In the van, Charlie took the blackened football helmet out of his Inventory and showed it off to Evan, "Can you believe this dingy little thing was making all those shark devils?"

"Why's it look like that?" Evan's face scrunched as the smell of ash and soot began to permeate the air, "Or was it like that from the start?"

"Nah, Lily scorched the hell out of it. Along with the whole hallway. Explosions everywhere."

"Ah, yes," Evan's voice came out dry, "I remember. It's why I lost contact with the cameras inside the school building."

"Yeah, her sorcery's pretty intense," Charlie rotated the helmet in his hands a few times before casting a calculating look in Evan's directions.

"I know what you're thinking," Evan's words were acid, "If you even try it I'll kill you."

"Gonna have to risk it then," Charlie grinned and leaned over, swinging the helmet around, trying to get the burnt helmet onto Evan's head.

"Stop it you dipshit, getting ash all over the car," Evan squirmed around and batted Charlie's hand away, but a twinge of a smile was present on Evan's lips, even as he tried to suppress it.

"He's a quarterback," Charlie laughed and tried again to put the helmet on Evan's head. He imitated a sports announcer, "Evan Collier, Number 49, running down the field. Is he gonna make it? Ohh, he's making it! Touchdown!"

Out from the inside of the helmet, a small white slip of paper fell out, somehow unburnt from Lily's explosions. Tiny runes drawn in a faint red ink covered the front and back sides of the paper. The two of them immediately stopped joking around. Evan picked up the paper off the floor of the van. It was warm to the touch.

The two of them looked at each other.

"You know what the hell that is?" Charlie asked.

"Not a clue."

Lily typed in "Department of Occult Affairs" into the search bar of her web browser. Out popped pages of results, either wikis for various fictional series or Facebook groups roleplaying as a secret government society. Nothing about government organizations fighting invisible monsters.

She closed her laptop, put it on the table next to her, and leaned back in her chair. She looked at the ceiling and blew out a sigh.

"What do you think, grandma?"

A tall white funerary urn holding the ashes of her granda stared back. Cold ceramic gave no indication of approval or disappointment.

"Yeah, figured."

It wasn't even a decision.

Lily thought she'd be stuck forever doing busy work in a convenience store or an office building or something of the sort. It wouldn't be a bad life, per se. Lily hadn't ever been of the mind that she needed to love her work to have a good life. It wasn't the brightest future, certainly not the type that she'd envisioned as a kid, but it was safe. She'd made a peace with it.

But here she was, considering joining some kind of secret society because apparently the lives of thousands of people were on the line.

"You'd kill me if you knew I was smoking, huh? Dad would kill me too. He always hoped I'd be better than him," Lily gave the urn a rueful smile. She was careful not to smoke in the house, trying not to taint the air. Felt disrespectful to be smoking in the first place, given that her dad's lungs had given out to cancer because of his own smoking habit. But nicotine addiction was a bitch, so here she was, "Sorry. Looks like I'll have to start smoking even more now. I'm a sorcerer now, or so I'm told. And whatever my sorcery is, seems like it chews through my cigarettes like nobody's business."

Lily took a lighter out of her pocket and lit the scented candle that her mom had left on the shelf next to her grandma's ash urn. Her mom hadn't ever acknowledged Lily's smoking habit out loud (it'd probably break the poor woman to have to talk about it), but she'd taken to leaving the candles around. Twofold purpose; a tacit nod to the fact that Lily's mom knew that she had a lighter on her most of the time, and to cover up the cigarette stank.

"Shit, you guys immigrated here to give me a better opportunity, huh?" Lily pulled up the sleeves of her shirt. Starting from about halfway up both forearms, small circular burn scars dotted her skin. The kind you got from pressing lit cigarettes into flesh, "Sorry for being such a fuck-up."

Lily imagined her grandma's tearful half-smile.

"It's alright, though. Got a job lined up, I think. And I'll be helping people out. Doing something productive for once in my miserable life," Lily sniffed.

She glanced over at the other side of the living room, where the coffee table sat. The table was strewn with papers. Bills, bills, bills. "Overdue," said one particularly angry red stamp. Her mom was getting buried with the bills. Her neighborhood was a little too rich for their family, but her parents had chosen to move there for the school system, to give Lily a better shot for the future. They'd just barely been able to afford it when her grandma, dad, and mom were all working. Now, her mom worked close to seventy hours a week and it still wasn't enough. It occurred to Lily that very soon, they might be losing the house.

"Fuck's sake," Lily grouched. She stalked out of the room and headed for the glass sliding door in the kitchen which led to the back porch, pulling a fresh pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket. She leaned against the wooden railing of her porch and sparked her lighter. She lit one, noticing that the cigarette burned a bright cherry-red. The smoke had little carmine flecks in it, all crackling with occult energy.

When she inhaled, the smoke roared its way down her throat and churned the acid in her stomach into a furious whirlpool. The surge of power that she felt in her bones was somewhat familiar at this point.

"Hey, is this Daphne?" Lily waited for a response, "Yeah it's Lily."

Lily took a quick glance at the house. She closed her eyes.

"How much does that sorcerer job pay again?"