The good thing about passing out was the lack of dreams. It was a coin toss whether an Incant would end up dithering about in their domain on the other plane or get peppered with the freedom of dreams (an unwelcome sight for those unfortunate few burdened with divination spells) but Nora wasn’t in either camp.

They knew what they’d taken from her and rubbed it in with every nightmare she’d been plagued with after that accursed third slotting.

No, blacking out was a respite for Nora because not a piece of her had the energy or the wherewithal to form a scene of terror or anything else really. And her domain made her feel ill at ease, having to share a space with…

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered while bobbing weightless in the dark. Not the twinkling cosmos of the Astral or the sky at night but the true black void stretching out as a cold blanket. True unrepentant rest.

Be careful.

Nora scrambled up from the floor caked in sweat and faint strands of drool in a panicked alertness.

“Ah, ah, wait!” The boy cried out with their hands up in the ebb of darkness, only a sliver of light from the outside world silhouetting a knife in his hand. The stuttering was incoherent as she charged at the boy with an open hand and ripped the hilt from the child’s fingers.

It didn’t matter what he wanted with the weapon. Backstab her or defend himself to things that go bump in the night, a knife was not meant to be in the hands of a child.

Wordlessly, she walked towards the bedroom she’d failed to reach and attempted to sleep again, arms folded in an upright position.

She’d only closed her eyes for a moment before feeling the shifting of the air carefully and painfully taking steps towards her bedroom.

“Quit it and get some rest or I’m throwing you back to that freak of nature.” Nora hissed hoping the drowsiness in her mind didn’t slur the delivery of her threat.

The movement stopped, “How’d you do that?” He asked incredulously. She didn’t open her eyes, feeling her body slink unevenly towards the soft side of the bed.

“Will you go to sleep and leave the knife to rest if I tell you?” She asked the young boy. “And no more questions after this.” She tacked onto her statement in a hurry. She was in no mood to indulge some kids' curiosities. The boy didn’t move. There was a pensive deliberation that she might have been brought to open her eyes again if she had the energy to do so.

“But I needed the knife to-”

“You wanted the knife. Wanted. To what, defend us from the weird fucking meat puppets? Or are you cold enough to stab your fucking neighbors with this thing?” Just give it a rest kid.

A moment of silence passed before she started hearing the muffled sobs of the boy give way.

“Fuck, don’t-don’t cry.” Nora opened her eyes and peered at the boy through the narrow slits. His hair was dirty blonde and moppy. There were scrapes and cuts across his arms and knobby knees and legs, most faded with recent additions gotten to by a rag or something else in the house she hadn’t bothered to rummage through. His eyes pierced the darkness with that pale blue and his boyish face tried its best not to scrunch up into an ugly snotted mess in front of her. “Look, kid, just sit down and take a breath.” Nora stammered with her order.

“I-I-I-I just want to make up-up for getting c-c-caught.” He was caught with this narrow intake of air and snot as he desperately tried to save face for the young Incant. “I got c-caught and l-l-left Anna-Marie behind!” The waterworks finally broke through. Nora had half a mind to pounce for his mouth and scare him shut but… but he was just a kid in a fucked up situation.

“Look. Just,” Nora pressed her fingers to her nose bridge, “Listen. You’re not a burden. You don’t have to make up jackshit. We’re dealing with the demented needs of some rogue Incant and it’d weigh fucking heavy on my conscience if I had some tween running around with a magic knife fighting off meat things while I’m passed out on the floor.” The explanation was messy and she slurred her statement (damn bodies and their need for sleep) but it gave the boy enough of an idea to mercifully stop the waterworks. “You and your damn sister have the same hard head. She came out here earlier today looking to save you from that mess and I had to rescue her first.” Brat’s, the lot of them.

The boy coughed out a giggle, “Yeah that sounds like Ann. Calls me the dumb one but the skulls generational.”

Nora bit her tongue from adding onto the comment.

“Now that you understand why I don’t want you running around with this,” Nora shook the knife in her hand like a toy, “Can you please promise me you’re not going to try and sneak in here again to play hero?”

The boy's smile faded a bit and he looked bashfully towards the floor, “Are you going to tell me how you knew I was coming?”

“Yes. Just make the damn promise!”

“Alright, I promise not to take the knife.” The boy looked at Nora with wide eyed expectation.

She sighed, “It’s not that crazy, kid. I read the air around me and saw you fumbling in the dark to tiptoe your way to the room.”

“But, but how?”

It was her turn to smile.

She shrugged and closed her eyes, “Pick your poison, kid. Magic spell, witches sense, demon minions. I need to catch up on rest and you’re gonna need it too if we plan to break off from this garbage.”

The faint grumbles of disappointment were quickly melted out of existence as the sweet embrace of nothing found her again.

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The clattering of a dropped pan rustled her from a groggy, dreamless slumber. Despite completing her rest on soft sheets and dusted blankets, her body ached and groaned with pain and overuse.

More complaints were sure to follow if she had anything to say with how the rest of the day went. Nora kicked her feet up and onto the hardwood floor and gingerly stepped towards the kitchen where the growing burnt stench came from.

The kitchen table was mostly wiped off of dust as the boy set down a plate of black disks at the center with a stick of butter accompanying the ‘appetizing’ treats.

“Made some toast.” The boy looked at the plate with pride before running back to the floor with strewn cookware and set them in the drawers.

Nora picked up a piece of charcoal and felt the black grains crumbling at her fingertips, “This is toast?”

“It’s a little burnt but it’s nothing we can’t eat. Can’t let food go to waste.” The boy responded.

“Kid, this is charred. We can do better than this.” Nora rummaged through her coat and felt for a hefty bag in one of the pockets. She reached in and felt the electric tingle of the stars as she pulled them out of the bag. The boy looked at the glimmering star stones with wonder.

“Ma said we’re not supposed to mess around with those kinds of stones.” The boy warned but his eyes were transfixed on the light.

“Your mothers a-” Nora bit her tongue, “She’s just a bit misguided. Or maybe a hypocrite. The Father said the town pulled together the funds to buy my services and they bought it with these.”

“Those are wishing stones, right, witch? Anna-Marie and her friends said they saw Miss Grichen digging around the woods once looking for stars and wished for a boyfriend and that’s how she found Mister Inglot.”

The backwaters at work.

“No. I’m- no that’s not how any of that works. Don’t you go to school?”

“Ma homeschools us with the help of Father Vincente. Says we’re safe from ‘heretic teachings’ that way. Ma takes care of morals and reason and the Father makes sure we can read our letters and count our numbers.”

“What-How does your mom pay for the Fathers services?”

“Um, mom helps clean and uh maintain the church while the Father runs errands in town with Mrs. Vincente. Everyone else in the community pitches in to help the other out.” From the look on the kids face, it was like she was the one touched in the head.

Nora shrugged. Ignorance couldn’t be helped if the community sought to go against the larger tides of the world.

“Kid, these are wishing stars. Clump a couple of these together,” Nora gathered the few stars in her hand and closed her palm around it, “And make a verbal wish to it. It’ll come true if you have enough weight in stars to grant it. Like, I wish for an appetizing breakfast large enough to satisfy this child and I.” The kids' eyes sparkled as the stars did. Their weight disappeared off of her palm and with it came the appetizing breakfast, materializing above the boys handiwork with unnecessary flourish. This time the universe sought to bring them a plate full of eggs and cooked sausage, glasses of milk and orange juice with more juice in an ice cold pitcher, and a half loaf of toast and butter warm enough to spread evenly across the bread face.

“Did the devil make us breakfast?!” The child pulled back from the table but his mouth betrayed that hunger.

Nora laughed, “Sure. Maybe if you put the eggs in your mouth, you’ll be able to taste the sulfur and brimstone.” She gathered the utensils the boy set down for her and dug into her meal. The first bite was ecstasy, with the juicy bite of sausage exploding savory flavors in her mouth, mingling with the salty fluffiness of the eggs. “Eat your demon food before it gets cold. I didn’t need to wish for a plate for you and I did it anyway. Be grateful.” She kept shoveling food down her throat and saw the boy take small steps back to his chair. He picked at his eggs suspiciously with a fork and inspected Nora with eagle eyes before scraping the edge of a piece of sausage with the skin of his teeth.

“Wow!” His eyes lit up at the morsel and those fears of demons and devils melted away as quickly as the butter on the slices of toast did. “How did you make this happen?” She approximated his statement. It was difficult to make out with all the food crammed in his mouth.

“I’ve already explained it. Those stars I just had paid the Astral plane or a god or whatever to make us some food.” Nora replied. She took a bite of toast with just the right level of crunch to soft fluff in her mouth.

“But like,” the boy took a hearty swig of his milk to clear his throat, “But where do you find these stars? Do you dig for them like Miss Grichen?”

Nora considered how to approach the response, “Most of the Incants under the employ of the AWW acquire stars from fulfilling bounties. Think of ‘em as services for all the communities across this land. They can be mined in the Astral or dropped by a spell fought against on either side of the planes.” His face didn’t look like it was gathering what she meant and she wasn’t going to elaborate just to get an earful from ‘corrupting her child’ by the mother later.

“Moving on, what’s your name? I can’t keep calling you kid.”

The boy opened his mouth to say something and then stopped himself. He looked down at his plate in shame, “Mom said witches ask for names to steal their souls.”

A quarter truth at best.

“Your sister was brave enough to share her name with me.” Nora looked away.

“Nuh uh! She’s a bigger scaredy-cat than I am!” The boy couldn’t contain his anger.

“Then how did I know your sister's name was Anna-Marie. Or that your mother’s name is Annabelle Hilston and your father’s name is Jonah Hil-”

“He’s not my dad! He won’t ever be my dad! And you could have heard those names from anyone!” The boy's voice grew louder.

“Hey!” Nora cut through the boy’s rage-infused confidence and snuffed it with a look. “Tell me your name, don’t tell me your name, I don’t care anymore. The moment you start yelling at me like that again, I’m letting you find your own way to your fucking parents.”

She continued to eat her food in silence. It was getting cold.

“My name is Thomas. Thomas Hilston.” The boy mumbled. She didn’t look at him, continuing to eat her food in silence.

Once Nora finished with her meal she got up from the table and threw the dirty dishes in the sink. She crossed the kitchen without so much as taking a glance at the boy to beeline her way to the wards she’d etched the night prior. It wasn’t her best work with the leyline being crooked and the runes themselves being worse indecipherable squiggles but it did its job. The burnt edges of each lettering told her as much.

“What’s that supposed to do on the floor there?” Thomas asked with his head poking from behind the kitchen entrance.

“Protects from intruders.” Nora curtly responded. Assessing her body, she was running at a half tank, mana wise. Sleeping in another wizard's domain wasn’t good for recuperation but she was too tired to think of an alternative. Could she run away with just her reserves or was she going to need to drink up her contingency plan? “How far away are we from city lines?” She peered through the window blinds out onto the cracked street and weed infested sidewalk.

“Um, going up this street, we’re probably a half an hour walk to the north exit of town.” Thomas answered.

Fuck. She was so damn close to a steed too.

“I think we’re going to need to head back to town.” Nora sighed in resignation. If they were there, she’d yell at them for making the job harder and drop off the child with his family before holding off the wizard at their threshold.

If they weren’t there… well she at least needed a place to group up with the oncoming Incant.

“Come on and get ready. I don’t know how terrible things are going to be back there but we’re making a beeline through the town towards the church. Stay close to me and stay quiet. Last thing I need is for you to run towards danger kicking and screaming.” Nora looked at Thomas with all the sternness of a babysitter hoping he’d grasp the severity of the situation.

The boy eagerly nodded and disappeared out of sight.

Nora gathered her own possessions and felt the cold potion at her fingertips from within her coat pocket as she made a silent resolution to drink herself out cold if she made it through this.