I tell Lebec to grab a seat and head to the back of Blackhart.

There are a few items there that might help me at Bristlebloom. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to be walking into or what equipment the Austerium will provide me with.

Better to come prepared than to have to ask for something and be refused.

Thank God I never have to pay a lease on that gateway ever again.

I breathe out a sigh of relief and then frown.

Is this the trap though? Can he lie to me? Do I need to get some sort of contract signed?

When the Austerium had first installed the gateway, I hadn't signed any sort of contract. An caster was dispatched, we had a conversation, and then the bills started coming after he enchanted the door, turning it into a gateway.

I can't believe they're letting me back into Anara. I can't believe I'm going to get to see Bristlebloom again.

Bristlebloom and I have a bit of a checkered past. I was enrolled there for all of what, two days? Before I got suspended.

It was around that time that I got cursed with my horns, but before I killed the man who set me up to be cursed.

It's a long story.

I pull myself back to the present.

If the Austerium is willing to bring me in, they must be desperate.

Maybe I can just look at the scene and then bail out. They must have someone more qualified to deal with this than me…

Silvy appears on a shelf to my right. “I can't believe you agreed to help them.”

“Same,” I say.

“There are other options.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you could become their little witch lackey, or you could go, look at the scene, and say you don't see anything. You're not trained by the Austerium after all. I'd love to see their face when you tell them that.”

“And then what? Come back here?”

Silvy shrugs but doesn't respond.

“I guess I can come back and help Marist find her daughter.”

Silvy sighs. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because I said I would. And outside of that I can start selling witchstones and finally getting ahead in my life. I might be able to make positive progress with my bank account. If I help the Austerium, maybe they'll even lighten my sentence.”

Silvy licks her paw.

“I'll just go through the motions of checking out the scene and then get the hell away. The Austerium and Anara can take care of themselves. I need to help Nightsbridge. No one's looking out for the sticks here.”

Silvy rolls her eyes at me and vanishes in a plume of smoke.

At the front of Blackhart, I find Lebec standing beside the gateway. He glances at the backpack I'm wearing over my parka.

“You ready?” he asks.

“As ready as I'm ever going to be. Let's go.”

He puts his hand on the knob, he twists it, and as he pulls it open the gateway fills with bright light.

I forgot adepts can do that…

Gateways are hardwired to only open to the specific gateway or gateways the Austerium decides. This is how it works for 99% of Anara's population. For the other 1%, the wizards and adepts, gateways function as something else entirely. They can choose which gateway the exit out of, instead of being restricted to whatever gateways are hardwired.

Through the gateway Lebec opens, I can see a darkened hallway lit by a single light source just out of view. Marble floors, wooden walls, high ceilings.

Bristlebloom.

We step through and I glance up at the floating lights near the ceiling.

We're in the dorms. The hallway we walk down might even be the same hallway I lived on.

“Is this the building where my room was?” I ask.

“I have no idea,” Lebec says. “Is it?”

I glare at him. “You tell me. You were the one who expelled me.”

Lebec pats his shirt and leads me on, not responding to my jab.

At the end of the long hallway I can see light pouring out of an open door on the right side. As we get closer, I ask, “Is that it?”

Lebec nods.

The door is by the entrance to the dorms and if memory serves, there's a large spiral staircase outside that door with plenty of gateways.

It's the perfect location for a getaway.

Lebec makes it to the doorway first and gestures for me to enter. I start to enter but freeze in the doorway.

My breath leaves me and my shoulders slump.

Floating at the center of this small, cramped dormitory room is a girl who looks like she's just about my own age. She floats upside down, slowly spinning in a circle, her head ten inches away from the floor below.

Her knuckles drag against the tile, the skin of her knuckles long rubbed off. The exposed bone of her knuckles moves along a pathway painted red. A perfect red circle of dried blood.

There are words at the center of the circle: Don’t try again.

When she spins around so that I can see her face, I frown. There are long gashes on her cheeks. One beneath each eye that traces down to the corners of her mouth. There is also a deep slash across her forehead.

The witch's horns looked nothing like mine. It's the second pair of horns I've ever seen, well, third if you include my own. The girl’s horns are thick and gnarled. One of them curls around the side of her head like a ram's while the other pokes straight out.

Until this point I've assumed all witches have symmetrical horns, but apparently that's not the case.

The horns are green and covered in what looks like moss, the type of moss you see growing on boulders in a burbling stream.

From the corner of the room someone sniffs.

I glance over and see a face I never thought I'd see again. “Cerulea. How are you?”

The adept turns her nose up at me, brushing back her raven hair and scowling with pursed lips. Not too long ago this same adept tried to arrest me for selling weaponized witchstones in the Red Market. I mean, I was, but she hadn't been able to make it stick.

She hadn't been able to prove I'd ever been to the Red Market as she didn't have access to it.

Too bad for her.

“So,” Lebec says. “What can you tell us that we don't know?”

I look at him and back to the floating witch. “Nothing. All I see is a witch suspended in the air. By the way, how is she still floating? Shouldn't the spell have already discharged by now?”

“That's another thing,” Lebec says. “We don't fully understand it.”

I not, reaching into my parka and pulling out a pair of luma goggles. I slip them on and him immediately blinded.

The goggles block out everything, all sources of light and all shapes except for any luma left behind when magick is used. Luma typically appears in colors corresponding to the type of magick used. Black for death magick, green for life, white for bone, red for blood, and yellow for curses.

I don't see any luma though. No colors at all.

“I'm assuming she's floating because there's a spell being used, right?”

Lebec doesn't say anything.

“I can't see you, Lebec. Are you nodding?”

“Oh, yes,” he says. “Our vanishers already went over the room, searching for luma. They couldn't find anything.”

I nod.

“Didn't you go to Bristlebloom to be a vanisher?” Cerulea asks. “All right… You got expelled… My mistake.”

“So there's no luma left behind,” I say, “she's floating here, and you think… that a witch did this? Because of the lack of luma?”

No answer. I snap my fingers.

“Oh,” Lebec grunts. “Sorry. Yes.”

Cerulea pipes up. “We think that the witch ate the luma before she killed her friend.”

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I slip my fingers into my pocket and pull out one of the witchstones I grabbed before we left Blackhart. I throw it on the ground as hard as I can and listen as it bounces. Each time it hits the ground, the entire room lights up blue, the focal point of the light coming from where the witchstone is impacting the floor. In addition to this blue light, I can see faint traces of other colors. Up around the floating witch’s feet I can a hint of red.

I step closer as the witchstone keeps bouncing, hitting the ground in even time.

“What is that witchstone doing?” Cerulea asks.

I smile. “Do either of you have luma goggles?”

Lebec and Cerulea rustle for their own goggles and I hear Lebec curse.

Cerulea's reaction is different altogether. “That can't be real. Blood magick has been banished from the Nidema Plaine for at least a century.”

Silvy speaks from my shoulder. “All witches are banished from Nidema as well but look where we find ourselves.”

“Cursed thing,” Cerulea spits.

“Useless bureaucrat,” Silvy shoots back.

“Ladies,” Lebec interrupts, “I think we need to focus on the problem at hand. From what I'm seeing, someone used blood magick on the witch.”

“Yup,” I say. “Welcome to the party. Explains how she's floating.”

Blood magick, at its most primitive level, works by taking control of the blood in another person's body. The more elegant forms of blood magick are more invasive. Highly proficient blood wizards can essentially change a person's thoughts, and make them think they came to these thoughts all on their own. Blood wizards operating at this level could even slip into another person's mind and see through their eyes.

I push away thoughts of when that exact thing had happened to me. I push away thoughts of what happened in the Shadow Vaile.

After pulling the goggles off and slipping them back into my parka, I catch the still bouncing witchstone and slip it back in my pocket.

“Okay,” I say. “It seems like you have a lot to do. As you can see, a witch didn't do this.”

“We don't know that,” Cerulea corrects. “A witch could have used blood magick to do this.”

“You and I both know that witches can't use witchstones.”

Cerulea raises her eyebrows at me. “Can't you?”

“That doesn’t apply,” I say. “I'm not a real witch. I only got my horns because I was cursed. I don't have any of the powers.” I turn to look at Lebec. “Hence, I don't know why I'm still exiled.”

Lebec clears his throat. “We would like you to continue working on this case with us. If the person who killed this witch is continuing to hunt, they might be looking for other witches.”

“Isn't that kinda sorta what the Austerium does?”

Lebec chews on his lip.

The Austerium has a long and storied past of hunting and executing witches.

“Yes,” Lebec answers, “but…”

Oh...

“You're not worried about another witch dying,” I say, shaking my head. “You're worried that the parents of the students that attend the school are gonna find out that witches have infiltrated it. Is that right?”

Cerulea scoffs. “Of course not. That's the farthest thing from the truth.”

Suddenly I'm exhausted with this entire exchange. I just want to go home, maybe look into the whole Pixie thing a little before going to sleep, but my eyes drift over to the floating witch.

That could have been me. That could've been me upside down in this dorm room. I could have been a victim just as easily as her.

“You'll help us?” Lebec asks.

“Yeah,” I say after taking a few moments.

“Good.” He clears his throat. “There's one issue though. As you'll be needing to move in and out of Anara whenever necessary, you'll need an escort.”

“An adept?” I ask.

Lebec glances over to Cerulea. The faint lines of a smile begin to form on her face.

“No,” I say.

“No?” Lebec asks. “Why not?”

“You know my history with Cerulea.”

Lebec glances pointedly at the hanging witch and back to me. “Can't that be set aside for this?”

“If I do this,” I say in a quiet voice, “I expect answers regarding my exile. Firm dates.”

Lebec nods. “I believe that if you do this, if you find the culprit, the Austerium will be amenable to commuting your sentence.”

I nod.

As the witch makes one more revolution, I walk out of the dormitory room.

“Get her down from there,” I say to Lebec over my shoulder. “She doesn't deserve to hang like that any longer.”