"And now to you two."

A man stood behind us. A scarf as black as his raven hair covered the lower half of his face while a hat with its bottom part cut off rested on his head. Piercing brown eyes stared at me through square-rimmed spectacles. Although his face looked boyish, in a Tom Holland way, he had the tall, intimidating build of someone who worked out regularly. Which made me feel small. I didn't want to provoke him. Sensing my fear, he swung a massive wooden staff, bigger than himself, and drew black aether mist into it. The leather duster he wore above his Levi's flapped in the wind. He rose from the ground with the effortlessness of a walk in the park and floated closer. Yes, really.

I know what you think. "Doesn't he need a broomstick to fly?" - No, staves worked, too, as a focal point for energy. But normally, you also needed a familiar's help. He didn't. Was he even human?

A sense of arousal flooded through me as he came closer. Despite the whole "promiscuous bisexual" cliché, I've avoided others for most of my life. Too many abandonment issues, too much distrust. But his aura suddenly made me lower my defenses. It wasn't romantic attraction, at least, no natural one, even if he was handsome. More like a warm feeling that brought peace to my soul and removed any inhibitions I might have had.

I woke up after Simon threw the horseshoe necklace around my shoulders.

"Look, whatever you just tried," I said, "I'm underage and my Dad is a cop, so-"

"I did not mean to," he spoke, his voice low, but his tone confident.

I noticed the pointy ears that betrayed his Fae nature. Oh, noes. Disney lied to you about fairies being nice, kids. Why do you think the Europeans fearfully called them the "Fair Folk"? Because they were all as small and cute as Tinker Bell? Or because they kidnapped humans with their alluring charm and played vicious pranks with no regard for their well-being? I'm betting on the latter.

You probably think all fairies are small and with butterfly wings, but there's also human-sized types we call elves. Much like vampires or succubi, they emit a mind mojo aura that makes them look beautiful to their prey, but assuming he didn't blatantly lie - which they were incapable of - it wasn't always controllable.

"D-did you send these monsters?" I asked. "Are you in charge of this of place? You guys tell the truth, don't you?"

"Lady Titania predicted a seventy-five percent chance of a Veil breach occurring here and I came," he said. "That simple."

I knew nothing about divination, but percentage precision sounded impressive. "Do, did your Titania cause this?"

"Let's strike a bargain," he said, ignoring the question. "My godmother's bound to the Otherworld by the Veil's rules. She needs scions who operate in the mortal world for her. Not that I wanna work with someone like you, but she told me that the Council exiled your mother to the Otherworld. You must feel the same about them as I do."

My mother. Why did this Shakespearean Fairy Lady know so much about me? "Good news," I said. "I'm not interested either. How about we say goodbye and you let us walk out of the portal?"

He pointed his staff at me like a saber. "Not that simple."

"Why don't you pick on someone of your rank, changeling?"

A black young woman with a short, stocky frame and white owl mask emerged from the crimson fog. Her choice of clothes felt inappropriate given her surroundings. Like someone had attended a graveyard in a ballgown. She wore a beautiful, robe-like azure dress with a Peter Pan collar, blue boots, long white socks, and a red band tying her hair together.

She held herself with elegant grace and, much like the changeling, she carried a staff like they only gave it to mages and above. Which meant she was a Cunning Folk Academy graduate.

Her familiar was, if her mask hadn't given it away already, a brown-dotted white snow owl that soared through the sky with age and wisdom in its beautiful, yellowish eyes.

She had a familiar. Good. So, she was likely human. And she wasn't alone. Three more people, two men and a woman with ages ranging from as young as me to their late thirties or forties, rose from the portal with their staves raised. They had plaques on their chests that read "HUNTER" and the oldest of the three even wore a purple sorcerer cloak. Practitioner societies employed a system similar to academic titles based on magical knowledge. Those who passed a basic education and earned a staff were called mages. Those with the equivalent of a Ph.D. in one magical discipline were called sorcerers and those Renaissance men and women who mastered all fields of magic were called wizards.

The changeling understood he stood no chance against professional monster hunters. He reached for his belt and as if it had popped into existence two seconds ago, he threw a cardboard tube with a burning fuse that looked like a firecracker. Before I could turn and run, it exploded in front of Simon and me. A cloud of dust billowed from the tube. My eyes watered while my throat ached from the cough-inducing smoke.

The Fae couldn't tolerate iron, steel, or anything similar, but that didn't make them technologically illiterate. To build a smoke bomb, you needed nothing more than a cardboard tube, fire, sugar, and some saltpeter.

I coughed. And, if you wanted to be mean, you can also add capsaicin or pepper to give people teary eyes.

When the smoke cleared, I realized the elf was gone. Quite the ninja indeed.

The Hunters barely looked fazed. One of them wanted to pursue the changeling, but the sorcerer told him to stand behind. Instead, the sorcerer swung his staff and lifted both Isa with a single levitation spell and effortlessly let her float out of the portal. Simon and I followed suit.

We walked through the swirling ball of distorted spacetime that showed solid ground and a peaceful afternoon sky on the other side. A good old wormhole. No, not a wormhole for interstellar travel like in the Starsnatcher movies. One for interdimensional travel. The one-up of interstellar travel.

If I was some kind of scientist, I'd have wondered about the spacetime magic needed to hold it open or what a profound moment for humanity it is to cross the border between the dimensions. But I wasn't a scientist. All I wondered was if someone had tea, cookies, and a warm bed for me on the other side.

Home, sweet home!

Once everyone returned to the parking lot, my head stopped humming and I could see clearly again. The sky had darkened compared to last time. Siris already warned me once that time passed differently in the Otherworld and who knew what time it was now. Five minutes could be an hour there.

Now that we were in the mortal world again, the sorcerer let his levitation spell disappear and Isa got carried away by hand.

The sorcerer had cast a glamour spell well before we stepped through the portal. Glamour was something Mom explained to me personally while I was small.

It was a delicate form of mind magic that influenced how people saw the world. I'm betting the changeling made himself invisible in our minds after dropping the smoke bomb to make us think he teleported away. Other fairies used glamour to appear more benign and beautiful than they truly were or to disguise their true nature.

Why don't all supernaturals have this all the time? Maintaining the Veil would be so much comfier that way.

Now, things apparently changed and we had to do it ourselves. The sorcerer explained that he made it look like we passed through a door and he'd make us look however we wanted to appear once we fully crossed the threshold. He made his staff appear like a hockey stick and changed the Hunter's robes to look like comfortable summer tees.

"I'd like to use my pixie for that if that's okay," the black young woman said.

Removing the bracelet from her arm, the girl made a small spark appear. A helpful pixie that looked exactly the way Disney imagined fairies showed up. The pixie made her body glow in white for a moment like she was Cinderella changing clothes.

Once the glow disappeared, the girl didn't wear her blue dress anymore. Instead, she wore an orange blouse along with dark, opaque tights and a checked skirt so formal that it might have belonged to a school uniform. Only that she probably wasn't in school anymore. Now that I could see her face, framed by her shoulder-length locs, she looked quite a bit older than the kids here. Her staff was still there, although, to an outside observer, it now looked like a broom. Yeah, the people liked disguising staves as brooms. How else do you think people came up with the "witches flying on broomsticks" cliché?

She didn't disguise the stern expression on her face as she looked at Simon, however.

She didn't disguise the stern expression on her face as she looked at Simon, however. "Didn't this place have rules against going to forbidden places?"

"Sorry, Hermione!" Simon said.

"You two know each other?" I asked.

Simon laughed. "Oh, her? Darcy, this is Marissa. Marissa, this is Darcy, my older sister. She just completed her undergraduate studies in magic and moved back home to our family in Summer Hill."

Okay, that explained how he knew about the supernatural world.

"Nice to meet you, Marissa," Darcy said. "You are Marissa Carter, right? The daughter of Alice, if I remember right."

"D-did the Council send you?" I asked.

"No, no, don't worry about that!" Darcy said. "I made a poppet of my brother. Through it, I could track the state of his health and his location. A Veil breach?"

What was this? An interrogation? The cold hands and the short breath returned from where I left them after Isa saw me.

Isa was still sleeping. Her Nokia 6 hung out of her bag and its screen remained black even when Simon played with its buttons. Honestly, I didn't care if she had time to share anything. She was more important than her phone and I hoped she was fine.

"J-just got my familiar now," I said. "Don't tell your friends though."

Darcy raised an eyebrow.

"What?" I asked.

"You know what they think of practitioners who refuse to join them."

"Yeah, they'll think I'm an SCP that needs containment."

"But you were involved in a Veil breach and they'll see you as a possible suspect-"

"Possible suspect?" Simon snapped, saying exactly what I wanted to say, with the difference being that he was faster. "She risked becoming dog food and plant food at once to save me!"

"I know that!" Darcy said. "Why do you never let me finish what I want to speak."

"Oh, I never let you finish?" Simon asked. "Do you remember all those times when I tried to talk to Mom, but then you-"

"Guys!" I said. "Stop making me glad that I'm an only child!"

A Hunter arrived, talking to Darcy. "Mage Leaf, we are grateful that you called us here. The portal has been closed and we do not expect the witnesses to fluidly recollect the events once they wake up. We will search the building for any traps that might endanger people in the future. Unfortunately, a higher-end D-ranked Veil breach in the region has been reported with the Jersey Devil being involved. We will leave this place soon. Before we do, we need a recollection of the events that have been witnessed. A glamour will ensure that nobody listens."