Our home loomed in the town's outskirts. Compared to the other houses, it stared you in the face like a toad's eye in a potion.

Not sure how many of you know that the New York Upstate area, well, exists, but Summer Hill was part of it. Built in northeastern Westchester, New York, it neighboured famous places like Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, or the Briarcliff Manor. As such, Summer Hill was your typical Hudson Valley suburban dream. Pastel-colored houses, lovely lawns with white picket fences, sunny lanes where friendly neighbors walked their dogs - you could run a checklist and hit every fifties sitcom trope.

Our house was different. Its overgrown lawn full of potion ingredients, its boarded-up windows, its old, sagging gambrel roof, and its peeled-off cement exposed it for what it was. It was a suburban witch's hut, abandoned for years. Houses are like people – in my opinion. If you show them too little care, they will wither and decay. When we moved back here, we bought it for a very cheap price. The previous residents got sick of the noise caused by a basement goblin they couldn't even see.

Dad's Ford was nowhere in sight. If I hurried, I could finish before the sunset and he came home.

I rushed upstairs straight into the bathroom. The mirror revealed a tiny scar under my sleeve, but otherwise, Darcy healed me flawlessly. I washed the Otherworldy mud from my face before taming my brown locks with a hairbrush. I removed a piece of toilet paper and tore it to bits.

Slowly, methodically, I limped into my living room. I felt tired to the bone. Even with the freshwater still in my face, sand crumbled under my eyelids. I walked towards the couch and, with each step, I left a piece of toilet paper.

That way, I created a forty-foot toilet paper trail to measure how far I carried the feather.

Our living room was small and full of bugs. Its mismatched old furniture left by previous residents included a tiny-aged television you could watch from the couch.

I took out my phone and searched for the Signal app Darcy had mentioned earlier. I contacted her there and Darcy promised she'd keep me up-to-date about news concerning the Council.

Sitting on the couch, I conjured up Siris on my lap. He felt so real when he assumed a physical form. As if he was made of actual flesh and covered in actual fur. I always wanted to have a cat since I was young. When I was ten, her Dad bought me one from the animal shelter, but we had to give it back since I was allergic. Thank Seraphiel that this didn't extend to magic ghost cats.

He stood up from my lap and jumped on the coffee table. "Eh, I'm a spirit of wisdom, not a plush toy."

"Aren't you also a spirit of cuteness?"

"Eh, whatever. Go practice so that you can move to your Academy and leave me alone."

Closing my eyes, I clutched my mother's necklace. Fears, worries, and anxieties; my mind shed these dark thoughts like a snake sheds its skin. My heartbeat slowed. I focused on nothing other than Siris, the cloud of my life energy, and the path. The feather drifted through the aether like a leaf. My mind scattered as the feathered strayed too far and the cloud vanished in a puff of smoke.

I needed closer focus. I needed a mental tunnel – a magical magnetic bottle, following Darcy's plasma analogy – to keep it stable.

I remembered Darcy's tips. She said I needed an inner fire, something specific to focus on. I pictured my mother sitting next to me and smiling each time I made it just a little farther. I pictured ugly monsters and callous Councillors whose faces I wanted to punch. And I listened to music on my phone. Relaxing, dark ocarina music that produced the ancient and arcane mood I sought.

Magic isn't just science. It's also meditation. Peaceful, quiet worship. All those wands and funny robes please the spirits while music pleases the mind. You need to feel the aether and be one with the spirits, particularly your familiar.

My mind was at peace. I forgot my daily worries. I was one with the feather. It didn't fly far yet, but it swam in the ocean of my energy. As I swished and flicked my wrist, the feather spun.

It was easier than before. The monsters, fighting them taught me through pain. It was like learning to swim by being thrown into the water. I felt stronger. This feather was a joke. I was unstoppable.

And then the telephone rang and I jumped from the couch.

Ouch, my arm! Okay, maybe it didn't heal that well. I might have made some rather childish noises while like I looked for the number of the caller. Who dared disturb me?

Dad worked as a detective and he loved working on the unusual cases others ignored. Despite the recent rise in Veil breaches, our government was slow to react. Science, military, and law enforcement lacked the resources to do anything about those unexplained phenomena, mysterious disappearances, or haunted photographs that became more and more common.

As much as I appreciated Dad's efforts, I hated how he overworked himself. He isolated himself after Mom's loss. I wished I could've talked to him when my soul became more aether-susceptible and anxiety-like symptoms started plaguing my brain, but neither of us had a clue what happened. His main answer was to pay for a therapist and some drugs in the hope that they'd help.

Not that I blamed him. Mom only told him the bare minimum about the supernatural, lest his mind might have suffered similar problems. He knew nothing about what magic did, only what to do against it.

I lifted the speaker, glad to see the phone wasn't as damaged as I feared.

"How was your day, sunshine?" he asked.

"It was cool. Nothing awesome, but no big bummers either. I made it out alive."

"Are you sure? I tried to reach you before, but you didn't answer."

Sorry, I had no phone reception during my two-hour equivalent adventure in the Otherworld Domain. That was the honest answer.

"Spent some time with friends and forgot the time," I answered.

"Your new friends are good people, I hope," he said.

"Dad, I'm old enough to decide who I hang out with. Why did you want to call?"

"I just wanted you to know that I'll be at work a little bit longer than today. Maybe you heard about it, but Mrs. Turner is very sick."

"Nope she gets better soon," I said. "But isn't that more Dr. Leaf's job?"

"It is." He paused. "But Josiah thinks her disease isn't natural. She received several unrelated illnesses without a clear vector of infection. Her comatose body was found in the woods covered in Alder leaves. There was a piece of paper next to it signed by someone called the Erlking."

"That sounds dangerous."

"Very dangerous, yes. This isn't the first such letter. We got them in multiple states, but the FBI can't pull their heads out of the sand to see a connection." He laughed. "It's up to us locals as usual! If you're hungry, we still have a tasty steak in the fridge. Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

I paused. "There isn't."

"Are you sure?"

"There isn't."

"Have you taken your meds recently?"

"Yes," I said, which meant I was planning to take them. "Love you, Dad."

"I love you, too," he said, resigning to my silence. "I'll try to be home at around eight. Make sure you eat something! Bye!"

He hung up.

The phone speaker rested in my hand for long, painful seconds of contemplation. I could have mentioned that I now had magic powers and that I could help, but your fault, Dad, if you don't to talk to me in person. I mean, phone lines can be tapped.

But he'd refuse my help anyway. He knew the bare minimum about magic accessible to a practitioner relative under a Geas. Had Mom told him more, his thoughts and knowledge would have drawn in aether that might have corrupted his familiar-less mind. He had no idea how much danger he was in. Nor did I.

Siris wasn't all-knowing. When he arrived on my seventeenth birthday, he claimed Mom sent a tiny part of her soul through a kinship bond that I could use to form Siris. It was my only hint that she was even still alive. He was just a core, a seed for me to fill out. His knowledge was restricted to the basics of magic his previous masters knew by heart. For this reason, he couldn't tell me why Mom was really sent away (the thing with the video was more of a guess). But he could answer questions if he stopped being lazy.

"Siris, what do you know about the Erlking?" I asked.

He snorted. "No more than Wikipedia or the news."

"Hey! Don't sleep, Garfield!"

Siris stood up. "Garfield? I might have his sharp wit, but I'm not addicted to food!

"Siris, this isn't funny, people are going to die because of your laziness."

"You disrespect the sacred feline art of sleeping while humans are awake. The Erlking should be a C-ranked threat, what makes you think he's in your league?"

"What makes you think he's in Dad's league?"

"He isn't. But your Daddy got the magic power of adulthood and life experience. If he dies, he won't accidentally blow up the town until it looks like a drunk prom party!"

"And what about my school?" I asked. "I need to find out who's responsible for the attack and we just got a candidate!"

Siris cocked his head. "Maybe. The Erlking isn't the nicest guy. He killed a kid in a ballad by Goethe, you know, the guy known for Faust or Sorcerer's Apprentice. Might be an Unseelie fairy."

Wiggs mentioned that the hellhound and the helltree were an Unseelie and a Seelie creature, respectively. "What's the difference to Seelie fairies?"

"Well, each of them has their own universe in the Otherworld complex. The Seelie Kingdom is one of Spring, Summer, and Life, and it's ruled by Spring Kind Oberon and Summer Queen Mab. This Titania must be part of that. The Unseelie Kingdom of Autumn, Winter, and Death has Autumn King Gwyn ap Nudd and Winter Queen Nicvenin as rulers."

Of our two suspects, Titania seemed harder to research. From what Dad told me, the Erlking was known to multiple police departments and the Veil seemed like a minor hindrance to him at best.

He even had a motive. Darcy told me that supernaturals gained power through awareness. The damage done to the boiler room was minor overall – our heating was decentralized – so it likely wouldn't make more than local news, but attention was attention.

This Titania had a sound motive, too, (experimenting with how far she could forage into our world) so this didn't narrow it down.

Wish Dad told me more about detective work. Or that I knew more about the Veil and everything surrounding its rules. Maybe I could discuss this with Simon.