Flight had always been one of mankind's greatest dreams. Who didn't dream of being free from gravity's tyranny and flying through the air like a baby bird?

Well, I did just that on Darcy's staff. And I hoped we'd finally land.

I screamed as the hot wind rushed through my clothes. I clutched tighter against Darcy, the blood pounding in my ears, and the cape whipping behind me.

Lyfa sat on the tip of her master's staff. A tunnel of aether enwrapped us and distorted the trees and the lake below like a fisheye lens. They shot past us at unfathomable speeds. Distances in this tunnel were different from the outside.

Darcy drew the ley line's power through her staff and pushed it out in a blazing plume like a rocket trail.We levitated until our altitude increased enough that the mighty lake below us became a pond.

The tunnel ended in a ball-shaped portal. Halos of distorted spacetime looped around us as we dove into the light at the end of the path.

I closed my eyes. Everything became so cold. I re-entered the mortal realm, my feet planted on the ground, but even the warm summer air felt frigid compared to the Seelie Kingdom's never-ending high noon.

A hiking trail flanked by tall grass and pine trees as far as the eye could see surrounded me.

Oppressive darkness covered this place. Only small stripes of sunlight illuminated the space between the shadows cast by the pine trees. If predators and demons were here, they had tons of hiding room.

A shield near the trail told me where I was. October Mountain State Forest. Thousands of acres big and the largest national forest in Massachusetts.

Its reputation preceded it. Ghosts in white dresses, vampire bats, horned devils, and beasts with glowing eyes were just some of the denizens it was said to contain. Rumor even had it that William C. Whitney, the landowner who built a massive game reserve here, still haunted this place as a ghost.

"So, you hide in the wilderness?" I asked.

"In a way. We wanted to have our most important buildings in the same state as Salem. When our Society was founded in 1700, we first called it 'Salem Society' before we switched to 'Thaumaturgic Society' later."

My breath was fast, but I tried to conceal it. "S-sounds a bit disrespectful to name our Society after the hysteric murder of innocents."

"Yes, but Salem has a big ley line. It's to us what Transylvania is for the vampires, what Sleepy Hollow is for the Headless Horseman, and the Olymp for the Greek Gods. Human belief not only empowers monsters and gods; it changes geographic aether fields."

Well, the trials happened in Salem Village, now Danvers, but the city of Salem turned its witchiness into a tourist attraction. Guess the association counts. Not that I cared, my head hurt too much to talk.

Darcy and I took unmarked trails that led near the West Branch Chapel Cemetry, an abandoned graveyard best known for allegedly housing the ghost of a ten-year-old girl who died in the early nineteenth century.

I had to give the practitioners here some credit. Those thousands of acres of reclaimed wilderness were the best place to hide a magical society short of going underground or into the Otherworld.

October Mountain State Forest was a common discussion topic in our Paranormal Pals group, particularly the Bigfoot sightings here. Those woods were so deep, I wouldn't have been surprised if those sightings had a kernel of truth to them.

What worried me more than that though was the fact that Massachusetts was within the Erlking's scope of influence. No idea if the same applied to Titania. Why did I even worry so much? Otherworlders weren't going to strike in a place with so many practitioners.

The unmarked trail took us to the stone foundation of an old home. The West Branch Chapel Cemetry was to the right. But it wasn't our goal. We went to the left.

When I followed Darcy, I felt warm and then cold again. A glamour broke and revealed things humans weren't meant to see.

There were houses here. A-dozen-or-so residential homes of Neoclassical and Gothic architecture along with a town square of small, wooden tables with items for sale. Battered signs told visitors what they could expect - be it talismans, fresh staves, or good luck charms - while a fireplace burned next to it under the watchful gaze of a Hecate statue.

This hidden village had maybe a hundred permanent residents at most. The difficulty with hiding villages was part of why we had maybe a few thousand practitioners in the Americas.

Luckily, the important settlements were underground. The wizard-hat-shaped roofs of two marble rock towers peeked out of the earth. According to Darcy, one tower roof belonged to the Council's headquarters. The other was part of the Cunning Folk Academy Castle.

Darcy didn't lead me there. She led me to a cobbled street leading to a house that, as Darcy informed me, was called Amadeo's Mansion and a place for me to buy rods. The mansion looked like a standard noble manor with its ground floor larger than other people's gardens, its luxurious windows shining like ornaments, and its lavishly decorated roof. Except for the fact that it stood on chicken legs like Baba Yaga's home. And that it was made of Hansel and Gretel-style gingerbread with its roof decoration being mouth-watering cream.

Purple-robed sorcerers played the home's bouncers with staves that carried sword-like blades at their tips. Darcy told me that those were Black Knights, high-ranked Hunters similar to Captains who protected practitioners from B-ranked threats. I remembered that Andrew Wiggs had such a blade as part of his staff, too.

I stopped for a moment. My knees clattered while my arms hugged around my body to protect me from a cold that wasn't even there. Why? Why did my body freak out for reasons neither I nor anyone else ever understood?

"Anything wrong?" Darcy asked.

"Self-diagnosis is hyperspace sickness," I said. "This Lady of the Lake led us to the wrong path."

"The Lady would never do this," someone said behind our backs.

Three girls roughly my age, all decked in robes, but without any staves (only rods), stood behind us on the cobbled street. They had a blonde-brunette-redhead dynamic with the brunette being standing at the center of their circle. She was an Asian girl with purple-dyed hair and violet sunglasses who didn't speak herself but listened to what her friends had to say.

"I agree," the redhead said. "I think living among the mundanes made her depressed and she's now projecting."

"Does she even have a boyfriend," the blonde girl asked the redhead. "I've heard the Unawakened men are whiny wimps - although her mother wasn't bothered."

"Don't talk about my Dad like that," I snapped back.

"I almost feel sad for her," the red-haired girl said as if I wasn't even here. "See it from her perspective. Her poor control of magic might attract monsters. The Enlightened could target her."

The blonde put a strand of hair out of her face. "Not tryin' to be cynical, but isn't that why we stay together?"

"Why the hate for vanilla humans?" I asked. "It's not like the Salem trials killed actual witches."

"No," the purple-haired girl said, "but would be funny if they did. You'd have been caught first."

"Jaclyn!" Darcy said to the purple-haired girl. "This isn't funny."

The girl, Jaclyn apparently, lifted her nose. "Mage Leaf, I suppose you are responsible for her? Did you take her as an apprentice in place of that brother of yours?"

"I fear this is none of your business," Darcy said, feigning civility.

"It very much is. We are living in harsh times where we need every practitioner we can get. But the Enlightened are a concern and we should not do anything to provoke them."

"The Enlightened aren't provoked by people living among mundanes," Darcy said.

"No. But they are provoked right now."

All of a sudden, that terrible, cold feeling I had when I first arrived in the village returned. A gloomy mist drowned me. Darcy, the summer sky, the trio, and the mansion all vanished as a weightless mantle of pitch-black darkness pressed against my eyes.

I was alone again. Everything felt piercingly, bitingly cold. And, yet, my arms lacked goosebumps.

The coldness was just in my mind. The coldness was just in my mind. The coldness was just in my mind.

This was mind magic attack. An attack that made the helltree's look like a schoolboy prank. It couldn't have been done from too far of a distance, otherwise, the other practitioners would have felt it. The evildoer had to be here. Which meant I wasn't safe. I wasn't safe anywhere in the world.

I turned my eyes to spot the perpetrator, but the weightless veil that covered my vision made it impossible.

Someone pulled my sleeve. A Black Knight.

"Bring her to the mansion!" his colleague screamed.

I could see and think clearly again as if they performed an exorcism.

On the horizon, towering, hooded figures the height of three men dropped their glamour as they trespassed into the hidden village. No feet were under their floating robes and only tentacles protruded from their hoods. I knew nothing beyond that. I couldn't find any myths they corresponded to or any antipathic weaknesses.

Mom called them Grief Eaters and they were my first exposure to the supernatural world ten years ago. I needed my parents' protection. As a small child, I had sworn to kill every single one of them if I ever became old enough. Now, I had technically reached adulthood, yet I didn't feel any stronger than back then.

How did they come here? How? Maybe they invaded the Lady's tunnel to follow us. If so, why did I notice their mind magic but Darcy didn't? Was it because my smaller life energy pools provided no protection?

The Grief Eaters made people feel cold through mind magic, but this wasn't their only trick. As it turned out, they also mastered literal cold.

The Grief Eaters called up a blizzard as vast as our hidden village. Frost formed on every surface in the epicenter of the wind while even those of us standing farther apart felt the sudden drop in mean temperature.

One Black Knight swung his blade-like staff and folded the very ground before us, lifting up a cliff of dirt vast enough to cast a shadow over the mansion. Another Knight conjured a blazing firestorm to counteract the demons' blizzard. As the mean temperature rose again, I was glad that our hill caught some of the convection.

Queues of people evacuated from the village headed for the stairs of the chicken-leg gingerbread mansion.

Darcy got lost in the crowds, but at least I had Siris next to me behind the hill.

"Siris, what's happening?" I asked.

"Remember when Darcy's warned you that the Lady's paths are easier to tap than phone calls?" Siris explained. "The Enlightened probably had friends in Seelie to track us down."

The Enlightened. He mentioned them again.

I wanted to ask the "The 'what'?", but only a feeble wisp of breath left my throat. Nauseating vertigo plagued my head as I crouched low over the ground. I only felt the hand of a Black Knight pull me up as I passed out.