"Is the attack over? Please, tell me it's over!"

Voices murmured around me as I slumbered. The sweet scent of caramel and chocolate pleased my nose while warm, comfortable air thawed me up after the Grief Eaters had frozen me cold. It was so embarrassing. I've trained so hard, yet I was every bit as small, weak, and helpless as when I first saw the Grief Eaters in the park. Now, here I was, lying around with an aching head, cushioned by an unfamiliar person's lap.

I shuddered as the whiskers of my adorable familiar tickled my face.

"Master, master!" Siris told me. "There's a wolf here!"

My eyes shot open. I jumped to my feet like a soldier during a military exercise, but the sharp pain erupting from my brain made it hard to stand.

"Careful, careful!" an elderly male voice said behind me.

My vision dimmed. I heard Isa's voice. "Took you a while to wake up, Mars! I knew you were hiding something from me!"

Then, I looked around and she was nowhere to be seen. Just an illusion.

I was on the inside of the gingerbread mansion. People sat all around me on wooden stools and tables resembling oversized donuts or lollipops in their architecture and paint-coloration. Chocolate glaze peeled off from the walls, revealing that, underneath its tastiness, this mansion was reinforced with marble to survive the storm.

Besides all those tables with food extended a recreational area with a caramel-painted dancefloor. Plentiful species had gathered here to seek shelter and company in our secret community. Humans, dwarves, lizard-people, fish-people resembling H.P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones, and even friggin' Bigfoot were here. Darcy sat in a corner, cooling her head from an injury she received outside. Her aside, I saw nobody I knew. If Isa could only be here. Or Simon. (Okay, maybe not Isa, this place had more sugar than was healthy for her).

"You have grown quite a lot since I last smelled you," the elderly male voice behind me said again. "I do not understand why you feel the need to come dressed like a pagan witch, but your mother liked doing the same and it is not up to me to cast the first stone."

I turned around. He was a Hispanic man in his fifties though he looked handsome in a silver fox sort of way, and he wore a cassock with a crucifix well visible near his collar. His dark clerical coat looked crinkled and torn as if he had worn it for a long time and couldn't afford a new one. The table he sat around was different from the others. It was close to the wall, next to the buffet, and instead of having any food or beverages, it only had a small box and a tiny cash register next to it.

Siris snarled when he saw the man and raised his hair on his back in a way cats only did when they encountered water.

"Child, there is no reason for you to fear me," he said.

My body trembled with nerves.

The man reached over to the buffet and handed me a small plate from his table with pineapples, pumpkin pieces, and other fruits I couldn't resist. Did this guy research my favorite foods to poison me? No way was I going to bite. Never accept food in the fairy realm.

"Do you not recognize me?" he asked. "I am Marco Aguilar. I was a friend of your mother. We saw each other although you might have been too small to remember."

Siris snarled again.

"My familiar doesn't like you," I said.

He put his plate with the fruits down. "It's okay. I don't like myself either. They kicked me out of the church for being the unholy monster that I am. If this is what God wants to me, I must accept this."

"Monster?" Siris already claimed he was a wolf, so it wasn't hard to guess what he was, but just in case, someone on the dancefloor spelled out the obvious.

"He's a werewolf," another man explained.

I turned around to see a man with slick-black hair and high, aristocratic cheekbones who wore a tuxedo while dancing next to a blonde not much older than me. Was he human? Vampire, demon, fae, werewolf, anything was possible. Why would the Thaumaturgic Council accept monsters here? Were they that short on staff or that desperate to maintain alliances? Or were there monsters who weren't evil?

"This is Amadeo," Aguilar explained. "He owns this mansion. He provides us access to his immortal wealth and in exchange, he receives customers to satisfy his thirst."

"His thirst?"

"He does not kill people," Aguilar explained. "He feeds on people's life energy by drinking their blood, but it is something they give voluntarily. I cannot find employment outside of Amadeo's mansion, so I operate my business here."

"What business?

He opened the box and it revealed pieces of wood, each the size of a small baton. They looked like wands, only larger. No, those weren't wands. Darcy said we could buy rods and this mansion was the place for that.

"Your mother used to have one of hazel when she was still an apprentice," Aguilar explained.

Runes of arcane languages bored into the smooth surfaces of the rod he pointed at. Siris forgot any apprehension he used to have against Aguilar and stared at the rod with the type of greed he normally reserved for fish and milk.

Aguilar smiled. "Your rod is ultimately also the rod of your pet." He avoided saying the word 'familiar'. Even 'spirit-guide' sounded too Satanic for him. "Choose one it will like and it will obey you."

I picked up the rod Siris liked so much. "How much does this one cost?"

"About five dollars."

Precisely the sum Darcy told me to bring. That was cheaper than those magic wands one could buy on Amazon, although those weren't good for actual magic. Unless its maker knew the right runes.

I handed him a wrinkled bill before I let the rod slide between my fingers.

Darcy hadn't taught me to shoot any magic beams yet, it so far only helped me with levitation. Yet, any tool that helped me control those streams of energy that went in and outside of my mind was a welcome one.

Aguilar reached below the table and put a crystal ball on the table. "For your astral courses." He reached below again and revealed two books, one titled An Introduction to Magic and the other A Guide to Otherworlders. "For your study." Finally, he reached below one more time and showed a box full of phones. They had those diamond-like casings Darcy's also had, although they looked more like feature phones than the fresh and shiny model she had. "For one-way communication."

"They're magic phones, right?" Marissa asked. "The casings kinda gave it away."

"These are ectoplasmic Faraday cages," Aguilar said. "Our technomancers made it so that their location cannot be tracked and their circuits survive even near the Otherworld!"

"And I'm meant to use those to call you guys?"

"In emergencies, yes. Destroy them after use. You can buy a new one for twenty-five dollars, though unless you can afford to buy one from us, it most likely won't be encased."

If Signal made me feel like Snowden, these burner phones made me feel like Walter White. "I-I also brought my normal phone. It's switched off. Battery removed, SIM card removed, everything. Can you encase it, too?"

"Probably. Wizard Celeste will know more than I do. Just give her your phone during the Initiation."

I put my rod down.

"Unless something is of great concern to you,"

"What on Earth happened outside? Why did those monsters attack us?"

Aguilar sighed. "The Enlightened likely bear responsibility."

"I heard this name a ton of times now. Who are these guys?"

"They are what our society might become if we stopped walking the god-given path ahead of us. This attack was a gesture of provocation. A display of their pride."

"You're talking like they've done this before."

"As has the Council to them," Aguilar explained. "We have been at war since the United States and the Soviet Union had been and unlike them, we never ceased"

"And what are you fighting over, if I may ask?"

"Power," Aguilar explained. "Humanity is a resource. Individually, the naturals might possess low life energy, but they outnumber supernaturals by a factor of one to a thousand. Their collective belief shapes how aether flows through our Earth. Whoever can sway them can also sway the world. Which is why the Veil's fragility is of great concern.

"Those breaches started decades ago. Supernatural societies discussed if the time had come to lift the curtain, but many, especially the Enlightened, saw humanity as mere resources to be divided between supernaturals. Anyone who informed naturals of the sinful creatures in its shadows was seen as seeking an alliance, thus shifting the balance of power, and declaring war.

"I am sure you heard of what happened when the European Imperial Powers divided Africa among one another. Everyone wanted to have a slice of the pie, a place at the Sun."

"And then World War One happened," I said.

"Precisely."

"And you want to prevent that. You cover up Veil breaches, you don't fight in the open, I get that. But what happens if war starts? Do you have nukes?"

"We have dragons," he spoke, his voice low and solemn, "and as S-ranked threats, they destroy worlds rather than mere civilizations."

"Dragons?" I asked.

"Yeah," Siris said on the floor next to me. "Not of the 'giant firebreathing lizard' kind. Otherwise, anyone with an elephant gun would be a dragonslayer. It's more like 'cosmic god that happens to look like a giant fire-breathing lizard'!"

Aguilar offered me a peach and I finally accepted his generous offer.

"The supernatural," he explained, "advances with the natural. As humanity developed nuclear technology, we tamed the mightiest of all creatures. Our Archmage formed a psychic bond with the Leviathan, sealed away in the depths of R'lyeh. The Covenant's leader bonded with the Behemoth, sealed away in the Dreamlands."

"And, in the case of war-"

"We would release them. Should they awaken from their slumber, they would tear apart the Veil and be as plain as daylight for everyone. Any wars we would fight afterward would be fought with sticks and stones. Besides us and the Covenant, only the Knights of the Round Table in Europe and White Lotus in Eastern Asia are active Dragon Powers. In the case of open warfare, they would side against the faction who started it."

"I think I got the main point." That seemed like a power struggle to stay out of as much as possible. The weight of Whateley resting on my shoulders was enough. There were no winners in war, only losers, and the Enlightened likely had their own story of who was in the right. Yet, this was assuming I had a choice and they didn't have a draft. "How do the Fae figure into this?"

"The Fae have sworn neutrality. That does not preclude individual fairies from having drives and ambitions or answering requests by humans and changelings. If what you witnessed in your hometown was conjured by one of our brethren, retaliation will strike against us all."

So, this Erlking and Titania and maybe also Kringle, whatever he was, were likely on their hit list. Among others, most probably. What a big world. She wanted to forget this, to focus on my Initiation, but I couldn't without hearing exaggerated barf sounds.

Jaclyn and her friends were here. The purple-haired girl wrapped her arms around her body, quickened her breath, and mimicked my physical reaction to the Grief Eater attack while friends laughed.

"Hahahaha," I said, "isn't suffering funny?"

"No-one's talking to you, Carter," the blonde girl said. "Send a demon after my soul if you want me to stop."

Marissa's heart rate shot up from sixty to sixty million. "You think I did this?"

"Don't think we don't follow mundane news. You're the only practitioner in your town. Other than the Leafs, I guess, but they don't do stuff like that. You think I'm gonna buy that it's a coincidence that you got your familiar when those fairy demon things summoned themselves?"

"Relax, May," Jaclyn said. "Look, we're just goofing around, no need to take us too seriously."

"Apprentice Jacqueline Miki and Apprentice May Nichelson" Agular scolded her, "jokes of such nature are evidence of excessive pride. Otherworlders are not the subject of humor!"

"Sorry, wolfie!" Jaclyn said. "Does the no-humor rule count for you, too, or are you an exception?"

"No!" he barked and the three girls walked away.

"Why do they even care about my hometown?" I asked

Aguilar gave her another peach to calm her down. "We are a small world and gossip travels fast. For all the disdain people have for the mundanes, we are very interested in what happens in their world."

I ate it. "What do you think about this? About the existence of the Veil and the fact that the world is divided into natural and supernatural? I mean, don't we all exist in one universe? Or multiverse, or whatever?"

"We do. In a perfect world, the Veil would not exist. But human nature has it that we are flawed. We will never be united before the rebirth after the Apocalypse."

The Apocalypse? "Does this Apocalypse have anything to do with why the Veil's getting weaker?"

Aguilar crossed himself. "Apologies, I should not have digressed into such matters. The Initiation certainly worries your young mind enough."

My peach tasted wonderfully. What he just said did not.