The rainfall stopped. Sprinkles of water dripped from the skeletons of bookshelves, tables, and drawers that the now-headless slime monster had torn apart. Wet envelopes covered the ground like pus and amidst all this chaos stood Zane.

His scarf covered his expression, foggy glasses made his eyes unreadable, and beads of water dropped from his barrel as he pointed his revolver at my heart.

Darcy, her robe as blue as the water soaking through it, stabbed her staff's iron end at Zane. "Don't touch her, Jonathan!" she hissed.

He tilted his head in her direction.

"Don't play dumb! It wasn't hard to find your real name in the Academy's archives, Jonny!"

"I prefer 'Nathan'."

"And I hope you also prefer your body intact!"

In her fist, she revealed that she made Lyfa steal a piece of Zane's (well, Nathan's) hair - probably as he passed us and focused on the Nuckelavee. She pressed it against a man-shaped doll, grabbed its arms, and forced Nathan to point the gun away from me. He couldn't resist. A thin aether-line connected his body to the doll like strings connected a puppet to its puppeteer. His movements were so fluid, they might have been his own.

He opened his hand and the revolver hit the ground with a splash.

But Nathan had two hands. He pulled out a cardboard tube with a fuse that had already been burning just in case and dropped another smoke screen. The moment I focused on the smoke rather than on him, he vanished from my perception. Glamour's least-resistance principle worked like a magician's tricks; you distract your audience and act when they don't look.

Yet, I could outsmart him if I expected him at a certain location. He wasn't around me. But I looked at Darcy and I saw him there. He pointed his gun in her direction and Darcy, who probably felt him through her poppet, had an iron nail pointed at her doll.

"I can see you," I said.

"I know," Nathan explained, "and I can pull a trigger faster than your friend can stab that doll. You should listen to what I have to say."

Pure hatred shot through me as I looked that guy in his hazel eyes. I had enough of him threatening me. A voice spoke to me in my head that sounded like that of Siris' only more mature (more like a lion than a young housecat) and more feminine. It said two words.

"Kill him!"

What?

"You hear me right, kill him!"

"You now have a familiar," Nathan said, interrupting the voice in my head.

"I'm sure she had one before," Darcy said. "All practitioners have one, all human practitioners at least."

"I mean a familiar in the classical sense," Nathan said, ignoring her provocation. "It's not just a spirit, it's a higher entity serving you."

"What are you babbling about?" I yelled and felt an aching pain where the books hit my ribs. The painkiller called adrenaline had worn down.

"Kill him!" the voice in my head said.

Nathan felt my pain, my strife, and my conflict with the familiar. His brown eyes locked with mine and broke the ward formed by my bracelet and my weakened will. My mental wards had improved, yet I couldn't match him or Darcy in this regard. His spectacles made it look like he had four eyes, four times the power to break my defenses and make me his. As long as he watched my soul, my mind was naked to him.

I pointed my rod at Nathan. "Leave my mind alone!"

"No reason to assume the worst, kitty."

I ripped the cat mask off until only the balaclava was left. "And don't call me kitty!"

"How flattering that you think I'm capable of mind control or even mind reading against a human. I tried to sense the new familiar inside you, that's all."

Darcy moved the nail closer to her doll. "Since your kind loves this number, I give you three seconds to explain what you want."

"I want a wish," he explained.

"A wish?" I asked.

"Titania has power beyond what even the wizards are capable of. But, like most of the higher Fairies, she can only act upon the world in exchange for a favor. She wants me to bring you to her. I owe her three favors and if I repay this last one, I am entitled to a wish. A wish for freedom. From the Council, from the Veil, from humanity, from everything."

"A wish against the natural order!" Darcy snapped.

Getting them to talk was good. He focused less on my mind, giving me time to restore my mental ward. But now, he focused on something else. Swift like a tiger, he threw a wooden knife against Darcy's poppet before she even reacted. He could have done that the whole time?

"The natural order," he said, "has it that I can do this and you can't." He turned to me. "Please, be realistic. You are in the same situation your mother used to be in right now."

"That's a lie!" I said.

"The Fair Folk do not lie," he said. "It's against our deeply held values to lie."

"But you twist the truth," Darcy said.

"And my mother would never engage in dark magic!" I said.

Nathan's coat flattered in a cloud of dark energy around him, but he adjusted his glasses and retained his composure. "Don't be ridiculous. It's normal for small children to worship their parents, but you are older than that. The Council doesn't care for my kind, and it doesn't care for yours either. They don't care about how many humans die as long as their deaths attract no attention. Melas, Magnus, Cornelius; if you help me to find their real names and if I repay my favors to Titania, these cowards will squirm like maggots before they suffer slow, agonizing deaths."

"What about the Blood Covenant?" Darcy asked. "Or the monsters? Who will fight them if the Council is gone?"

"I will," he said. "I don't hide behind orders or protocol. If there's an enemy, I kill him barehanded. No exceptions."

"I'm starting to think you have a pathologic need to be always in control," I asked.

"I don't have a need," he said. "Freedom is just my way of life. Why won't you help me? Is it because your mother wouldn't have done the same in your place?"

"How often do I say that you have to kill him!" the annoying new familiar in my head kept and kept saying. "You're a nervous person, am I right? You're worried what Daddy, Darce, or the Big Council's gonna say if you go all out, eh? But you wanted me. You made a deal with the devil in exchange for knowledge, just like Faust did. You understand what it's like to be a real witch and I am proud of you."

What on Earth did I get into my head?

"How do I know you're different from them?" I told Nathan. "Your childish revenge fantasies and the fact that you give me no time to think are bad signs!"

"There is no time to think right now."

Without even thinking about it, a vortex of aether spilled out of my rod. It rippled through the puddles and splashed the glasses straight out of Nathan's face. Even though he could see at night, he was apparently short-sighted, as his search for where they fell allowed me to contemplate. How did I do this? Without at least a D-grade range, elemental magic wasn't even worth trying. Nathan stood farther away than I carried feathers and I never practiced controlling water. How was this possible?

"The scream comes from here."

"Do you think everything is alright?"

I heard voices. No, I didn't hear them, I felt them. People were outside and they were panicking. Panic released their life energy and I attracted it like a magnet to myself. These people and their thoughts briefly gave me power over water. But, if these people were nearby and if they thought about me, it meant they could see me.

Darcy shone her flashlight at one of the windows.

I hadn't even realized how close I stood to it.

A militia-like mob of townsfolk stood just outside the fence. They approached the warehouse armed with iron frying pans, breadsticks, silver crosses, and garlic leaves. Mr. Weber was among them, clad in a Jack Wolfskin night jacket with Mrs. Crenshaw, whose glasses looked even more opaque than usual despite the torches next to her. I heard about this in the news. People saw inexplicable events and protested when their police and particularly their president laughed them off. It was only a question of time until the waves of protest hit Summer Hill. Well, at least they might drown out mine and Darcy's DNA if they stormed this place.

The homeless man I had saved from the Nuckelavee stood before the mob and waved his arms. He tried to explain something, to calm them down, but they didn't listen to him. Even the yellow police tape meant nothing. These people didn't believe in their police anymore. They knew there was something scary out there and took the law into their own hands.

I went away from the window before any of them could take a picture. Nobody recorded me. Not this time. And even if they did, my subtle transfiguration potions ensured only my fellow practitioners might recognize me.

But if they entered this warehouse, they'd find the ectoplasmic goo left behind by the Nuckelavee and the mare. Scientists would see it, the Council would get angry, and they might blame me.

Nathan had found his glasses again. "I was right about you," he said. "You know the path to power through awareness."

Darcy extinguished her flashlight. "When will you shut up?" she asked.

He smirked and shrouded us in a dark mist that erased us three from the perception of spectators. "After my glamour has covered your escape."