There was one awesome thing about Halloween. I didn't have to wear anything different at Summer High than what I wore at the Cunning Folk Academy. My practitioner's robe and my pointy hat didn't feel unnatural in my World Issues class. Everyone else dressed up like skeletons, mummies, or headless horsemen while Simon looked like an astrologer wizard.

Mr. Weber was the only person not wearing a costume. Dressed in the same tweed jacket he probably got married in, he showed us the NYU Department for Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology's press report concerning the Nuckelavee green goo. The police sent it to them after arresting members of the town militia trespassing the PPE Library crime scene. They reported elements not found in the periodic table, although due to the slime's metastability, they couldn't reproduce their results.

After discussing it with us, Weber showed a YouTube video by NYC-based conspiracy theorist Xander James who rambled incomprehensible stuff about how aliens must be behind everything. Weber scoffed at him and handed out texts about conspiracy theories and why people believed in them.

I talked to Simon later during the football game. Summer High's Sunshine Crusaders played against the Sleepy Hollow Horsemen under the gloomy afternoon sky. Rows upon rows of students sat around the field where two big lantern posts illuminated Summer High and spotlighted our cheerleaders and football players. Our school mascot was dressed like a sunflower which, admittedly, looked extremely lame compared to the Headless Horseman mascot that the Sleepy Hollow Horsemen had.

Sleepy Hollow and Summer Hill were similar towns. Both lay miles apart in the New York Upstate area and both had creepy rumors attached to them, even if Sleepy Hollow was way more well-known. It didn't have as many Veil breaches as Summer Hill, but Washington Irving's famous poem The Legend of Sleepy Hollow put its name firmly on the map. And if we faced off, there could be only one winner.

Our crowd cheered when we scored a touchdown. Simon cheered much like everyone else and had both his hands held up in a victory sign. His astrologer wizard costume consisted of a blue robe with galaxy patterns and zodiacs while he held a magic staff. It lacked the kind of sigils that a real magic staff would've required, but I didn't mind the technicalities. It looked nice.

I tapped him on the back.

"Can't that wai-, oh, it's you!" he said.

"Yep," I said. "Nice costume, even if anyone knows that witches are much scarier than wizards."

"Thanks. I already predicted you'd pick your robe and I wanted matching clothes."

"Yeah," I said. "What's your sis doing?"

"Whining all day about how she isn't as good as she thought and about this Nathan like he's her ex-boyfriend. I can understand why you fell out with her."

Yeah, because I didn't tell you the full story. Because the little devil in my head doesn't like it if I tell anyone about her. I mean, I can tell people if I don't mind getting a cocktail of every disease ever at once until I land in a coma with barely functioning lungs.

"Anyway, I'd like to watch the game," he said. "How about we meet in the parking lot after it for Operation Pumpkin Party?"

"Of

Summer High won the game. Not that I was surprised - the guest team tended to play weakly in such events. Everyone dispersed once it was over. Most went to the gym to dance, but many, especially the younger students, preferred the schoolyard. Our school had tightened security measures in light of recent events. They shortened breaks and employed extra staff to prevent students from going to places where they shouldn't. Including the basement. Two new janitors currently tried to prevent a bunch of boys from hurting themselves with their silly pranks.

However, there were far more rule-breaking students than the adults could supervise, and Simon and I took this to our advantage. Operation Pumpkin Party (Simon named it, not I) began. The door to the basement was locked from the outside, but with Siris and my aether-shaping skills, I telekinetically opened it from the inside and we got in.

Simon's backpack was so full of crowbars, frying pans, iron nails, horseshoes, and iron-coated baseball bats that he needed my help to walk down the stairs without falling over. While I left my schoolbooks at home and only packed potions, Simon looked like he was carrying all the textbooks they ever had. Did it make him feel manlier that he was allowed to carry all that heavy stuff for me?

While Simon took his time to stand, I took my potions out of my bag. The good thing was, even if I had lost my bag and someone found them, I could've claimed they were part of my costume. Not like any of them contained unusual ingredients. I had an app for beautiful tables so that all of them got neatly listed along with their ingredients with an effect-based name to the left and the recipe to the right.

Bone-healing potion: Milk, nuts, broccoli

Painkiller potion: Lavender oil, ginger

Wound-healing potion: Alcohol, witch hazel

Unseelie Repellant Potion: Iron powder, water, salt, bread, salt

The table missed one. The scariest potion of all, the flask marked with a crossed-bones sign containing water, black food coloring, and dissolved Nuckelavee wasn't listed. It wasn't something I wanted to admit having.

Once I put these potions around my belt, we searched for the boiler room door. Which wasn't as easy as it sounded since the creepy ivy mold on its door disappeared when I burned down the Cad Goddeu. Hard to believe that this basement hid anything sinister. It was clean and well-lit as the main floors, but it lacked people besides us. And monsters loved the isolation.

"Is your back alright?" I asked Simon.

"Couldn't be better," he said, walking like a turtle trying to carry its armor while on two legs. "How're your ribs?"

I stroked my fingers over the spot on my chest hit by the books a few weeks ago. "Bruises are healed."

"Lemme guess, healing potions?"

"Yep," I said and pointed at my bone-growth potion. "But they only slightly speed up natural healing. You can't just jug one and it'll fix everything. How's your research going?"

"Searched for people called Klaus or Claus who used to attend our school, but haven't found anything," Simon said. "I swear, my life never felt so much like a movie before. I stumbled into danger before, but that was while sleepwalking. Now, I'm here with you, undercover, against a supervillain, with so little information and so little time. We only have this one day before everything goes to hell."

"Very exciting, yes."

"We even do it without the cops like real outlaws. What did your bosses think of your last mission?"

"Gave me an infraction, made me swear another oath, and made me do extra schoolwork, but I'm fine unless I mess up again."

"And that's more important to them than the actual baddies?"

"There are more bad guys than good guys," I said. "When your sis and I went to my Initiation, a group named the Blood Covenant greeted us with monsters. They love doing this, especially when they think we caused a Veil breach. And after the topsy-turvy at the PPE library, our army is busy with their soldiers and our cops with their monsters."

"That sounds like their side of the story. Cops are cops. No offense against your Dad, but the normal police have no legal obligation to protect us. Why should the magical authorities be different?"

"Dunno, but they care a lot about covering up Veil breaches. Our town's forming a militia and even our police hate that."

"Yeah, and we're part of this militia. Who needs knights or hunters when we have NOMIS and the Witch of Summer Hill?"

"Night Witch, please!" I said. "If you give me a code name, give me the right one!"

He laughed. Maybe we should have been taking the situation more seriously, but humor was the best medicine, and the less negative emotions we displayed, the better we survived.

The boiler room door was near. Through trial-and-error, we found it and realized how devastated it looked. A janitor must have cleaned the puddle I and the hellhound caused, but the pipe was still missing and the boiler itself needed a plumber if we wanted to survive winter. On a positive note, at least the room retained intact water pots. I didn't see them the last time, as the portal to the Otherworld had been between them and the door.

But those weren't my main focus. At the moment, all I needed to focus on was the broken mirror in this room. It's unsurprising why people consider mirrors magical. They combine the reflective beauty of still water with the fragility of being made of glass. A broken mirror, however, was jumbled, distorted, and anything that dwelled in it was, somehow, wrong.

"Klaus Kringle, Klaus Kringle, Klaus Kringle!" I said.

"What are we trying here?" Simon asked.

"Catoptromancy," I said. "It's a subdiscipline of divination that uses mirrors. You call an entity's name three times and it shows up in a mirror."

"Like with Bloody Mary?"

"Like with Bloody Mary."

"But isn't this Klaus the bad guy? Why should he let us in?"

"It's possible that Klaus Kringle is just the name of the spirit that controls the passage between the Domain and here while acting independently from its boss."

"Maybe you need to say the name five times then?"

"Simon, this isn't Candyman."

"Yeah, sorry that your magic stuff makes no sense. What are even the underlying principles behind divination?"

"You call an entity's name and then you link your spiritual essence to it. Using your life energy, you can enforce your will to summon or communicate with it."

"Maybe you haven't got enough juice?"

"Simon, even normal people could call him. Even if he's powerful, he'll obey if you meet his preferred conditions."

Simon took a deep breath. "Klaus Kringle, Klaus Kringle, Klaus Kringle!"

The broken mirror changed. The spiderweb of cracks melded together until the surface was as calm, smooth, and serene as a pond. It stopped reflecting our faces and instead revealed a library on the other side as vast as a labyrinth and as old as a ruin. Torches hanging on the library's ancient walls flickered on the mirror's surface, but they didn't flicker nearly as bright as the fire in Simon's eyes after his accomplishment.

"You just have to speak loud and clear!" Simon said.

"How?" I asked. "How can you do this when I can't?"

"Hm," Simon said. "Maybe that's a sign that I'll manifest superpowers soon. Or all those pushups gave me tons of willpower! Ever tried working out yourself?"

"Don't wanna look like Arnie with long hair, sorry."

"And your looks matter when people are trying to kill you?"

"That's called being a teenager. Looks are as important as having a phone."

Speaking of which, I took out my Magia Phone and photographed the mirror. I planned to message any photos I made. Given how I destroyed my reputation among Darcy and most of my fellow practitioners, I hoped they'd at least believe me if I had tangible evidence.

Simon dropped his heavy backpack like a rock. "Are we gonna get in or will you just send the pictures?"

I pocketed my phone. "The pictures are for our cavalry," I said and showed Simon my WitchsApp conversation this morning with my only unburned Society bridge – Marco Aguilar. "First, our enemy must swallow the bait. Then, the backup can come."