After two months, apprentices could light candles with fire spells. They could find their keys if they were diviners, track their siblings through their hair if they were sympathetic practitioners, or make their feet sticky if they were transfigurators.

After two months, Marissa destroyed a building.

Darcy obsessed over her numbers on her Magia Phone app as much as others obsessed over calories. When she graduated from the Academy, the numbers showed 900 W equivalent each second and about 5 kJ equivalent of power before she overexerted herself. It was when she finally learned to levitate and fly on her staff.

Marissa, however, required an order of magnitude more to tear apart the school. Her arms stretched so long that her skin opened and exposed her flesh.

She fought against a living storm and won. After she plucked that air elemental out of the air and rammed it into the building, the grey storm clouds disappeared.

Moonlight broke through the cloud cover and shone over the corpse of a school they had left behind. Gaping holes in its walls and windows resembled a hollowed-out pumpkin.

Did Marissa feel remorse? Did she think this was necessary? Did someone force her to do this? She had heard of the myths of people making bargains with Satan for power. Was this what she did in the PPE Library? Did she do it and was too scared to mention it?

Her eyes caught the blue-robed figure of her younger brother walking out of the derelict building. She was glad it was Halloween. Her own blue robe attracted significantly less attention as she walked through the streets wearing it.

Yet, she couldn't face Simon.

"Master, I would like to kindly remind you that our enemy feeds on negative emotions?" Lyfa told Darcy.

And what's your suggestion? Darcy thought. Willing my problems away through "positive thinking"?

"No, I am merely suggesting you should talk to your brother and search for your protégée. When you first received me and you asked me how to channel your life energy, I said you must remember what drives you."

I know.

Back in the day when her mother lost her magic to the Slaugh, Darcy already had Lyfa. And she had her dolls for tea parties. It was heartbreaking to watch her mother return from her honeymoon with a broken tailbone. She wanted to cry, but her Dad told her she was a big girl. And a big girl could heal any wound life gave her or her loved ones.

She saw her mother in her bed, unable to move, and asked for a hair. She did everything right and even picked a doll that looked like her mother - she didn't have many, most of her dolls were so white.

Once the doll was done, she poured all her hope and love into it, but her finesse over aether was underdeveloped. She only made the injuries worse. Her mother's physical wounds healed, but the mental ones did not.

She never wanted to return to the Society, so they remained in a life of mundanity. Neither Simon nor Marissa knew about this.

She tried to help back and only failed. Now, when Marissa bargained with evil, Darcy didn't know what to do. She thought she could stand back, but sometimes, the worst action was a lack of action.

Simon approached her under the crowns of the torn-apart autumn trees. The Sluagh circling over their heads were gone, but the truce was temporary. It was only a question of time until the reformed swarm struck again and caused everyone to crumble like autumn leaves.

"Hey," Darcy said.

Simon's expression was grim. He eyed Darcy as he searched for a bench to sit on while police sirens rang in the background.

"Are you fine?" she asked.

Simon closed his eyes. He drew the air in through his mouth and breathed out through his mouth. In his attempt to stay calm, he breathed out black smoke which coalesced into a sphere.

The sphere molded. It sprouted wings with feathers as black as the night and the ominous crow that resulted fluttered through the sky.

"Found it in the Sluagh swarm," Simon said. "Some familiar they stole from a poor lad. When Marissa smashed their wind elemental into the school, these things panicked, lost mana, and set it free. Looks like it's mine."

Ever since the fight against the Nuckelavee, Darcy's Veil Pixie had been very sick and she couldn't rely on it anymore. It was unlikely she could still talk to him if the chattering crowds in the back came too close to them.

"You're just in time to stop the destruction of the world!" Simon said.

"I-I didn't see your messages," Darcy said.

"'course you didn't. Too much of a shame for our family to earn attention, am I right?"

"You aren't a disgrace."

"Not anymore, I guess," he said and pointed at the crow fluttering behind him.

"No," she said. "I never hated you. I just wanted to keep you away from harm."

"Well, that turned out well, didn't it?"

Darcy didn't want to cry. It wouldn't just ruin her makeup, but it'd also make her look weak. She swallowed her tears and took a seat on the bench, too.

"Did Dad ever tell you what happened to Mom?" Darcy said.

"She had a monster accident in the mountains and was too scared to do magic after that," he said. "That's what he said."

"Yes. It was those Sluagh that harmed her, but that's not the full story. I- I tried to heal her when she came back."

"Tried to?"

"Yes. I had a piece of hair and my poppet ready. Dad gave me a bone healing potion. He said I just had to pour it over the doll to make it work on Mom's tailbone. I couldn't resist. I wanted to make him proud."

"But you messed up?"

Darcy nodded. "Too much energy at once. The spell was supposed to promote the creation of osteoblasts and destroy osteoclasts, but I exaggerated it. I overhealed her. Caused osteopetrosis and made everything worse. I tried to forget it, but a mare reminded me."

"And what has this got to do with anything right now?"

"Remember how I didn't want to heal Marissa when the hellhound bit her? Something like that happened again. She wasn't bitten, but she contracted some evil being and refused to tell me."

"Why?"

She remembered how Marissa almost choked on her breath when she wanted to say something. "I don't know. I didn't even really listen. I saw myself in her. I thought she had reached a point of no return and if I tried to help her, I'd only make everything worse."

"Darcy," Simon said and glared at her. "When the thing with Mom happened, you were, like, what? Twelve? I was in second grade! You really can't get over this after ten years? Not sure if you noticed, but the Earth is still spinning and we need you in the here and now!"

Darcy didn't know what she should say. It stung like nothing else. If she had been a better teacher, maybe the school wouldn't have been torn down, they'd still be united, and their enemy would have fewer dark thoughts to eat. But Simon now had a familiar, too. And he needed someone to teach him.

"Have you tested out what you can do?" Darcy asked.

"I mean, when we got in the basement, I said some spirit's name three times and it showed up. 'rissa couldn't do that, but I could."

"Then you can help me track her," Darcy said. "I don't have a hair right now, but I have a doll who looks like Marissa and we know her name. I could form an incomplete sympathetic bond to her and you could ask a spirit to tell us her location through divination."

"Simon and divination?" This red-haired girl in a vampire costume, Isa, suddenly stepped out in front of an aspen tree, having overheard their last lines. "I tried to read his future through Tarot cards and he said it was nonsense. He doesn't have the intuition for that!"

Darcy froze. This wasn't good. She was used to having conversations with her Veil Pixie around to guard her. Now that it was gone, slip-ups like this were inevitable. She already received an infraction for what Marissa did under her guidance. If she divulged secrets to a mundane, she might have her staff taken away and her mage title revoked. But Lyfa didn't punish her. She couldn't feel any aether restraining her mind or even the threat of this happening. She heard the soft, gentle voice of Lyfa who told her, "Look behind the girl."

A two-tailed fox walked behind this Isa and she was aware of it. She even stroked it when it rubbed against her leg and set the grass before her feet on fire.

"Fireballs, how boring," Simon said. "Precognition is the best superpower in existence and I swear I'll master it."

"This is not the philosophy you should use when choosing a discipline!" Darcy said. "You are still young and you should take your time."

"Trust me, I know a useful power when I see it."

Isa shrugged. "Fire's okay, I guess, but I'll try out the rest, too. So, what's going? What just happened? Is there some kind of global paranormal super conspiracy breeding genetically engineered monsters and now we've seen just seen what happens when their experiments fail and you couldn't tell anyone because they'd have killed you or wiped your minds if they knew that you knew?"

"About half of that is true and the other half is a long story," Simon said. "I'll tell you after we found Marissa."

"That would be a good idea," a brown-haired, heavy-set police officer who just arrived at the scene said. Darcy remembered him. Robert Carter had just arrived. "If anyone asks, I am interrogating you while the rest of the police searches this building. Now, come, we have no time to lose."