Wooden planks fell faster than the raindrops summoned by the storm.

We were exposed. It had been clear from the start that this desolate library couldn't shield us from natural forces. With its abandoned nature, it provided minimal protection from creatures needing to be invited.

A plank of plywood hit Darcy straight in the face. Leaves, loose branches, and small items were blown into the library by the vengeful wind.

Isa, Simon, and I formed a circle before Nathan as he drew the chalk circle at which we had to throw our nails. He claimed a pentagram would have worked if taking our time didn't get us killed.

He spoke Titania's true name silently enough to drown it under the howling wind. Once he spoke it three times, a smoky dome shielded us from the wind. It gave Nathan a time window to light candles as the subtle magic coursed through the air and trickled through each pore of my soul.

White mist glimmered in the candlelight. It opened like a curtain to reveal a tall, stunningly beautiful woman standing in the chalk circle. Pointed ears stabbed out of her long, flowing hair. Her dress was green like that of Tinkerbell and consisted of a tunic as they wore it in Early Medieval and Byzantine times. A sparkly, flower-motif tiara like that of a fairy tale princess sat on her forehead, just above the various daises she had woven into her hair.

None of them got blown away by the wind. It neither made her hair nor her dress flap. She resisted the storm like a marble statue and, if she wanted to, she could have ended it with a single spoken word.

She greeted us with a smug, self-satisfied smile that turned the innocent fairy tale princess into a malicious queen from one moment to the other.

"Do they all look like that?" Simon asked.

Darcy facepalmed.

"I can answer this question," Titania spoke. "But what can you give me in exchange?"

"What do we have to do to make you help us?" I asked. "I need to know the Erlking's real name!"

"Normally, I do not meddle in mortal affairs, but the Erlking has made me an offer," Titania said and pointed at me. "Should I get you to put your name into his book, he will barter with an entity that will free from the Veil's restraints."

"Nathan called him a scumbag," I said. "I'm sure there's a 'but' here."

"But the Erlking is not a moral man. Therefore, I might grant you a small wish without demanding one of your names. You merely need to prove yourself worthy."

"And how do I prove myself worthy, dear wise oracle of wise wisdom?"

An eerie little laugh drifted from Titania's mouth. "Answer my question."

"Is it a riddle?" Isa said. "I like riddles, please have it be a riddle."

"Not a riddle, young mortal. It is a very simple question. You do not even have to think about it very hard. How do you get a man to remove his coat? Through the wind or the Sun?"

My face went blank. What weird question was that?

"Does fire also work?" Isa said.

"I think both works," Simon said. "If there's a heavy wind, he might lose his coat, but if there's a lot of Sun, he might take it off because it's so hot."

"Is this your final answer?" Titania asked.

"No!" I said.

The summer fairy looked at me, her eyes piercing me like knives.

"I mean, Simon is right, but I don't think both works equally well. When the wind blows, he might lose his coat, but most likely, the man will keep onto it so that it won't get blown off. But when the Sun is out, he's likely to take off his coat voluntarily. So, I think the Sun works better."

Titania's red lips curled into a smile. "Very true. Are you familiar with the tale of The North Wind and the Sun?"

"Old story by Aesopos," Nathan said.

"Very true, child," Titania said. "My little Nathan failed the riddle because he thought like your friend. Aesop's fable describes a contest between the wind and the Sun. The north wind blew as harshly as he could, but the harsher he blew, the harder the traveler clutched onto his coat. The Sun embraced him with its gentle rays and he removed the coat of his own accord to enjoy the pleasant weather. Even though you did not know the tale, you answered my question correctly. You have shown that you understand the one thing that the Erlking does not. He failed to understand why the wind's ways could not work."

"You mean, you asked him this riddle, too?" Darcy asked.

"I did not," Titania said. "The path he walked is evidence of his ignorance. When he was my scion, he understood the values of Seelie. We used to work together, but he gave in to darkness. He wanted to use the power he found to rid the world of the Veil and the Council, but he did not wield it responsibly."

"Now, what's his name?" I asked.

Titania closed her eyes as she moved her lips. "The answer to this question has been right before you the whole time."

"Wait," Simon said, "that's it? That's all the info you're willing to provide."

"Equivalent exchange," Nathan said, "empty answer for an empty payment."

Titania conjured a double-edged knife whose black handle was decorated with astrological glyphs, pentagrams, and runes. "I fear you must figure out his name on your own. You might earn a reward."

She slashed the air with her athame and tore a hole into the very fabric of space-time. From what I read, you needed the energy output of 100 million years of sunlight to open a wormhole the size of a grapefruit. Titania produced a bowling-ball-sized hole with shaping fine enough to not tear the library apart. A portal to the Seelie Kingdom opened and she entered it as a cloud of fairy dust.

The smoke that protected us from the wind got blown away.

A gust of wind slapped Simon without making his miserable expression worse. "We tried everything," he said.

"Everything," Isa said.

Darcy didn't even bother adding anything. Doll in her hand, she conjured up Lyfa, hugging the owl like a plush toy as I had done with Siris occasionally.

Siris, how can we- Right, I don't have you anymore. You're gone now. I needed to do this on my own.

I clutched my robe to avoid having it blown away. "We will find out his name."

"How?" Darcy said. "We have no clues, no suspects, and no time."

"But we did some detective work," I said. "Simon, you looked at his killing pattern, didn't you?"

"You mean kills-anonymously-for-who-knows-how-long?" he said. "The pattern that shows nothing other than that he wants to be seen?"

"But think of where we found his parchment?" I said. "Why's his Domain in our school's basement?"

"To feed on teenage despair?" Simon asked. "It's not like he hasn't got Domains in other places. Like here."

Darcy nodded.

"But why did the government even have a research facility in our outskirts? Summer Hill is a haunted town. That's why my Mom moved here."

"This town has a minor ley line, but no-one knows what formed it," Darcy said.

"Exactly. This town is special. It was one of the first places where Veil breaches and Paranormal Psychotic Encounters happened."

"And you're suggesting our school's connected to that ley line?" Simon asked.

"Yes," I said. "It might even be its cause. We know the name of one entity that's in our basement. Klaus Kringle."

"That's the Erlking's house spirit," Simon said. "How does that help find out the name of its boss?"

"Might've named it after himself," Nathan said.

"Cool," Simon said. "Already searched Summer High's records for people named 'Claus' or 'Klaus'. Zilch results!"

"Because we didn't search for the right names!" I said.

Nathan noticed what I was getting at. "'Kringle' is an anagram for 'Erlking'," he said.

"Wat?" Isa asked. "What does Anna have to do with grams?"

Simon facepalmed.

"An anagram is when you re-arrange the letters of a word to get a new one," Darcy said. "The 'Kring' in 'Kringle' sounds a bit like 'King'. Now, you have a free 'r' and when you combine it with the 'el', you get the 'Erl'."

"And 'Klaus' has the same letters as the name 'Lukas'," Nathan said.

"Isa, do you remember the yearbook you gave me?" I added. "The one with Klaus Kringle's first victim?"

"Peter Tredwell?" Isa asked.

"There were other names in that yearbook," I said. "There was a Claudia Nutter, I found her name funny. And there was a guy named Lukas Weber, granduncle of our World Issues teacher Felix Weber."

Skeptical looks surrounded me. Only Nathan, who ignored the flapping of his scarf in the wind, followed my train of thought.

"Brilliant deduction, Sherlock," Simon said. "But Mr. Weber is, like, in his forties. How do we know his grunkle is even still alive?"

"Well, Peter Tredwell finished in 1958," Isa said.

"That's possible for a mortal," Nathan said. "If he was a changeling who moved to Seelie or Unseelie, none of this pedantry matters. He's immortal"

"Why would he set up his old school as his home base though?" Simon asked.

"Old memories?" Darcy guessed.

"That, and he's a man of spectacle," I said. "He wants to be remembered in history. To be remembered as a myth. This powers him. He gave himself an alias that's an anagram of his first name and his other alias. Klaus Kringle, Lukas Erlking. Comic book supervillain-level of subtlety."

Nathan clutched his scarf. "Your Council's got no idea of this?"

"They were busy," Darcy said. "The Autumn King's wreaking havoc, the Coven of Primordial Revenants started a murder spree, the Blood Covenant fights border wars."

"Bottom line: the Erlking's part of a network," I said. "He only got a little farther than his friends."

Simon skimmed pictures on his phone. "Okay, Peter Tredwell's on his victim list parchment, but is there any better proof?"

I glanced at Nathan. "You think you can summon him like you summoned Titania? You know, by calling his true name three times and trapping him in your summoning circle?"

"Titania let me," he said.

"But she said she'd reward us if we found the name out!" I said. "That's how we can test it! And if we put all our life energy together, maybe we can match his!"

Isa lifted a fist. "Power of friendship, go!"

"Wait a second," Simon said. "Putting our life energy together?"

"Why not?" Darcy asked. "Human life energy is sympathetic to our blood. That's why vampires drink it. If we cut our fingertips and drip blood onto the summoning circle, Nathan should be able to use our energy in the summon."

"Yeah," I said. "This isn't something we can do alone. Does anyone have a good knife?"

From a hidden pocket bag in her Halloween costume, Isa revealed a knife as double-edged and lavishly decorated as Titania's athame. "Let's do the emo thing!"

Darcy threw a featureless doll with a "Lukas Weber" nametag into the summoning circle.

Isa handed around her athame.

Great, I had to cut myself. Due to my sensitive skin, I only cut the tip of my pinky finger. After seconds of nothing, red drops fell out of my tiny, surface-level cut and splashed onto Nathan's chalk-and-iron circle.

We held hands. A lightly grayish cloud of power from the Awareness I caused streamed out of my body. It devoured the clouds Isa and Simon conjured next to me and joined the far larger clouds Nathan and Darcy produced

Our combined power poured over the doll.

Nathan and Simon said the important words. "Lukas Weber, Lukas Weber, Lukas Weber!"

Our poppet directed our collective will as tiny threads touching our target. He was there. He was alive.

He wasn't as strong as I feared. He wasn't dangerous by himself, the entity he bartered with made him a threat. Our bond wasn't as strong as it could have been with a hair, but if we put our life energy together, we could overpower him.

A spherical portal of green ectoplasm formed in our circle. Titania's "reward", if it was what I thought it was, proved us right.

The white strings reaching through the portal like fishhooks pulled our victim closer.

A medium-sized man clad in trousers and a woolen shirt fell into the circle. As an eightysomething, one might have expected Lukas Weber to have graying hair and a wrinkled face. Instead, his hair was maroon with pointy ears protruding from it and his skin was as unblemished as that of Titania.

His eyes widened as he realized his predicament.