The candlelight flickered into Lukas Weber's sharp and angular face. I wasn't judgy towards redheads (I mean it, Isa), but his flaming hair would've branded him as a witch back then.

His sharp ears pointed upwards like those of a horse sensing danger. He looked left and right, seeking a way out of the circle where there was none.

Once he stopped turning his head, I looked him dead in the eye and said, "Call back the Headless Horseman!"

Nathan, his hand bandaged, had his revolver. "These are steel bullets. They're as dangerous to you as to me,"

Weber smiled. "I'm wearing a bulletproof vest underneath my woolen cloth."

Nathan pointed the gun at his head.

"How boring," Weber said. "I suppose you will have me turned into an ugly cockroach by your superiors. This is how you hope everything will go. Ist das nicht so?"

"Well, yeah," I said."Just one final thing before you go. The lovely gentleman who's pointing a gun at your head said my Mom wrote her name in your book. Is this true?"

"This really isn't the time for that," Nathan said.

Weber laughed. "It is precisely the right time for that."

He pulled up the shirt he wore. As he promised, he wore a kevlar jacket underneath, and, sandwiched between the wool and the mesh, I saw the familiar edge of a red envelope.

A cracking tome so thick I couldn't even finish it on a plane trip to Australia fell to the ground. Weber picked it up without breaking a sweat and held it with a grin like that of a child showing his A-grades to his parents.

He opened the book in the middle. In what can't have been an accident, he showed the "Carter" that had first been written in Dad's handwriting and then in mine.

He turned the page to the previous entry and showed the name "Alice" in my mother's handwriting.

"You are lying," I said.

"I do not lie, Ms. Carter," Mr. Weber said.

"This is a trick. This is some twisted kind of glamour."

I punched the book out of his hand. I balled a fist and reached behind, but before I could punch his face, Isa grabbed my sleeve and pulled my arm down.

"Don't," she said.

I tried to pull my wrist free, but she was stronger than me. I needed to calm down, calm my body, calm my breathing. I needed to process what I just learned.

It explained so much in retrospect. Like why my new familiar didn't harm me like it harmed the previous victims. I assumed it was because risking my life for knowledge impressed her, but it wasn't that.

It was a far more banal reason. She, or whatever entity she served, had already hurt my mother and I was connected to her by blood.

I never knew my mother all that well. I knew she was born in Summer Hill and that she moved to New York where to meet Dad before we moved back. I didn't know who her parents were or what her background was. I now feel like I hardly knew her at all.

I thought I could tell apart good from evil. Mom saved me from a friggin' demon, showed me the beauty of magic, and showed that she was always with me, even if it didn't look that way at a first glance. There was no way she had made a deal with this monster.

Isa let go of my wrist.

Darcy was typing on her Magia Phone. "Can we hand him over now?"

"No!" I said.

"Not trying to be a buzzkill," Simon said, "but people are dying out there!"

I know! The thing was, I had to get information out of him. On his network, on the book, on everything. But I couldn't tell Simon this because Weber would know.

"How about a deal?" I asked. "We won't call the Council and in exchange, you talk."

"What are you trying?" Darcy asked.

I looked Darcy in the eye and pretended I was typing something on a cell phone. Hopefully, Weber was too much of a boomer to catch on.

"I am willing to talk," he said. "If you give me one more name."

"Why not?" I asked. "I'm sure that's also how you found my mother, didn't you?"

"I did not find her," Weber said. "She had a special connection to this book. I can tell you more."

"If I sell my soul, yeah, I know that shtick already," I said. "How about we search his body to see if he has anything other than the book hidden? Darcy, you pick up the book. Simon, search his sleeves. Isa, search his boots!"

I was feeling like a leader giving commands. Everyone did as I ordered while Weber wore his best possible poker face.

His poker face slipped into a panicked frown when Isa reached deeper into his boot and pulled out yet another double-edged copper blade with an inverted red cross joined by an infinity symbol decorating its black handle.

"Seriously, what's with those knives?" Simon asked. "Why does everyone have them?"

Isa pointed the knife in his direction. "So, you're saying you knew about magic all this time and no-one ever told you what an athame is. It's, like, super important in Wiccan and Satanist rituals."

"Yes, and this one carries the symbol of the Enlightened on its handle," Darcy said. "The infinity symbol shows their desire for immortality. The inverted cross shows their disregard for Heaven, their Veil, and the natural order."

"The Veil is the reason why the Holocaust and the colonization of this very country happened," Weber said. "Do you think the Jews and the Native Americans had no practitioners in their ranks? Do you think they had no people who would have loved to defend their kin had their spirit guides not tied their hands?"

"Do you think genocidal maniacs couldn't have used bloodline curses?" Darcy said. "And don't even dare to claim a moral high ground with all the death and suffering you caused!"

"This is not a world where all men are born equal, junge Dame!" he said. "I used to think like you when I was your age and discovered the Book of Samael for the first time. I thought I could improve the world through peaceful means. But the Enlightened opened my eyes. Aether is not an endless resource. Some have more of it than others and are stronger and we can only enter a bright new age when the strongest are in charge. Your Society mirrors this. The wizards are superior to the sorcerers. The sorcerers are superior to the mages and apprentices while practitioners are superior to mundanes. Everyone in your Society thinks so. Did you never face contempt for your father's weak bloodline?"

Now, I understood what Titania meant by her question about the wind and the Sun. It was a metaphor for the values of civility and persuasion over extremism and violence. I now knew about his network, but this weird book was the one thing I had yet to figure out.

"No, my child," Evil Siris said in my head. "I do not serve Satan anymore."

"We get it," I said. "You're a scumbag. Only thing I'm left wondering is how my Mom ever found a piece of shit like you!"

Weber smiled. "Power. Everyone wants it, but people refuse to admit it and everyone fears it. Your mother was not banished because she was caught in a Veil breach, but because she could cause them and I made it possible! She wanted to use her power to change the world, to inform people about monsters so that they could defend themselves. She thought like me, we only disagreed about the aftermath."

My next action wasn't very rational, careful, or calculated. I slammed my fist against his nose and caused his head to rock back.

He barely seemed fazed.

I needed to try harder. I slapped his cheekbones.

That smug grin refused to leave his face.

I couldn't believe that. That the Enlightened and this Samael were involved bothered me far less than that his ectoplasm-reinforced bones made it hard to punch him satisfyingly.

Luckily, I still had my robe. Pulling down my sleeve, I remembered where my iron bracelet was.

Weber leaned away from me instinctually, but the iron circle containing him made sure he could never flee if I decided to rub my wrist against his head.

Weber put his sleeves before his cheeks in a desperate protective gesture.

"Not my cheeks, not my cheeks, please, I'm sensitive there!" he said.

"I will spare you when you tell me where you got that goddamn book from!" I said.

He took his hands away from his face. "I know you have your mother's name as one of your middle names. If you change her first name into your handwriting, you can transfer her curse onto you and whatever I did to her will be undone."

"I'm sorry, but I can recognize a 'We can rule together speech' when I see it," I said.

"Ms. Carter," he said. "Did you not listen to me at all? Your mother had the same intentions as I did. She, too, wanted unity between humans and supernaturals. We can end this war peacefully!"

Ghosts floated over what passed for remnants of a roof in the library. He was stalling time. With each second where the storm eroded the building, any protection it offered against supernatural beings that needed inviting ceased.

He was stalling time. If I didn't finish this now, these things were going to break through and have us join the hunt. I needed to be curt. "No," I said. "I'll get out there and chop your Horseman's head off."

"How precisely?" Weber asked.

"Easy. I'll go out there, fly into the full moon on a broomstick, and drop some gold so that people know how to beat him!"

"If you deliberately cause a Veil breach, this will be grounds for war. The Enlightened will release their Behemoth. The other supernatural societies will do so as well and your Society will be the target."

I ignored him. "Darcy, when I looked at you and pretended I was typing something in the air, what did you do?"

"I assumed you wanted me to record this conversation," Darcy said. "That's what I did."

"And Isa," I said. "You still have the athame, right?"

She proudly stabbed the knife into the air.

"Which means two things," I said. "We have your confession that you are the Erlking and that you caused all the murders and Veil breaches associated with him. We also have physical and recorded evidence that the Enlightened supported you in all of this. I'm sure you know the reason why the Council is so eager to cover up Veil breaches."

"Cold War," Darcy said. "They sent monsters after our headquarters recently for something Weber was responsible for."

"And if the Enlightened wants war for what I'm planning to do," Marissa said.

"The other societies would be on our side if we show them who is really behind the Erlking," Darcy said.

"I presume you are telling me this so that I give up," Weber said. "Bold of you have me tied up near the center of my Domain."

Damn it. We went here because it was the most likely place to find more evidence of his plans.

Unfortunately, since we were on his home turf, he could invite monsters in and finish us right now.

An army of Unseelie nasties was too much for either of us to handle.

Yet, nothing happened.

Weber's turned pale. He balled a fist, tried to punch Nathan, tried to tackle him, tried to jump out of his circle, but his life energy wasn't as great as that of us combined. For all his talk about the strong ruling the weak, Weber wasn't an archmage. He was just a child who stumbled upon a powerful book, nothing more.

"Jonathan," he screamed. "Did you traitor call Lady Morgan to close my Domain?"

Nathan's face twisted. "The real traitor is the disgrace of a changeling who reveals our godmother's real name!"

"You aren't talking about Morgan as in Morgan le Fay, are you?" Isa asked.

What? I thought the myths said she was some kind of evil sorceress. Le Fay – the Fairy, it made a certain amount of sense.

"As if these children could harm her!" Weber said. "She never cared for me. She stopped helping me to gather names and I am certain it was her who betrayed me to you."

"Not like you didn't deserve it," Nathan said.

Weber rummaged in his pockets. He was done negotiating. He hoped to find a weapon Simon and Isa overlooked while inspecting him. Maybe he had a gun up his sleeve hidden under glamour?

Darcy wasn't planning to let him have it. Lyfa plucked a hair from his head while he searched his boots for another knife. She swooped down and picked up the doll they had placed near the circle. The owl gave the doll and the hair to her master and once the two connected, the doll also connected to the red-haired changeling.

Weber suddenly stood pencil straight. Darcy hadn't even done anything to the poppet yet – Weber instinctually felt the bond between it and him. He stood still not due to magical reasons, but due to the realization that his body wasn't his anymore. Any twisted arm, any nail through his stomach, or acid over his skin could soon spell a cruel death.

Darcy didn't even do anything to him. Mozilla jumped like a dog and snatched the poppet out of Darcy's hand without warning. Weber didn't feel the jaws around his body. Nothing happened to him as long as Darcy didn't help it. But the adorable little fox couldn't let go of its new toy and brought it to its master.

"Ooooh," Isa said as she picked it up. "It's a voodoo doll, right? So, anything that happens to it happens to him as well?"

"Only if I allow it," Darcy said. "And I'm not pro needless torture."

"How about we torture him until he calls back the Horseman?" Simon suggested.

Mozilla, like the mischievous daredevil it was, ignored what everyone said. It leaped into the circle, teeth on Weber's leg, and set his trousers on fire. Our prisoner screamed. For all the mildly ectoplasm-enforced bones and muscles he had, he was still human enough to maintain his sensitive, naked primate skin.

"Enough!" I called out. "This isn't bringing us forward. I'll get to my room and prepare everything to fight the Horseman by myself. Isa, get your fox under control! Simon, give Weber your phone. He'll need to call an ambulance after all those burns."

Simon first gave me a skeptical look, but then he understood what I wanted and obliged. He put his phone out and placed it at the edge of the iron circle.

Weber's held his leg and pain and was glad for our offer.

I turned to my bedroom. Isa and Simon followed suit, leaving only the two Mages to guard our prisoner.

"Wait, wait, wait," Isa said. "I'm a little slow. What are we gonna do now?"

"We'll take the Book of Samael and bring it to Sleepy Hollow," I said, "That's where most practitioners are right now. And since we have Weber's confession that he and the Enlightened started it all, I can cause a deliberate Veil breach to gain power. People currently hate me. I'm getting life energy through negative emotions, though I haven't tested what will happen yet if I present myself as their hero."

"Won't that a Veil breach be bad for the fabric of reality and all and invite more monsters?" Simon asked.

"Probably, but it won't be all we'll do. We'll also show them that gold works against the Horseman and if everyone puts their power into it, we can win. And if I can bring them hope, his monsters get less despair."

Isa raised a fist. "Let's show them the bright side of darkness!"

Yeah, that was what we needed to do. How long did our discussion take? Ten minutes? Twenty? I didn't watch the clock. With the decaying roof and windows, there was little time until the whole building collapsed and we were exposed to the elements.

I already shivered. I couldn't believe what Weber had said about my mother. I couldn't believe that I was wrong about her. That she spent so little time with me in my childhood so that I couldn't learn about her dark powers. I had to push these thoughts back just a little longer and focus on the mission.

Just as I tried to get the stuff Dad got out of my basement, Isa had to ask one more question. "Why did you leave him Simon's phone?"

"Well, he'll probably need an ambulance after your burns," Simon said. "But, I recently gave my phone an iron casing and-"

"-he won't notice in time," I said.