Nobody tried to kill Marissa in the last four months. Which left her with time to cool down.

Melancholic jazz played behind neon signs that read Darkhallow's Eve. Despite the harsh winter, the club was well-insulated enough that people could afford to dance in dresses and tights. Strobe lights brightened the stale air and proclaimed the first year since humanity awoke to the supernatural.

It wasn't hard to see that Isa understood the nightclub's culture better than Marissa did. The piercings and the chaos magic tattoo were part of her "baseline" look, but today, she rounded it off by styling her red hair until it looked electrified. She sported a black jacket made of fake leather and purple polish on nails in dire need of a manicure.

Marissa wore black, too, although just a simple nightgown. She made peace with the fact that she stopped growing, but she showed what she had. With her chestnut hair loose and flat heels, there was nothing wrong about enjoying a calm evening. She already survived the end of the world and the first semester of the Cunning Folk Academy, how bad could some music and booze be? Pretty bad, it turned out.

"You call that dance moves?" Isa asked.

"No one's dancing," Marissa said.

"That's because the music makes you wanna fall asleep," she said as the soothing Jazz faded out. "He's gonna change it, look!"

The DJ put on a new plate. The background music now changed to the loud and dismal soundtrack that might have belonged to Amorphis or something similar, Isa might have been able to identify it better.

"It's not the music," Marissa said.

"Don't tell me you can't dance."

"I can. Well, not in clubs maybe, but I can. The problem is that my head hurts.

"Your head always hurts."

Marissa still hadn't told Isa about Lydia. Not like it was easier to tell her about the devil in her head without getting a gazillion diseases.

For now, it might have been better to enjoy their two-week winter break. She had a lot of catching up to do after missing half of the Cunning Folk Academy's first semester. Not to mention that the old-fashioned prudeness of practitioner societies irked her. So, she banged her head to the pulse of the beat while everyone else drowned their sorrows.

Not that Marissa blamed them. Even though New York had been spared, many of them had friends or family who lost their homes or maybe even died in the Headless Hurricane.

That didn't make the crowd less comfortable. Marissa ran into demons and ghosts and she still had the scar of a hellhound bite in case anyone asked. Those friendly-looking people with their facial tattoos or metal bars in their ears and noses, were they all human? Monsters could shapeshift.

Fortunately, the crowds were smaller than they'd have been in summer. She navigated past the dancers to sit on one of the bar stools.

Between the hissing glasses and the mugs clunking against the table sat a dark-haired young woman with European features. Marissa already knew Rose from a Halloween party last year. She was tall for a college girl, but she always made herself small. Even now she sat with her back hunched and avoided eye contact when Marissa came.

How relatable.

"Where's Bianca?" Marissa asked.

Rose pointed at a blonde girl in a tight pink press wearing high heels on the dance floor. She had been the one to invite Marissa and Isa here.

Currently, she was standing between Isa and a huge Asian guy in a tank top with short-cropped hair. He pushes his way past the dancers to the bar.

Rose stretched her hand out for him which he took to kiss.

"Who's that?" Marissa asked.

"Oh, that's Josh," Rose said. "He's in the army, can you believe that?"

He threw himself on a stool. "Hey, I just started this year," he said and turned to the skimpy waitresses. "One beer please!"

He definitely looked like a man who already passed the drinking age.

"That's pretty cool," Marissa said to Rose about the army comment.

"He's my hero," Rose said. "So much creepy stuff out there, but it won't scare him."

Marissa at times wished she had a boyfriend like this. But getting intimate with someone meant sharing secrets and there were at least two she couldn't share. She couldn't tell mundanes she was a witch and she couldn't tell anyone about Lydia.

"Didn't you say you'd also bring some boy?" Rose asked.

"His name is Simon," Marissa said, "I think he's still checked by the bouncer."

Ever since the events of last Halloween, humanity has grown paranoid. For years, many lived in denial of the horrors out there. But after the Headless Horseman led an army of ghosts against northeastern America, the government reacted accordingly. Everyone read up on as much mythology as possible and bouncers around every nightclub in the country checked visitors if they were vampires.

Simon finally got in. He was a moderately athletic black young man wearing high-waist pants and a shirt with holy water stains. Garlic leaves covered his round face to show just how thorough these guys were with those background checks.

Elegant as an eel, he slid past the crowd until he reached Isa. He removed the garlic leaves in his hair when he saw Bianca. He already tried hitting on her last year. Maybe he had more luck without evil mind-control ghosts getting in the way.

The three came closer to us in the bar.

"Are you guys fine?" Bianca asked. "Heard your uni got destroyed," Blossom said.

"Found a new one," Marissa said.

"What's it called?"

Marissa looked at Rose. Theoretically, Marissa could mention the Cunning Folk Academy by name without risking cosmic backlash. Not only did the Veil become looser, Marissa even enjoyed special protections against it. There were beings named Primordials for which the normal rules didn't apply. Lydia, whom Marissa bonded to last year when she still lived in Summer Hill, was such a being.

But this wasn't a good custom in the magical world. As she learned, most people with Primordials preferred to keep a low profile to avoid attracting hostile attention. She started a new life here in a nice loft in a city warded from most of the chaos. She just wanted to lie low and enjoy herself for a while.

On the other hand, neither Isa nor Marissa had any available parents or support networks from the magical world. If they kept living between the two worlds instead of committing to one, such questions became inevitable.

Luckily, Marissa pondered so long about her answer that Bianca already forgot and talked abounded something else. She briefly talked about her ex-boyfriend before switching topics to a guy who rudely bumped her while she was on her way in.

Marissa noticed the man she was pointing at. He wasn't exactly easy to overlook. He stood one head taller than everyone else and had black hair with blue and green stains on it. He was a V-shaped, square-jawed man with an action-hero perma-stubble and he wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to show his biceps.

His date was more unassuming. A tiny Latina girl wearing a cotton crop top with silver lipstick on her smiling face.

By itself, there was nothing suspicious about that. But they were walking closer to a storage closet with "NO ADMITTANCE - STORAGE" written over its door. It seemed like they wanted to make out with each other like young adults usually did whenever people forgot to unlock these places. But something about that man's uncaring eyes or deathly pallor seemed unnatural.

"Your instincts are good," Lydia said inside Marissa's head.

Mirror panels decorated the walls near the door where he was leading his date. He lowered his head when he came near the polished glass. A creature that avoided mirrors?

Marissa looked at Bianca. "Would you guys excuse me?"

"Where are you going?" Bianca asked.

"I'm curious, too," Rose asked.

"Talking to some security guards," Marissa said. "That guy who bumped you, he looks a little suspicious."

"He was an asshole, but I don't think he's a criminal," Bianca said.

"Wasn't he a bouncer?" Simon asked.

Everyone's eyes turned to Simon.

"I-I saw him outside," Simon said. "He was talking to the others and he told them that he heard something inside and wanted to check out."

"Yeah, sure," Marissa said and stood up.

The bouncer-guy revealed he had a key for the storage room. He opened it and went inside with his date. Damn it. How could these guys be so incompetent that they checked everyone except their security staff?

As Marissa tried to shove my way past clubgoers left and right, she noticed Isa and Simon on her heels.

"What's going on?" Isa asked. "Anything spooky?"

"Probably."

"It's been a long time," Simon said. "Could use some fun."

"Except this isn't going to be fun."

They went to a corner that led to the wardrobe holding everyone's winter cloaks. It was just silent enough for the three to have a conversation and just loud enough for everyone else to overhear.

"I've got my cloak here," Marissa whispered. "I'm gonna put it on and you're gonna do the usual."

Simon and Isa covered Marissa while she removed a black cloak and a ski mask from the hanger. Good that they let the mask slip. It made her look shady as hell, but she was used to it. During her monster hunts, she didn't want to be seen. Anyone who knew her name or her face could curse her based on that. She fled more than one crime scene wearing this cloak and had an arrest warrant on my neck.

Marissa wished she had been able to bring her potions and her magic rod here. But they controlled her bag and that would've exposed her cover. Fortunately, that handbag contained iron nails and garlic in her handbag just in case anything bad happened along with pepper spray.

Isa walked between Marissa and the others, ready to bring some fire for backup, while she turned around a corner and snuck down a hallway, heading closer to the "NO ADMITTANCE – STORAGE" door. With an ear against the wall, she tried to listen for screams. Her heart throbbed. It had been a while since her last monster hunt. Most of the time, she was quick enough to protect those she cared for. But she was still a rookie. She was just an apprentice and monster slaying was the business of qualified Hunters.

Marissa armed herself with a piece of garlic. Every monster had some kind of element it was weak to. That was because everything that existed had a spiritual essence that could either be sympathetic, that was – friendly, or antipathic to one another. Often, this relationship was symbolic. Garlic contained an antibiotic agent called allicin which was fantastic for preserving food and driving off decay. Vampires, meanwhile, symbolized death and decay which was why their weakness was so obvious. If she shoved it in his mouth, she could win, but to do that, she had to be fast.

She opened the storage room door.

As the door swung open, she realized to her horror that she was too late. She expected to find the young woman lying on the ground with two fang-shaped holes in her neck while the vampire licked his lips.

That didn't happen.

The bouncer lay on the ground of the storage room; a stake driven through his heart.

The woman meanwhile, stood on her feet, saliva dripping from her lips, her gait unstable, and her expression empty.

He didn't kill her. He did something worse to her. He turned her into a ghoul – the larval stage of vampires.

And that ghoul went out of control.