Westchester, NY

  “Practitioner, we are here.”

  Wol woke me up with a solid shove of his paw into the soft part of my belly.

  I immediately groaned —surprise, surprise— as everything began to hurt.

  The first was my head. I knew that I had dreamed, but I just couldn’t remember exactly what. It had been something about Euclid, eldritch beings, and daemon names but that was about the extent of it. Reading The Execution of Euclidean Elements on Eldritch Ensnaring & Exorcisms had messed me up my head. My gut told me it wasn’t permanent. But now was hell of a time to have my head hurt when my mind was about the only thing I could count on.

  My ankle was on fire. The broken bone felt hot, and I felt the urge to reach inside my cast and start scratching it exactly like I wasn’t supposed to. Even just moving it sent waves of white-hot throbbing pain cascading up my pain system. I groaned and turned.

  Not to mention the burn on my arm, which had literally been on fire. But it ached differently, a sensitivity that went beyond just hurting. I knew on a subconscious level that I was more aware of the burns than anything else, and conversely was trying to block them out. It hurt. A lot. And I found myself nursing it constantly, trying to keep it from bumping into anything. I think my body knew instinctively that this was the biggest injury I’d sustained so far.

  There were also bruises on my unburnt arm. And legs. And my back hurt, probably strained. So did my stomach.

  I’d never pushed my body like this before.

  Oh god, I needed to go to the hospital. And I hated the doctor. Being poor meant I was on Medicaid. Which meant the insurance company would reject my hospital visit reasons out of principal. That meant having to fight for my bills to be paid. That meant phone calls arguing with depressed customer representatives, asking the hospital billing office for aid, asking them to send letters as proof that I needed treatment, which would lead to late payment, then debt collection letters, and an overall nervousness that everything beyond my body was breaking down. I heard horror stories about debt collectors seizing people’s houses from debts that people incurred twenty years ago.

  It sucked being hurt.

  It sucked even more being poor.

  The fact that I was worrying about medical bills when my ankle had been twisted into pieces by a mad daemon said a lot about how I grew up.

  I delayed opening my eyes because when I did, I knew that I’d see Wol and Hwari’s faces staring. I didn’t want to wake up from this darkness. It was nice here. No responsibilities. Just existing without doing anything.

  God, I’d probably need some sort of therapy when I finally got my life together. The only question was which would come quicker: financial stability or depression.

  Worse, just giving up on everything. But I guess that's a part of depression.

  “Practitioner?” Wol said, worry creeping into his voice.

  I opened my eyes. “I’m up,” I said, managing not to lash out at my poor familiar who’d done nothing wrong. If anything, he and Hwari had been the only two really looking out for me this entire time.

  Rosefinch was staring at me with a knowing look. I’d been calling a lot of the preternaturals predators, and I wondered how close I was to the mark. If Vampyrs had really evolved alongside humans and specialized in hunting them, she’d probably be able to tell how vulnerable I was. I also wondered if there was some hunting instinct that she had to fight off, or if everything was a rational, cold decision. To feed, or not to feed.

  I opened slid open the door and stepped outside.

  It was fucking freezing.

  Westchester is a rich people’s county. Nice cobblestone-ish walkways, stretches of parkland that went on for mindless miles and miles; big houses, and plenty of nicely kept hiking trails all around. It was a little bit north of the Bronx, but the difference was night and day. It shared a border with Connecticut, also a place where a lot of rich people lived. I heard there’s a stereotype regarding C-suite guys who drive big cars because it gives them tax breaks, and you can see those cars on the highway between Connecticut and New York.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  I was expecting to see a beautiful town meshed with those fancy historical buildings and clean sidewalks. Instead, I was near what looked like a forest, with a faraway view of the Hudson to my left. A little more north and we’d come up on the Catskills, which is the hiking and getaway spot for a lot of New Yorkers.

  There was no town in sight. No sidewalks. No trash can. No hiking trail markers.

  Just darkness, trees, and knee-deep snow. Silence too.

  There was nothing here but the forest and whatever lived in there. Both my previous world and the current. Spirits stirred here and other things. Things that I couldn’t even begin to name.

  And absolutely no sign of ghosts.

  It was eerie. No matter where I had gone, there had been the presence of ghosts. Not any that were particularly strong, but those that were close to fading. But here, I didn’t see any if the lingering haunts.

  I folded my arms and shivered.

  Rosefinch got out of the car.

  “Rosefinch,” the shorter Geistheiler said, getting out as well, “From here, you cannot accompany him.”

  She gave them an even look and bared her teeth in a mirthless smile. “I know.” She walked over to me, bare shins embracing the snow. “But it is mine right as his second to converse before he sets off. Is that not right, Hudson Men?”

  The Geistheiler gave her a curt nod. “Be quick.”

  Rosefinch gave me a small nudge on my shoulder in the direction of where she wanted me to go. We stepped away for a bit, and I immediately had trouble balancing on my cast and crutches in the nearly frozen snow. This was going to be a problem.

  “Mageling,” She wrapped her arms around me, her body as cold as the snow we were walking on. There was no warmth in her touch, nor in her breath. Her tone, too, shed its casual sardonic clothes, turning harsh and hurried. “The Old Forest is a crossroad. Do you know what that means?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a place with many doors. Some lead to the lands of the Fae. Some to Lost Places. Some to nowhere,” Rosefinch spoke in a hush. “If anyone, anything, attempts to draw you away, do not follow. Do you understand, Jain Shin Hallow?”

  Bewildered, I nodded. “I, I got it.”

  All of a sudden, the Rosefinch I knew was back. A corner of her mouth quirked upward. “Good,” she said to me. She turned to Wol, “Do you know what I speak of, little familiar?”

  “I do,” Wol said confidently.

  With that, she turned around and returned to the warmth of the car.

  The Geistheilers approached, and the weight of their presence was in full bearing. Both of them had staves made of gnarled wood, and wreaths made of evergreen leaves.

  “You may begin when you are ready,” The short one said.

  I took out the flashlight that Abigail got me and tore off all the tape that had made it shine in the shape of a triangle. Before, I had sacrificed surface area to create a Euclidean triangle. Here, I needed the opposite: more light.

  With my only free hand using the crutch, I was forced to squeeze the flashlight between my armpit and my burnt arm. Luckily, the burns hadn’t spread that far and I was able to do so with minimal discomfort.

  “Wol, Hwari,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Wol stepped lightly above the snow, sinking no more than an inch at most. I noticed that his fur didn’t trap any of the snow. That was one less thing I had to worry about. In case the snow was too much for the small cat, I was ready to put him in my backpack.

  Hwari went on ahead, naturally at home in the darkness of the forest. She swam by my feet, circling like a shark in the ocean to let me know that she was near. Then she was gone again.

  The trek up to the forest boundary was uphill and took me more effort than I wanted to spare. I dragged my cast the entire way, feeling it pound against the frozen shell of the snow bank with every agonizing step. Despite the temperature, I was sweating at the top of the hill. Not from exertion, no; from pain.

  “Wol, hold on a second,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Wol paused, his eyes full of concern.

  I set my backpack on the ground and rummaged through it. I took out the whiteout and shook it. There was no way to know how the cold would affect the inky liquid. Taking a knee, I shone the flashlight on the cast.

  “Wol, tell me if I’m doing it right.”

  The wind was getting to my hands; they started to go numb from the cold. I wished I had gloves, but I would have to take them off for what I was about to do anyway.

  The rune for passage came to life on my cast. I felt the faint effort will drain from my remaining reserves and instantly felt Wol’s presence next to me, lending aid. He was providing the power for the rune so that I didn’t have to.

  “Will this work?” I asked.

  “I do not know, I’ve never seen anyone use it with this intended effect,” Wol said. “I reckon we won’t ever find out until you become more skilled.”

  I stood up and put everything back, except the whiteout, which went in my inside pocket.I wanted to keep it warm.

  “When we get back, we will cover sigils.” Wol said, “There are sigils which we can use for things like this.”

  “What’s the difference between sigils and runes?” I said, trying to take my mind off the cold. We resumed walking.

  “Sigils are like minor runes. They are usually based on the Yin-Yang Five Elements, or Empedocles’ four basics. To stave off snow, which is a combination of water and wind, we could use the fire sigil,” He explained.

  I dragged my casted foot over two feet of snow. It could have been my mind, but I thought it was easier to walk. Maybe a placebo effect. But it would do.

  “I could use some fire right now,” I grumbled and shone my flashlight into the forest.

  Undisturbed snow lay before me, and that was scary in its own way. I heard too many stories of people being found dead in the snow. Too many documentaries about men stranded in the cold and dark, found as frozen corpses. Chances were, if I died here, it would be the cold and not anything else.

  Which reminded me of the Town Hall. Beta had held a gun. Alpha had a sword and shield. Practitioners could be killed just as easily by worldly things as by the spiritual.

  Maybe I should get a carry license.

  I took a step forward experimentally and rested my weight on it. It held until my weight was enough to break through the outer shell and sink right through. Luckily, I’d used my cast.

  Damn, maybe the passage rune was a mistake. Perhaps it was making it easier for my cast —maybe it didn’t stop at the cas and my whole self was affected— to break through the snow. If it was even working at all, that is.

  I stopped stalling and walked into the forest.