Seth was awoken only five hours later by knocking on his bedroom door.

“Son. Are you in there? Son.”

Seth sat bolt upright. The bears. Homecoming. It would have been in the news by now for sure. “Yeah,” he shouted through the door.

“Oh, thank god. I’m- I’m making breakfast. Do you want some?”

Seth leaned forward and rubbed his face. “Uh. Sure.”

“Okay.” His dad’s footsteps receded. Seth looked back at his bed, contemplating crossing over to it and getting under the covers, but he knew sleep would not accept him again. He pulled aside the curtains on his window and autumn sunlight streamed into the room even as his breath slightly fogged the glass. Seth changed out of his ripped homecoming attire and into gray sweats and tanktop. He paused a second and opened the camera on his laptop, twisting around to get a look at his back. Only a row of four thin pink lines ran across it. It looked like he’d just been vigorously scratching at dry skin. His chair, however, would need some cleaning. Bloodstains crusted to the black leather. Seth snatched his phone off the floor and checked for missed calls.

One, from Olivia. Two hours ago. Seth raised an eyebrow and called her back.

“Mm. Who is this?”

“It’s Seth.”

“Oh, thank god. Heard about your homecoming.”

“What? How?”

“Custom news feed.”

“Featuring me?”

She grunted. “It’s a magic-fueled AI I’m working on. Traverses data lakes for deep pulls of-”

“Losing me.”

“You asked. You didn’t poke the bear again, did you?”

“I ran into them again.”

“Dammit, Seth.”

“I wasn’t looking for them.”

“Oh. Did you insult them?”

“No, I just said I didn’t want to deal with their bullshit.”

“Okay, so you did. Nice.”

“My friend got taken, Oliva.”

She went silent. He could hear her moving somewhere. “Who?”

“Andrew. He was here when you Monsters, Inc’d through my door.”

“Dammit. They killed him, or they took him?”

“They said they’re holding him so I’ll make a choice.”

“That’s not good. Seth, have you had contact with the coven?”

“No, but I called someone else, and I’m getting help.”

He heard what sounded like a palm slapping a face. “You called Hunter, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, better than nothing. I would come there myself, but… The situation is beyond delicate over here. And personal feelings aside, I’ve known you two months. There’s people’s lives in the balance at this summit I’ve know for decades.”

“Good to know where I stand,” said Seth.

“Don’t make me show my pragmatism, Seth. I will, and I can be a cold, cold bitch when I need to be. Hunter might be a bunch of bumble-fucking magicless mortal oafs, but they’re good at hunting things that go bump in the night.” He heard a clattering noise in the background, followed by the sound of her drinking something.

“Look, things are going to get bad if you’re in deep, so I want you to do two things. One, get a marker, or a piece of chalk and draw the picture I’m going to send you on your door. I need a target for non-sentient object translocation, and there’s way too many doors that look like yours. Second, make contact with the coven. Witches are nasty, evil people, but damn if they don’t hate shifters, and you don’t want to be fighting them and the shifters— shamans— druids, whatever they are, at the same time.”

Seth looked at his screen as a picture of a rune sketched on a notepad appeared on it. He dug through his desk for Sharpie. “How do I contact the coven?”

“Covens are predictable. I don’t know if you have the gift, but anyone can use source-magic. There will be several items I’m sending you, along with some instructions for a contact spell. As long as you can pronounce Greek, you’ll be able to sniff them out.”

“Hunter said not to contact the coven.”

“Yeah, and the first thing they do when they show up will be contacting them themselves. Tell them you got orders from the Knights of the Sacred Flame and you got confused. Your file should say that’s who you were running with.”

“Knights of the Sacred Flame, got it.”

“If you want to be really convincing, just call us Ignis-Sacer. Hunter loves it when people use third century monikers. Alright, I have to make the sending spell. Don’t open your door until after the light finishes glowing or my next spell is going to be a void-diver to pull you back, and I am too hungover to be casting five pluses.”

Seth blinked. “I didn’t understand any of that.”

“Just think of it like there’s going to be a black hole behind your door until the light stops shining, and I have enough of a headache you’ll spend a lot of time in super-fucky-space until I manage to fish you out.”

Seth grimaced. “Got it.” He found the Sharpie and started inscribing the picture on his door.

“Stay safe, Seth. I’m really looking forward to experimenting on you this summer.”

“I’m-” Seth paused his drawing, not entirely sure what she meant by that phrase, but hoping she was only referring to lab experiments. “I’ll be waiting on the spell.”

“Two minutes, tops.” She hung up.

Seth pulled his chair back and stared at the door. Nothing. The rune, a rather simple geometric thing that looked a bit like an R. He hoped he’d drawn it right.

He had. Deep eggplant-purple light shone from under the door and Seth instinctively scooted back a bit more, thinking of the black hole explanation. The light shone for a solid minute, before fading over the course of thirty seconds until it was gone entirely. Seth stood up and cautiously twisted the doorknob to pull his closet open. A brown leather satchel sat there, with a Post-It note on it.

From Olivia. XO.

Seth thought very hard about what she meant by ‘experimenting’ as he opened the bag. There were a number of items inside. Most notable was a hunting knife in a plastic sheath that had a strap system either for the small of the back or the thigh. Another note was on it.

Cold-iron. De-shifts weaker shifters, damages stronger ones.

Seth set it aside. A small canvas sack with a drawstring called out to him next. He peered inside it. There was a scattering of herbs in plastic baggies, and a phial of some clear liquid. The note on the outside read:

Contact spell. Texting you the ritual and phrases.

Next was a piece of quartz with a hole drilled into it, looped through a leather thong and attached to a chain.

Warding crystal. Charge daily in bright sunlight for four hours. Stops one Class Three, or multiple lower classes equivalent to. Wear whenever you’re out.

Seth placed it on his window ledge where the sun spilled into his room.

The last item was a plain iron ring, unadorned by any gem or inscription.

Spell-store. Focus intent and say ‘Ignis Alta’. Range: sight. Blast radius: 5 feet. Kill radius: 20 feet. Concussion radius: 50 feet.

The note continued onto the other side.

DO NOT USE INDOORS. Contains single charge, do not discard. Careful in front of Hunter. They don’t like magic above C2. DO NOT USE INDOORS.

Seth stared at the iron ring for a minute before trying it onto his fingers. It fit nicely onto his left index. His phone vibrated, and Seth checked it to see a wall of text from Olivia containing excruciatingly detailed instructions on how to use the contact spell items to get ahold of the coven. He scanned through the text, and nearly jumped as the doorbell rang.

“Son!” Shouted his dad from the main level. “Can you get that?”

“Yeah!” Shouted Seth back, stuffing the blade and the spell bag back in the satchel and putting it next to his flesh augment in the corner before hurrying down to the entryway and opening the door.

Seth froze. Emma stood there, clothed in all black, a color combination—or lack thereof—he had never seen her in before. That necklace of hers hung on her sternum, resting above the low cut of her top. Seth could definitely identify it as the Witching Symbol. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and a black-cloth covered basket hung from one hand. Her eyes were sparkling—and violet.

“Good morning, Seth.” She beamed.

Seth continued his hesitation.

“Last night was rough, but I am here at the command of my coven.” She continued smiling and Seth probed her eyes for a hint of fakeness. This was not the angry Emma from last night. She presented the basket. “A peace offering, from my side.”

Seth took it and peered under the cloth. A pile of blueberry muffins sat inside, still hot enough to release a puff of warm air. “Thank you…” He said, questions hanging in his voice.

“No, I’m not still mad at you. The coven has forbade it. I have laid aside my petty childishness and am here to offer you parlay with us. The shamans have greatly offended you by their actions last night, and we wish to assure you no such actions will be accredited to us, despite your harsh actions the night you first met us. Matron Morana was soon to begin her journey to the distant realms, your hasty action against her is completely forgiven.”

Seth realized Matron Morana must be the witch who’s head he crushed with his augment, and her statement made him even more suspicious. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he looked out past Emma into the neighborhood. Nothing. He looked back to her. “Were you responsible for the… ice wall?”

She shook her head. “There was a third party present, but we do not know who. Still, you should understand the shamans will take. We only offer.” She reached a hand up and placed it on his cheek before he could react. “Oh, child of the spirits. How happy we are that your time is almost upon us.” She smiled as brightly as Seth had ever seen her smile. “There’s a note in the basket. We honor the Goddess at that location at three AM every day. If you wish to parlay with us, you may come there.” She stepped back, reaching beside the outside doorframe to grab ahold of something just out Seth’s field of view. When she pulled her hand back, it held an old-style broom. Seth’s eyebrows arched all the way up.

“No,” she said. “I don’t ride it. I’ll see you soon, Seth.” She turned around and took one step before disappearing into thin air. Seth closed the door. He was surprised how unperturbed he was, but he supposed he’d seen a fair amount of magic at this point. That was all somewhat less disconcerting than ‘detached foot he could feel from another room’. Seth walked up to the kitchen, taking the note out of the basket and stuffing it in his pocket. As he rounded the corner, his dad offered a faltering smile from the stove. “Happy birthday, son.”

Seth set the basket on the kitchen island countertop. “Thanks, dad.”

“I’m really glad you’re alright. They said that a few students haven’t had contact with anyone yet. I hope they’re okay, and I was really worried you were one of them… They hadn’t released any names yet.”

Seth shook his head and pulled one of the muffins from the bag. He’d seen enough movies with witches in them to strongly question eating it, but it was truly one of the best-looking muffins he had ever seen. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, pushing the thought of Andrew being drug off by the bears from his head. He hesitated. “But, dad.” He sighed. He didn’t want his dad involved. His dad had been hands-off ever since the whole Nicole situation, but he knew his dad might return to his old, over-protective and stifling ways, the ones Seth had dealt with ever since his mother split. “Look. You may hear some weird things. You remember the NDA we signed?”

His dad nodded, moving something in the pan on the stove.

“It’s more NDA stuff.”

“I understand. Son, you’re eighteen now. I know I’ve…” He let out a long, long sigh, very similar to the ones Seth had been making ever since he got back from the Crow Reservation in Montana. “I’ve been trying to parent as best I can.” He turned around, face set hard, but eyes wet. “I’m sorry I hit you.”

Seth swallowed, unexpected emotion churning up inside him. “Uh, it’s nothing. You’re fine.”

“No, it’s not.” His dad moved the pan off the stove and began scooping scrambled eggs onto two plates that already had bacon and pancakes on them. “I’ve been doing a lot, and I mean a lot of thinking since you got back from wherever you were. Last night made me really think some more.” He took the two plates and set them on the kitchen island between them, along with two forks and two knives. Seth set the muffin down as his dad continued. “I’ve been parenting out of fear, and I sincerely mean it when I say that I’m sorry, son.”

Seth swallowed the growing lump in his throat, trying to shove it into his void. It didn’t work. “It’s really nothing, dad.” He stared at the breakfast plate as melted butter and maple syrup dripped over the pancakes, soaking into their golden-brown and fluffy surface.

“I just don’t want us to part on bad terms. You have less than a year left in this house. And I guess this means I have to start with stopping keeping secrets from you.” His dad leaned on the counter top, head hung for a moment.

“What secrets?”

He looked up with determined brown eyes. “I’m going to tell you the real reason your mother left.”

Seth almost choked. “Excuse me?”

His dad nodded, his gaze roving over to the kitchen window and staring out at the woods, eyes searching for something. “It has nothing to do with her cheating, though that did happen. She wasn’t picked up by some lawyer in New England because our marriage was bad, though I suppose it was, in a way, though not because of any direct incompatibility.”

Seth followed his dad’s gaze. He recognized that look, it was the same look he had whenever he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and he looked around for the person watching him.

“There’s been something going on with the men in this family for five generations before you.”

Seth had the vague feeling he was about to get a talk about having superpowers.

“Every single one of us. Myself. My father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather, and my great-great-grandfather. We all had the experience of… Being watched.” He sighed again. “A feeling, a paranoia. It’s gone on for a very long time, and it has affected all of us. Someone watches this family. When I was sixteen, I once saw them, sitting in a car, face hidden, dressed all in black, but watching me and my friends. I saw the exact same thing again in college, and several other times. My experience was practically identical to the ones of my father, and his father, and his… The paranoia gets bad. You feel it, like you’re being observed when there’s no one even in the room with you. My paranoia got very bad when you were born, because I knew that this thing… This stalker, or stalkers, I suppose, were going to pass on to you. But, fortunately, you haven’t seen them yet, and I haven’t felt them since a few years after you were born. Maybe they went away.”

Seth looked down and shook his head.

“Ah. I should have told you this sooner, then. Regardless… That’s why your mom left. I was scaring her with how paranoid I was. And I’m sorry for that, it’s my fault she left. Your mom isn’t an asshole, at least not as much of one as you seem to think she is. She was just scared.”

“She still cheated,” said Seth, poking at his pancakes.

“Yes, and that’s a terrible thing to do. But I was… I didn’t make life easy on her. You don’t have to think her actions were justified. I don’t. But you do need to understand that people do terrible things when they’re afraid. All of us.”

Seth pressed his lips together, turning the lie that had been his parents divorce over in his mind. “And your overbearing bullshit?” He looked up at his dad, the thoughts spitting up anger.

“I grounded you whenever anything went wrong because I was afraid it went wrong because of those people watching our family, and I thought if I controlled you, it would keep you away from them.”

Seth blew air through his nostrils. “I-” Why was he angry? His dad was apologizing for everything Seth had wanted him to for years. Seth struggled inside, trying to release his grasp on his anger. With a hesitant effort, he did. “It’s fine. We’re good.” Their eyes met, and for the first time, there was some semblance of understanding between them.

“Who dropped these off?” Asked his dad, pulling the black cloth aside and picking up one of the enormous muffins. Seth opened his mouth, but his dad had already taken a bite. Seth’s eyes bulged. “Good god,” his dad said. “These are good.”

“Uh,” Seth contemplated calling the Poison Control Center as an image of the witch offering Snow White an apple stuck in his mind. Did that make him the fairest of them all, or was this more of a Hansel and Gretel situation and he was about to be a mincemeat pie? “Emma… For my birthday…”

“Have one, I am really sorry, these are so much better than the pancakes I made,” his dad chuckled. “That girl can bake.”

Seth opened his phone and Googled the number for the Poison Control Center, putting it into his dialer and locking the screen again. Just in case. “I’ll have the pancakes first.”

“Missing out.” His dad took another bite.

Seth felt the note in his pocket. If he didn’t have to call the Poison Control Center in the next hour, maybe the witches really were the ones to align with here. Seth took a bite of the pancakes, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the witches and Hunter-33 would help him rescue Andrew.

***

Seth stood outside the Benson City Park Community Center, the gibbous moon overhead in the night sky. South City Sandou, Jayson’s gym, was only a few blocks away from here, and he always felt uncomfortable in this part of the city because of that.

Seth had a hard time believing the witches met in such a public venue. Then again, at three in the morning, not a soul aside from him stood among the trees in the park. The swings on the playground about a hundred feet off the path creaked in the wind that carried the scent of dying trees to him. Seth continued forward, walking up the steps onto the veranda that wrapped around the entire pleasant-looking building, the wooden walls painted in shades of a calming pale yellow. No lights came from the inside, but Seth knocked on the front door.

A moment passed as Seth looked around the park. The hairs on the back of his neck had been standing up ever since he left his house, and now that his dad had spilled the apparent family secret, the feeling just pissed Seth off. Who the hell was this? Why were they watching his family? Foosteps approached and the door opened up to the inside. Emma stood there, now wearing a black cloak like he had seen the witches in the woods wear. Her eyes were still a deep violet, but in the moonlight, they seemed to glow. He swallowed. “Hey.”

“Good evening, Seth. Will you join us in worship tonight?”

Seth did not like the sound of that, but Olivia had told him the witches hated the shamans, and that they might be a worthwhile ally. “Sure,” he said. He followed her into the community center, adjusting his black leather jacket to ensure the cold-iron knife strapped to his lower back stayed hidden. The quartz warding crystal rested against his chest, the chain cold on his neck, and the ring still adorned his left index finger. They made their way through several hallways to the center of the building. Seth could hear drums from within. Emma paused them outside a door. “Keep an open mind, Seth. Our ways are not yours, at least not yet, but we mean no harm to you, unlike the shamans.”

She opened the door and stepped in. Seth followed. Several dozen women sat cross-legged in a circle, half of them with bongo drums in their lap, beating out a rhythm upon them. The rest hummed, low, deep. Ominous. In the center of the circle hovered a fire, this one orange, but still the same shape and size as the blue-white fire Seth had seen in the King’s Hall. Around the fire, danced two of the women. They occasionally stopped to throw small unidentifiable objects into the fire. Red paint streaked all over their exposed faces, clearly visible in the light.

Emma placed a hand on his arm. “Stay here. No matter what you see.” She unfastened her cloak, dropping it to the floor. She smirked, and walked into the center of the circle, the two women stopping where they stood. The continued throwing the small objects into the floating fire. Seth watched as Emma approached and waited in front of the fire for a long minute.

She plunged her left hand into it, burying her arm up to the shoulder in the flames as they licked hungrily at her body. Seth saw pain scrawl itself across her face as her hair caught fire. Her eyes glowed, brilliant rays of violet light shining forth from them as the flames wrapped themselves around her body. And yet, though the flames covered her and danced across her, her flesh did not char, the scent of burning hair did not fill the room, and not even her clothes began to cook under the flame. Seth covered his ears as she pulled her arm out, her body still flaming, and all the women let out a howling shriek, a cacophony of screaming. One of the two other women in the circle pressed a knife into Emma’s hand.

She slit her own throat.

Seth covered his mouth as blood burst forward in spurts from her neck into the flames, hissing and sparking as the fire absorbed it. A few seconds later, Emma dropped the ground, blood pooling around her. The women all surged forward and began smearing her blood onto their faces. Emma’s corpse still burnt on the floor.

Seth pressed himself back against the wall. So, South City Sandou wasn’t the reason he always felt uncomfortable in Benson.