Edyta Wisniewski lived in a two-story family house in Zone Three, incidentally barely a ten minutes drive from their apartment, just up on the hill.

'She was here all along,' shook his head Robert.

'I'm still not sure what to expect,' said Jenna.

The two of them sat in the back seat of Marcus's Tesla, just a little down the road.

'Her file is kinda bleak,' said Marcus from the driver seat. 'She made a point not to share her knowledge, which eventually led to her early retirement. MAGE wanted a squad of dreamwalking soldiers but she refused to teach them.'

'I already like her,' smiled Robert.

'You two would make a cute couple,' nodded Marcus with a serious face. 'She is an idealist like you, apparently, and she is at your age, she was 46 last month…'

'Once again, we are at the same age,' Robert sighed, but the friendly teasing felt good. There were not many jokes between them lately.

'And yet I look sooo much better,' replied Marcus. 'I just don't get how you bagged a girl like Jenna.'

'Nobody does,' shrugged Jenna. 'While you are wondering about that, tell me, what do we know about shamans? Ayana?'

The older woman sat in the passenger seat. Until now she had her unwavering eyes on Wisniewski's house and as always, she stayed away from the conversation.

'Not much to tell,' she answered. 'We had our own shamans in Japan, we called them miko or geki, according to their gender. The last 200 years were hard on my country, a lot of old things disappeared. There are still people practising the old traditions but they don't have any actual power, most of them aren't even sorcerers.'

It was probably the longest speech Robert ever heard from Ayana, and the most emotional one, too. She even blinked once.

'Yeah, but you are even older than Robert,' said Marcus. 'Haven't you saw real shamans back in the day?'

'I have. Once, back in 1889. He was an old man, fragile and half-crazy, but the spirits spoke to him indeed. Not the elementals and ghosts you call spirits, but the real ones, the immortal, omniscience souls or minds from another world. The ones that modern magic is afraid of studying or even naming, the ones that were called gods before the white men came and said there is only one God.'

'Yeah, that shit happened all the time back in the day,' murmured Marcus.

An awkward silence fell upon them.

'Erm… Sorry?' said Jenna carefully.

'It is the past, cannot be changed,' said Ayana in a hollow voice.

'And it's not like you were there, personally…' shrugged Marcus. 'So let's take this nice little guilt trip at some other time, shall we?' he looked at Ayana. 'What did that shaman guy and his spirits do? What were his powers?'

'He knew things,' answered Ayana. 'Things he couldn't have known. You would call him a medium, but he got his information from the dreams and the spirits. He also knew how to make several potions, most of them healing diseases, cleaning up wounds and the kind.'

'Did he use Runes at all?' asked Robert. His voice trembled from the tension. If that woman in the house up on the road knew magic that didn't need Runes, he could be a real sorcerer once again. Or a shaman, it didn't matter. All he needed to do was to convince her to teach him.

'He did not. He wasn't a sorcerer, I think. His power came from somewhere else. He had a spirit animal, a fox… It was always around his hut, but I do not think it was a real animal at all. More like a connection, a lesser spirit who could have gone into that other world and ask the shaman's questions from the spirit-gods.'

'Yeah, okay, so shamans knew things, that's handy,' said Jenna a little impatiently. 'But what about dreamwalking, shape-shifting and that kinda stuff?'

'I have never seen the geki change into something else,' Ayana shook her head. 'But I only spent a week or so in his village. The villagers claimed that once he ordered all the foxes and wolves in the forest to come and protect the village from bandits. I don't know if it was true.'

'Probably not,' said Jenna. 'Sounds like bullshit.'

A pigeon landed on the engine hood with loud wing-clapping.

'Oh, nonono, this is a new car, hush, you little winged rat,' said Marcus, waving his arms towards the bird. It just stared at him.

'There is something in his beak,' noted Robert. 'Looks like a piece of paper.' He got out, went around the car and carefully walked up to the pigeon. It stared at him now, like it was waiting for something. Robert reached out slowly, and the bird dropped the folded piece of paper into his palm, then flew away.

Robert sat back in the car.

'That was odd,' he said, unfolding the paper. 'It says: "Come on in already, the coffee is about to get cold. E". What on Earth…?'

'I'd like to change my answer about foxes and wolves,' said Jenna, then she opened the car door. 'Coming, Professor? I could use some coffee,' she ran across the road.

Robert climbed out.

'If you need us, just shout,' said Marcus. 'Or send a pigeon, because why the fuck not, apparently.'

Robert nodded, closed the door and waited until the traffic eased up for a moment. Then he ran after Jenna who was already halfway to the shaman's house.

'Anything?' he asked when he caught up with her.

'Some weird-ass magic but nothing like the Goddess was,' shook her head Jenna.

The house was big but somewhat boring. There was nothing special about it. Almost the same houses stood on both of its sides, with the fake-Tudor front and a tissue-sized garden between the door and the street, cut in half by a footpath. While the neighbours had nothing but some shrubbery, a closed grill or maybe dead roses in that, Edyta had a bunch of colourful and exotic-looking flowers and other stuff growing there. Robert couldn't name any of them and he was certain that they shouldn't be that vivid in the middle of November.

The wooden fence desperately needed a paint job and it was only symbolic anyway, they could have stepped over it.

'I never understood these,' beckoned Jenna towards it. 'Why bother?'

'Looks good, I suppose,' shrugged Robert.

'It looks silly. Pointless.'

'I think for someone who used to be a MAGE agent and knows an ancient kind of magic fences are not exactly main priorities,' pointed out Robert. 'We really need to get some coffee for you, now you are getting angry at fences…'

'Do you wanna be the next I'm getting angry at?' she snapped. 'You are doing great so far.'

Robert sighed and decided not to answer: it would have been, much like Edyta's short fence, pointless. When Jenna got stuck in a mood like this, there were only three ways to get her out of it: food, sex or one of her favourite liquids. There were only two of them: coffee and whiskey. In a way, it was easy to keep Jenna happy.

Robert opened the short gate and let Jenna go first.

'Do you know any of these greens?' the girl asked looking around as they went.

'No, but that doesn't mean anything, biology isn't my strong suit.'

'I beg to differ,' said Jenna with a little smile and knocked on the door.

'It's open, come on in!' came a voice from somewhere deep in the house.

They exchanged a look. Robert checked his pockets while Jenna touched her new Rune-engraved silver bracelets. They were presents from Robert, with no particular reason: he just noticed that Jenna was struggling a little with the wand she used and her aim was terrible with it. The simple gesture earned him an unforgettable night because that was still the only way Jenna was perfectly comfortable with, when it came to showing emotions.

Robert turned the doorknob and pushed the door. It opened to a shadow-filled little hall. On the left-hand side there was a little cabinet for shoes, with some garden tools on the top of it. It smelled like mould.

'In the kitchen, just go straight!' came the voice again.

Now Robert stepped forward. The dark corridor was only wide enough for one person and he wanted to be that one in case they are walking into a trap. Flowerpots hung from the wall and the ceiling and Robert had to be careful not to bang his head on any of them.

They passed a doorway leading into a cosy-looking living room and then a closed door, probably hiding a toilet. As they got closer to the kitchen, the smell of mould disappeared and instead there was the scent of freshly made coffee in the air. Good coffee at that, Robert could hear Jenna's already satisfied sigh. The girl claimed that she could tell by the smell whether the coffee was good somewhere or not. For Robert, they all tasted the same, and he preferred Earl Grey anyway. When he told that to Jenna, she just shook her head and called him a "barbaric Briton".

'Finally,' Edyta Wisniewski said when Robert showed up in the kitchen door. 'You must be that Montgomery boy, judging by the hair.'

She was a plain-looking woman with average height, a full figure and a nice face. She looked a little younger than 46, Robert would have guessed her around 40 instead. She wore a baggy hoodie and torn jeans. Her hair was tied back in a long, greying brownish-reddish ponytail that reached for her elbows. It looked like Autumn itself would have, if it was a colour.

'My name is Professor Robert Montgomery,' the man said. 'Are you Edyta Wisniewski?'

'If I wouldn't be, do you think I would tell you that?' she asked back. The slightest accent could be heard in her voice, somewhat similar to the one that Ghost had.

Jenna squeezed herself through the doorway, pushing aside Robert.

'So, there was some talk about coffee…' she said.

Edyta's pale blue eyes opened wide.

'Huh. A Montgomery and a Carano, together in my kitchen. The pigeon told the truth, after all. That's something.'

'Do you know me?' asked Jenna, looking for the coffee machine.

'Darling, everyone knows you. You were famous amongst MAGE agents since you were born. Your grandmother was a legend. I hear you are quite the sorceress yourself.'

'And your pigeon told you that Jenna Carano was waiting outside in a car?' asked Robert, raising his eyebrow.

'No, of course not, don't be silly. He is only a pigeon. He just told me that a curly-haired pretty girl was there.'

'Naturally,' nodded Robert. 'My bad.'

'Don't stand in the doorway like this, I won't bite,' Edyta gestured towards the table. 'Sit, sit. Yes, darling, I'm gonna serve the coffee,' she added because Jenna looked like she was about to ask something.

So they sat. The kitchen was big and surprisingly modern, but in a rustic way: there was a lot of wood and porcelain, not much of metal, but behind the wooden doors the fridge was state of the art, and the mugs came from a hidden washing machine. They were in the back of the house, and the wall behind them wasn't a wall at all, but two huge glass doors looking at the back yard.

'This is where I spend most of my time, you know,' Edyta said as if she was reading Robert's mind. 'This and the gardens, of course. You've seen the one in the front, but I have a bigger one back there, as you can see now… Milk?'

'Not for me,' shook her head Jenna.

'Good girl, why spoil it, right? Here you go.'

The woman sat across them with her own mug.

'So I suppose you have questions, right? Those two that just left clearly wanted to check on me, what's wrong with that girl, by the way?'

'She is having a bad hair day, otherwise, she is always chatty,' shrugged Jenna.

'Funny, I could have sworn that she was full of demons, but anyway. How is the coffee?'

Robert nodded politely. It was coffee, there was nothing more to tell about it. Jenna moaned happily as an answer, so the man assumed it was up to her standards.

'You know, I get that you two are supposed to be mighty sorcerers, but the MAGE or the Met really shouldn't work with civilians. You just drink something a suspect gave you, a suspect who was supposed to be very good at potion and stuff.'

Robert stared into his latte. Did it taste weird? Or did he just imagine that?

Edyta laughed.

'Relax, Mr Montgomery, I did not poison you. I'm just having a laugh.'

'It's Professor Montgomery,' murmured Robert.

'Is it, though? Aren't professors supposed to be smart?' asked the woman.

'You see, people keep asking this from you,' pitched in Jenna. 'What's up with that?'

'Can we please concentrate?' Robert asked.

Jenna grinned and shook her head, then looked at Edyta.

'So we are after someone and…'

'I know, I know,' cut in Edyta. 'She was here, weeks ago. You know, for dreamwalking you need a special potion that helps your soul leave your body, and she couldn't find the ingredients anywhere, so I gave it to her.'

Robert put down his coffee.

'Why would you do that?'

'She asked for it,' shrugged Edyta. 'Listen, kids, I know you have a mission or whatever nonsense the MAGE or that old twat in the pub told you, but all I've seen is that poor woman was robbed from everything, and now she got a second chance. She is just trying to live, you know?'

'She is trying to live in her new body, a body that she occupied, destroying the mind of the original owner,' pointed out Robert.

'You don't know that,' said Edyta. 'Nobody knows how that kind of magic works. Maybe the body was empty, in a coma or something, or the owner wanted to die anyway. Or she is still there, in the backseat, sleeping, and she will wake up when the old lady leaves. We just don't know.'

'In any way,' said Jenna, 'we need to find her.'

'Why? She isn't hurting anyone. She isn't dangerous. Do you think it's fair that you lot are trying to put her back in the same statue she spent the last twenty-something thousand years?' the woman didn't seem angry, she spoke like the whole conversation was something amusing.

'She is recruiting and arming followers,' said Robert.

'No, she teaches people. It's about time someone does, if you ask me, those fae bastards don't have the right to decide who deserves real magic and who doesn't.'

'Yeah, but if they come back…' started Jenna.

Edyta laughed again.

'That's what the bartender told you? That his people are gonna come back because a dozen sorcerers got to learn the Old Talk? Darling, I thought you were the smart one between the two of you. C'mon, there must be a brain under that beautiful hair. We had terrible wars, we had Hitler and his warlocks, Joseph Stalin's secret police used mental magic to find those who weren't thinking the right things, policemen cursing and shooting black people and vampires every damn day without any reason, and you really think there is a bunch of powerful and wise elves who are watching over us and will destroy us if we don't behave? Honey, look around. The world is a terrible, terrible place and we all deserve to die, the humankind deserved it long before you or even I was born. If there was anything watching over us, any fae or God or whatever, they would have killed us decades, if not centuries ago.'

Deep, deep silence. Then Jenna shook her head.

'That was… Reassuring…' she murmured.

'There are written proofs, hundreds and hundreds of them stating that the fae is real. Luther is real, for God's sake,' Robert objected.

'Sure he is,' nodded Edyta. 'And he is known for his honesty. I'm sure he tells you everything. Listen, you famous professor: he is using you because he personally decided that you cannot have the knowledge of his people. Who are, by the way, either long dead or don't give a damn about what is happening here, if you ask me. Sure, they were real, but not anymore, not for this world and certainly not enough to chase an innocent woman because of them.'

Robert got up.

'I think it's time for us to go,' he said.

'Yeah, I think that too, while we are all friends here,' agreed Edyta.

'But… I didn't finish my coffee,' said Jenna. 'Okay, okay. Let's go.'

They walked up to the front door, this time with the shaman behind them. She probably wanted to make sure they are leaving.

'So… That went terrible,' said Jenna once they were out of the house and the front garden, back in the street. 'What now?'