The family sat around the kitchen table, awaiting Naomi’s arrival. A day had passed since Angela dropped the bomb that the Tome mage might be able to track down Grandpa Jack, and nobody had been able to focus. All plans for working on Skills or plumbing the depths of their Tomes had gone out the window, but that nervous energy had largely been expelled as the hour drew near, and for the most part they were keeping it together, sipping their tea as they waited for the big moment.

Except for Beth. She felt like she was about to wriggle out of her skin.

What if they found out something terrible had happened to her grandfather, but they couldn’t help him? Or worse, they could have helped him, but Beth’s insistence on taking it slow and avoiding risk had prevented the family from becoming strong enough to intervene, thereby dooming her grandfather? And all because she was ashamed of her past. She could never have admitted that two days ago, but she could now. She didn’t want the family to prioritize fighting ability because that would mean revealing skills she had been hiding, leading to questions she selfishly didn’t want to answer.

What a fool. What a coward. So terrified of her own ghosts, acting like the reasonable one. Then she’d gone and done…what she’d done. It made her sick. But to think of her kids following her down that road? Palmyre obviously wasn’t San Diego, but there was—

Peter squeezed her hand and gave her a gentle smile. “Don’t wear out that treadmill, okay?”

She looked at him in confusion, and he tapped the side of his head. “You’re spiralling.”

“Oh,” she said. Of course he’d notice.

“It’s okay,” he said, squeezing her hand again. “We’ll get an idea where Jack is tonight, and wherever that takes us, we’ll deal with it. Just like we always have. Together.”

“I know,” she said, fiddling nervously with the plate of brownies, aligning the dark, perfectly cut squares with the wood grain of the table. “I’m just so afraid.”

He put an arm around her and pulled her close, kissing the top of her head. “We all are, hon. And that’s okay.”

They sat like that for a while, waiting in limbo, until a knock at the door brought everyone’s heads up. They looked at each other.

“I’ll get it,” Mark said, rising from his chair. He headed down the hall to let Naomi in.

Jack and Eliza had followed the splinter group of cultists, or mercenaries, or whatever the hell these folks were, through the forest for more than a day. It was pretty clear they were looking for the ranger. Every couple of hours they would stop so the mage could do a bunch of hand-wavy mumbo-jumbo, but each time he came up wanting. That had the white-robed lady getting increasingly annoyed, which was fine by Jack. The more snippiness and infighting, the better. That lack of trust would translate into less cohesion during battle, and if Jack and Eliza had their way, that’s precisely where this was headed.

“Gotta figure this is our chance,” Jack said, the weird muffling of their Silent Communicator Ability indicating that their words wouldn’t be overheard by those in the camp. It was strange being able to speak with Eliza despite her being nearly five metres away, but he was also on an alien planet following a cult lady and her merry band of mercenaries through the forest, so “normal” had left the building a long time ago.

“Definitely,” Eliza said, keeping her eyes on the camp. “The woman in charge isn’t comfortable in the woods, but she’d rather be wrong than listen to anyone’s advice. Setting up camp in a place like this is a terrible idea—it would be remiss of us not to show her why.”

If anything, Eliza was underselling it. Whenever they got within earshot, they could hear the woman complaining about the dampness, constantly insisting they find an elevated place to sleep that night. Which was fine, but she’d also refused to give up searching for Eliza until it was too late in the day to find a proper camp, leaving them with only a few decent options—all of which she ignored. Instead, she had insisted on a slight slope that backed up against the base of a cliff. While it did limit the potential directions for an attack, there was almost no open ground between their camp and the forest, letting potential ambushers—such as them—get extremely close before mounting an assault. The rock wall also curved into a bowl, cutting off any means of escape if her group needed to make a tactical retreat. They would be fish in a barrel, so to speak, even with ten of them to Jack and Eliza’s two. But numbers only mattered after the initial assault happened, and from what Eliza had described, those numbers would be much lower once she was done with them.

Not that it wouldn’t be a scrap and a half, even if their ambush went perfectly, but it needed to be done.

“You’re going to be okay with this?” Eliza asked.

Jack couldn’t see her, but he knew she was thinking of the wyvern bone club. He’d explained its ability to hit someone without killing them, and she’d looked at him like he was nuts. She came from a school of thought where if you could take someone down, you did it, and you made sure they never got up again.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Jack said.

It wasn’t that he had changed his mind and was now about to kill people willy-nilly, but he’d been thinking long and hard about his stance. Ultimately, he’d decided that if he could spare someone worth sparing, he’d do it. Who knew how they’d ended up where they were, or what curveballs life had thrown at them. But Jack also knew battle, and it was a messy, chaotic thing. Even if the person he was up against was only there because they’d hit a rough patch along the way, he wasn’t going to hesitate in taking their life if that hesitation might risk the life of an innocent.

Maybe it wasn’t the most thought-out approach. Maybe it was just a fancy way of saying he didn’t know what he’d do when the battle started. What he did know was that the group they were facing was despicable, and he’d do his best to calibrate that evil. One way or another.

Jack shifted position a bit, making sure that the long light of the setting sun didn’t throw his shadow into the enemy camp. No point ruining one of the many advantages the cultists had handed over to them. After all, lookouts didn’t do much good when they were forced to shield their eyes and turn away from the forest every time they glanced in your direction.

What a bunch of idiots.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Jack said, resetting his grip on the club.

Waiting time was over.

Mark opened the front door and nodded to Naomi, who was dressed in a nondescript travelling cloak and carrying a large satchel over one shoulder. It looked heavy, so he quickly stepped aside to let her in.

“Thanks for coming, Naomi,” he said, surprised at the slight cringe he got from the mage. He gave her a querying look, but she didn’t say anything, simply stepping past him once he granted her entry to the house. As soon as the was door closed, though, she looked at him pointedly.

“Please don’t use my name outside these walls,” she said, her frown evident even in the dim evening light. “Naomi is not a common name in Palmyre, and there is always someone willing to buy information on the comings and goings of Family members in this city.”

“Uh, okay,” he said. “Is this a code name situation, then? What do you want us to call you?

“I don’t know,” she said, giving him a blasé wave. “I can’t say I care all that much. Just so long as it isn’t Naomi.”

He thought about it for a moment. “How about Imoan?”

She stopped what she was doing. “No.”

“Why not? It kind of works because it’s your name backwards, and—”

“I’m aware of your logic. The answer is still no.”

He crossed his arms. “You said you didn’t care.”

“And yet here I am, changing my mind,” she said. There was a hint of amusement in her tone, but he couldn’t see if she was smiling. They really needed to spring for some decent household lighting.

Letting out an exaggerated sigh, Mark said, “Fiiine. We’ll come up with a better code name. And sorry about the lighting. Getting this place set up with those magic orbs is still on the list.”

“I can help with that for now,” Naomi said. Making a quick motion with her hand, she summoned a ball of light into her palm. She tossed it towards the wall, where it promptly stuck in place, then she repeated the action as she walked down the hallway to the kitchen. Tossing one more ball of light at the ceiling, she illuminated the entire room…and the shit-eating grin on Angela’s face.

“Diiiid I just hear my brother suggest ‘I moan’ as a code name?” she said, fluttering her eyes as she took an innocent sip of her tea.

Mark glared at her. “No, I said ‘Ih-moan,’ like ‘if’ or ‘idiot.’ My ‘I’ was soft, not hard.”

Angela snorted tea out her nose in an uncontrolled geyser. “Ohmygod! Uh, okay, yeah. I can’t improve on that joke. Like, at all.”

“Then I suggest you don’t try,” Naomi said icily, her words killing Angela’s laughter like a dagger to the heart.

“Um, sorry,” Angela said, turning her focus to her tea.

Naomi shook her head, then softened her features and turned to Mark’s mom. “Congratulations on furnishing your home. It looks lovely.”

“That is very kind. Thank you for coming,” his mom said, giving Naomi a weak smile. It wasn’t much, but it was the first time she had smiled in Naomi’s presence, so Mark was prepared to call it a win. “Are those lights you’ve put up permanent, or…?”

“Oh, no,” Naomi said. “I have a constant stream of mana running through them to keep them active. You can buy essentially permanent ones, but these will disappear shortly after I leave.”

“That’s too bad, but understandable,” his mom said. She gestured to the plate sitting on the table. “Can I interest you in a brownie?”

Naomi looked at the plate of treats curiously. “You have a food named for one of the fae?”

“You don’t have brownies here?”

“Some of the southern reaches do, but there haven’t been brùnaidh in Palmyre in a thousand years.”

Mark leaned over to Naomi and quietly said, “She’s asking if you have the dessert, not little men who clean your house.”

“Ah, I see,” Naomi said, politely shaking her head. “Not to my knowledge. Although they do smell quite—”

“Laaaady, you wanna eat the brownie,” Leonard shouted from where he was lying on the ground by the patio door, flat on his back and holding his crumb-covered belly. His eyes had a glassy look, and he still had a large chunk of brownie clutched in one paw. “I swear, you’ll regret it if ya don’t. Dese things are dumb good.”

“Best not to be rude then,” Naomi said with a courteous smile. She picked up one of the brownies and took a small bite, only for her eyes to go wide. “Tits of Ásta! Where did you find these?”

His mom laughed at the reaction. “Old family recipe. I was surprised to find cocoa on Arenia.”

“Cocoa?” Naomi asked, cocking her head.

“There’s some in that tin on the counter,” his mom said. Looking to the rest of the family, she added, “And yes, you can all have one now.”

Grins broke out among the family as they reached for their own brownie, while Naomi wandered over to investigate the cocoa tin. She sniffed the tin’s contents, then her eyes went wide and she spat the brownie into the sink, rinsing out her mouth with water before racing back to the dining area.

“Nonononono!” she shouted, batting the brownies out of everyone’s hands.

“My brownie!” Mark said, staring forlornly at the spot on the floor where his treat had fallen.

“You can’t eat those; it will mess up the ritual!” she said.

“What? Why?”

“Because that’s not ‘cocoa.’ It’s ground chopa nut. It’s delicious, but it’s also a mild hallucinogen. Did any of you eat one of these today?”

“Just Leonard,” Angela said, pointing to her stoned familiar. “Little bastard couldn’t wait for you to show up before pigging out.”

Leonard waved his brownie in the air, shouting, “I regret nothing!”

Mark’s mom looked concerned. “Oh dear. I tasted a little of it when I made the first batch yesterday, but they didn’t come out right, so I threw them out and did another batch today. I didn’t eat any of the finished product, though. Leonard was my tester.”

“An’ I was a goddamned rockstar at it, too,” Leonard slurred, raising a paw and somehow making devil horns with his fingers.

Mark looked down at his brownie in a new light. “Is it dangerous?”

“Gods no,” Naomi said. “I agree with your familiar—under normal circumstances, I would eat nine of these and then fill my pockets when nobody was looking. But I need all of you clearheaded for this ritual, myself especially.”

“I did taste the batter as I made them. Will that be a problem?” Mark’s mom asked.

“Depends on how much you ate. Do you feel relaxed?”

“Not in the slightest,” she said. “I can’t tell you how worried I am about having Grandpa Jack off in the forest with nobody around to help him.”

Angela snorted uncontrollably. “Phrasing, mom.”

“Oh, grow up,” his mom said, rolling her eyes.

Naomi chimed in with her own small chuckle. “I would say that, given your anxiety, you needn’t worry about the chopa nut. To be honest, if you had some experience with it, I might even recommend some to calm yourself.”

“I can make do with breathing exercises, thank you.”

“As you wish,” Naomi said. “How about we shift focus to the ritual? I have brought everything I need, but I do require open space. Where would be best?”

“Grandpa Jack’s room,” Mark said, the family already having discussed it earlier. “He’s the kind of guy who’d want to decide on his own furniture—probably a cot and a single dresser, knowing him—so we left the room empty. It’s upstairs.”

“That should be fine.” Naomi said. Looking at each member of the family, she said, "Let's get started."