The library fell apart. In such situations, they said you should leave all your belongings apart and run as soon as you could. This might have been good advice, but I needed my belongings to survives.

I picked up a night vision potion, a potion to transfigurate my jawline and gait, an Unseelie Repellant potion, two crowbars made of cold iron, a pouch full of gold coins, and a broom. The broom was gonna be important.

Simon and Darcy guarded Weber's circle while Nathan – the Book of Samael in his hand - and Isa followed me outside. Opening door, we faced the flogging rain head-on.

A ruined town met our eyes. Roofs missed their slates and chimney pots while floating branches shattered windows like rock-throwing teenage boys. Lightning spirits lit the sky like torches and thundered like drums. Meanwhile, flying debris transformed the street into a Swiss cheese piece of potholes.

Dad's Ford had parked before the destroyed fence. It was an old and battered boomer car that looked like it had fought in World War II, although that might have been due to the storm. Debris turned its windscreen into a spiderweb and peeled off red paint from its roof and its doors.

Landlines were down, so, Darcy had to call a Councillor on her Magia Phone who then had to call Dad in a roundabout way. He opened his car's door.

Isa, Nathan, and I ran as fast through the storm as our umbrellas allowed while Mozilla's flames at least caught some water and kept the air dry.

Even so, that didn't stop Isa from complaining as she entered the car.

"Bah!" Isa said. "My beautiful dress of undeath is dying!"

Dad gave Nathan a harsh look before he could enter the car as well.

"You take the backseat," Dad told him coldly as I took the front seat.

As everyone took her seatbelts and Dad got the battered car to run, I filled him in on our plan and everything we found out.

I finished by asking, "What happened with the FBI?"

"They at least acknowledge the Erlking is real now," Dad said, his eyes glued on the street.

Dad drove slowly. After I drank my night vision potion, he asked me to watch the streets. It was hard to spot manholes and sinkholes under the broken lantern light and the sheets of water covering the streets. It was a race against time where hurrying meant breaking our necks.

At one past midnight, we arrived at a road leading to Hill's Park near the library. Much to my surprise, all the monuments and trees were still standing. The park was deserted. 18th century ghosts haunted the place while a Black Knight hovered in an aether cloud amidst the specters. He stretched out his staff. Lightning bolts whose sparks glinted on his black armor electrified the sky and killed every ghost gliding through the park.

Our car reflected the sparks like a Faraday cage. I kept my hands away from the metal while tiny, molten fragments of our vehicle's antenna fell down the rear windshield.

If he wanted to, the Knight could have cleared the surrounding town blocks as well, but he had to keep things small so that onlookers in their houses might confuse his actions for normal parts of the storm. As the car drove by, he briefly winked me and I winked back. Most normal people couldn't see him with his glamour. He made himself visible only for me.

"You know this man?" Dad asked.

"Guest lecturer in one of my combat magic classes," I said.

Leaving the safe sanctuary of the Park, returned to the town's outskirts. We passed a manor robbed by a team of burglars. The criminals took advantage of civilization's collapse to raid the old estate and take any precious objects with them they could find. One of the robbers was torn apart limb-by-limb by hellhounds. His fellow thieves ignored him.

Not far behind the manor waited the St. Phelps Church. Hordes of people gathered in its gloomy burying grounds like peasants in a keep. In the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane reportedly sought sanctuary from the Headless Horseman in the Old Dutch Church.

Many people who had read the short story hoped Summer Hill's church could offer them similar protection and, I had to admit, it was a good idea. Normally, churches indeed provided shelter from ghosts, demons, and even against magic itself – which was why I wasn't sure if I could enter the grounds. But against a being as powerful and vengeful as the Horseman, the church's natural wards wouldn't be enough.

Ghostly riders with stag-horn helmets and hellhounds gnawed at the fences of the church, seeking to get in and to have those they devoured join the hunt.

A man with a hunting rifle shot the hounds. It wasn't as effective as it sounded. Unless he hit the head, the hounds would regenerate and move on. Steel bullet or not, the contact wasn't long enough to seriously harm them and, in the darkness of the night, hitting the head wasn't easy. But at least with the Veil being as weak as it was, he could see the creatures he was shooting.

The ghostly riders ripped the man out of the crowd. His bullets were useless against the intangible specters, but the rifle proved he was a hunter, a predator, and if he was a fellow hunter, the restless ghosts only desired his company even more.

I couldn't watch this. I needed my fairy repellant potion if I didn't want to get torn apart immediately.

A girl, barely elementary-school aged, tried to climb the fence from the outside and screamed as she saw all those dogs.

My heart trembled. This girl, it was a mirror reflection of my earlier self. She wore braces, had unruly brown hair, and clothing way too big for her. She had an almost uncanny resemblance to what I looked like when I was still seven. For this girl, it was probably the first time she saw anything supernatural. She had to be protected by any means necessary.

"Now!" I yelled and everyone in the car executed their part of the plan.

Nathan cast a glamour over my father's car to prevent anyone from seeing them come closer. Rule one was to never drive a car through a storm unless utterly necessary. Since there weren't many other cars on the streets, the likelihood of a car accident ws small. Dad parked his Ford, which had been battered to the point of popping wheels and shattered windows, on a sidewalk near the churchyard's fence.

Nathan, Isa, and I stepped out.

I faced the debris-filled, whipping wind head-on. I wasn't any stronger or tougher than the people who tried to defend themselves from the monsters. But I had knowledge and now I could share it.

It was almost impossible to stand in the storm. We had parked close enough to the fence that I could grab it without being blown away immediately.

I threw a crowbar at the hounds that tormented the little girl.

That probably qualified as a Veil breach, as I just made a crowbar appear out of nowhere. But as long as Nathan covered me, I should be fine.

I felt the confusion of the people in the courtyard. It was confusion direct at me and with that new familiar of mine, I couldn't ignore such energy.

While I was invisible to them, I was not invisible to the hounds. They put their eyes on me. They bared their teeth.

I kept calm. As long As my fairy repellant potion worked and as long as Nathan's mind magic calmed me down, I had nothing to fear.

I didn't have to fight them. I only had to give the people hope and show them how they could defend themselves.

Mozilla jumped to my side. We faced the hounds as Isa played a song which Nathan, conveniently, excluded from the glamour that made him and Isa invisible and inaudible.

"From the depths of hell and silence, cast your spells explosive violence."

In perfect harmony with the lyrics, Isa and Mozilla produced sparks that seemingly came out of nowhere. It was a beautiful spectacle.

The people in the courtyard watched as if the hounds weren't even there.

When I destroyed the school, I caused negative emotions that made Evil Angel stronger and made her take over Siris. Now, I had to see if positive emotions might turn the tide. If my theory about how this worked was right and Siris had a "good" spiritual essence, then life energy produced by "good" emotions should be sympathetic to him. That might strengthen him and let him fight back against whatever my other familiar did to him. After all, he was an Otherworlder my mother had chosen to pass on to me and she wanted to bring people hope.

The people stared the sparks. Although they couldn't see me, they thought of the person who might have caused them. White lines connected their baffled faces with me and Isa and I could feel all the hope, all the relief, all the amazement in their face. One of them even still had a working phone and recorded everything he saw.

This was how I had imagined to announce myself to the world. This way and no differently.

The ghostly scepters raised their sabers and lunged towards me. The extra life energy I got made my Unseelie Repellant potion's ward stronger. A metaphysical shield surrounded me and absorbed the ghost's blades.

The aether I got from the people's emotions and from Summer Hill's ley line that ran through the church lifted me off my feet. First, I could only lift my bag. Then, I could lift Bill. Now, I was strong enough to levitate my own body weight. Even with the whipping wind, I wasn't blown away, but hovered in place.

And I accidentally left Nathan's glamour.

People in the churchyard took photos as my robe flapped against the full moon.

I could fly. These people, they accepted me. They accepted me as their helper in the crisis. I might have gotten into trouble later for doing magic in the open, but currently, not even the wind bothered me.

I floated closer to the girl. She forgot all the monsters around her and watched me with her mouth open. I could feel her emotions. At first, she had been scared of my black robe and the fact that I was wearing a balaclava. But she realized I meant no harm and that I was trying help. My range still wasn't all that great, but once the distance was small, I enclosed her in a cloud of aether. While she couldn't see it, the little girl could feel the energy that protected her, that lifted her off the ground, and carried her to safety.

Unfortunately, it was at this point when I focused on supporting her rather than myself that a gust of wind blew me off my feet.

I was slammed against the fence. I was still fragile, still a normal human. For all the life energy and wards I had, they provided no protection against the raw forces of nature.

It was a miracle I could even stand. Luckily, an adult caught the girl when my aether cloud dissipated.

Another gust threw me against the fence once more. I threw my crowbar across it and the same person who caught the girl also caught it. The sooner people found out that cold iron worked against most of the Unseelie creatures, the better. Many people probably already found it out through experimentation, but demonstration also helped.

Clouding me under a glamour, Nathan pulled me back before the wind blew me away again.

"Are you done doing party tricks?" Nathan asked.

"Haha," I said. "We need to show them what works against monsters. Weber was wrong. Individually, humans might be weaker than us, but if we give them enough hope and show them the equipment they need, their combined life energy can even ward the Horseman off."

"You mean, we'll visit him?" Isa asked.

"Aha," I said. "He's near Sleepy Hollow, fighting against our people. The Book of Samael is in the car, right?"

Nathan nodded.

"Good. Now that I can carry my weight, let's fly straight to Sleepy Hollow!"