"A vampire?" I muttered.

"I presume you are aware of what vampires are?" Cornelius asked.

"She did not believe she could control her bloodlust," Melas said. "So, she left and asked us not to tell anyone her current location."

My mother had been only sporadically present in my childhood, even before the "banishment". But, after she had saved me from that demon, I always thought she only had the best intentions. So, when she left me, I thought it was something forced on her.

It wasn't.

She went away. And she chose not to inform her family.

"Did she also say you shouldn't tell me?" I asked.

"No," Melas said. "She didn't. I think she hoped we would. Your father had always lived in denial which was why he could not tell you either."

I clenched a fist. I spent a lot of my childhood feeling miserable as, along with dealing with anxieties, I had wild theories about why Mom left me. That I was a burden or not good enough and these guys could have resolved it easily. "Is there a reason you didn't just tell me?"

"We could not rule out that you would become like her," Cornelius said.

"I was seven," I said, my voice low.

"Are you familiar with Fate?" Melas asked.

I blinked.

"God, Allah, Yahweh, Brahma, Coincidence, Destiny, almost everyone believes in a guiding cosmic principle, an ultimate cause for everything. It has many names, but I call it Fate. It might be just a law. It might be sentient. It might even be one of the Primordials. All I know is that Fate is real. The ultimate principle behind the Veil is that the supernatural shall not alter the natural course of history. Who decides how history ought to go, if not Fate? Your mother's fate is intertwined with yours. Even more so once you two gave your names to Samael."

There was so much I could have done now. Grab that picture frame, destroy a copy of Dracula, you name it. Destiny. What dumber excuse was there for anything than "destiny says so"?

"There is a reason we are telling you this," Melas said. "You have a Primordial now. You are a weapon. If you do what you did today, people might be worried you steal their worshippers. You wouldn't want to go into this world without a strong organization that protects you and who you can trust, right?"

"Right." Not like I had a chance.

"Good. I am sure you already knew this, but the Erlking was not alone. He was only part of a network. The Coven of Primordial Revenants helped him. They summoned a Primordial which took the Autumn King Gwyn ap Nudd out of commission and made him act like our enemy. We might encounter them again. Especially that, now with your home destroyed in the storm, you might need to move back to New York again."

I fell on my bed. School destroyed. Home destroyed. My whole natural life was destroyed.

There used to be times when I thought I could be a normal girl. Graduate school, find a good college, marry a rich man, and have kids.

But the natural world wasn't there anymore. My life was in ruins and I had to commit myself to the supernatural more fully.

Which was probably exactly what they wanted.

"What happens to me now?" I asked. "Will I ever get Siris back?"

"When did you lose him?" Cornelius asked.

"When I destroyed my school. That Primordial ate him, kinda."

"I am assuming you are not deliberately lying to me because I can sense his presence. Spirit guides are remarkable entities. They might appear as animals to most, but this holds only true when they want to be perceived as such." Tentacles of a shadow manifested around Cornelius as if to show what his familiar looked like.

The thought wasn't pleasant. Siris had become more than a tool for me. He was a friend. A friend whom I could touch, whom I could feed, who was the cat I never had. I wanted him to be that way. Small, approachable, understandable, not vast and incomprehensible. I knew him for two months, yet it was like I had never known him. The way Cornelius described familiars made me wonder how different they were from Primordials. "Where do familiars come from?" I asked. "Our course didn't teach us."

"They have been used by practitioners in different forms ever since the time of the Primordial Mage," Melas said. "The Primordial Mage bound them and showed other practitioners how to bind theirs. How and why this happened is an ongoing topic of our research."

"Are there any more people with Primordials among you? Other than me, of course."

Melas answered with a laugh that reminded me of a noblewoman. "More than you might think."

I was so down the rabbit hole. I had been ever since I followed Siris down that basement. That was a dream, one from which I'd never wake up. Whether it would be a pleasant dream or a nightmare was all my choice.

Let's hope my pulse slowed down until tomorrow.

[-]

School did not resume next week and it was announced to happen online for the rest of the year. Not like anyone wanted to study there with all the rooms destroyed.

Or all the houses surrounding it.

With how many people, including students, left the town, it was unclear if it'd ever reopened again.

Without lessons on the horizon, I was free to do whatever I wanted. Simon and Isa went to their Initiations soon as they could.

We went through the Lady of the Lake's realm all the way to the underground tower in the October Mountain State Forest near Salem. Isa didn't even inform her parents of the Initiation business, but her parents were too busy preparing for the coming Rapture anyway.

Under normal circumstances, they would have been two months too late to join Cunning Folk Academy's current semester. Too bad that regular rules didn't apply when you helped to save the world. So, Isa and Simon got offered private tutoring and had to promise that they worked twice as hard as everyone else until the final exams.

Since I followed the two to their Initiation, we were all conveniently near the Academy for another in-presence course. It felt relaxing to sit in the dungeon and to hear Wizard Mafalda talk in her course on general magical theory. She didn't even give me special treatment for the Wild Hunt stunt. She just repeated information from previous lectures, added details about the relationship between divination and ritual magic, and emphasized what would be important for the upcoming exam.

We saved a cozy corner near the rocky wall where a different trio already sat.

"Look at that!" Nick whispered. "Our war heroes are there."

"I don't make war," Isa said. "Only a bit of fire."

Nick lifted an eyebrow. "I like you already. How about a contest about which of us can make bigger fireballs followed by a drink? If I win, I don't have to pay."

Crista punched his arm as she did the last time I saw them in person.

She preferred to listen to the lecture. After my conversation with Cornelius and Melas, I started paying attention not to what was taught, but also to what wasn't taught. Like the origin of magic. Maybe they didn't know, but weren't there at least theories? Any curiosity among them?

Probably not, as my fellow students weren't concerned. Isa tried sitting still, though Mozilla made everything harder. She loved walking around so much that it took a spell by Mafalda to stop her.

Simon's Raven was quieter. He stood between Nick's Velociraptor and Mark's badger who listened as attentively as if they were students, too.

"Where is Siris?" Mark asked once the lecture ended.

Everyone stood up. I remained seated.

"Hm, good question," Isa said. "Don't all of you have such a cute pet? Mozilla told me you do!"

"How much do your familiars talk?" I asked.

Mozilla raised her ears.

"Just asking because I argued a lot with my familiar," I said. "You seem to be more chilled with yours."

"Oh, they do it, just at home," Mark said. "So, what happened to Siris."

I couldn't tell them about my Primordial without some tasty diseases. But I could tell them the honest truth. "Don't know."

"Of course, you don't," May said as she left the classroom. "Otherwise, you'd tell us why you flew even when everyone saw you."

"You really think some shady ritual individual was involved?" June asked May.

Jaclyn followed her friends out and remained silent as the only one of the three.

We followed. We strode through the dungeons past the torches until we found boulders.

Now that everyone was standing still, I had a good idea of what we looked like compared to one another. Nick and Mark were both taller than Simon, but only a little. Maybe half an inch. For Simon, that was reason enough to extend his chest and accept their challenge as they pointed at the rocks.

They rested against the walls like pillows, some weighing hundreds of pounds. They were prepared by dwarves specifically so that young male practitioners could use them in competitions.

The guys pointed their rods.

"Why don't you join us, Marissa?" Nick asked.

"Why?" I asked.

He grinned. "C'mon. Have you seen yourself in that storm? You flew on a staff when most couldn't even stand."

"I had help. And a ley line."

"If you've got enough magical energy to lift your body weight, these rocks should be a joke."

I looked at them. One of them reached barely up to my waist. "My broom's toast. Don't we need at least staves to carry objects so heavy?"

"As if," Nick said. "People say it's safer that way, but you can try it with a rod. They aren't so heavy."

I took out my rod at the same time as the boys. We pointed our rods at the rocks and aether spilled out of them.

Each of us four enclosed the rock closest to us in solid fists of ectoplasm. By moving my rod up, I decided the direction of the kinetic energy and lifted the rock from its place.

It would have been better for concentration to do it with both hands, but the desire to watch my new phone won. My power and energy approached the A-quintile. Other stats failed to keep up. Since I was outside of Summer Hill, I was probably outside of my "Center of Worship", too.

And I felt the consequences.

My palms quivered, my head ached, and the ectoplasmic cloud burst before the rock hit the bottom with a thud.

"Sad, isn't it?" my new familiar asked. "As above, so below. To draw power from positive feelings, you must feel positive yourself."

Shut up. Really, shut up. That's not how anything works.

I needed to do this again tomorrow. I needed to learn control. But as long as I couldn't tell anyone other than Melas and Cornelius about my Primordial, I had no idea what I could do about her.