"Why did you do this?" Alex said as they strode across the boardwalk disguised under his glamour.

"I already said sorry," Isa said. "Why are you still angry?"

"No reason," Alex said. "Not like people could've died or anything."

Isa's eyes got shiny as she stared at the ground instead of at Alex. How glad she must have been that he briefly lifted his glamour so that they could walk into the club again and ask for coats. Because currently, Isa was freezing enough.

Simon grabbed her before she could walk out of the cloud. "Look at what you've done!" he told Alex.

"Stating facts," he said.

Marissa limped next to Simon, crouched forward with her hands over her ribs. "Alex. This isn't helping. She was doing her best."

"No," Isa said. "It's okay. Sometimes, it's fine to just sit back and eat muffins."

"Hey," Marissa said and briefly forgot her pain. "Fire was a great idea. It's not your fault that it was so cold and the ghoul so tough."

"Really tough," Simon agreed. "At first, I was wondering if this was a zombie or the Terminator."

"No shit," Alex said. "Who would bother reviving the undead if they're cannon fodder?"

Marissa coughed as a way to hide her anger.

"This wasn't cannon fodder," Simon said. "This was cannon fodder that broke the Veil. Some big bad guy was involved."

Alex wiped a snowflake from his glasses. "His name's White Cloak."

"Maybe him," Simon said.

"Not 'maybe'. We saw the bastard. He was here."

"He was. And we can be pretty glad that he was alive so we are not going to piss him off?"

"Why not?" Alex asked and increased his stride.

It was difficult to keep up with Alex. Not just because Marissa could barely breathe but also because of how long his legs were. He wasn't the type to turn around and care if other people were able to keep up. He knew that they needed his glamour.

Asshole.

They stopped near a traffic light with cars parked in every available space and city buses so crowded that Marissa got to appreciate just how cramped everything was.

Williamsburg was Brooklyn's capital of art, hipster culture, and nightlife. Having the nickname "Little Berlin", this was the part of the US where everyone was partying while the others slept.

As fun as it sounded, it was heavily gentrified. The line between the nicer parts of this neighborhood and the hives of scum and villainy was so small that it might as well have been nonexistent.

The streets were the worst part of the world to block a road. A traffic jam of hundreds of cars dammed up before the crime scene. Yellow tape and chalk outlines trapped the zombified woman and allowed no one except for an ambulance to break through.

Whoever sent this vampire chose their target area carefully. Due to their importance for humanity, global cities like NYC enjoyed special Veil protection. When a storm ravaged New York State and parts of New England, it was the only city in the region that wasn't harmed.

Which was why Marissa and her friends moved here. Anything that happened here concerned the entire world. And they were here to set things straight.

Isa already provided the group name "Scoobie Avengers". She thought it'd be a fun activity. That they could be superheroes saving the world at night and dealing with rent and college debts during the day.

But her enthusiasm proved itself to be a farce. She watched the ground after Alex's comments.

Why couldn't he be more thankful? After he earned freedom from his abusive godmother last year, Marissa offered him a new life. And he needed their help as much as anyone else.

He was a changeling. Like any of the Fair Folk, he stood for nature and was weak to civilization-symbolizing iron. With all those people doing horseshoe-background checks in front of any grocery store, he couldn't even eat, let alone find a job.

So, he and the Scoobie Avengers were stuck in a codependent relationship. They gave him food and a place to sleep and in exchange, he offered his glamour when they needed to travel incognito.

Their home base wasn't far. They lived in what one might call a shared apartment.

Williamsburg saw exploding rents since at least the nineties and they became astronomically high after the mass exodus of refugees from surrounding coastal areas. The wards were so good that not even the East River caused floodings here. Or, at least no floodings as bad as those who destroyed her mother's old home in Summer Hill.

Fortunately, the Thaumaturgic Council proved to be grateful for the Erlking thing. Marissa wasn't rich and her lifestyle made steady employment difficult.

So, their secret backed funded them a home slightly north of Williamsburg in Bushwick.

Bushwick was a working-class neighborhood. The type of neighborhood where people drove to Manhattan to find work without paying rent there.

The Wild Hunt's storms made everything worse. One saw homeless people collecting bottle caps at every corner and starving artists who hoped that the pedestrians would listen to their songs.

The streets had potholes big enough to be visible at night and desaturated graffiti by the many artists here was reflected by lantern lights. Blocks of cream-yellow row houses and the occasional six-family apartment building decorated the left and right borders of the street.

Marissa's new home waited in an abandoned brick factory as yellow as the row houses. Through a small backdoor, they entered a dusty, spacious backroom that had been stripped of any treadmills. Any machines it used to have gave place to husks and sheets.

Bill, her mother's brownie, already waited here. He was a house goblin with the wizened skin and ragged clothing that went along with the job. He helped with maintenance in exchange for milk. As a fellow Otherworlder, Alex tolerated him quite well to the point that he preferred to sleep down below.

Isa, Simon, and Marissa meanwhile took the cobwebbed stairs to the attic of this warehouse. Well, the renovated attic. There was a floor with an azure tapestry that led to a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, and three doors decorated with animals corresponding to their familiars.

The crow door was Simon's room, the fox door was Isa's, and the door with the cat sign was Marissa's.

Their living room consisted of a couch, a table with pizza on it, a TV, and Simon's laptop. The laptop should, naturally, belong in his room – would he not drop and forget it here so often.

Marissa dropped onto the couch as soon as she could and threw off her winter jacket. Why did this feel like a marathon spring?

Isa sat down next to her. "Is everything alright with you?"

Marissa massaged her aching ribs.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't," Marissa said. "You did your best and I got injured before you did anything."

Simon still stood in the doorway. "You might want to see a doctor."

"The doctor will ask questions. And I have a bone-healing potion. Milk and nuts and magic heal bruised ribs heal in six days rather than six weeks."

He looked in the direction of the kitchen. "Should I get you some ice then?"

Isa jumped from the couch. "I can do that faster."

Simon walked in without comment as Isa sprinted out. Must have felt a little bit weird to be the only boy of their coven of three, but witchcraft was a gender-neutral business. Much like Isa, his abilities were not very refined yet, but he claimed he wanted to study ectoplasmic crafting at the Academy this semester, much like how Isa planned to take up elemental magic.

He sat on the couch and turned on the TV. It played some teen soap which Marissa didn't mind, but which Simon switched off as soon as he saw it.

He instead turned on his laptop and searched for Xander James' YouTube channel to see what the conspiracy theorist had to say about the ghoul attack.

"Any news?" Marissa asked.

He checked his phone chat. "Bianca's fine. She and her friend still need time to recover, but they survived the attack."

Isa came back with a bag of ice. "Noone asked about her, Romeo."

"She was someone we knew," Simon said. "Sorry for paying attention to people!"

Marissa took the ice. "How many people are not fine?"

Simon scrolled through his laptop's newsfeeds. "Two or three got bitten, doctors don't know what to do with them. The woman got tranquilized and they'll put her to death. There's a government research project in Fort Totten on zombie biology and they discuss sending her there."

"As if you can understand magic with science," Isa said.

"Totally not," Simon said. "It's not like we have a whole Academy dedicated to teaching what science has told us about magic."

"Pfft," Isa said. "Forget about them. Barely any parties, ultra-boring guys, that's the worst college I've been to. I wouldn't even be there without you guys."

"Give them a break," Marissa said. "They've done apprenticeships for centuries and now they're still wondering how to do public education."

"Parties?" Simon asked. "Is this what you two harp about? You can literally learn how to bend the rules of reality!"

"'Bend the rules of reality'," Isa said. "They can't even have me shoot a fireball."

Simon gave Raven, his uncreatively-named crow, a piece of pizza. "Maybe studying would be a great start."

Isa let Mozilla play with her rod. "Tell me. How many plus-one video game swords have you crafted already, Mr. Istudysuperhard."

Simon pulled the pizza pieces out of Raven's beak. "I'm getting there."

"Guys," Marissa said, "you are still young, you have all the time in the world, and enough money, you'll do great."

Isa now took a pizza piece myself. "Maybe. But maybe we're about to witness the zombie apocalypse."

"Not according to Simon's news."

"That's what you think! Where there's one undead, there's more and we saw a vampire in the club, didn't we, Mars?"

Marissa's ribs clenched despite the ice. She had a hunch that nothing today was a coincidence. A nagging inner voice told her that the zombie was there for her. That it wanted to kill her or provoke her into exposing herself.

The Enlightened already didn't like her flying a broom around Summer Hill, who knew what else they got angry about? The more the Veil leaked, the more supernatural culture stepped in to fill the void with their Veil Treaty. Did Isa's fireball already count as a Treaty violation?

Maybe Marissa was self-centered. Maybe what happened today only happened for the sake of murder and nothing else. But she couldn't sleep peacefully until she knew for sure.

"Simon," Marissa said. "What did people think of my stunt?"

He lifted his chin and, with half-open eyes, he combed online forums and news websites and even the newsfeed in the Thaumaturgic Wiki. "Let's see. The media just repeats what happened and that the police wants you. Some think you're a hero. Others think you created the zombie. Others-" His eyes widened.

Isa and Marissa peeked over his shoulder to see what was so interesting to him that he had to stop mid-sentence.

"Someone wants to challenge you," Simon said. "To a duel to the death."