When I opened the door, I felt a wall of cold press against me.

The chill didn’t abate in the slightest as I stepped out of Blackhart and into the Night Market. Frowning, I pulled the parka around me a little tighter and turned back to check the door. It had already reappeared in its original position.

Up the road a way, I saw the man with the white robe who’d walked past the entrance to the shop. He wasn’t that far, and I had been inside Blackhart long enough that he should have made it to the end of the street and around the corner ages ago.

“I think that man is spying on me,” I said under my breath.

“Oh?” Silvy whispered back, nestled deep in the hood behind my head. “Why would you think that?”

“I saw him walk past the entrance to Blackhart when I first went in.”

Silvy let out a long, annoyed sigh before explaining in an even more annoyed voice.

“The lab inside Blackhart is in the Shadow Vaile, Hex. When you're in the Shadow Vaile time moves slower outside.” Silvy paused for a moment before continuing. “Well… that's not entirely true… time moves much faster in the Shadow Vaile, but because of that it seems as though, outside of the Shadow Vaile, that time is hardly moving at all. That man's exactly where you left him when you entered the lab in Blackhart, unless you exited at some point.”

I started to argue but didn't know what to say. Instead, I started walking and Silvy crawled out of the hood to perch on my shoulder.

She whispered in my ear, “You might want to pull the hood up over your horns.”

“Why?”

“You never know when a witch might be around.”

“What?”

Silvy chuckled. “Yeah,” she said. “I can just imagine you seeing someone else with horns, them seeing you, them not knowing you, and you outing them.”

“Outing them?”

“Only witches can see each other's horns,” Silvy whispered. “And nobody likes a witch, except for other witches.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What aren't you getting? Witches are banished from all major plaines and from most of the shards. Belladonna is the only shard where they're allowed to exist and thrive, but that doesn't stop them from infiltrating other plaines and shards.”

What is Silvy saying? That I’m a witch?

I felt like I was drowning.

“Why do you think you're so cold?” Silvy asked. “You're not in the Shadow Vaile anymore.”

“Is it only the lab that’s in the Shadow Vaile?”

“For your purposes, yes. That’s not entirely true, but as far as time moves, yes. The lab is the part of Blackhart that’s most in the Shadow Vaile.”

“Can I eat magick?” I asked.

Silvy laughed. “You've got the horns, but you don't have any of the witch abilities. You’re a half-witch. You're basically a vanilla witch.”

“A vanilla witch?”

“It’s nothing.” Silvy sighed. “Don't worry about it.”

I shrugged and kept walking.

I’m not even a real witch. I’m a half-witch. I have the horns, but not the powers. I am the worst of both worlds.

I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was something different than I’d been not even an hour before. I was altered yet my place in the magick world had taken a nosedive. I hadn’t known things could get worse for me than being a stick.

I tightened the hood around my head, hiding those cursed horns as I walked among the cloaked magick users.

You finally got a cloak of your own, Hex. Even if it’s only a parka…

Without the crown of lights marking me as a stick, I got far fewer looks and outright stares. I fit in. For once.

What if they find out what you’ve become, though?

“What do they do to witches?” I asked.

“Not sure what’s changed. It's been a long time since I've been out in the world.”

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“Where did you come from?”

“Where all familiars come from: The Shadow Vaile.” Silvy floated off my shoulder and flew through the air, landing on the shoulder of the cloaked figure walking in front of me. She turned back to face me. “I'm not sure which was worse, being cooped up in that witchstone for all those years or now being saddled with a half-witch.”

“Be quiet,” I hissed. “Someone might hear you.”

The cloaked figure in front of me turned around and I froze.

The man stared down at me. “May I help you?” he asked.

I pulled the hood tighter around my head and my eyes drifted up to see Silvy sitting on the man’s head, curled up into a ball with her paw dangling right in front of his right eye.

“Say…” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Should I pop his eye out? I bet it’s delicious. I bet it tastes like a grape.”

My heart sank. The cloaked man was going to kill me. There was no doubt.

“No,” I said.

The man cocked an eyebrow, shook his head, and turned away.

Didn’t he see Silvy? Does Silvy have no power over him?

Silvy floated back to my shoulder. “You're no fun, Hex, and I think we could have a lot of fun here, you and me. I think we could make a lot of friends.”

“Was he not able to see you? Or hear you?”

“No one can unless I want them to.”

“Can I command you to do anything?”

Silvy snorted. “You can command me to do anything you want, preferably getting a taste of that sweet, sweet magickal blood. I'm so thirsty, Hex. Just let me have a taste. Just a little bit.”

The way Silvy was begging made me think she was only teasing, but there was also a note of seriousness running beneath her words. She absolutely wanted blood, and if I told her yes, even jokingly, I had a feeling she would attack someone.

Then what will happen? If she does that, will she turn into something else? Is she like a gremlin?

“I don't like this,” I said. “I don't like not knowing anything about you, about… myself.”

“Gosh,” Silvy said as though she was talking to a child. “If only there was a way you could find out the answers to questions. If only there was a way you could look up what you don't know.”

“I don't have a Lumadex. I don't own one. I don't even know where to buy one.”

Silvy laughed. It came out as more of a giggle than a laugh though.

“Well…” She lifted her front left leg and flicked her paw off in a direction to my right. “Seems like that would be a good place to start, right?”

I glanced in that direction and saw two bright windows pouring warm light onto the street. Above the door between the windows was a shingle that read Coffee and Content.

“Coffee and Content?” I asked. “Like drink coffee and be content? How's that gonna help?”

“No, you child. Coffee and CON-tent. All the tables and all the surfaces are Lumadexes. Just walk in. Grab a coffee, let me have some, and... well actually let me have all the coffee. In fact, why don't you wait out here. I’ll go in, drink the coffee, come back out, and we can still be in the same predicament. How's that sound?”

“Terrible,” I said.

“Then go in,” Silvy groaned. She lay on her side, hanging off my shoulder as though I was the worst person in the world.

Shaking my head, I entered Coffee and Content.

It was as she said. Lumadexes covered just about every surface and glowed with light. Most of the people in the café ignored the Lumadexes, though. Instead, they seemed to be focused on enjoying their…

What are they drinking?

The girl to my right held a coffee cup in her hand, a coffee cup made of clear glass, but at the center was a single globe of liquid just floating there without touching any of the glass. She took a straw and slipped it into the globe, took a single tiny sip, then removed the straw, and returned it back to where she’d gotten it from: a blue test tube. I watched, surprised and captivated.

I looked at the glowing lights of the menu as I approached the counter, but only a few of the words made any sense to me. I also realized I didn't know how to pay, that I had no idea of how to buy anything in the magick world.

“Hi,” I said to the barista.

She had a septum piercing, and, beneath her left eye, it looked like five dots tattooed in porcelain blue ink.

She stared at me and raised an eyebrow. “What’ll it be?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “This is my first time.”

She nodded as though this was a common occurrence. I had a feeling it was anything but a common occurrence, though.

“So, what'll you have?” she asked.

I took a deep breath and let it out, shoving my words into the sigh. “I don't know how to pay.”

The girl snorted. She tapped several things into a Lumadex type of device to her right and a three-dimensional box of light appeared on the counter in front of me. It looked like the containment field I'd used when I tried to dispel the curse from what I had thought was the Builder’s Stone.

“Just put your hand in it.” She might as well have just rolled her eyes at me.

I slipped my hand into the glowing light box and it went dark, going completely opaque. It was a terrifying moment. One second, I could see my hand through a filter of blue and green. The next second, the box was completely black. It looked like my hand had been cut off at the wrist, everything else embedded in a block of black ice I couldn't see inside of. Almost as fast as it went opaque, it cleared, and I could see my hand again.

“Not sure how much money you have in your account, but you have enough to cover our most expensive item.” She pointed at something that appeared to cost seventy dollars. I had no idea if the dollars were United States dollars or something else.

Magickal dollars? Are dollars in the magick world magickal? Are they even dollars?

“Okay,” I said, unsure of what I was doing. “I'll have…”

Silvy draped herself over the barista’s shoulder, her head lolling to the side, her tongue hanging out like she was dying of thirst. Her tongue was black.

“I'll have whatever she's having.” I pointed over my shoulder to the girl with the globe of liquid in the transparent glass mug.

The barista squinted in that direction, saw what it was, and nodded. I stood at the counter as she started to walk off. She turned back at me. “You can go sit down. You've already been charged. It'll show up at your table, wherever you sit. Go wild.”

I went over to a table and took a seat, the Lumadex there glowing to life. I started searching on the Lumadex, trying to fill in the infinite blanks I had about the magick world and what had just happened to me.

It was like trying to seal the hull of a sinking cruise ship that had been shot through with the holes from a million bullets.

I searched witches. The Shadow Vaile. Blackhart. Covington. Wizards. Familiars.

Everything Silvy had told me was true. Everything she'd said was correct.

I’m a witch. I’m a creature banished from my own plaine.

I stared at the entry before me that described the Belladonna shard, not even realizing that my coffee had arrived many minutes ago, or that Silvy had consumed the entire thing.

I was so lost in the Lumadex that I didn’t even notice someone had sat down next to me.

“You’re in trouble, Hexana.”