Why is he here? Is he tracking you?

After taking in a deep breath and holding it, I let it out.

No one is tracking you. Everything is fine. Calm down.

I cleared my throat.

If everything is fine, why did he say that you were in trouble?

That seemed like a good place to start.

“Flin?” I squeaked, my voice cracking. “What?” I tried to make it seem natural, like it was just a progression of the conversation.

“I was just joking,” Flin said with an easy smile. “You're not in trouble. What could you have done that would've caused you to think you’re in trouble?

Silvy materialized between us on the table, looking from him to me and back.

“He's cute,” she said, and I felt my cheeks flush with warmth. She didn’t miss my blushing. “Oh, so you think so too. Nice.”

“It's not like—” I started to tell Silvy before I realized what I was doing.

Flin raised an eyebrow. “Not like what?”

“Nothing,” I covered. “I haven't been sleeping very well. I’m very behind in the magick world. I've had a lot to catch up on.”

“And still,” Flin said, “even as you’re drinking coffee, or drank your coffee I should say, you’re studying. It's impressive.”

If you only knew the half of it…

“Yeah, well. There's a lot to catch up on,” I repeated.

“Ask me anything you need,” Flin said. “I'm here to help.”

“I’ll bet he is,” Silvy said. “Ask him about the Dark Aftermath. Ask him what sort of world believes it’s okay to commit genocide. Ask him what sort of progressive world completely shuns witchkind onto their own shard. Ask him those things. I'd love to hear the answer from his pretty little mouth.”

I had no idea what Silvy was talking about, but I had no intention of asking Flin about any of those things. They all sounded so antagonistic.

“What do you know about witches?” I asked instead, leaning for a more general subject.

“Lots,” Flin said.

“Are you born a witch? Or do you become a witch?”

Flin laughed. “Is that why you're wearing a hood? You've become a witch?”

I tried to laugh as well, but it sounded forced.

“Show him,” Silvy begged. “Show him. Please. Not that he could see, but I bet if you took his hand and put it on your head, maybe impaled his palm just a little bit, he would believe you. Then I could taste his blood. Everyone wins. Let's do that. Sounds like a great idea.”

I ignored this.

“If a witch breeds with anyone, they create a new witch,” Flin explained. “No matter what, 100% of the time, their offspring ends up being a witch. A wizard, adept, stick, whatever. Offspring is always a witch.”

“So, witches can't be made.”

“What, like a vampire?” Flin asked. “You get bit by a witch and then become one yourself?” He gave it some thought before continuing. “I've never heard of anything like that happening, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened before. My expertise is in gateway theory, though, not witchlore.”

“Okay,” I said, my mind snagging on that. “Are there any gateways that are permanent?”

“Every gateway is permanent until it's not,” Flin answered.

“No, I mean are there any gateways in existence that only open to one place, and one place only.”

“Sure,” Flin said, “but they're exceedingly rare. For something like that to exist, it would have to exist in the Shadow Vaile.”

I nodded. Blackhart’s lab was in the Shadow Vaile so it made sense why the door from there would permanently open into the theatre. “So theoretically, a gateway could exist that opens between the Shadow Vaile and the stick world?”

“Yes,” Flin answered with a frown, “but I don't know why anyone would create such a gateway. What would be the point?”

To easily allow my father to move between the stick world, where I was, and Blackhart.

“What can you tell me about the Shadow Vaile?” I asked. “Could you and I visit sometime?”

I tried to make the last bit sound naïve, doing my best to pull out the maximum amount of info out of Flin that I could.

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“We could,” Flin answered, “but we’d both probably end up going insane.”

“How?”

“The Shadow Vaile corrupts everything it touches.” As he explained, Silvy floated up in front of his face and slowly spun in a circle, her head shifting from his face to my face and back. “Everything that the Shadow Vaile touches, it corrupts. If a stick were to stay in the Shadow Vaile, if you, for example, were to stand in the Shadow Vaile for any amount of time, you would start seeing things. You would start hearing voices.”

I stared at Silvy, wondering if that's what this actually was. Maybe I wasn't cursed. Maybe I didn't have horns on my head after all. Maybe it was all just a hallucination.

Flin continued, not noticing my momentary hope. “You could exist within a shadow bubble, for a short amount of time, but nothing extended.”

“A shadow bubble?”

Flin took in a breath and sighed. “This is a little outside the realm of what we’re talking about, but you can create a shadow bubble if you have a shadowstone. It’s a tiny bubble containing the Shadow Vaile.”

“Sure,” I said, giving him a shrug as if this was all too obvious. “A shadowstone. A shadow bubble. Of course.”

“Yeah,” he said, either not picking up or just outright ignoring my sarcasm. “It's a type of witchstone, but different. It activates when it touches the ground after leaving your hand. It creates a little bubble around wherever the stone hits. Within that bubble is the Shadow Vaile.”

“Meaning the rest of the world essentially stops as you move in that bubble?”

“Yes. Exactly. Vanishers use shadowstones almost exclusively. It's an effective way to examine magickal crime scenes and keep the scene fresh while the perpetrator might still be in the area. Think about it, you can do all your examination, take all the evidence, while time is essentially stopped outside the bubble. It’s especially good in the stick world. Things can be cleaned up before the sticks even know something was wrong.”

I thought back to the crime scene I'd watched the vanishers work.

“What about the scene in the Night Market?” I asked.

“The one we watched?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Why wasn't a shadowstone used on that?”

“Too big. Too risky.”

“What do you mean too big?”

“Shadowstones are rare,” Flin said, “and the bubble they create is fairly small. To fully cover a shop like the one that was destroyed, the bubble would have to be massive.”

“So, what you're saying is heavy destruction can't be contained within a shadow bubble?”

“I mean it could be, you would just have to find a large enough shadowstone. You could also piece together a bunch of smaller stones to make a sort of Venn diagram of coverage.”

“Ask him about me,” Silvy said, curling up on top of Flin's head. “Ask him about familiars. I'd love to know what he says.”

Shaking my head, I rolled my eyes. “And what about familiars?”

“Familiars?” Flin raised an eyebrow. “Those are just myths.”

I stared at Silvy and cocked my head to the side. “That’s what I thought.”

Silvy rolled her eyes and started swishing her striped tail beside Flin’s ear. Flin, following my eyes, looked up with comic confusion.

“Something in my hair?” he asked, his hand lifting and slipping through Silvy as though she wasn’t even there.

Silvy giggled and rolled onto her back.

“So,” I said, trying to focus, “assuming familiars were real, where would you find them?”

“Probably the Shadow Vaile,” he said.

“The Shadow Vaile? How do you figure?”

“Where else would they be?”

“You think they're born there?”

“Born, created, whatever, sure. I mean we’re all just guessing here. Like I said, familiars don't exist.”

Silvy floated up from his head and slid down the front of his face. Her black and white striped tail slowly squiggled behind her, darting towards the underside of Flin's nose. It tickled the underside, swishing back and forth. Thankfully, Flin didn't notice.

Maybe this is all just a halluc—

Flin sneezed out of nowhere.

“Sorry,” he said. “It felt like something was tickling my nose there for a second. Weird.”

Silvy slowly turned to face me and she smiled, her head turning to the side as she looked at me.

I sighed. Okay. Not a hallucination. This is very real.

“Hey,” Flin said, “would you want to get a drink sometime?”

“Oh, holy shit. It's happening,” Silvy said. She brought her two front paws together like she was clasping her hands in front of her chest. “Please say yes. Please? Pleasepleaseplease?”

“I don't know,” I said. Not only taken aback by the suddenness of the question, but also with the excitement Silvy seemed to be showing in Flin. I didn’t trust any of her requests.

“Magickkind does that too, you know,” Flin said. “Go out for drinks. Dates. Friendly meetings. Whatever.”

“Please,” Silvy begged. “Please let me taste his blood. Please.”

“I don't know,” I stammered. “I'll have to think about it.”

Flin nodded. “Is that the stick way?

“Yup,” I said in a voice that sounded way too loud. “That's exactly what it is. We like to think. Love to think.”

Flin shrugged and nodded. “Okay. Here.”

He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a business card. It listed his name, the Austerium, and his department. It also had a phone number below it.

“Call me,” he said. “Anytime. We'll go get drinks, talk some more about the magick world. I'm sure that there'll be plenty of time for questions.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Questions.”

An awkward silence expanded between us. All the while Silvy was looking increasingly gleeful at what was taking place.

“Okay,” I finally said, “well I'm going to head back to the dorms, get some sleep, and get ready for class.”

Flin nodded. “Have a good one.”

Without another second of hesitation, I stood up and left Coffee and Content. I didn’t know if Silvy was following me, I had a feeling she had to, that she was tied to me, but I was kind of hoping she stayed back in that coffee shop.

I hadn’t walked far when I heard her voice whisper to me from inside the hood of my parka. The hood that was still covering my horns. She had to be deep inside it, curled around the back of my neck.

“So,” she said. “Where now?”

It was a good question.

I wanted to go to Geist. I wanted to see if he could help me, but I also didn't want to show up empty-handed.

Without even realizing where I was headed, my feet led me towards Blackhart. I had a tiny bit of an idea, just a simple thing really.

I was now able to access all the witchstones within Blackhart and there had to be one that looked like the Builder’s Stone. And seeing as the Builder’s Stone wasn't even the real Builder’s Stone, I had an idea that I could replace it with a replica and save face.

I just needed to find a witchstone with the same coloring, the same weight, the same shape, and I'd be set. I could find one in Blackhart and return to Geist, tell him that I wasn't able to do it, that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Me being a silly stick and all… Then I could just keep living my life, existing in the magick world while hiding my horns and hiding Silvy as long as I could.

I turned down the little side street that led to Blackhart and had only taken a few steps when I felt a strong hand clamp down on my arm.

I whirled to see at who’d grabbed me, fully expecting it to be Flin.

I was ready to give him a lecture on why he shouldn’t grab people like that.

It wasn't Flin, though.

“Geist wants a word,” Grey Eyes growled.