Friday. 3:32 PM

Ben spun his truck around to drive away, looking me up and down. “Jesus Christ, what happened to you?”

The contrast between us had to be intense. He was still looking as fresh and handsome as he had during our date, while I was ragged, scraped up, bruised, and stained with old blood.

“A couple counsellors,” I said, groaning. “A motorcycle accident. A troll. What did you see?”

“Huh?” He looked between me and the road, almost blowing through a stoplight.

Drumming a hand against my temple, structuring my thoughts, I explained. “On the highway, there was an illusion. What did it look like to you?”

“I… at first it looked like a semi had fallen sideways, and something was on fire,” Ben explained, “But at the end, it just all… went away? The semi disappeared. And there was just a guy up there in a lab coat.”

“It was a robe, not a coat, but…” I tapped a finger to my head in thought, then looked down at the crystal in my hand, still working to dispel and diffuse magical energy around me. “Well, that’s handy.”

“What is?”

“I think I dispelled the illusion when I came in here.” Setting the crystal in a cup holder, I continued, “What you saw at the end there, that was real. The semi, the fire, that was all crap to cover up that a pair of counsellors… eh, magic cops, basically… were fighting a troll.”

Ben shook his head. “Why were you fighting a troll?”

“I wasn’t.” Squeezing the back of my neck to work out some of the stiffness, I turned on the seat heater. It was warm outside, but the heat would help ease some of my aches. “The plan was, it’d distract them for a minute or two so I could get away and meet up with you. Then my bike got totalled and the damned thing was just bigger than I’d expected and, well… yeah. It got out of hand.”

Taking deep breaths, Ben looked into the rearview mirror a couple times, shook his head, and gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“I know, it’s a lot to take in,” I said, fishing in my pocket for my wallet. Withdrawing a hundred bucks, I extended it to him. “Here.”

“What’s that?”

“The cash I promised you.”

He frowned, but took it and stuck the money in a pocket. “I’ve got questions.”

“Ask, then.”

“Why were the magic cops chasing you?”

That was easy enough to answer, even if it’d take a while. I gave him a basic explanation of how my day had gone, starting with my realization at the coffee shop and continuing up until he’d picked me up after the battle on the bridge. I didn’t leave anything out.

He listened, occasionally asking for clarification on a detail, or for an explanation of how some facet of magic worked. I did my best to explain that, though I was by no means an expert myself and some of my information was pretty hazy.

When I was done, he asked, “Do you know if Maggie is okay?”

That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. “I… no. I’ve been running so much I hadn’t really had a chance to wonder about her. I can’t risk calling her, anyways. They might be watching her phone.”

“How do you know they’re not watching yours?”

That… was a good point. Taking out my phone, I turned it over in my hands, as though I might be able to see a spell if one had been used. “The cleansing crystal should have purged any magic on it.”

Ben nodded, glancing over at me. “You look pretty rough. Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just a few aches and pains. I don’t think anything’s broken. I just need to get this story put together and clear my name, then I’ll worry about my health.”

“You don’t ‘think’?” Ben raised an eyebrow. “If you’re not sure—”

“If anything’s broken, I can’t feel it,” I clarified. “I’ve been hurt a lot. I know what it feels like when something’s broken. It’s only, like, a six right now. Until the pain gets to an eight or nine, I’ll just deal with it.”

Ben looked at me, his expression unreadable.

After a moment of trying to parse what he was thinking, I took the easy route. “What’s that face?”

“I’m worried about you.” Ben tapped his blinker, looking away from me for a moment as he shifted onto the highway.

While I pondered how to answer that, I dug in my backpack, taking out my laptop so I could look it over. It had come out pretty much unscathed, by some miracle or another. “Like I said, I’m fine for now. Once this is all over, I’ll crash for a day or two, put myself together, it’ll all be good.”

“Not just that.” Ben frowned, but shook his head. “It’s not important. Where’s this place we’re going to?”

“Sort of a… magic workshop, I guess. Maggie could only give me the basics before I had to leave, but this guy will know if anyone was doing big-scale magic in the area.” I shrugged, returning my computer to its slot in the bag. “If he can’t help me, then I really don’t know where I’ll go next.”

“I don’t think Cuba extradites,” Ben suggested.

“The commonwealth follows their own rules, and they’re not too concerned with borders.” I tried to remember what I’d read on the subject. “I’m pretty sure there are a few countries that have explicit treaties with them, but I don’t know which.”

Ben glanced at me again. “That was a joke.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

…

Saturday. 1:15 PM.

Murray was glaring at me.

Her glare lacked the steely undercurrent of Davis’s more practiced stare, but if anything, that made it more intimidating. It wasn’t a practiced look to make me afraid, it was genuine anger.

“Look,” I said, pausing the story. “I’m sorry I got you tossed in the river. You got out alright, didn’t you?”

“I was unconscious,” Murray said, her tone low. It seemed embarrassing for her to admit it. “Our robes are enchanted to let us breathe in inhospitable environments. If that hadn’t kicked in, I would have drowned.”

Oops.

I bent forward and tapped a finger to the side of my head, feeling guilty. “I’m… sorry. I really didn’t mean to make that much trouble. I didn’t think a troll would be that dangerous.”

“Is that supposed to make it better? That you unleashed a vicious predator that could have killed someone as easy as blinking, and it was an accident?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

There was no good response to that. She was right; my stunt on the bridge had been reckless and stupid. Had I known then how dangerous it would be, I would have come up with a different plan.

“What was that breeze I felt, anyways?” I asked, while I had a moment.

“The council bounced in energy from Chicago,” Murray replied. “Not through leylines, it was a direct current. That ten seconds of power cost a quarter of a million dollars.”

Oops.

I didn’t have a response to that, either, except to deflect again. “It let Davis really pound on the thing. I kind of felt sorry for it at the end, there. It was just trying to protect itself.”

Her glare didn’t exactly soften, but it did change a little. Her brow set, and I interpreted that as a shift from ‘You enormous asshole’ to ‘You stupid asshole’. “You don’t know the first thing about trolls, do you?”

“Just bits and pieces, and what I observed on the bridge,” I admitted. “Don’t they eat goats?”

“They eat kids.” Murray let that hang in the air, before adding, “They especially like to work up some fear in their victims first. They feed on the psychic energy as much as the meat and bones.”

I didn’t even know how to deflect from that.

During this lull, Davis walked back into the little gazebo. There was a wavering of magic as he penetrated the illusion, but that only lasted for a moment before the false reality solidly reasserted itself.

“Everything alright?” Murray asked, looking up to her colleague.

“They’re just getting a status report,” Davis replied. “I assured them that we have the suspect off the street and in custody. What did I miss?”

“He was just telling me his version of what happened on the bridge,” Murray explained. “So far, his account of what happened matches up with what we knew. Apparently, he got a ride from a straight.”

“I don’t know if I’d call him that,” I pointed out, interrupting Murray’s recap.

“Well, not now that you’ve told him everything, but we’ll get to that later,” Murray replied, missing my joke. “Anyways. You were saying?”

…

Friday. 3:39 PM

The GPS on Ben’s dashboard beeped, telling him to turn left onto an access road. We had arrived, more or less, though all I could see at the destination was a section of forested terrain.

Turning off the directions, he pulled onto the gravel path that led through the woods. “What are we looking for?”

“I told you everything I know about this place. If we see someone, I guess we’ll ask if he’s Garret.”

Tires crunching on the driveway, we kept driving forward until we came up on a ‘no trespassing’ sign hanging from a latched metal gate.

Ben stopped, and I got out of the truck. Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I approached the gate. “Hello?”

Nobody answered, which wasn’t a surprise. I couldn’t see anyone up the path. “I’m not sure what to do from here, but you don’t have to stick around. You did what I asked.”

Walking up to the gate, Ben put his hands on the top and vaulted it with an athletic jump. Once on the other side, he shuddered, but quickly tried to hide the reaction. Waving at me, he said, “Come on. This is way too interesting for me to bail now.”

Rather than try to replicate his athletic motion and most likely faceplanting, I walked around the gate, stepping through a muddy puddle on the side of the road.

Immediately, I got the sense that something was… wrong. Something was watching me, something deep in the trees that I couldn’t quite see.

“We should be careful,” I said, glancing down the road.

He looked back at the gate, nodding. “Yeah. How much do you know about this guy, did you say?”

“His name is Garret,” I said, shrugging. We walked forward, looking around cautiously. “You don’t have to come with me. I just needed the ride.”

“Yeah, right.” He didn’t turn back, which was a small comfort.

My ears twitched, and I stopped, listening carefully.

“What?” Ben asked, turning around.

“Do you hear… breathing?” I asked, looking back and forth. The woods were still, not even a bird or a squirrel pittering between the trees.

Ben listened, but shook his head. “No, that’s just the wind.”

“Are you sure?”

He paused. “What would be breathing?”

The question hung in the air, and I shook it off, walking forward again. Whatever was watching me, I could feel its eyes burning a hole in the back of my neck. I felt like prey, like I was being hunted by something I couldn’t even see.

I stopped again, a few paces later. “I definitely hear breathing.”

He frowned, tilting his head. “Okay, maybe it sounds that way, but our ears are playing tricks on us. There’s nothing out there.”

Regardless, we walked a little closer together, eyes on the tree line.

“Garret?” I called, raising my voice. “Garret!”

A little further down the path, a trench had been gouged into the road, marking the space where a tree had fallen. The log was still off to the side, and deep claw marks had ripped out chunks of bark and branches.

Chuckling nervously, I asked, “What kind of tool do you suppose made those marks?”

“A tool,” Ben agreed. “I’m not sure, but… yeah. Some kind of tool.”

The breathing was so close that I could almost feel it on the back of my neck. There was definitely something close by, watching, waiting, hoping to rip my throat out and drink the blood.

I steeled myself, shut out the fear, and kept walking, checking over my shoulder every few seconds for the predator that was following.

Finally, we came up on a clearing. A couple vehicles were parked out front of two large structures. The first was a two-story house, with a side garage wide enough to fit half a dozen cars. It was old, as evidenced by the colonial windows and general style of construction, but it was well maintained.

The second structure was a steel cage, with a circle of complicated runes built around it, set into cement.

The cage was empty, and the gate was open.

“That’s…” Ben said, looking at the cage in alarm. “What would you even keep in there?”

My thoughts flashed back to the troll. This cage would be a little tight, but it would hold it… or something else that was equally big and strong. “I don’t… I don’t think I want to know.”

“Okay, I definitely hear breathing,” Ben added, spinning. “What the hell is that?”

“Maybe… If it can turn invisible, we wouldn’t even know if it was right behind us.” I turned in a circle, looking at the ground around us, watching for footprints from nowhere.

“There!” Ben pointed, taking short, sharp breaths. “The ground just moved, right there!”

I looked, but the creature had already moved. Circling us. Ready to pounce at any moment. Our only hope was to run. “On my count, we’re going to get out of here,” I said. “How fast can you run?”

“Did track and field in high school, but I haven’t kept up,” Ben whispered back. “Do you really think we can outrun this thing?”

A feeling in my gut told me we could. If we sprinted for the exit now, we’d be safe.

I frowned.

Heart still pounding, I stepped away. “We’re being played.”

“Huh?” Ben looked at me like I was speaking nonsense. “Levi, we need to get out of here before that thing gets us!”

“What thing?” My gut was screaming at me that he was right, that we needed desperately to flee, but I forced that fear down. Raising my voice, I called, “If there are any monsters out here, come kill me now!”

Nothing happened. A few moments passed, and Ben stared at me incredulously.

“If there was a monster here, and it were following us, it’d be blocking the way to the truck. Our impulse should have been to find a place to hide, not to run in the direction of the danger.” The breathing was still right behind me, the sense that something was about to strike. I ignored it. “There’s no monster. We’re safe.”

The door to the house opened, and someone spoke behind me. “That’s only half true. Who are you?”

I spun, surprised at the sudden new figure. She was about my height, maybe a little taller, certainly a lot more fit. She was glowering at us.

Clearing my throat, I did my best to explain quickly. “I’m Levi, a reporter. This is my friend, Ben. Maggie told me to come here, I really need to see Garret.”

“We don’t take walk-ins,” she said, harshly. “Whatever you need, call and make an appointment.”

“It’s not a work thing,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s… do you know Andrea Hills?”

“Yeah, I know Annie.” Her eyes narrowed. I couldn’t tell if she was just naturally scary, or if the mystical fear had just centered around her since there was no other tangible threat to focus on. “Why?”

I still didn’t have any bedside manner, but I tried my best. “You might want to sit down. I’ve got bad news.”

My intent was to build up to it, but she was too quick on the draw. Raising a hand to her mouth, she stepped back, her head shaking unconsciously. “Oh no. No, no… what happened?”

“I found her body. I’m trying to figure out the rest. I really need to see Garret.”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, eyes growing wet, then shook her head a couple times as though she were trying to shake something off. Reaching inside the house, she fiddled with a switch, and a moment later the fear in the air vanished.

I let out a sigh of relief as I became palpably more calm.

The woman looked between us, shook her head one more time, and said, “I’ll be right back.”