We packed our things silently after I told my friends about my latest dream. Although no one said it out loud, we all agreed that we didn’t have any more time to rest.

I changed into the last clean clothes I had — a soft hoodie from a flea market, and a black pair of cargo pants that had ripped in the knees when Amelia’s spell on my skateboard had worn off. I took the dead witch’s finger, Elias’ knife and the prophecy out of my jeans pockets and stuffed them into the ones on my cargo pants.

I had an uneasy feeling, which I had learned to recognise by then. It was my magic building up, making everything feel and smell and sound a hundred times more intense. It made my fingertips tingle and my legs ache from needing to constantly move because I couldn’t stay still or I would explode.

I was afraid that if I didn’t find Killian tonight, my next magical tantrum would be the end of me. Amelia had said that they would get worse as time went on, and the last one had almost killed me. I wasn’t sure I would get so lucky again.

“Just keep breathing, keep calm,” Amelia reminded me. It was easier said than done. It wasn’t exactly a stress-free situation we were in.

Charon listened carefully before we left. According to him, the lawyers had taken shifts outside our room for the first few hours but had given it a rest once we’d gone to sleep. There was no one outside our door now, so we followed Charon out as quietly as we could.

“So do we just… walk straight in?” I asked in the elevator. Lionel Richie’s All Night Long was playing in a soft volume in the background. I thought it kind of suited the situation.

“I mean, it’s a landmark, right? There’s bound to be tours and stuff. We just grab tickets to one and we’ll be fine,” Amelia said.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’m sure there’s lots of those at… oh, look! Eleven PM,” Charon said, pointing at the watch around his wrist dramatically.

“Maybe there are ghost tours?” I suggested.

“Yeah,” Amelia said hopefully. “Maybe.”

“Let’s just get out of this place before the lawyers notice we’re gone,” I said.

The elevator dinged cheerfully as it arrived in the lobby. It was fairly quiet that late at night, the only patrons either too drunk or too tired to pay attention to three kids sneaking out. Outside the hotel, I was hit with freezing wind and pouring rain. The sky rumbled ominously.

“How long is it to the tower, exactly?” I asked. I dodged a stray umbrella that the wind had taken from some poor soul.

“Like… twenty minutes, half an hour by foot?” Amelia said.

“And I’m guessing we don’t have money for a cab,” I said dryly.

“Nope,” Charon said.

“Right. Let’s not waste any time, then.”

My denim jacket and the hoodie under it were both already absolutely drenched by the time we started walking. Amelia’s hair became flat and straight and glued onto her face. Charon, as always, looked gorgeous even when the rest of us resembled wet rodents.

We weren’t the only ones stupid enough to go on a walk in the storm. In fact, Chicago was almost as busy as it had been in the daytime. There were party-goers out and about in colourful outfits even though it was a Sunday, and business people struggling to keep their expensive suits dry.

“Fuck this shit. We can’t show up to a hostage situation with hypothermia,” Amelia said and stopped. She grabbed our wrists and pulled us to the side, out of the way of Chicago’s nightlife.

“Charon said we can’t afford a cab,” I reminded her.

“Yeah, and we’re not getting one,” Amelia said.

She was still holding our hands. I was about to ask what she meant when she mumbled a spell and a pleasant warmth started spreading from her palms and fingers. I saw my clothes dry before my eyes and felt my hair stop dripping. When I looked over to Charon, I saw steam rise from him. I had been shivering before, but now I was positively toasty.

“That was really impressive,” Charon said, “but we’re just gonna get wet again.”

“Just don’t let go of my hands,” Amelia said. I wanted to argue that she was the one holding our hands.

Amelia whispered another spell. I gasped. It was as if there was a large invisible umbrella over us, shielding our bodies from the rain.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to keep it going the entire way?” Charon asked.

“Yeah, it’s not a big deal. Let’s go,” Amelia said.

We started walking again, and this time my socks didn’t squelch awfully in my shoes. At first I was worried people would notice Amelia’s spell, but none of them seemed to care. Once we passed an older woman who saw it, but she didn’t seem frightened or confused, just nodded approvingly at Amelia.

Walking hand in hand was a bit inconvenient with so much traffic, but Charon and I held on to Amelia for our dear lives. Running across Washington in freezing rain had been bad enough, and neither of us wanted to repeat it in Chicago.

When we finally approached Tribune Tower, I understood what Ms. Cormier had meant by pretentious. It basically screamed evil lair, with the whole gothic skyscraper thing it had going on.

“Most of it is used by Chicago Tribune, but Kane’s coven occupies parts of it,” Amelia said. “Barbara told us.”

“I wonder how he convinced them,” I said.

“Probably either threats or trickery.” Charon shrugged.

“Because he’s a witch or because he’s supposedly evil?” Amelia asked.

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

“Both.”

“Fair enough. Come on, let’s go.”

The entrance of the tower was guarded by a burly man wearing a purple suit and shiny leather shoes. He was doing a crossword puzzle, which he held flat against a paperback book. Outlander, the cover said. His face turned sour the second we walked up to him. “What’s your business?” he asked us.

“We… uh, we need to get in,” I said. Not my biggest moment.

“The tower’s closed for the night. Try again tomorrow,” the guard said. He turned back to his crossword.

“It’s just that—“ Amelia said quickly, and the guard sighed and looked up from the crossword again. “We were on a tour here earlier today, and I forgot my wallet.”

“I’m sure it’ll turn up in the lost and found,” the guard said.

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning. Seriously, my mom will kill me if she finds out — my plane ticket is in that wallet. Please, sir, just let us go have a look. It’ll take a minute, tops,” Amelia pleaded.

The guard studied her face dubiously. I held my breath. After what felt like hours, he finally stuffed his crossword and paperback into his breast pocket and asked: “Which bathroom, miss?”

“The ladies’ bathroom in… the fifth floor, I think,” Amelia said.

“You think?” the guard said in a flat tone.

“It’s a big building,” Amelia said apologetically.

“Fine, I’ll go look. And I’m locking the damn door behind me,” the guard said. True enough, the door clicked hollowly when he shut it in our faces.

Once the guard was out of sight, Amelia immediately stepped up to the lock and started trying various spells. The chant she had used on Dennis’ door a lifetime ago didn’t work, but that didn’t dampen her mood. She did spell after spell until the door finally clicked again, and she pulled it open.

“Holy shit, you did it!” Charon laughed.

“Let’s go! We don’t have much time,” Amelia hissed and ushered us inside.

We didn’t have time to marvel at the lobby’s architecture. Heavy footsteps approached from where I assumed the elevators were. “There!” Charon whispered and pointed at the unoccupied front desk. We jumped over it and crouched down to hide.

The guard walked across the lobby and we remained unnoticed. He cursed loudly when he realised we were gone. He didn’t seem to suspect that we were in the building, though, and assumed he had just been victim to a stupid prank.

I sighed in relief and slumped down, leaning against the desk. My heart was beating so hard I might as well have been a hummingbird. I could feel my magic boiling in my veins, ready to burst. My friends must have noticed because they exchanged worried looks.

“Do you think Killian is here already?” Charon asked.

“I doubt it. The security is too lax right now,” Amelia said.

“So we have to just wait?” I said.

“Well, we don’t even know where Ewart is yet. This place is big. I reckon it’ll be good to just calm down and scope the place out first,” Amelia said.

“Okay. Yeah, that makes sense,” I said against all my instincts. A voice in the back of my brain screamed that we had to find Ewart and make him pay already.

“Do you remember what floor Ewart’s office was?” Charon asked.

“It was pretty high up,” I said.

“I wonder…” Amelia mumbled. She got to her feet and started going through some desk drawers. The ones that didn’t open, she unlocked with a simple spell. Charon and I looked at each other; She’s doing it again. “Hah! Found it.”

“Found what?” I asked.

Amelia sat down between us again and showed us a stack of papers. I could only see the top one. It was a list in small print — titles, names, numbers.

“Is that…?”

“Every office in the building. Or at least most of them,” Amelia said.

“I’m impressed,” Charon said.

“You always are,” Amelia answered.

Each of us took a sheet of paper and started searching. It was mind-numbing, but it was a distraction from the magic pounding in my head. My list was full of ordinary office stuff like human resources, risk analyst, head of advertising… I switched for a new one once I was done, but that one didn’t look too promising either.

For a while, all I could hear was papers shuffling, rain falling and thunder clapping every now and then. Eventually Charon broke the silence: “I think I got something.”

Amelia and I both raised our heads. “What is it?” she asked.

“There’s a lot of vague crap in this one. Office of consult, director of coordination… and look, here.” Charon’s finger skimmed to a row near the middle. I had to squint to read it. “E. W. K., Head of COK.”

I couldn’t help but snort. “That’s what you wanted to show us? Cock?”

“That’s really immature, Charon. We’re in the middle of something here,” Amelia agreed.

“What, no! C-O-K. What do you think those stand for?” Charon said frustratedly.

“Coven of Kane,” Amelia muttered.

“Yes! That has to be it, right?” Charon said.

“Good find,” Amelia said proudly.

“Okay, where is it?” I asked.

“30th floor.”

We scrambled up and headed to the elevators. I felt very much out of place, just like I had in Washington, because everything looked so damn fancy. I felt more homesick than ever.

“Wait,” Charon said before Amelia could press the button to call an elevator. “What if he’s there?”

“We’ll have the element of surprise,” I said.

“No, actually. Charon is right. We should think about this.”

—

We spent the night mapping out the building. A few times we almost bumped into a late night office worker or a janitor, but other than that it was eerily quiet. It was mostly Charon and I doing the whole scoping business. Amelia focused on tinkering with something — potions, I realised. How she managed to make them while walking, I had no idea.

Charon kept humming some slow song. At first I was confused because he never hummed (as I had learned on our road-trip, music and Charon was an equation for disaster), but then I realised it had an oddly calming effect on me. Not too much, not enough to make me off guard, but just enough to settle my magic at least a little.

“You know,” I said as we walked along a long hallway with marble floor, “under any other circumstances this would be really cool.”

“It still kind of is,” Amelia said.

“Well, yeah. But like, we’re in a… historical goddamn landmark, alone at night. It’s dope as hell,” I said.

“We should do this more often. Minus the evil witches,” Amelia said.

“So just me and Oscar?” Charon quipped.

“Ha-ha.”

“We should hang out together more, though. Now that you guys can get along,” I said.

“Did you not hear him call me an evil witch literally three seconds ago?” Amelia asked.

“You knew I was gonna say it,” Charon pointed out.

“Right. Sure.”

The next bathroom we came to, I went inside and told my friends to follow. (Amelia did so reluctantly, since it was the men’s room.) I began to look around.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Charon asked. Amelia made a face as I inspected a trash can that smelled extremely suspicious.

“A hiding spot,” I said.

“What for?”

I didn’t answer because I had just come across a perfect one. There was a very small space between a mirror and the tiled wall, only really visible from a specific angle in one corner of the bathroom. I took the bone and the prophecy out of my pocket and stuffed them behind the mirror. After a second of consideration, I also took my dad's rosary off and hid it. I checked every angle just in case, and decided you couldn’t tell there was anything there unless you knew.

“Okay. Why did you do that?” Charon asked.

“Just in case something happens. If… I die—“

“Jesus Christ, Oscar, don’t say that!” Amelia scolded.

“Let me finish!” I said. “If I die or something — if I’m compromised, you guys know where they are. Promise you’ll get them, and you’ll keep them safe.”

“I… yeah, I promise,” Charon said.

Amelia chewed her lip. “I promise too. But you’re not gonna die, okay?”

“Yeah. I’m sure I won’t,” I said quickly. “It’s just a precaution, you know?”

“We know,” Charon said.

Once the dawn began to cast faint rays of light into the tower, we headed to the 30th floor. We knew every exit now, every escape route — or at least enough of them to feel sort of safe walking into the lion’s den.

The door of Ewart’s office was decorated with a brass slab that portrayed a stallion with a ram’s horns and a slender tail, almost like someone had stitched different animals’ features together. Underneath the slab was a smaller, slimmer brass plate that said: E. W. Kane.

“Do we knock?” Charon whispered unsurely.

“No,” Amelia and I answered.

I took a deep breath and turned the knob. The door wasn’t locked. I pushed it open slowly.