It was a normal-looking house. Not shabby but not overly welcoming either. Designed, she was sure, to turn eyes away. Nothing was interesting about it and no reason to want to find out who was inside.

Donner lived here.

"Your house?" she asked, amazed. On a boring street stood a boring house and it was Donner's residence. With a small, fenced front yard and a back of the same. The grass a uniform height. "I don't know what I thought the place you lived looked like, but it wasn't this."

A mid-level Society neighborhood, Tower Way was home to those who fell in the largest pool of socio-economic status. Not rich, not poor, rather in the center of things. Those who shopped Midway lived on streets like his and there were a few family-run stores in this area as well.

"No one would have come to check on you?"

"No. Tower Way is not a neighborly district. You will find Society divided into sections and this one consists of those with stable incomes, but no desire to chat on the street."

"Not family friendly."

"No, it's not. I don't believe any of these households have young children," he said. "If you want privacy in Society, you must make an effort to have it."

She'd concealed herself before departing for the image he showed her in dreams. She'd gotten good at falling asleep when she wanted to; with nothing else to do, she practiced at will sleeping. If it ever became an Olympic sport, she would definitely take first place.

"You've got a lot of mail."

"Take it in," he ordered.

"At least none of it's ruined. It must have been out in the rain and snow though."

"Spells protected them."

Right. Magic. It still didn't make much sense to her. No matter how he tried to explain it, she didn't understand how or why it worked. She supposed that was the reason it was called magic. Something that defied explanation. A genetic trait that some had, but most didn't. Ninety percent of the world's population lived without and got on fine in her opinion. Well, 'fine' being relative.

To hear Donner tell it, Society had never had an interest in learning more about their abilities. They used what they had and left it at that. Rituals involving the full moon, blood, and candles. Many of those things were discarded in polite company nowadays; they largely stuck to sticks and chanting. Even at Arcane Arts, they didn't tend to practice the old ways. Though the topics were discussed, it was the rare student invited to participate in a true ritual and still, it was never for something serious.

"They've convinced the populace that the people who would do such things are seeking dark power," he told her again as she entered his home. "And perhaps they're right at this point. In the old days, it was commonplace. That's not to say they're wrong for seeking simpler methods, but the efficacy isn't the same. They settle for less and don't even know it."

The inside was about as nice as the outside, Luna thought. An entry hall with a long, red rug. To the right was a narrow staircase. An old-fashioned telephone with a turn dial sat atop a small, half-round table set against the wall.

"I was in the room on the left," he said with trepidation. Nerves were setting in. Whether his body remained or not, he wasn't looking forward to the discovery. It would be better if it was there, but still. His dead body. Left for years where it sat. If it wasn't there they'd have to find it and that would be an ordeal. But the idea of Luna knitting flesh back over bone was sickening. Especially-

No. He wasn't going to think about it.

No.

"No, what?"

"Nothing," he hissed. "Go and see if it's there!" There was no use dawdling.

"Okay," she said out loud. "Geeze."

She pushed open the door to find-

"Yup, still here and looking like you died a few minutes ago so that's good, I think!"

"This raises more questions than it answers, but yes. It is a relief."

While he'd had systems in place to keep him living, there was no such measure taken to deal with his dead body. Nothing he'd ever done accounted for this, which meant something, or someone, else was at play.

"What should I do with your body?"

Yes, that was the question, wasn't it? And because there were big unknowns it was best to do nothing at all. "Leave it where it lay. While I hate to say it, I don't know how this happened. My death, which should not have been so easy to accomplish unless-"

He paused so long that she had to prompt him to continue. "Unless what?"

"Unless she wasn't technically the one who killed me." In the back of his mind, so to speak, he'd thought of it before but the idea was too painfully embarrassing to consider. "It is possible that the act of entering her mind, something I did myself, caused my death. If that is the case, my dying is explained. However, that has nothing to do with the preservation of my body. I did nothing to ensure this and there was no one else here besides us."

"So that lady, whoever she is, made sure your body wouldn't rot somehow?"

"It's not so strange that it's lasted, one good spell can do this. But, when I say 'good spell' I mean ritual. Something of the old ways. This was not done with a simple wand and Latin muttering."

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She tried to put the pieces together and found too many missing. "So, we should leave it alone because we don't know what she did to it?"

"Exactly. Rituals are rooted in specific practices and conditions. We don't know if the placement of my body is important. A tiny shift may break the spell."

"Doesn't that mean rituals are fragile? Are they much better than stick spells then?"

"Both are fragile, equally so in most cases. As I've told you before, even losing concentration for a moment can put out a candle. A ritual done right can maintain itself as long as the conditions continue to be met by the physical items involved."

"Which lets us know no one messed with this place over the years." Because they definitely would have moved a body and that would have broken the spell. "Hey," an idea occurred to her. "Can I live here?"

"No," his answer was immediate.

"Why not?" A whine of epic proportions because she thought it was perfect.

"Because then Ji-hun can come get you and I don't want him in my house. As your father, he could find you if he wanted to. Even being here now is putting this place in some danger and there is no reasonable way to explain how you know about it. With that said, you should leave. Go where you like as long as it's far from here."

She did. Back to the boring-ass once-vampire-infested mansion. "Is there any way to break that? It's not like he's done anything for me. He didn't know he had me, then he met me once and left. It's been months! All I need from him is his signature or whatever."

"You can legally become separated. At its heart, it's a simple process, but it's rarely granted and hardly ever sought. I sincerely doubt they'd grant it to you at this point. His past behavior toward you would count in your favor, however as you are young and an orphan otherwise, I don't see them finding it appropriate."

"But I've lived alone this whole time! He hasn't done jackshit for me!"

"While true, you'll be hard-pressed to change their minds. Though evidence favors your position, it is unconventional. They avoid such things at all costs. I wouldn't be surprised if your petition was placed in circulation."

"What's that?"

"The routine they follow for things they don't want to deal with. It will move from department to department, from desk to desk, until they eventually get around to it. It can take years. Even if your petition is valid, they won't do anything about it until you're at least a reasonable age."

"Uh, I got around that problem before. I made them do it."

"This isn't something that will work that way. Finding a family member is a fairly simple process, even if it can end up dragged out. That isn't done intentionally. In the case of emancipation, your initial request and presentation of evidence would be made to one person, who then sends it to someone else with their recommendation. Even if you compelled the one you spoke with to wholeheartedly agree with you, the next one has nothing to do with you directly."

"Can I do anything else?"

"Adoption," his answer was immediate. "But that is near impossible. You would have to find someone of higher social standing willing to do it. While it would certainly be allowed, you're unlikely to find someone agreeable in the first place, let alone with the conditions you'd want to set."

"So, my best bet is to wait and cut him off when I'm older?"

"At this point, yes."

"And those are all the options?"

"Unless he dies, yes."

Murder was on the table.

"I don't advise it. Like myself, he has surely placed his own security as his highest priority. No matter how easily you deal with people who cannot use magic, this is something else."

Murder was still an option.

"On top of that, I don't know how you would get away with it. Hired assassins are perhaps a reasonable option. They would have to successfully kill Ji-hun, then themselves, and be dead for long enough that memory extraction is unattainable."

Darn.

"As annoying as it is, your father is a fixture in your life for now."

"Life was better when he didn't know about me. He makes everything more complicated."

"You are not the first to feel that way about your parents and you won't be the last. Be glad you have any chance of addressing the situation at all. Most do not."

She was trying to be grateful for things lately, but it was getting harder every day. Waiting for something to happen was the worst.

"What if he lied? What if he doesn't come back?"

"Then you will go and find him. If he doesn't show up within a week of the start of the school year, you'll return to the Annex and request his location."

"I don't have anyone to go with me this time."

"You'll have to make them do it for you, right then and there. Alerting them to your near-orphan status won't do any good. I'm sure it would create more roadblocks."

She shook her head. This was too complicated. "There's really no way to emancipate myself? You said all the shit they do with wands can be better accomplished with rituals. Isn't there a ritual?"

"That's part of the reason they avoid it. All they have for this is a ritual. Both parties must agree and blood needs to be spilled."

"And I can't do it myself somehow?"

"He needs to agree to it."

"There's no way people haven't done this before," she argued. "What about a kid in an abusive house? They couldn't run away if their family could track them down, right? So how did they break free?"

"Dark magic, they would call it. Murdering their parents. That effectively severs the ties."

"Back to killing him then," she tapped her chin. "But you don't think I can do it."

"It's not that I believe you are incapable, Luna. There's more at play than his life and I don't know that you can deal with all of it and still get to Arcane."

"Even if I don't," she said, "we know you get your body back. Future me said I was going to see you and there's no way you'd be out of my head, but not in your body. Maybe I don't need to go to school to do this."

Imagine she spent all this time trying to get to school to find out she didn't need to go in the first place.

"You can try to expel me from your mind, but that's happened once and you were not conscious of it. I don't know that I could have returned to my body then, even if it was available."

"But you don't know you couldn't have either," she reasoned. He was talking about when the farm was on fire. He was right though, she didn't remember. He said she became her other self. Life. "Maybe I need to know how to be Life a little bit. Wouldn't Life be able to do something like that? Put a soul back into a body?"

"At this point, I don't know what you are or are not capable of. Regardless, you should go to Arcane. You want to kill Ji-hun? Find a way there. His free access to you will be diminished and his guard will be down. No one expects a child to research how to kill their parents while they're at school."

"And if I find a way to do that," she was getting excited, "I can go to your house without him being able to follow me. Then we can try to get you out!"

It felt good to have goals. She'd spent the last several months doing nothing in particular and wandering aimlessly was no way to go through life. Every day felt so long and she had nothing to look forward to. Trying to remake the mansion was fun for a little while, but soon became tedious. What was the point?

"If you want something to focus on," Donner said. "You can keep up with the remodeling. I'll need a new headquarters and this property is well suited to the task."

"Should I get furniture and stuff? I could make it shabby-chic." She figured his silence was annoyance but just in case warned, "If you don't say no I'll assume you mean yes."

"No."