Kene had cleaned up quite nicely themself, though they didn’t wear a suit. Instead, they wore nice gray pants with a button down white shirt. They took me in and smiled slightly, then canted their head to one side.

“You used to have more suits, what happened?”

“Oh, I sold them,” I said. “I got my defensive aura pin, and Dusk’s earthen armor spell.”

“Ah, I see,” Kene said, nodding. As he nodded, though, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Are you about ready, then?”

“I am,” I said. “We don’t have to go, though, if you don’t want to.”

“No, we should,” Kene said, though they let out a long sigh a moment later.

I reached down and squeezed their hand, and they smiled at me as they took their broom from the pantry. We headed out into the garden and both took off.

Kene, as it turned out, was originally from Teffordshire. A small part of my brain wondered if I might see Ivy while I was in town, and debated swinging by the… Emerald Enchanters? I couldn’t remember the name of his parents' enchanting shop, it had been so long.

I did want to invest in upgrading the defensive aura to third gate before the Idyll-Flume, so maybe it’d be worth trying to find the shop.

Teffordshire was pretty far from Kene’s village, which was much closer to Mossford’s capital, and as we flew, I wondered how much of that was wandering, and how much was deliberate. With how anxious he was, I was half expecting his parents to be utterly awful.

We were both pushing our brooms to their maximum speed to make it to Teffordshire by sundown, and while the rushing windstream did provide enough lift to make sure that the broom was comfortable, it also made conversation difficult. Midway through the flight, even Dusk curled up in my pocket and fell asleep, and I was left even more alone.

It was boring. I liked flying, and if I’d been trying to race Kene, I’d have been able to quite enjoy the long flight, but as was, flying in a relatively straight line was… Boring.

We took a brief break to let my broom recharge a bit, Kene applying a strange lacquer onto it to help temporarily recharge it faster. That was definitely a potion I needed to make.

“How about we stay at a hotel, or in my cottage, instead of at your parents?” I asked Kene as we sat in the center of some standing stones.

“Yes,” Kene said, sighing in relief. “I didn’t want to ask, because I didn’t want you to think I was suggesting anything. But yeah, that sounds good.”

Far too quickly, our break was over, and we were off flying again.

I hadn’t been to Teffordshire in living memory – Ed said we’d gone there when we were kids, on a school trip, but I didn’t remember it.

It looked…

Well, it looked like a city.

There were more mana harvesters on rooftops than I was used to seeing in the capital, as well as a much more substantial warehouse and work district, but otherwise it looked fairly normal.

We landed in a slightly run-down part of the city, and for a moment, I was hit by the instinct to grab in my pocket for firepepper extract. I stopped it a moment later, and felt the urge to laugh at myself, but stopped that too.

Kene led us into an apartment complex, and up to the third floor, where the door was opened by a small woman who reminded me of Kene. She was blonde, with blue tips at the edge of her hair, and she looked a few years younger than Kene or myself, maybe fourteen or fifteen.

“Kene!” she said, pulling him into a hug, then looked over me, a hand on her hips. “Who’re you?”

“This is Malachi, my partner,” Kene said, smiling. “How are you, Kara? Can we come in? It’s a bit chilly.”

She walked back inside, letting us enter. I took off my shoes, and surveyed the apartment.

The first thing that hit me was the smell – booze and smoke was practically baked into the carpet and walls of the apartment, and it didn’t take long to find the cause.

Kene’s father was sitting on the couch in a wifebeater shirt, with two empty beers on the table next to him, and a third in his hand. He was watching a communication mirror, which was playing a sev-ball game.

Apart from Kara and the dad, there were two boys who appeared to just be entering teenage years. I thought they may be twins, but I wasn’t sure. Their hair was styled quite differently from each other, one with hair that fell to his mid-back, while the other had a buzz cut.

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Finally, Kene’s mom was in the kitchen, working on the food.

“That’s my dad, and there’s my mom,” Kene said politely. “You already met Kara. The twins are Kendrick and Kaleb.”

“You really like names that start with K,” I said, then immediately wished I hadn’t. That was a terrible first impression. On the couch, the dad let out a half snort, and the mom let out a polite laugh.

“I’m Malachi,” I said. “Nice to meet you all.”

“How come Kene gets to bring his sugardaddy, but I can’t bring Natasha?” Kara demanded.

“Sugardaddy?” I asked at the same time as Kene’s mom spoke.

“Honey, not in front of the twins,” she said, sounding weary.

Kara instead shot me a look and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh come on,” Kara said. “Like it isn’t obvious. I mean, you’re literally in a suit. For a dinner.”

“These are the only nice clothes I own,” I said self consciously.

“Whatever,” Kara said, rolling her eyes.

“Watch your tone, young lady,” Kene’s father said, while the twins both slipped away towards their bedrooms. Kene took my hand and guided me towards the table while Kara and their dad argued. The argument quickly turned into shouting, and then Kara roped their mom in. The mom quietly deferred to the dad, and I found myself starting to understand why Kene wasn’t a fan of coming home.

After a bit, Kene went to talk to the twins, and I went into the kitchen to help the mom cook. She was preparing a classical Spirit’s Feast, so the chicken was already in the oven, alongside the roast potatoes, but there was still plenty that I could help with.

I boiled the cranberries in sugar and water until they popped before mixing in some orange zest, lemon juice, and diced green apple, then set it in their fridge to chill.

At the same time, the mom, who introduced herself as Rebecca, finished roasting a mix of parsnips, sprouts, bacon, and onions, and grated a small amount of parmesan cheese over the top.

With those done, the two of us started working on the pie. Rebecca had already roasted the butternut squash, so while she made the pie dough, I scooped out the flesh of the squash and mixed in allspice, a good amount of ginger, cinnamon, a pinch of salt, heavy cream, melted butter, and golden syrup, mashing it well. There was a cheap cinnamon whiskey in one of the cabinets, which I mixed in for a bit of flavor. The heat would cook out the alcohol.

In the bakery, we would have then run it through a ricer to help get it to the smoothest possible consistency, but Kene’s family didn’t own a ricer, and I was left to reflect on that. I was, in many ways, lucky. I wasn’t rich at all, but one advantage of growing up in a bakery was that we never had a dearth of food, or tools to prepare it.

Kene wandered in a bit after that and helped his mom take the bird out of the oven and extracted the stuffing, spreading it out in a pan and letting it broil for just a moment to get it crispy on top.

As we started moving things to the table, the father let out a snort.

“I thought you two were men, but look, there you are with Becky.”

I heard Kene mumble under his breath about the label not exactly being accurate for him, and I bit my tongue.

In some ways, I was reminded of Liz’s father. Kene’s father seemed worse, certainly, but it was there.

Rebecca got her husband another beer and called the kids in, and fixed a plate for her husband, who stayed in their living room while everyone else ate at the table.

We made small talk, talking about Kene’s work in his village, about my work, which Kara, Kendrick, and Kaleb seemed interested in.

“When I awaken my mana, I’m going to get a job with a guild to hunt monsters,” Kendrick – the twin with long hair – said, only for Kara to smirk at him.

“Yeah, right,” she said. “You’re going to awaken a single gate and get a terrible legacy.”

“Be nice to your brother,” Rebecca scolded.

“I’m sure you can,” I told Kendrick. “Though, you should remember that most monsters are just magical animals. Just because it can hurt someone doesn’t mean that it will. Choruks and sparrhunks are both technically monsters, but they’re just pests who eat trash. Even the moldmongers are monsters.”

A thoughtful look came across Kendrick’s face, but Kaleb piped up then.

“Well, while he hunts monsters, I’m going to learn enchanting, like mom.”

“Oh, you’re an enchanter?” I asked Rebecca.

“Nothing fancy,” she said. “I just maintain some of the enchantments that carriages use. Fairly basic endurance and strengthening enchantments.”

“Skill must run in the family,” I said, nodding to Kene. “Kene is an excellent alchemist. Far better than I am.”

Kene flushed and made a dismissive gesture, and Rebecca just smiled.

A while later, the father spoke up, asking to know where the pie was, so Rebecca abandoned her half-eaten food to check on the oven, giving him a peck on the cheek and promising it would only need another half hour to finish and cool.

“What do you want to do, Kara?” I asked politely, and she shrugged.

“I like math. Maybe I’ll get a business degree or something.”

That surprised me – with how abrasive she’d been toward me, I half expected her to want to go into fighting in some regard.

Once the meal finished up, Rebecca had us all think of someone who we were going to dedicate the meal to, then link hands and send out mana around in a circle.

I found myself thinking of my mom, probably because she was the one who I’d always dedicated Spirit’s Feast to, then felt a surge of gratitude, because she was really the only person who I could dedicate the meal to. I hadn’t lost my brother or my dad, and that was worth a great deal to me.

Mana rushed around the circle, starting with Rebecca’s. Kene added their ungated mana in, and I poured mine in as well. Kara was old enough that she’d started to cultivate a small pool of ungated mana, which she added in.

The surging mana finally woke up Dusk, who crawled out of my pocket and let out a curious wind-in-leaves noise. She must have picked up on what we were doing, at least to some degree, because she pushed her own ungated mana in as well.

Kaleb, the twin with the buzzcut who wanted to be an enchanter, broke free from the hand that his brother held and reached out to her.

“Kaleb,” Rebecca scolded, but Dusk just playfully bopped his finger with one hand.

With the circle broken, the ungated mana all dissipated into the air, swirling wildly, mixing with the death energy that permeated the world in this part of the year. I heard a dry, haglike laugh, and the energy and mana began to coalesce. The sense of it was overwhelmingly dark, like staring into the abyss.

I tensed, mentally reaching out for one of my Spirit Gourds. It was rare for a Spirit’s Feast ritual to actually manifest anything. Even on the odd chance it did, it was almost always a ghost of a loved one. But if we’d accidentally manifested an Asomatous…

A moment later, Kene’s grandmother stepped out of the shadows. She swept her gaze over the table, then smiled.

“Hello dearies. Happy Spirit’s Feast.”