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I had to admit I was unsure about meeting the E.I.S. So far everyone Colson and I had run into were regular people—people who could do magic—but still regular people. The Board representatives were the next best thing to government officials, people I had no idea how to behave around.

Getting dressed and equipping my spear, I left the gun behind. Heading downstairs I went into the bar. I checked my phone and it read 10:34 AM. Man, my training sessions with Colson were wiping me out. I’d slept like a log for almost ten hours.

The El-Renos were all present and I assumed they’d been notified that the E.I.S. representatives were arriving today. Along with Colson and Jasper, two identical women in black fatigues, each equipped with what looked like a sword handle on one hip and a sidearm on the other, kept them company. Jasper was looking a bit nervous, but I didn’t blame him one bit. I wasn’t exactly sure his bar was up to code, and I’d be concerned too if I had the magic police visiting.

“Ah, there he is,” Colson noticed my presence and waved me over. “Ethan, meet Aurelia and Isabelle.”

Everyone turned my way.

Walking to where they were standing, I presented my hand for a shake.

“Ethan Margrave, nice you meet you,” I offered.

Up close I noticed that they both had pale complexions, and freckles, with red curly hair that was held up by a ponytail. They looked young and attractive, with sharp features and grey eyes, a laminated identification card hanging around each of their necks. One of them had a red-gemmed stud in the uppermost cartilage of her left ear, and the other had an identical stud with a blue gem in her right one.

A way to tell them apart, maybe?

“Nice to meet you, Ethan. I’m Aurelia,” the blue-studded woman said, smiling at me, and shook my hand.

My eyes flickered to Aurelia’s ears briefly as we shook, and I noticed that they were regular-sized but ended in sharp points.

Registering my gaze, Aurelia commented on it, “We’re half human half alv—or elf—I guess I should say.”

Half-elves? That was so cool! I must have looked a little starstruck, staring at her, because she beamed at me after a second. I felt myself redden at her amusement. I wanted to ask so many questions. What was it like being an elf? Were they native to Earth? What was their magic like? Out of respect—and to avoid distracting us from the matter at hand—I held off. Deciding to ignore my embarrassment as well, I held my hand out to Isabelle instead.

Absently, I thought about Jasper’s slightly pointed ears, and it struck me as odd that he hadn’t offered an explanation.

Oh well, it’s not my place to pry.

Instead of shaking my hand, Isabelle crossed her arms and gave me a firm nod, not saying anything, her expression set in neutrality. Identical, but different personalities I presumed.

“We were just catching them up, telling them about our encounter with the Vdélla,” Colson supplied.

“Sounds like you had your work cut out for you,” Aurelia said, still smiling. “We’ve put out an APB on Tanner and it’s been circulated to our affiliates and announced through the ParaWeb. If he’s spotted, we’ll know.”

Something dark flickered across Isabelle’s expression, but I didn’t have a chance to analyse it before she’d schooled her expression back to neutral.

“It wasn’t that hard,” Sally told them and laughed humourlessly. “Colson did most of the heavy lifting in the end. We’re just annoyed we didn’t get any more information out of the vamp before Tanner did her in.”

Aurelia nodded her assent and spoke again, “Understandable. We’ll head out to the farm and investigate. Then we’ll try to work a signature ritual on the remaining aether in the ward,” she gestured at her sister. “Isabelle doesn’t have the aether tracking skill, but she’s a dab hand at performing rituals so hopefully we’ll get something we can use.”

Isabelle nodded.

“How are the people we saved doing?” I asked Aurelia.

“As well as can be expected given the circumstances,” she answered, and I thought I caught a hint of approval in her tone at my inquiry.

“They were questioned by the trauma team after their emergency treatment and told them about their time in captivity. They weren’t treated badly or abused, but they were being bled in turns at regular intervals by the Vdélla. Seems like she didn’t want to share the spoils with her slaves, so they were sent to feed on the local wildlife.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes.

Disgust at her confirmation of their secondary purpose rose in me and it left a sour taste in my mouth.

“Colson, we’d like for you to join us,” Aurelia looked at him as she spoke. “If the ward is almost empty, we may need you to supply some aether to the ritual just in case our reservoirs aren’t enough.”

Colson looked at them unhappily before answering, “You want me to play battery?”

Aurelia laughed and Isabelle grunted.

“More or less, yeah,” Aurelia confirmed. “Just you, as well. No offence to the rest of you,” she glanced at everyone as she spoke, “but we don’t want any more contamination of the scene. The ritual’s finicky as well, if anyone outside the ritual accidentally draws on their Sigil, we’ll lose coherence, and any remaining aether will dissipate. Sorry.”

There was a general smattering of displeasure shared amongst the others, but nobody voiced their opinion too loudly. Nobody was happy about it, but as I suspected, you didn’t want to mess too badly with representatives of the governing magical society. The Man was keeping us down. I shook a mental fist at the sky.

My feelings about her statement were mixed as well. I would have liked to go with them to watch the ritual, but on the other hand, I had no desire to enter that basement again.

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The sole exception was Colson, who voiced his disagreement. Of course.

“Ethan’s my charge. I don’t wanna leave him here and go off for too long,” he protested.

Both Aurelia and Isabelle perked up at this news.

“You’ve got a new charge? Wow, I didn’t think you’d want to do that after what happened with your last one,” Aurelia exclaimed in a surprised tone.

Isabelle untangled her arms and smacked her sister on the arm.

Hello? What happened to his last charge?

Colson’s expression turned sour, and she realised her mistake. Her eyes widened slightly, and her lips parted in an “oh shit” kind of way.

“My apologies, I spoke without thinking,” she expressed regret at her choice of words, looking embarrassed. “I’m happy to hear you’ve got a new trainee. We both are.”

She smiled at us both and Isabelle nodded. I looked at Colson, but he was avoiding my gaze. I’d have to probe him for information later.

“You won’t be gone long, Colson. How long’s the drive to the farm?” she asked.

“About thirty minutes by car,” Dink piped up.

“We’ll be back in a couple of hours. Shouldn’t take Isabelle more than forty-five minutes” — Isabelle held out her hand and wobbled it — “or so to finish it up.”

Colson took a deep breath and grumbled a little.

“Fine. Note that I’m doing so under vehement protests.”

“Duly noted,” Aurelia said with mock severity.

I sighed internally at Colson’s overprotective behaviour. It was a nice gesture, but it felt a little misplaced. I’d gotten along fine without his involvement before entering the world of magic. Okay maybe not exactly fine, but I’d done the best I could given my circumstances and I didn’t begrudge him two hours of field work where he didn’t have to explain his every move to me.

Rob, Dink, and Mateo had been quiet during our conversation, only whispering amongst each other, but Mateo pulled me out of my musings when he decided to weigh in.

“Rob, Dink, and I have discussed it, and we’ll stay here with Ethan. Keep him company,” he told us. “If you’re okay with us hanging out for a bit, Jasper,” he turned and addressed the barkeep.

“Fine by me, as long as you buy something to eat,” he said half-jokingly and grinned.

“I gotta go check on my mom, so I’ll let you have an all-boys day,” Sally intoned sadly.

“How’s she doin’ by the way?” Rob asked her.

“When I left her yesterday, she was confused and scared. I’m not sure if it was a good decision to relocate her to a nursing home, but I can’t take care of her if I’m never home. Dementia's a bitch,” she finished under her breath.

There was a general murmur of assent at her words, and I felt a pang of sorrow for Sally. Even though I’d known them for the better part of a week I didn’t know anything about them. We all had our battles to fight outside of monster hunting.

“We’ll head out immediately, if you don’t mind, Colson?” Aurelia asked him awkwardly.

“Sure,” he agreed, “let’s get it over with. We taking your car?”

“Yeah, I think we’ll have trouble fitting three people in yours. We borrowed one of the Board’s sedans.”

Colson nodded at her, then walked down the bar a little, motioning for me to follow.

With a small distance created between us and the others, he addressed me in a whisper.

“Your phone charged?” he asked me.

“Of course, got it right here,” I whispered back and patted my left trouser pocket.

“Good, good. If anything happens you call or you text me, alright?”

“I got it, don’t worry. I remember what you said when you picked me up.”

He smiled, reassured, “Just making sure.”

“Don’t be too weird with those two, alright? I don’t wanna make a bad first impression on the Board, you know?”

“I won’t embarrass you too badly, don’t worry.”

He tapped me on the shoulder with a knuckle.

“I’ll even avoid mentioning you peed yourself a little when you fought the empousa,” he said with a sly grin.

“I didn’t pee myself!” I protested, aghast.

“They don’t know that though, do they?”

“Colson!”

My cheeks flushed and he laughed.

“I’m just messing with ya, kid. We’ll be back in a jiffy,” he winked at me as he spoke.

Blowing out a deep breath through my nose I just frowned at him and nodded. His shenanigans would be the death of me someday.

Heading outside, we said our goodbyes and they got in the car and left. Sally saw them off with us, then got in her own car and drove off with assurances that she’d be back later.

I’d done my best to reassure myself that I’d be okay without Colson around, but he’d been a constant companion since we left for New Orleans, and it felt weird knowing he was out of reach for a while.

My phone dinged.

“I knew you’d miss me,” Colson wrote.

“You wish. See you in a bit,” I replied texting him back.

He sent me a thumbs-up in return.

“C’mon Ethan,” Rob clapped me on the back as he spoke, “let’s head inside and get some breakfast. We can play a board game or something after.”

Going back inside, Jasper presented us with some fried fish and chips. He didn’t have a chance to go shopping yesterday so we’d be getting the greasy breakfast instead of the healthier variety Colson and I had enjoyed for the past four days.

We ate our breakfast while swapping ideas on what the trio would take away from the remaining aether in the ward.

Dink told us that he’d heard of the twins before and that—while he didn’t believe they had an aether tracking ability between them—had an excellent record of weeding out information and finding their targets eventually.

I purposefully decided not to ask about their heritage, since I didn't know whether that would be offensive or not and instead asked him what kind of abilities, he thought they had. He told me that there were a wide variety of known abilities you could use to track and identify magic users, and several rituals to boost them, but that he didn't know what theirs was specifically. It made sense given Imara's advice about keeping your abilities secret.

Dink then proceeded to explain some of the skills that he knew about. How, for example, some skills functioned as scrying tools where they could point you in the general direction of the Holder that had cast a working. You’d need to have a map on hand, and the skill would sketch out a rough area of approximation of the perpetrator’s location, but it could vary in size a lot. In that case, you’d have to investigate the area by yourself and that meant that the target could potentially switch locations and you’d be none the wiser. There was also a form of dousing which functioned much in the same way.

Other skills worked by presenting you with an image of the person who had cast the magic. You would see the person in your mind's eye and could potentially describe them to others. Instead of just doing that, you could also enhance the skill before using it—with ritualistic magic—and you would be presented with an image that anyone could see. If you could identify the person it represented you could potentially find them that way.

Lastly, he told me about a woman who worked directly for the Board’s top brass. She was both famous and infamous and had an ability through her affinity with spiritual magic that let her form a sympathetic link between her and her target, allowing her to track them directly. Her ability was widely known because she didn't see a point in hiding it. She'd find you anyway.

Thinking about it gave me the creeps.

Mateo then explained that there were ways to foil some kinds of tracking and avoid potential scrying, but that such items were expensive and that all legally sold copies were carefully logged.

When we were done eating, Jasper brought out a small board game and set it on the table, something called Ludo. He told us that he was going into town to buy groceries and kegs for his draft beer.

As he left, my phone dinged again.

“We’re here, setting up the ritual now," Colson wrote.

“Gotcha,” I replied, throwing in a bro fist for good measure.

“You ever play Ludo, Ethan?” Rob asked me.

“Can’t say that I have. Looks pretty simple,” I told them.

“It is. There’s four of us which is the max number of players. We each have four tokens that we need to move out of our base by rolling a six with the dice” — he gestured at the board, tracing a path — "and then get them through the finish line. If two players land on the same spot, the last player to land knocks the other one back to base and you have to roll a six to get it back out. The first player to get all four tokens over the finish line wins,” he explained.

“Alright, who goes first?” I asked the table at large.

“You’ll go first since you’re the youngest,” Mateo intoned, “then we go around clockwise. If you don’t roll a six to get your first piece out of the base, you get an extra roll.”

Picking up the dice, I let it roll over the board and a six made itself known. This was a nice novel experience, I'd never played board games with anyone before.

“Easy pickings, baby,” I said as I moved my first piece out of the base.

The bat doors squeaked, and we looked up from the game, puzzled at why Jasper would be back already. It wasn't him.

Standing at the entrance was Tanner. And he wasn’t alone.