Getting to Aaron’s new home wasn’t entirely without incident, though, starting when they got back to the car in the parking garage.

When they reached the sedan in the parking lot, Kiara wanted Aaron to sit in the middle of the backseat. He didn’t have a problem with that, but it seemed like that would be the least comfortable seating arrangement since he was much larger than either of the women who’d be sitting with him. He objected out of principle, or maybe a desire to seem chivalrous.

Or maybe I just don’t want to ride ‘bitch,’ he thought. I wonder if there’s a better term for that these days.

“It doesn’t matter if we’re shorter than you are or how comfortable it will be; it’s about protocol,” Kiara replied to his concern. “We might not be great human shields, but it’s best if we can see what’s coming.”

On the ride over the airport, Aaron had enjoyed the window seat and he was looking forward to seeing more of the city as they went… wherever it was they were going. That was going to be a lot more difficult if he was sitting in the middle of the backseat.

Kiara’s security concerns were understandable, but perhaps an overabundance of caution. He wasn’t sure how much of a difference it would make to have Tia by the window. She was, as far as Aaron knew, a college student who was mostly focused on magic as Mallory’s apprentice, not a steely-eyed, streetsmart sentinel.

If Kiara’s stuck on protocol, though, a rational approach might not be the best play, he thought. Maybe a little hyperbole and humor can crack the problem.

“Listen, I’m like two-thirds Lizard Jesus, right?” he said. “So shouldn’t I get my way approximately 66.6% of the time? Repeating, of course.”

Of the little gaggle they’d formed around the sedan, Kiara was the only one who didn’t crack a smile — Albert actually gave Aaron two thumbs up, like he was the oldest extra in the history of cheesy teen movies — and she looked like she was gearing up to get loud. Aaron brushed a phantom bug off his neck and tried to play it cool; he didn’t know how he’d respond if she did start shouting at him.

Tia forestalled any escalation by stepping between them and holding up a small figurine in the palm of her hand; it was an eastern dragon, carved out of a pale green stone that could have been jade.

“How about we do this — I lend Aaron this relic of protection for the ride and the ancient, powerful magic contained within will compensate for the less-than-optimal seating arrangement?”

Kiara eyed the small token, running a hand through her thick, red hair and considering it with a frown. Aaron thought the small woman was going to argue some more, possibly just for the sake of being ornery or bossy. Kiara, however, surprised him.

“Fine, but she sits behind Griffin so his big, fat, blond head might soak up some bullets if shit goes sideways.”

“Just try to get it on video so I can be a meme posthumously,” Griffin said after barking out a laugh.

Tia placed the charm in Aaron’s hand and closed his fingers around, giving his fist a couple of soft pats. Then she hit him with her trademark — a wink and a smirk. Aaron looked at his closed hand, where the little jade dragon sat.

Is this thing just a trinket she pulled out to stop the argument? he wondered. Or… is it possible she’s flirting with me?

Years of embarrassing experience suggested the former was far more likely than the latter, especially considering he was the hottest of messes. Actually, after a year of letting himself go pretty much completely, Aaron was more like a cold, moldy mess. Some kind of mess, anyways.

Whatever the case, he was glad to have her on his side in this instance.

A few minutes later, they were back on the road. Aaron continued taking in the city, glad he’d managed to finagle a window seat with Tia’s help. They were really in New York City, with its abundance of unique character, represented as much in the presence of small and artisan businesses in the immediate vicinity of Times Square as anything else.

There was a Hampton Inn & Suites on the left! And a 7-11 on the right! Places with real character. Aaron knew they were in the chintzy, gaudy, and eminently tacky heart of global tourism, so he tried not to let the string of multinationals bother him, but he was doing a piss-poor job of it.

Next thing you know, it’ll be a McDonald’s or a Taco Bell, he grumbled to himself.

As it turned out, he was only half right. A bit further down the road, they didn’t pass a Taco Bell and McDonald’s, but instead drove by a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s. They were just a couple doors apart, with a CVS right across the street from both. Character!

It made perfect sense that, in a densely populated world capital and one of the most visited places on Earth, you could find plenty of the biggest, most saturated chains, but it was weird nonetheless.

At least the buildings are still fairly cool and interesting, Aaron thought.

The street they were traveling down was a long urban canyon with skyscrapers rushed away towards the horizon on either side of them. Still, something of Aaron’s disappointment with all the mega-chains must have shown in his demeanor, because Kiara reached across Tia in the middle seat and tapped him on the shoulder.

“It’s a rough stretch of town to get that New York feel, but we’re coming up on some interesting stuff,” she said.

“Where are we going, anyways?” he asked.

Everyone in the car suddenly had the same enigmatic smile on their faces, probably even Griffin in the driver’s seat, who Aaron couldn’t see. None of them offered an answer to his question.

“All right, then, keep your secrets,” he said, settling back to city-gazing.

Albert wheezed a laugh from the passenger seat. “Nice.”

Not long after this exchange, their wide, one-way street emptied into a huge traffic circle. It was hundreds of feet across with a park sitting at the heart of the circle, bordered by trees. A monument rose from the center of the park — a white pillar at least fifty feet tall on a huge stone base. The pillar was topped with a statue that Aaron could only discern from the street by its different shade.

Although Aaron couldn’t make out the figure of the statue on top, he figured out what it was after a few seconds — it had to be Christopher Columbus — which meant they were pulling onto Columbus Circle. Whatever Aaron thought of Columbus or his legacy — and he didn’t think much of either — Columbus Circle was a tremendously famous landmark in New York. It was also at one of the corners of an even more famous landmark — Central Park.

Griffin pulled their sedan onto the street that ran along the western edge of the park, which was aptly named Central Park West. They drove past block after block of beautiful buildings that, Aaron was pretty sure, were some of the most expensive residences in Manhattan.

“Am I staying in one of these?” Aaron asked, another reminder that the Drakon Society seemed to have an exorbitant amount of wealth. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to dislodge a bug that didn’t exist.

“We’re going almost all the way up to the end of the park,” Albert said, earning a smack on the head from Kiara behind him.

“Maybe eventually you could move into something here,” Tia said. “If you wanted to be all la-di-da, I mean. We own quite a few of them.”

“It’s so weird how many of these buildings look familiar,” Aaron remarked. He wasn’t sure how to talk about owning multiple buildings around Central Park, so something more familiar seemed like the safe bet.

“Lots of places around here get used for establishing shots in film and television,” Albert said, turning around in his seat to face the back. “Plenty of other neighborhoods, too, but CPW doesn’t change much on account of being all historical. For instance, we just passed the Ghostbusters Building.”

“Bullshit! I’d have noticed that little fire station. It’s iconic.”

“That building is in Tribeca,” Albert said. “The building we just passed is where Zuul was living in the fridge in Dana’s apartment. Interesting fact-”

Everyone else in the car groaned and Griffin tapped on the brakes, giving everyone a solid jolt forward.

“Don’t let him get going about movies, especially nerdy ones, or he’ll never shut up,” the big man said.

“He barely shuts up as it is,” Kiara said.

“I only shut up when Kiara’s shouting at me or my mouth is, ahem, otherwise occupied,” Albert said, waggling his eyebrows.

“Gross,” Tia said, pushing on his forehead with two fingers until he turned back around, snickering.

Although many of the buildings that lined Central Park West were interesting and even beautiful, two stood out to Aaron in particular. One was the American Museum of Natural History, with its high-arched entrance and four distinctive columns. Aaron almost didn’t recognize it when they passed; the statue of Theodore Roosevelt on horseback had apparently been removed since the most recent pictures he’d seen.

The second building caught his attention because it was almost outlandishly out of place. It also happened to be where they stopped to turn away from the park, which gave Aaron a good minute to examine the strange building as they waited for the light.

That can’t be where we’re going, can it? he wondered.

The structure looked like a castle, except that it was red, squat, far too tiny to be a proper castle. It had several fat, round towers with intricately decorated, arched windows on the highest floor and each was topped with a conical roof in a material that looked like silver or tin. There was a surreal quality, or maybe it was absurd, that made it seem even more out of place than the centuries-old churches that sometimes sat between massive ultra-modern skyscrapers in the city.

“Surely not,” Aaron said, pointing at the weird, squat, maroon castle.

Albert, Griffin, and Tia all laughed, but Kiara was all business, as usual. “Not a chance. Too obvious.”

“It’s a quirky old building,” Griffin said. “You just know some magi are operating out of one or more of those towers.”

“Get a witch a tower; witches love towers,” Albert agreed.

“It’s because it matches their hats,” Tia said, to more laughter.

Aaron scratched and swiped at his shoulder, having felt like something was crawling on him there. He needed a shower badly.

“That was the old New York Cancer Hospital before the institution got too big and they moved over to Sloan-Kettering,” Tia said. “My mom always says she wished she could work in a hospital with a cool building like that. It was derelict for years, but someone turned it into what every empty building in New York eventually turns into — luxury condos.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Ah, progress,” Griffin said.

The street they turned onto at the old hospital was a narrow, one-way road with very different buildings from the grand structures of Central Park West. They were, predominantly, townhouses made of brick, limestone, and granite cut in a variety of sizes, each ranging from three to five storeys tall and with no space between them.

Do they build two sets of walls in the middle, or share one? Aaron wondered. They probably have to share; at that width three to six inches would add up to eat a lot of space.

At the next intersection, Griffin turned them onto a two lane road lined with trees. Despite the height and architectural style, all the trees reminded Aaron of his neighborhood back in Sacramento. Hopefully the local flora wouldn’t smell like dried semen every spring. That was something from home Aaron could definitely do without.

Griffin pulled the sedan to park at the curb in front of a row of townhouses. The spot was right in front of a fire hydrant. That seemed like a risky move, but maybe parking enforcement wasn’t as on-the-ball in Manhattan as Aaron had been led to believe by media portrayals. The big man could be counting on luck to keep him from getting ticketed.

Or maybe it’s not luck; maybe they have a magic parking spot, Aaron thought. That would be almost as dope as it is petty.

“Stay here a minute,” Kiara said, as Griffin and Albert got out of the car.

What followed was a bit of theatre that earned the two men a great deal of esteem in Aaron’s eyes, not least of all because it was all part of their efforts to keep him from getting murdered. Albert and Griffin emerged from the car like anyone might, seemingly already in the midst of a genuine but completely inane discussion about a TV show.

From his seat in the back of the car, Aaron could see Griffin’s eyes clearly and knew the burly man wasn’t just shooting the shit with his little buddy; he was also surreptitiously checking the surroundings for threats. Albert was probably doing the same thing on the passenger side. Anyone not close enough would just see two guys having an innocuous argument over something that was breathtakingly pointless to anyone but them. Griffin punctuated some point he’d made by slapping the roof of the car with his hand.

“That’s the ‘all clear,’” Kiara said, opening her door.

When Aaron stepped out of the car, Griffin was still standing by his door, but Albert had already made his way to the trunk and was pulling Aaron’s few pieces of luggage out.

“I can take all that,” Aaron said, and Albert gladly handed the baggage over.

The building they’d parked in front of was three storeys tall, like every other building on the block, and narrow. The lower half was made of large reddish-orange blocks, and the top half in much smaller, normal looking brick. The window frames and front door were painted black and a bay window overlooked the street from the top floor.

Griffin took the lead going up the narrow stoop, which was made of the same large bricks as the lower part of the building, with Aaron and Tia being herded up behind him. Albert and Kiara stayed at the foot of the stoop, a bit conspicuous as they kept an eye on the street behind them.

Rather than a key — or even a keycard — Griffin pulled out a smooth, flat, stone disk about three inches across and pressed it into the doorknob before turning it, then stepped into the building.

Before he followed Griffin inside, Aaron stopped just outside the door and leaned over the stoop. He looked down into the small, fenced-in area beside it. He’d always been curious what was down there when he saw similar spaces in pictures and movies. The buildings on either side of theirs had windows at that level, which supported Aaron’s guess that it was a basement, but their building was just more of the plain brick. Given the premium on space in New York, Aaron figured there were probably apartments down there.

Wasn’t there a show where someone lived in an apartment like that? A sitcom with a red haired woman, he mused. He knew he was right, but he couldn’t think of any other details from the show. Wasn’t the building a tugboat or something like that? Weird.

He felt something wriggling around on his head. Despite knowing it was a phantom sensation, had to run his hands through his hair to convince himself he’d dislodged the nothing that wasn’t actually there. Finally, he followed Griffin into the building.

There were mailboxes on the wall right by the door and a hallway extended down the length of the building ahead of them. It ran for at least fifty feet and ended at a left turn. Aaron wasn’t sure where the hallway could go given how narrow the building was.

Following Griffin down the hall past two apartments, he learned the turn was a staircase that led up and down. They went up the stairs to the second floor, then all the way back to the front of the building, where Griffin used another stone to open the door, which was marked 2A.

“Lucy, I’m home,” the big man said, stepping inside.

Aaron experienced a moment of almost physically palpable cognitive dissonance when he stepped into the apartment — it was simultaneously exactly what he’d been expecting yet not. When they’d driven up Central Park West, he’d been imagining a sprawling six-room home with oak-paneled walls and ornate mahogany furniture. After they’d turned at the old cancer castle and started passing townhouses, he’d been picturing something from the Gilded Age, all brass and marble.

But as they’d walked through the building and he’d seen there were two apartments per floor, he had envisioned something more modest and probably on the small side by the standards he’d grown used to in California. If his estimates were right, each apartment would have been less than twenty feet by twenty five feet, meaning four or five hundred square feet — small even for a studio back home. That would have been very on-brand for New York.

At first glance, the room Aaron stepped into could have been a studio apartment. The front door opened right into the kitchen, with a dinette beyond and a larger living space to the right. The space had an open floor plan except for the counter separating the kitchen and living room. Except the dinette extended several feet beyond the wall of the living room, suggesting more space.

Aaron would have assumed the bathroom was in the space behind that wall, except for the empty doorframe in the middle of the far wall of the living room. That revealed the space was actually a hallway that led farther than the living room. He strolled across the room as everyone filed in behind him and dropped his luggage in the dinette area, taking a look down the hallway.

It went back much farther than the end of the living room.

A second door that opened into the hallway past the living room and the hallway itself continued past another five or six feet then turned right. He couldn’t see what was around that corner, but there had to be more rooms back there.

If the open area at the front of the apartment were roughly square, Aaron estimated it would be right around twenty feet by twenty feet, so almost all of the space. The hallway suggested the entire apartment was significantly longer.

“Is this apartment bigger on the inside?” he asked, incredulous.

That reference earned him an amused, wheezy snicker from Albert, but Tia answered seriously. “We could do that, but it’s a lot easier to knock out a wall and make each floor a single apartment.”

“So… the other front door in the hallway is fake, a decoy,” Aaron mused.

“Which makes the property seem like it’s filled with rinky-dink studios instead of two and three bedroom condos. A good security feature if you want a nice place that doesn’t draw a lot of attention from the real estate fiends on StreetEasy or Trulia,” Albert said.

“Your unit has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. You can explore after we get everything sorted on our end,” Kiara said, walking over to the dinette table and sitting in one of the chairs. “Take a seat.”

Aaron sat across from her, Albert and Tia joined them, and Griffin leaned against the counter in the kitchen. Albert produced several keys on a keyring and a stone like the one Griffin had used on the front door. He laid them out on the table with some space between them.

“These,” he indicated the keys, “are bullshit. They don’t do anything, not even open the mail. This magic rock is all you need for the building. We’ll need to bind it to you and you’ll be all set.”

Tia sat forward in her chair. “Do you mind if I do it? I haven’t had many opportunities to practice binding talismans.”

“Knock yourself out, kid,” Kiara said.

Albert pulled out a small leather case and unfolded it on the table. There were an assortment of odd items stored within — thin metal tools, bits of different fabrics, chalks, tiny, stoppered glass vials filled with powders and liquids, even a small sheaf of thick paper tightly rolled together — and, after he checked over everything, slid the case over to Tia.

“Very nice kit, Albert,” Tia said, also examining the various components.

“What does that mean — ‘bind’ it to me?”

“It’s a simple bit of magic that makes an item super convenient — you can’t lose it, it doesn’t take up pocket space, all sorts of good stuff,” Albert said.

Tia conducted what seemed to be a very simple ritual, though Aaron’s only frame of reference was the complicated business at the lake in Yellowstone and whatever Tia and Mallory had done with the Vault. She placed the stone in Aaron’s hand, wrapped them together loosely with a length of silk, then sprinkled various dusts and fluids over the whole thing.

While she worked her magic, Kiara explained the security procedures she wanted Aaron to be aware of and follow. Aaron didn’t catch all of it — he was distracted by occasional twinges of imaginary bugs on him and keeping his cool whenever Tia touched his hand — but he got the gist of it.

There were several small teams assigned to his security and they worked in shifts. Whichever team was currently on duty would either be with him or, if he was at the apartment, in the building. A backup team would usually be nearby but out of sight or in the building, as well.

The entire building was occupied by drakus — the active security team on the third floor, Aaron on the second, Tia on the ground, and the backup in the basement. Griffin made a point to make sure Aaron knew the basement also had a laundry room and some other nice amenities. He didn’t know how much they could fit down there, but he wanted to remember to go check it out when he got the chance.

Kiara also showed him that several numbers had been programmed into the speed dials on his new folding phone, told him to never go outside the building — not even to the stoop, the roof, or the fire escape — without making sure security knew and had given him the go-ahead, and that his computer should be delivered in the next day or two.

When Kiara had said her piece and the binding ritual was done, Tia took over the task of explaining basic shit to the noob (as Aaron was starting to think of it). Her tone was conversational and felt significantly less like a lecture than if, say, Mallory were the one doing it.

“Conjuring and dismissing a talisman is as easy as wanting to,” she said, removing the silk wrapping from Aaron’s hand. “It’s literally at-will, but it takes a little getting used to. Try dismissing it.”

Aaron looked at the small, flat stone in his hand and wanted it to go away. The stone, being a stone, simply sat there. He tried asking it, he tried imagining it disappearing in a poof, and he tried concentrating really hard on wanting the rock to be gone. Nothing worked. He didn’t take his eyes off the stupid rock sitting in the palm of his hand, but he was aware of the four people sitting around the table, all of them smiling at him expectantly.

Maybe there’s a trick to it, like with using my strength, he thought.

When Aaron had learned how to utilize the immense strength that came with being a drakus, it had been a blending of intent with action, a more conscious use of his body than the way that came naturally. Bearing that in mind, he tried to dismiss the talisman again and found himself flexing in a way that wasn’t exactly physical. It was almost like he was trying to put something away in a pocket but his arm wouldn’t move. The others in the apartment all clapped for him when the flat stone vanished.

“Quicker than most people figure it out,” Griffin said.

“Figure out what?” Aaron asked.

Tia patted Aaron’s wrist. “The way we interact with bound talismans is similar to how we do magic — it’s a very personal experience and the mental constructs and processes are as varied as the individual. There are some generalities we can talk about, but it’s basically up to each of us to figure out what works best for us.”

Aaron summoned and dismissed the stone a few more times to get used to it. “It’s definitely weird. Where does it go when it’s not, y’know, here?”

“It goes in your butt,” Griffin said, scoring a wheezy laugh from Albert and a glare from Kiara.

“That’s not untrue, exactly,” Tia said. “It discorporates into a static matrix of quintessence and that matrix attaches itself to your body. So it kinda does go up your butt, but it also goes everywhere else.”

Kiara stood up. “Anyway, that’s everything we needed to go over, so we’ll head upstairs. Remember to call or message if you’re even thinking about going outside the building.”

After Aaron gave his assurances to Kiara’s satisfaction, the three security personnel left the apartment.

MY apartment! he thought.

Kiara shook his hand, her expression so serious it was almost comical, but the other two were more relaxed in their farewells, leaving with little more than waves and up-nods. That left Aaron and Tia alone. Aaron smacked himself in the chest, irked by another phantom fucking bug.

“You wanna hang out for a while?” Tia asked. “I figure you’ve had a pretty wild weekend and some time to decompress will do you good.”

“I’d love to, but I really need to take a shower.”

Tia nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll make sure your TV is set up and order some dinner.”

That was very much not what Aaron expected and he didn’t know what to make of it. He generally wouldn’t be comfortable with someone in his home when he was sleeping or bathing unless he knew them extremely well and trusted them — it just felt too vulnerable.

At the same time, Tia was so god damned hot he was willing to make an exception. Probably a lot of exceptions. Enough exceptions he might have to question whether he was the principled person he thought of himself as. Surely he wasn’t that much of a stooge, right?

More practically, Aaron realized he was getting quite hungry, so someone who knew the local restaurants would help him avoid eating McDonald’s on his first day in New York.

Aaron just signaled his agreement with a nod to Tia, not trusting himself to say anything more; anything he might think to say would almost certainly be weird and make things awkward. Instead of sticking his foot in his mouth, he gathered up his luggage and wandered down the hallway to discover the rest of the apartment. His apartment!