They peppered him with questions. Nate fielded them easily. He could tell they were all intimidated now, respecting him and what he could do. The questions about magic, he mostly shut down. They didn't want to reveal too much yet, obviously. Not with a book to sell.

  "What is this book, anyway? You got a title?" asked Phil, who hadn't quite dropped his prickly attitude, but still clearly deferred to Nate now.

  "Not yet. It's not my writing."

  That got their attention. "So whose is it?"

  Linda stepped in. Nate didn't mind; they made a good partnership most of the time, and it gave him an opportunity to take a few gulps of water and catch his breath. The display of magic earlier had been exhausting, even with the two near-perfect gemstones Linda had purchased. He still felt a bit winded by the exercise, and their constant requests for other minor displays didn't help much either.

  "The author was not one of the residents of the town. She was an outsider who kept detailed journals on the events."

  "Was?"

  "We have been unable to locate or contact her, or any of her relatives. She lived and wrote under a pseudonym. Her style and handwriting matched nothing on record to a satisfactory level of confidence."

  "Come on, how hard could it be?"

  Samantha adjusted her glasses slightly as she chimed in. "If Luther Renalds and Portman couldn't figure out who they are, no one can."

  Linda smiled slightly at the praise. "Given that her presence was confirmed in Rallsburg until the incident, and all remaining unidentified persons are still presumed dead, we feel we have legal standing to publish her diaries."

  "You're gonna get sued," said Phil. "She's still got copyright, dead or alive."

  "We made a reasonable effort to locate her, and these are extraordinary circumstances. Her personal diaries give invaluable insight into a tragic event that still dominates the news cycle six months later."

  "How personal are we talking?"

  "Barring a few minor editorial choices, the wording is one hundred percent hers." Linda glanced over at the door, where one of the bodyguards was waiting. She nodded, and he quickly headed down the hall to the reporters, passing out white-paper excerpts.

  "Some of this is downright poetic," Phil muttered.

  "Is this her handwriting as well?" asked Samantha.

  "Yes."

  Linda turned around and picked up the original journal, which had been sitting behind them on the desk the whole time. She turned it to the page they'd been given and held it up against the glass. The journal was leatherbound and with quality parchment paper, built to last. Nate mentally thanked Ruby for designing Cinza's later journals. Her older plain spiral notebooks were certainly well cared for, but they looked plain and unappealing compared to this weighty, beautiful tome. The parchment reminded him of the Scraps, too, though it was without the scratches of age.

  "That's going to be difficult to read," said one of the publishers.

  "Our plan is two copies of the book, one in a sans font and one in untouched script. The latter as a collector's item."

  He nodded. "We can sell that."

  "What's this blacked-out part?" asked Phil.

  "A name."

  "It's a small town, how hard is it gonna be to figure out who that is?"

  "Not everyone in the town was supposed to be there, and plenty who were left."

  "That person was a little kid," Nate added. It wasn't dangerous information; they couldn't remove all details of Natalie without too much alteration to the book. He knew she must have survived though. There was no way she would have died in the fighting, as powerful as she was. Wherever she was, Natalie was obviously in hiding, and Nate wasn't about to out a little kid like that. "We erased it for their sake."

  Phil nodded. "Fair enough."

  "For the most part, I think you'll be happy with how little we've redacted," Linda continued. "And my client would like to note, to this group at the very least, that his own involvement is very minor."

  "I'm not even in half of it," Nate added, smirking. He didn't mind. Just bringing the story into the world would be more than enough to catapult him to fame.

  "What other edits can we expect?" asked Samantha.

  "For publication, we moved a few sections to create a better flow, since events were recorded when the author had the opportunity rather than in any sort of planned sequence. I'm sure your own editors will want to take another look at it, and you are most welcome to give it another pass, pending our explicit approval on all changes."

  "Of course."

  "What's the narrative line?" asked Phil.

  "What?" asked Linda.

  "The centerpiece. What's the story about, besides just what happened?"

  "Well, it is a diary."

  "Yeah, but we gotta have a narrative to build this around. Even Anne Frank has got an arc."

  "It's a love story," Nate cut in suddenly.

  Phil stared at him. "...Uh huh."

  "Trust me. Cinza had some bits where she remembered old things, like how she and Ruby met." Nate realized he was giving away too much already, but they needed something to latch on to. Linda seemed a bit lost, since she was used to dealing with corporate corruption. "You can put that at the beginning, and follow them all the way to the end. They're the focus." He nodded to himself as he kept talking, trying not to think about how he was kind-of betraying them. Well, they did it first… I'm just trying to get back what's mine. "They'll give you an arc."

  "Cinza being the author?" asked Samantha.

  "Yeah."

  "Cinza and Ruby. Grey and red." She smiled. "Smoke and fire."

  Nate grinned. These people were pros, and they hadn't even read the book yet. "Perfect."

  "And they were a couple, for sure?" asked Phil.

  Nate rolled his eyes. "You might actually want to censor those parts a bit. Cinza got uhh… descriptive."

  He laughed. "Are we talkin' PG-13 or porn?"

  "PG-13, thank god. Maaaaybe R at a couple parts."

  "I'm sure it'll be fine. We can sell it as authentic."

  "The LGBT community will love it," added Samantha. "This couple as the face of the story?"

  "Gonna get smeared."

  "Oh, come on. It's twenty eighteen."

  "Yeah, what country do you live in?"

  "Pity they aren't around to interview," Samantha sighed.

  "Yeah, all we got is this clown," added Phil, grinning.

  "I'd make a great clown," Nate shot back.

  "Sure, kid." He frowned. "Why are you doin' this, anyway?"

  "The public good, obviously."

  "This is off the record, remember?"

  "...Money," Nate said, reluctantly.

  "I thought your family was pretty well off? Richest in the town or some shit."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "It all burned up," said Ted. "And they were officially declared dead. Assets reclaimed by the state."

  "Shit. Sorry, man."

  "We're currently working on a petition to return those assets to their rightful owner," said Linda. "But even that will be a pittance. Most of the Price family's assets were tied to their land and holdings. Since their home was completely burned down, and the value of the entire region has plummeted significantly, Mr. Price has very little to his name."

  "So this is your way back to the good life. I get it."

  "I mean, I really am doing it for the public good too," Nate added. "I think this story's really gotta be told."

  "Fair enough. Don't sweat it, kid. We'll make sure it gets told right."

----------------------------------------

  A whirlwind week of interviews, questions, teases, excerpts. More editing questions, but now from the professionals instead of Linda's small team. They'd all been signed and sworn to secrecy, even from their own companies and superiors. All it took was one person to break contract, but they all knew the fortune they'd give up if they did, as well as the sheer loss of reputation. They'd never work in the field again.

  More than that, they all felt the importance of what they were doing. Nate could feel it too. There was sensation building up, like they were on a roller coaster approaching the top of the hill. Any day now, everything was about to start rushing forward, but for the moment they kept working, kept preparing, anticipating that final, anxious moment of release.

  He had power, too. More power than he'd expected. All the reporters completely deferred to him. After a day of consideration, Nate picked Ted Winters as the lead. Ted would be the one to conduct the interviews and present the story, while the rest began to prep auxiliary content. Interviews with relatives, additional research, background information. Nate picked Ted because he was the most familiar, and because Nate felt like he deserved some credit for the work he'd already done.

  They talked about bringing in the perspective of "paranormal" experts, but Nate shot it down. After all, none of those crazy idiots had known what magic would really be like. They were all spouting nonsense or running scams, in his eyes. They did have a couple prominent scientists on call, in physics and biology, to start analyzing anything they could get their hands on. All of that would wait though. They didn't want to bring too many people in when the reveal was so close.

  The interview sessions with Ted were grueling. The guy was nice enough, but with the heavy spotlights and all the prep work, Nate just wanted them to be done already. All the time spent in makeup before-hand, on top of the effort to put up and take down the set, was exhausting—especially since they were working with an absolute skeleton crew. Plus, he didn't exactly like reliving the events of Rallsburg.

  "It says that you were aware of the Awakened long before you became one yourself. How did you find out, exactly?"

  "By accident. I saw someone casting spells on a security camera outside the grounds of our house. After I went and talked to them, they put me in touch with Rachel."

  "Who is this someone?"

  "The redacted minor from the book."

  "Ah." Ted scribbled a note, even though the cameras were recording everything anyway. "And 'Rachel' is Rachel DuValle?"

  "DuValle, like 'tall'."

  "She was the elected leader of the Council?"

  "Yeah."

  And on and on they went, confirming every little bit of the story, expanding on details where Cinza's journals fell short. She only wrote events that she personally witnessed, in order, and while the attention to detail was astonishing (and the style almost lyrical in its prose, as one of the editors put it), events beyond her knowledge were relegated to brief paragraphs between each entry, if they were even mentioned at all. It was up to Nate to fill in the gaps.

  "The so-called 'ritual killings' in the center of town, the twenty-five people struck by lightning—"

  "Not a ritual. Nothing to do with magic."

  "But they were certainly killed by magic, right?"

  "Yeah. I mean, I didn't see it, and neither did Cinza, but… well, there's only one person who could use lightning magic, right? So it had to be her."

  "Rika Nishimura."

  "Yeah."

  "Why do you think that happened?"

  "I mean, I dunno. But those last couple days were insane. Like, actual angry mobs. I think… Rika wouldn't go out of her way to kill people, but if they went after her…"

  There was also the most dangerous question, the one Nate could have held ransom for billions if he played it right. But after a lot of debate, he'd agreed with Linda: it was too dangerous. It was the difference between capitalizing on his fame, or getting hunted down by every major government on the planet. They'd left in the description of awakening, in full. He wasn't holding it back for later.

  "What was awakening like for you?"

  "...Terrifying. But… really, really exciting, right? Like, I knew it was something special, and I'd seen it before. Mine took way longer than most. It's all in the book, 'cause Cinza was there. She sponsored me. I wouldn't have gotten to awaken if it wasn't for her."

  "You were a member of her family. Her 'Greycloaks'."

  "...Yeah." Nate nodded, playing up the drama of the moment. "I was the last one to join before it all… happened."

  "Would you go back to them, if you could?"

  "It's hard to say, you know? They treated me all right, but…"

  "Do you think they would accept you back?"

  "...No. Not after this."

  "After publishing her journals, you mean?"

  "...Yeah."

  To Nate's relief, Ted quickly changed the subject. This was an interview, not an interrogation. "Tell me about Grey-eyes. Cinza describes her in great detail, but I'd like to hear a more… frank impression, if you could."

  "She's not a normal girl. I mean, she can do crazy impossible things, but I dunno. Something about her just seems off. She's always wearing the same old t-shirt for some band nobody's ever heard of, she always looks kinda sad and lonely. It seems like she's not real. I know she is, and I've seen her before that, but something's just not right there."

  Other questions went much more smoothly. When they were talking about Rallsburg the town, or his own family, or even just the general antics of the awakened in town, Nate could relax and be much more himself. Telling stories of Ryan and Seth first trying to do Movement spells and smacking themselves in the face with rocks, or the story of Joe going colorblind. Pranks they pulled, like when he and Natalie snuck the deer away right under Robert's nose.

  Ted and the team were most interested in the big events, though, not the antics of Nate and the other college guys on the sidelines. "The first major confrontation with the town took place at the town hall on… May 12th," Ted said, checking his notes. "Were you at that meeting?"

  "Yeah. I didn't do much, but I was there."

  "You and Robert Harrison already had an adversarial relationship. Did you realize what he was planning at the time?"

  "No. I mean, if I knew he was already working with Omega, I would've told everyone. Obviously."

  "But what about his friend Julian Black? The one Cinza noted as helping him sew chaos through the meeting."

  Nate shook his head. "Julian was one of us. He thought he was making a move on the Council. Robert played him, just like he played the rest of us."

  "This also marks the first mention of Hailey Winscombe in Cinza's narrative, who later becomes a pivotal figure and one of the 'empowered eight', to use Cinza's term."

  "What, you didn't like the 'Ogdoad'?" Nate asked, grinning.

  "She certainly spent a lot of time considering different terms to use."

  "I bet that was more Ruby's thinking actually. She's the one who always wanted to come up with fancy names for everything."

  "But getting back to Hailey, what was your relationship with her?"

  Nate rolled his eyes. "We went to the same school. She was the popular girl. That's it."

  "Let's talk about them though. These 'empowered eight'."

  He shrugged. "No idea what makes them special."

  "You think they gained their power at random?"

  "Do you see anything tying them all together?" Nate held up his fingers as he counted them off. "The three Gods. A little kid. A hispanic grocery store owner. The rich, popular blonde girl from the big city. Her best friend and total opposite. And the econ professor, who's also apparently the daughter of some megacorporation or something?" He shook his head. "The only thing that makes sense is that it's eight people, because of course it's eight people. 'Cause of the star."

  "You mentioned the economics professor. That's Kendra Thomas Laushire, daughter of Thomas Laushire of Laushire Enterprises?"

  "Yeah."

  "Thomas Laushire quite famously only had a single child with his wife before she fell ill and became barren."

  Nate shrugged. "I heard he was a sexist asshole."

  "...One way to put it. It was never public, but a few memos have leaked over the last few months regarding his relationship with his daughter."

  "Didn't he say that no woman could ever run a major company?" Nate rolled his eyes. "Can't blame her for ditching. Her dad's a dick."

  "I bring this up because Cinza makes it quite clear that there was a second Laushire in Rallsburg. An identical twin, no less."

  "...Yeah, I guess so."

  "But you never met her."

  "Not that I know of," Nate replied with a smirk.

  Ted laughed, and they continued onto other subjects. He was questioned in detail about the rest of the eight, and did the best he could to answer. He'd never met Alpha or Omega in person, and the rest of the group weren't exactly his friends. The closest of the two were Natalie, whom he'd already decided he was trying to protect and wouldn't say a single word about, and Hector.

  "Not to be too blunt, but Hector seems like he doesn't really belong in your town."

  Nate tried not to feel too smug at the phrase 'your town'. "Hector Peraza was the nicest guy you ever met. Everyone liked him. But wherever he came from, I think it was down in California but I dunno—he really hated it there. You could tell. He was running away. He showed up in Rallsburg ten years back, and for a while he just worked with the loggers. Then old man Rawls died and the grocery store didn't have anyone to run it. Hector took it up." He shifted in his chair again. "Hector really didn't deserve any of this. I feel really bad for the guy."

  "Do you have any idea what happened to him, in the end?"

  "Well, I don't think for a second he died. I mean, he's crazy powerful. You had to see it to believe it. He made it out okay, wherever he is."

  "The diaries stop right after the final battle at Cinza's home, when Rachel shoots Omega. Can you fill in what happened after that?"

  "I wasn't there, but I'd guess they all decided to go into hiding. I bet some of them are still there, but you can't find Cinza's place without magic. The forest tricks you and the magnetics are all screwed up. Compasses are useless, GPS is useless, maps are useless and you can't see where you're actually going. It's impossible unless they let you in."

  "And some like Hailey apparently decided to go into public service."

  "You mean pretending she's a superhero, right?"

  "You don't think she's doing good?"

  Nate shrugged. "I think she probably thinks that."

  "What do you think?"

  "She's the one with all the power. But I dunno. Vigilantes are usually bad things. She's got it in her head that she knows what's best all the time."

  Inevitably, though, with each line of questioning, Nate brought the conversation back to the topic he really wanted to discuss: how his home and his family had been taken away. His house was burned down by an angry mob of loggers taking out their rage on old foes. His parents died in the catastrophic ritual attempt to kill Omega. He was abandoned in the forest by his supposed family, by Cinza's words (though she claimed he ran away). He'd survived on nothing but scraps and his own wits in the forest, hiding from the government, the greycloaks and the golems all on his own.

  Or mostly on his own. He had no intention of revealing that Julian had helped him survive, when Julian obviously wanted to keep his return to the area a secret.

  Nate Price had suffered for months, but he'd survived, and he was bringing the truth to the world. He'd give them all the answers they'd been begging for. Then, finally, he'd be back on top where he belonged.