I locked eyes with the unfamiliar familiar and fear took me.

My depleted aura was wrenched into action by that icy energy running through my veins and it flared within me. My time amongst mortals was over. Anna and Arthur, at best, were about to discover that I was not of their world. At worst, they were going to be caught in the crossfire of a magical entity and a severely handicapped magical novice. In that terrifying moment, they were in the very worst place two mortals I had begun to care about could find themselves.

Distract it. I thought. Let them get away.

If I somehow managed to drive it off, then there would be its master, whoever or wherever they could be.

Looking, looking, looking. Played back through my head.

The Mother’s seal, a mark on my being that reminded me of the harm I had caused and the debt I owed to the sorceress that had cast it on me, kept me from making a mistake. Just before I moved, my aura broke against the seal’s unshakable force and the loss left me weak.

Not a moment later, the four eyed familiar slipped back into the darkness that surrounded the moonlit clearing as silently as it had come.

"Dani," Anna said, giving me a gentle shake. "Are you alright?"

You can't tell them. I thought, knowing it wasn't entirely true. They were in danger because of me. I could have told them. I probably should have told them if their safety was truly my concern. Not telling them would be selfish and very possibly could get them killed, but if I did, it would be over. I would actually have to leave. No excuses, no more putting it off, gone.

I'd realized sometime in the seconds before I spoke that what I wanted mattered more to me than what I needed.

"I'm okay, just cold." I lied, faking a shiver and taking the thermos from Arthur.

"Here," Arthur said, pulling off his jacket before I could protest. He slung it over my shoulders and sat back down. "You need it more than me."

I drank, the warm drink doing more than I thought it would to calm my nerves. It's gone. It left. "Why is that?"

"Yeah, Arthur, why does she need it more than you?" Anna asked.

"You're just so skinny, it makes sense that you would get colder faster than me or Anna would. No offense."

Anna crossed her arms. "Did you hear him? He just called you skinny and me fat at the same time."

I laughed. Only part of it was fake. Whenever I could steal a glance at the wood line I did. The cold ache of fear settled in my stomach but remained ready to spike back into terror at the smallest glimpse of shining silver eyes or bared white fangs.

It’s gone. It left.

We stayed in the woods until the sun began to blue the black sky. The familiar never showed itself again. The thermos and the warmth the hot chocolate had given long cold, Arthur gave up his ghost and we left the clearing to trek back to the boarding house just after sunrise. His plan had been to get lost, to replicate the circumstances of his first experience with something outside of the mortal normal, and like I had thought when I learned what his plan was, it might have worked if Anna hadn't kept track of where we were and was able to retrace our path out of the woods, step for step.

Just before the house came into view, Arthur slowed until I came even with him and said. "We'll try again one night, without the nonbeliever, if you want?"

"Naturally." I nodded to him, the cold spot in my stomach finally melting away as the sun began to warm the new born day.

When the house came into view and we stepped out of the woods, two things made me uneasy.

The first thing was I had never put the mattress back over the window and without curtains or blinds, the small blue shape of Sam could be clearly seen staring out of it.

The second thing was I could see Ms. Lao in the front yard, talking to a man I didn't recognize. She turned to us and waved.

"Looks like the new guy is here." Anna said.

"Ma wants us to meet him, I'm sure." Arthur added.

The two siblings turned from their path and headed towards the front of the house.

I didn't follow. Instead, I took quick steps while their attention was diverted and climbed the three steps towards the back door. I opened it but before I could step inside, Anna called my name.

"Yeah?"

"Come meet him with us?" She asked.

I couldn't see him but I heard Arthur yell. "Yeah, come on. We haven't had a full house since we were kids."

You didn’t tell them they were in danger. You owe them. I thought.

“Since you want me to.” I reached Anna and went to meet the stranger whose very presence made my life all the more complicated.

"These are my children. Anna and Arthur. They are home from college to help me around the house," Ms. Lao said. and then nodded to the man standing near her. "This is Mr. Bill Argus. He will be staying with us until the new year."

"It's very nice to meet you," Mr. Bill Argus said, going over and shaking the siblings' hands. Then, he turned to me. "And who do we have here?"

I didn't like Mr. Bill Argus. He was a short man, barely taller than me. A tangled mess of wispy blonde hair fanned out from his head, surrounding a face with eyes that were too wide and a smile that was too friendly. The mismatched yellow suit he wore didn't fit. Every piece of it looked too large for his small frame.

"This is Dani Matthews. She is also a tenant. Arthur, take Mr. Argus's things to his room," Ms. Lao demanded and then turned to her daughter. "Make a fresh pot of coffee."

"It's nice to meet you, Dani." Mr. Argus said with the same overdone smile on his face. It looked like he knew he should smile that way because it would make people like he is not because it came naturally like Arthur’s

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Everyone moved to go inside and in a moment of social awareness that I was not familiar with, I walked with them.

"Mr. Argus is a biologist looking for somewhere quiet to work on an academic paper." Ms. Lao said, with a strange tone of pride in her voice.

"What's it about?" Arthur asked.

"Please, I’m a glorified bird watcher," Mr. Bill Argus clarified. “There is a specific finch that only resides in this part of the country that I have been researching for some time.” Mr. Bill Argus answered, climbing the porch stairs.

"It will be nice to have such an intelligent person staying with us." Ms. Lao said.

I couldn't be sure, but it felt like her words were directed at me.

I held the door open for Arthur, his arms loaded down with leather luggage. Taking advantage of the house being busy with the new arrival, I slipped up the stairs to the relative safety of my room.

Door locked, I shrugged out of Arthur’s massive coat and then the coat Anna had given me. Sam was still perched on the window sill, still staring out of the window.

"You aren't going to ask me where I've been?" I asked.

No response.

"There is another familiar in the woods behind the house that I could surely use your guidance on."

No response.

"Sam. Speak to me right now and I will return to Zenithcidel before noon!" I snapped, walking over to him and picking him up by the scruff of his neck.

No response.

I placed him back where he had been sitting. Had I broken my familiar? When I last returned from The Well, he had asked his questions, but I don’t think he had spoken a single word since.

My whole body throbbed with one big ache. I knew, if I laid down, I would not get back up for a long time.

The unfamiliar familiar and the new tenant had renewed my desire for security. I pushed the mattress back up to the window, hoping to get a reaction out of my familiar. Even after I had covered his looking glass, I received nothing, so I gave up.

The hot water of the bath felt good on my bones but did nothing to slow down my mind. The new tenant, the familiar in the woods, Sam's continued silence, and the sudden realization that I was willingly risking my freedom to stay close to Arthur and Anna spun in my mind until they blurred together and I slipped into The Well.

"What should I fuck with today?" I sighed, looking around the unbearably consistent room.

I had tried the walls. I had tried the corners. Unless I spontaneously learned how to levitate or discovered some way to bring a step stool into The Well with me, the ceiling was out of reach.

I sat down and ran my hands along the floor. I had never thought much about it before it had suddenly dropped out from under me that last time I had been there. Black, reflective, cool to the touch. I listed whatever I could identify about it in my mind. Polished Stone? I wondered. If true, that was a difference from the metal the walls were made of.

A door of empty light faded into the room and I watched it materialize in the blurry reflection it made on the floor.

"You can obviously be moved." I said, pushing on the floor with hands.

Thunk.

Light washed over my outstretched legs and I pushed harder. I'm on to something. I thought, looking up.

Thunk.

The door grew, its illuminated outline expanding until I could no longer see the corner behind it. I slid back along the smooth surface of the floor until my back hit the wall. The door followed, becoming so bright I had to shield my eyes in the crook of my arm. With no room for me to back away with, I heard it again. Thunk. Then the door washed over me, forcing me into a memory.

Asha was going to get me killed.

Sneaking through the halls of her dormitory, I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into an alcove cut barely large enough for us to both fit into.

"Shhh, you're being too loud." I whispered, holding my pointer finger in front of my lips.

"Why do we have to be quiet? They are here to guard us." Asha whispered back.

I clamped my hand over her mouth, stifling her laugh and biting my lip to withhold my own. Being that close to her, I could smell the last sip of sweet wine she had taken before we had snuck out of the feast on her breath. I must have smelled like I had bathed in it considering I had drank nearly twice as much as she had.

Asha bit my hand and placed her own over my mouth, muffling my surprised cry. Just as she did, the footsteps of two of the guards that had been tasked with patrolling the halls of the school not three mornings prior, grew louder as they approached the alcove. Two mortal men stepped into view. Armed and armored to the teeth with auraments, weapons and armor that had been augmented by sorceresses to prevent the mortals from being totally useless, they marched in unison past where we were hidden.

We waited with held breath until they were out of sight and then listened for their footsteps to become unheard from the raucous din still echoing from the feast.

"Hey, watch," I said to Asha, stepping out of the alcove. I stood up as straight as I could and puffed my chest out. Mimicking the all too rigid steps of the mortal guards, complete with my hand on the imaginary pommel of my imaginary sword, I pitched my voice down as low as it would go. "In the name of the Circle, I will protect all the Maidens of this school to my dying breath."

Asha let out a mad series of giggles. She skipped ahead of me and crouched down, altering her own voice to something raspy and monstrous. "It is I, Azeralphane. I've come to steal the color from all the young Maiden's souls, to pull Zenithcidel from the ground with one hand," She rose and shook the sleeve of her cream colored robe until it bunched around her bicep and she flexed. "To wed all nine Mothers and give each a blue horned baby!"

"I, cant, believe, you, said, that!" I wheezed between bouts of laughter. I couldn't breathe. Every time we managed to steal a moment together despite our conflicting schedules, I'd wake the following morning with my stomach sore from laughing. That night, it was partly the wine and partly the excitement for the Iridescence the following day, but it was mostly Asha and the knowledge that I didn’t know when I would see her again that made even the horrible thing she had said the funniest thing I had ever heard.

"It came from this way." A man shouted. The sound of hurried footsteps and clinking armor came from the hall we had just come through.

Asha and I smiled at one another and ran away. We turned left at the end of the hall and I pushed her into a stairwell I had scouted out earlier that evening. Crossing through it myself, I turned back and let my aura flow. It came easy, it always did when I had been drinking, and filled the space we had come through with my power. I pictured us, ascending the stairs behind us and coming to a solid stone wall that was indistinguishable from every other wall in the dormitory.

My aura made it so and when I released my hold on it, a perfect glamor that I wouldn't have known was there if I hadn't crafted it moments before stood in the doorway. I grabbed Asha by the hand and started us down the stairs. "That won't hold long."

"Where are we going? She asked, holding onto my tightly.

"If I told you," I said, opening one of the large wooden doors that led outside to the campus, "That would ruin the surprise."

We turned into the dark alleyway behind the dormitory and slowed our pace, both of us out of breath.

Asha stopped, bending over. "Leannan, hold on," She panted. "I don't know if this is a good idea. We're out past curfew, hiding from guards, probably going somewhere we shouldn't be going. We're gonna get caught."

Asha was going to get me killed.

"Hey,” I pulled her to me by her hands and wrapped my arms around her. Our lips met. I whispered to her. “Who knows when we will see each other again, trust me.”

Asha smiled at me and kissed me back. “I’m going to miss you.”

From behind us, a voice came. "A poor night for you two to be out here."

We both turned, startled, to see the silhouette of a man, long hair flowing in the wind, standing at the end of the alley.

"Who are you?" I asked, noticing that the temperature had suddenly become cold enough that I could see my breath.

The man laughed. "What did your lady say earlier? Something about stealing the Maiden's colors and giving each of the Mothers a blue horned baby?"

"No. . ." Asha whispered. I could feel her shaking in my arms.

Fog billowed into the alleyway from behind the man as he began slowly walking towards us. Every step he took echoed off the stone walls.

“Azeralphane isn’t real!” I shouted, not believing the words I said.

Two glowing yellow eyes appeared on the silhouette’s face.

"Oh, I assure you, I am."