I woke with a splitting headache. I groaned in agony, shifting against the cold floor.

“Please tell me you’re ok this time.” A voice said. I liked the voice, it was gentle. It was also red, which I didn’t think voices were supposed to be.

I opened my eyes but was immediately blinded by the lights. Eyes closed then, for now.

“Probably,” I answered the voice. “Where am I?”

“Are you sure you’re ok? You’re not gonna decide I kidnapped you?”

“Well, that very much depends on if you’ve kidnapped me.” I didn’t think the voice would kidnap me though. “How many times have I woken up?”

“This is only the third time,” she said. The voice was feminine. And a flower?

“Lily. That’s your name.” The information started to pour in now, who she was, why I liked her, why she was red, what we had been doing. “I’m suffering backlash.”

I opened my eyes again, squinting but fighting to keep them open. We were still in the study room, it seemed. I wanted to see… there she was. Lily sat in a chair, facing where I lay on the floor. She looked upset, but she wasn’t hurt. She also wasn’t quite looking at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Whatever I said or did, I’m sorry.”

“I get the feeling that what happened to you was a lot worse,” she said. She seemed to have accepted I was back but still looked extremely uncomfortable. “I brought these. I wasn’t- I didn’t want to change you- I’m sorry.”

She held up a plastic shopping bag. It was transparent enough that I could see denim inside. Oh, I had peed myself.

“Don’t worry, this happens,” I said. It’d been a while, but it could get far worse than this.

Lily stepped outside to let me change. As I looked at the space around me, I realized there were now two tables and several more chairs than there had been. That was a clue, the first thread to some grand tapestry, but I couldn’t see it.

Lily and I were not the same size, but it wasn’t enough of an issue to be more than uncomfortable. My old pants and panties went into the plastic bag, which I twisted and tied closed. As I transferred my phone from the old to the new pants I checked the time. 3:43 pm. I hadn’t thought to check the time when we went into the folded library, so I couldn’t tell for certain how long I’d been out, but it had likely been a few hours.

I put the plastic bag in my backpack, deciding against carrying it.

I understood that I was supposed to be embarrassed by this and I probably would be eventually, but I was not fully my normal self yet. I accepted that small mercy for what it was. Future Claire could process the shame later.

I also looked around for the piece of the outsider. I had a half-memory of a piece of it breaking off. After a minute I found it, a piece cut out of obsidian. It looked rough but was smooth to the touch. It was small enough to fit entirely in my hand.

I shouldn’t have been able to notice it breaking off, it was so small, but the Weaving was a god of connections. Excess information would often come with the backlash, which had a much better chance of being useful than divinatory static.

Lily was waiting for me just outside the room. She looked down to confirm I was wearing clean pants and then seemed to need to look anywhere else.

“So…” Lily trailed off. “We need to talk, but I really don’t want to spend any more time in that room and you really want to be in clothes that fit. Is… is it better if I come with you to your place or if I wait for you?”

That was an excellent question. Honestly, I’d rather just go to another study room and have the conversation there. Except, I hadn’t killed the outsider or even hurt it.

“Are you still hearing voices?” I asked Lily. She nodded, looking almost embarrassed about it.

So it was still after Lily and would be back eventually.

Margaret would be the best equipped to identify and remove the targeting mechanism from Lily. Even if she couldn’t, the house wards would make her safest there.

“Come with me,” I said reluctantly. “My mother can probably help with the outsider too.”

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

Lily managed to last an impressive five minutes’ worth of walking before she started asking questions.

“So… magic is real?”

I looked around us, but the campus seemed to be pretty barren. Right, no classes. It was… probably safe. The bird perched on a bench told me Margaret would know but Lily had already said it out loud. That damage was done.

“You’ve been introduced to magic by a hedge witch,” I said for Margaret’s benefit, “so there’s one thing you need to know about first. The most important thing.”

Lily nodded, rapt with excitement to hear about magic. I was impressed, considering her introduction to it. She walked slightly behind me as I led her to Margaret’s house.

“The Inquisition.” How do I explain this in a way that doesn’t sound insane? “The reason magic is secret isn’t because witches want it to be secret. A lot of us do, but we don’t have a choice. The Inquisition is… a secret society. If they find out you know about real magic, they will kidnap and torture you for everything you know about me and my mother, then do the same to everyone they think you’ve told.”

Then they would come for Margaret and I with overwhelming force. It was an extreme case, but I knew of one witch who had her home quite literally blown up while she was inside. They’d called it a gas line explosion.

Lily was quiet for a moment as she processed the implications.

“That’s why you told me to pretend nothing happened if you died,” she realized. “To protect me and your mom from them.” I nodded. Some witches killed witnesses and called it a mercy. I wasn’t sure I disagreed.

On a bad day, I might say that I’d hand Margaret over to the Inquisition gladly. I wouldn’t actually. Not even she deserved that, and the witches she knew about definitely didn’t.

A thread tugged at me, a detail I’d forgotten in the chaos of the folded library, but I couldn’t find it.

“They have people who you’d never suspect, who live their entire lives normally. Or maybe they recruit people later in life, it’s hard to figure out how they operate. They have people in the government, the FBI, not all of them but enough. Every person you tell, you are putting everyone you know and everyone they know in danger.”

“Keep the secret, I got it,” Lily said glumly. I didn’t like the dismissive tone, but the severe look on her face made me think she understood. “Why do you even do this, then? If you get attacked by monsters and hunted by the Illuminati?”

I reached for something positive about magic.

“Well, I didn’t get much of a choice,” I began, which earned me a look of sympathy, “but I think I’d be doing this anyway. Magic is…” Was it too embarrassing to say? Screw it. “There’s a great quote from one of my predecessors, Lilian Rivers, where she calls witchcraft inherently narcissistic. Magic so clearly does not like humans but we insist on making it work for us anyway. Something is inspiring about that. It’s proof we can control things, make them better.”

I was met with a painfully long silence. I couldn’t look at her. I hadn’t realized how much I needed her to understand. This was the only good part of my life.

“I see,” Lily said finally. Dammit. “So, the lie detector thing, that’s magic?”

“It is,” I answered. I did a fairly good job keeping the agitation out of my voice. “The spell is called communication, it’s the first one I learned. It also makes me fluent in every language.”

“That does sound really useful,” she admitted. “How many spells do you know?”

“Only two,” I said. Lily didn’t look impressed. “My other is called animation.”

Eager to show off, I pointed at her and imagined a thread running from the tip of my finger to the palm of her hand. I flicked my finger up and her hand rose too, much to her surprise.

“Woah! That feels weird.”

She fought the pull and I immediately dropped the effect. Trying to overpower her would turn the otherwise negligible backlash fairly strenuous.

“It works on anything, not just people.” I explained “But it isn’t very strong as you can tell.”

“I get it. That’s why you didn’t use it against the spider demon,” Lily said. I fought back the embarrassment.

“Anyway, they’re quite hard to learn, which is why I only have two. I’m pretty close to my third though.”

Lily gave me an odd look as if she was evaluating me. Margaret’s house was in sight now.

“You fought off a spider demon. You basically have superpowers. You’re a great wizard.”

“I’m not a good witch,” I said immediately. “The spider only avoided my ward because it didn’t know what it was. I’m pretty sure it could’ve barreled right through it.”

Lily looked like she was going to say something else, but I cut her off.

“Let me show you something,” I said. I pointed across the street at Margaret’s house. This magic would be impressive, which might even help her understand my passion for it. “Count how many houses there are on that street. Don’t look too hard, just give me the number.”

Lily complied, her eyes moving over the street. I took the opportunity to covertly catch my breath.

“Five.” Perfect.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Now tell me the color of each of their front doors.” She eyed me curiously, but I just waited in anticipation.

Lily said each one as she looked at them.

“Blue, dark brown, a bit darker brown, and a light brown.”

I couldn’t hold back my grin.

“That’s only four colors.”

Lily paused, looking back at the houses.

“I miscounted,” she tried. “Wait- no there are five houses still. What?”

I stepped behind her, pointing over her shoulder at the house. I noticed the spot on her neck that I had pinched to wake her up was bruised, a smear on her bronze skin.

“Follow the line of my finger. Just focus on the point at the end there and you’ll get it.”

Margaret’s house looked jarring compared to the rest of the street. It was several feet further back from the road and twice as large as any of the others. The pure dark oak looked rotten, which I knew Margaret had to do on purpose. It truly felt like the place an evil witch would live.

After a minute, Lily made a gasp of surprise.

“I see it!” she said excitedly. “How could I not before? I… I remember it being there.”

“That’s my mother’s specialty,” I explained. I was so glad she enjoyed this. “Information magic. That specific effect makes it almost impossible to notice unless it’s pointed out to you. Even if you knew something was there, you wouldn’t be able to find where.”

“So, is that where we’re going?” Lily asked. My mood dropped immediately.

“It is,” I confirmed. Lily’s expression dropped to match mine. “So, the rules. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Don’t lie, she has communication too. And don’t… interfere, no matter what she does to me. It won’t last forever.”

Her look of sympathy grew with each rule. How much had Lily put together by now, from how I acted? She was shockingly observant, but this was far more direct.

“Let’s go,” I said, stepping away from her and starting towards the house. The incline of the hill was sharp enough that I was breathing a little heavier by the time I got to the front porch. It very well could’ve been made that way to spite me.

I rehearsed the script I’d made in my head. I needed to spin a narrative where Margaret and I were conspiring to manipulate Lily, leveraging Margaret’s need to feel superior over her anger.

I knew what was probably going to happen. Lily followed me onto the porch, stopping to squeeze my hand in reassurance before dropping it. That did help.

“I have not betrayed you yet,” I said as I opened the door.

Margaret looked down from the banister of her workshop, obviously knowing we were coming. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lily processing the implications of me saying that before she schooled her expression. We walked in and waited just outside the entryway.

“Every day you tell me that,” Margaret said. She glared at Lily while speaking to me. “And yet for the past few, it seems less true each time.”

“You know-” I began before collapsing. The icy feeling overtook me. I’d expected it eventually, but usually she lectured me first. I could hear things happening, someone was moving then someone else yelled and the movement stopped.

I never knew how long this was, in the moment. It was like my body wasn’t my body. The pain, because of course it still hurt, wasn’t enough to remind me that it was my body and I was real. I wasn’t sure I was real.

After some length of time, I reemerged from the icy prison. I regained feeling in my body and weakly twitched my fingers. I had fallen in such a way that I could see my hand, which had flakes of frost on it. I guessed I’d been out between five and ten minutes.

Margaret allowed me enough time to struggle to my feet. Lily stood almost perfectly still where she’d been, but I didn’t look longer than to confirm she was alive. The glance gave me a surprising impression of restrained fury.

“Now, why do you think I did that?” Margaret asked.

Fuck.

“Be…” Speaking was difficult after being frozen for so long, which was a good cover as I thought. I ran through today’s events desperately. “Because I… showed the girl… the house.”

That was what Margaret would care about the most, the leak of information. Calling her ‘the girl’ depersonalized her and made her seem unimportant. Worth letting me keep, I hoped.

“Yes. Why on earth did you show her my demesne before you made your request? If I disagree now, I have more than enough cause to kill her. You gain nothing doing it this way. It isn’t even betraying me for a reason, it’s just stupid. So why?”

That… was a good point. Of course, of course, the one time that Lily saw was a time when I actually deserved it.

“Because I am stupid,” I said. Stupidity was the greatest sin in Margaret’s eyes-

“No!” Margaret snarled. “I am not so worthless a teacher as to make you stupid. It is because you are weak! It’s because you are chronically incapable of thinking with your head instead of your snatch. How many times must we do this? Will you just give my entire legacy away to the first harlot who waves her tits at you?”

I shamefully waited for another round of the curse, almost preferring it to this, but Margaret seemed to make an effort to calm herself.

“Please tell me you brought her here for a good reason? You’ve exposed her to enough of your foolishness already.”

The plan was worthless now. Direct approach then.

“This girl was attacked by a hedge witch. It sent an outsider capable of folding space after her. She and I were both pulled into a clearly magical place. The hedge witch left me no choice but to induct this girl into our world. I ask that you find and remove the targeting mechanism placed on this girl.”

“Yes, yes, I know why you told her. Why would I help her?” She honestly sounded curious, which was good.

“Because she has valuable information that can locate the hedge witch before they bring the Inquisition down on you,” I said. ‘You’ not ‘us,’ she wouldn’t respond well to us as equals.

“Have you fucked her yet?” Margaret asked.

What?

“No.”

“Then why are you wearing her clothing?”

Really, that was it? She wanted me to say it.

“I peed myself amid backlash after constructing a ritual to escape from the outsider.” I decided to play up the humiliation and let her have her fun. It’s not like this could look any worse to Lily. “I panicked when I saw the outsider and failed to consider the lack of a leyline crossing in extradimensional space.”

Margaret snorted.

“Yes, that does sound like something you’d do. Both of you, up here then.”

I didn’t look at Lily as I walked upstairs, though I could hear her following me. The stairs creaked under our combined weight.

“Have you betrayed me yet?” Margaret asked as we reached the top of the stairs.

“No.”

“Then recharge the wards. You, girl, stand over here.” Margaret led Lily to the center of the room, where we would draw rituals. I pressed my hand against the ritual point on the wall, noting the frost hadn’t yet melted.

I saw Lily pause, noticing the walls not lining up with the area below, but she didn’t say anything. I took the opportunity to observe her, gauging her body language. It was tight and tense, but she was holding her composure well. She was doing almost no fidgeting, which Margaret may or may not know to be surprising.

I didn’t understand the mechanics of how Margaret saw through the birds. She couldn’t possibly be processing all that information at once, but her knowledge seemed too extensive for her to be manually choosing to watch through a specific bird’s eyes. I couldn’t imagine her intentionally choosing to watch me all day. Even if she could stand that, it would undermine the bird’s value as a tool of espionage.

There was a bit more backlash than usual when I charged the wards, enough to surprise me. I dove into my mind to repair the combined damage from the backlash and the curse. It took far longer than it should’ve, but I managed to get the threads orderly. This had the added benefit of reinforcing my persona at the same time.

“Claire!” Margaret pulled me out of my mind. “Let’s see you learn something from this. You’re going to be drawing a modular diagnostic ritual.”

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

It took an hour and a half, but this ritual was a thing of beauty. Margaret was understating it when she called this ritual modular. With only minor changes, this could divine information about people, objects, and even concepts if you could somehow get them inside the primary circle.

Modifications to the subrituals, connected by a line drawn to the main circle, would change what information was obtained. You could even change the subrituals based on the information obtained without redrawing the primary circle.

Margaret wasn’t having me reference a book, which implied she’d made this ritual herself. It definitely had her style of genius about it.

After a trip to the bathroom, during which I also took the opportunity to change into my own clothing, Lily stood in the center of the primary circle. I placed my hand against one of the three subrituals, which would be enough to activate the entire thing.

“Have you betrayed me yet?”

“No,” I said. Lily had long since stopped reacting to the question. She looked tired and I realized she’d never seen real ritualcraft. What I did back at the folded library was all free-hand, which was suicidally reckless unless you had no choice. She probably hadn’t expected us to spend as long as we had drawing the ritual to precision.

“Then get on with it.”

I activated the ritual, feeling the backlash wash over me. It was only a sharp headache, despite the complexity of this ritual. A combination of the precision to which it was drawn and having access to the leyline crossing again.

The ritual flooded my mind with information about magic on Lily. I could see it, the marker that had been placed on her. It wasn’t a physical mark, instead being attached to… the concept of Lily?

There was also something else. It was too blurry to make out, though I probably could with modifications to the ritual.

“What do you see?” Margaret asked.

I weighed the options in a split second. Was this a test? No, she wouldn’t teach me this ritual if she wanted to curse Lily. She’d do it and then berate me for not thinking of it.

“It’s a conceptual marker,” I said. “No distinguishing characteristics, any god could do this with a spell.”

“Could you remove it?” She asked. I shook my head immediately. “Good, hubris like that could be the death of you. Go get Irregular Disenchantment volume one.”

Margaret was always nicer during lessons, I noted while I hunted down the book. Maybe she enjoyed teaching, or at least talking about magic. I certainly did.

Just as any god could make a conceptual marker, any god could remove one. In general, the more specific the effect was, the more specific the countereffect would need to be. It only took another half hour to build a ritual to get the Weaving to remove the marker from Lily. I could probably do it free-hand in five minutes if I accepted the backlash.

It wasn’t surprising that Margaret wouldn’t have been in danger from the spider monster, but it still stung. A reminder of how inferior I was to her in so many ways.

Margaret seemed finished with us, walking back over to her ritual drafting table. I could tell how badly Lily wanted to leave. Her eyes flicked to the door every few minutes and her fidgeting was getting less suppressed. I felt quite bad as I spoke up.

“One more thing.” I intentionally did not say a name, since both ‘Mom’ and ‘Margaret’ had upset her before. I held out the shard of the spider monster I’d found. “Would this be enough of a point of connection to find the outsider?”

Margaret turned around, looking at the shard for a moment.

“Have you betrayed me yet?”

“No.”

“Then bring it here.”

I walked over and Margaret grabbed it out of my hand without letting our skin touch. She stared at it in her palm for a moment.

“It isn’t in real space currently,” Margaret said. I blinked. She could not possibly be doing that with a spell. “But its history is very short. I can tell you where it was summoned.” Did she have a spell connected to a ritual somehow? But why would she need to do that kind of divination on demand?

Then my brain caught up with the rest of what she said.

“You know where the ritual is.”

Margaret nodded, smiling for some reason. Did she look strained or was I imagining it? Which answer did that make more likely?

“It’s an apartment building, Lunatics. What an awful pun. Room 412. I’ll be keeping this as payment.” She pocketed the shard and turned her back to me again.

What would happen if I just brought a knife and stabbed her one day, while her back was turned? She had knives in the kitchen, so unless she were stupid she’d have a plan for that. This was a well-worn thread of logic.

“I have not betrayed you yet,” I said as I left, which was met with a snort from Margaret. Lily was by the top of the stairs, looking relieved.

The reason for Margaret’s amusement was clear. If it was at Lunatics, then it was my fault the hedge witch had been able to avoid Margaret’s notice.

Neither of us said anything as we descended the stairs. Once we were out the front door, Lily sighed in relief. I kept walking, not trusting my voice until we were at the bottom of the hill.

Now comes the almost-as-hard part.

“So…” Lily began. I’d stopped at the road to let her catch up to me. “Can we talk about… that?”

“No,” I said. I kept my eyes forward. We really were shockingly close to the dorms. Did Margaret do that on purpose? Why would she?

“Claire…” She reached for my hand but I pulled it away. “Ok, ok. Can we go by my dorm room and drop off my clothes then? Before we go to the apartment building, I mean.”

She seriously still wanted to…

“Ok.” I managed.