"Is something wrong?"

Cameron jumped at the sudden question, then slowly released his breath, looking at Adam. They were at a youth center in the city, though at that hour on a Friday, it was mostly empty. They weren't questioned about why they weren't in school, however, as it was also popular among home-schooled youth.

It had only been two weeks since the lessons began, and Cameron still didn't trust Adam, even if the other mage never attempted to take him anywhere private. In fact, the ancient mage always arranged for them to meet somewhere public.

"My friend… told me something," Cameron said. "I've just been… a bit confused."

"What did he tell you?" Adam asked, sitting on the couch and taking a sip of his soda.

"Remember how he was shaken-up at the warehouse on Monday?" Cameron asked.

"I do," Adam nodded. "His mind was rather troubled, though as I promised to you, I didn't pry into it."

Cameron shifted around for a few moments.

"He said," Cameron hesitated. "He said that a god was looking for a son of Ulrima when he went to Elaine's that afternoon. And that Cupid showed up to interfere."

"A demigod?" Adam looked bewildered, nearly dropping his cup. "That's… if there were a demigod in the city, I'd know about it."

Cameron shifted again, then sat down on the love seat.

"He said that the Cupid, someone called Namil, I think, said that the demigod's power was bound."

Adam thought over that for a few moments, then asked more questions about what Cameron had been told, though it wasn't much. Sighing, he stood and asked Cameron if he wanted to meet a god.

"Um… meet a god?"

"Yes," Adam said. "I can summon some. Minor ones, not High Gods like Ulrima."

"What's the difference between High Gods and minor ones?"

"Most gods," Adam explained. "Require faith to fuel their power. High Gods are fueled simply by the existence of what they represent. For Ulrima, it's love and lust, two things that will always exist. Also, sex. He's also considered the patron of protection, though that actually goes to a different High God, who represents protection. Ulrima's just incredibly protective, which probably explains why the High Goddess who represents protectors and sanctuaries fell for him."

"What does Ulrima think of rapists?" Cameron asked quietly.

"Depends on who they're raping," Adam answered. "Rape falls into his territory of lust and sex, so he doesn't mind it much. Unless it's against one of his children or something. In that case… well, let's just say that I'd pity anyone stupid enough to rape one of his children, even if the child's divinity is bound."

"So praying to him about rapists wouldn't do anything?" Cameron asked.

"It might, or it might not," Adam shrugged. "To be honest, most of the High Gods ignore prayers, since they aren't necessary. They don't care about a following and have many things to do, so they can't really attend to prayers. If someone raped you, Cam, I'd recommend praying to a minor god over a High God. I'm going to summon one who actually sits firmly in the love territory, if you want to join me for it. He really hates rapists. It does require going to my home, though, and I know how adverse you are to that."

"I-I wasn't raped," Cameron shook his head. "I-it was-"

"Someone you knew," Adam finished, and Cameron nodded. "Well, Sebar will probably listen to the request."

Cameron shifted around uncomfortably, but ultimately, he agreed to meet with a god. Part of it was because he had the opportunity to meet one, and part of it was because the voices in his head seemed elated at the idea of it. While he'd begun to trust Adam more than anyone else he knew, he had nearly an absolute trust in the voices.

"Whoo-hoo! We're getting to meet a god again!"

"When did we ever meet a god?"

"I dunno. Probably back when we were working with that guy Evan."

"Wasn't that about eighteen thousand years ago?"

"Yeah."

"Hey! Isn't that the guy who sired, like, six demigods and demigoddesses?"

"Oh! I loved that guy!"

"Considering that he could hear us, of course you loved him. We always love the people who can hear us. They're always awesome."

"We haven't met Sebar before. What do you think he's like?"

"Strong. Confident. Muscular. Probably gets all the ladies."

"Do you think he has pencils?"

"Will you guys shut up?" Cameron hissed under his breath, then flushed as Adam chuckled.

"Come on," Adam said. "I don't live far from here."

Cameron nodded, then followed Adam out of the youth center. They walked a few blocks until they reached a skyscraper apartment complex. The ancient magician led him inside and to one of the elevators, dipping his head to the security guards stationed in the lobby.

"Which floor do you live on?" Cameron asked as the elevator doors closed.

"My suite's the two top floors," Adam punched the button for the top level.

Cameron blanched when he heard that.

"You have two whole floors?"

"I own the building," Adam snorted. "It's only natural I can afford the penthouse suite."

"But… you look thirteen!"

Adam sighed. His apparent age was something Cameron brought up often, and he hadn't wanted to reveal things too much. He knew, however, that Cameron would never believe it was simply through mind magic.

"My roots are in the shift school of magic," Adam told Cameron. "I can alter my form. In about three minutes, I can take on a completely different appearance. I take on this form because it's easier to deal with things most of the time, with my current lifestyle. No one expects me to fight in the warehouse no matter how often I show up, for example."

"It also makes it easier to gain another kid's trust and lure him into your apartment for a sacrificial ritual," Cameron muttered.

"I don't do that!" Adam laughed. "Well, not anymore, and I didn't live in apartment when I did sacrifice children. Back in ancient times, we'd sacrifice young boys to appease the gods – those were the 'innocent sacrifices', not virgin girls or women the media portrays it as."

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"The gods want boys, not women?"

"The gods couldn't care less, most of the time," Adam scoffed. "What it really was amounted to nothing more than human superstition, Cameron. A natural disaster struck? The people would blame the gods and sacrifice a boy or group of boys to appease them. In reality, it was to decrease the mouths needed to feed."

"Killing people to feed less?" Cameron sounded confused. "What did natural disasters have to do with that?"

"That," Adam said as they stepped off the elevator. "Has everything to do with it. Back then, if you had an earthquake, chances were that you lost food and some space for food, too. Not enough to feed everyone. So killing people was necessary to lighten the load. They needed the girls to make babies for them and care for the babies, once they recovered from the disaster. They could only make so many at a time, after all. Meanwhile, a male could produce many children. They were also the laborers, and ate more, but again, they were the laborers, the ones who did the heavy work. The boys, on the other hand, often contributed too little. So it was them who got selected, as they were the ones best killed for the sacrifices. Especially preteen boys. They weren't needed for repopulating as much, since a boy could produce more children than a woman in nine months."

That was a bit more than Cameron had wanted to hear.

"Oh," Cameron said, then looked around the apartment they had entered.

It was spacious, with a view of the city nearly all the way around. There were stairs leading to the second floor of the suite, which Adam told him was where the bedrooms were. On the first floor was the living and gaming space, as well as the kitchen and dining room, all as one single room.

"Play games or something, if you want," Adam told him. "I have to get the stuff to start the ritual to summon Sebar. If anyone knows anything about what's going on, he probably does. He courted a daughter of Ulrima millennia ago, until she passed away."

Cameron nodded, though remained by the elevator. Adam was upstairs for several minutes before returning downstairs with an armful of containers. He made several trips up and down the stairs, then began arranging candles on the floor.

After creating a circle eighteen feet in diameter with fifty-four dark purple candles, Adam began drawing on the ground with a stick of dark purple chalk. It was only then that Cameron realized that while most of the floor was made of marble, there was a square twenty-four feet on each side made of a dark gray stone, and that was the space that Adam was using, centering everything on the slab.

"What kind of stone is that made of?" Cameron asked.

"One not of this world," Adam answered. "It's fae stone."

"Fairies?" Cameron asked.

He'd heard a little about fairies from Adam, Blake, and Greyson. They kidnapped magicians from Earth, but no one would tell him why. He didn't push the question of why, but he could sense worry and unease in the minds of the blood mage and the werewolf.

That made him uneasy.

"Yeah," Adam continued creating his magic circle, placing down eighteen crystals, each around three inches thick and eighteen tall, standing them on their ends. "Fae stone is harvested from one of their quarries. They have this massive forest of trees that create and pump out magic, which they use to connect their various worlds together and shape the worlds to their wills. The quarries where fae stone is harvested are one of the places they pumped magic into to alter. The stone makes for one of the best mediums for summoning magic."

"I know we're in America," Cameron shifted a moment, then frowned. "But shouldn't you be, like, using metric or something? Everything's always 'this many grams' and 'that many millimeters', and even though it's America, lots of people are strict on that."

"Ah," Adam chuckled. "Yeah, media's got a few things wrong. Look at the words 'magical' and 'scientific'. They give you a clue about something, in relation to measurements."

"What?" Cameron asked.

Adam looked up for a few moments, then sighed.

"Magical and imperial," he said. "Scientific and metric. They end with the same two sounds. 'al' and 'ic'. Magical rituals, formulas, potions, and such need the imperial system, that's why it's persisted. It's also part of why America won't shift to metric. A lot of America is built on magic and needs it."

"Oh," Cameron said.

Adam finished his lines, then grabbed a stick of black chalk and began making more marks, creating a series of circles around each crystal and linking them, putting three marble crystals around each crystal pillar, the marbles matching the crystals in type and color.

"So what, exactly, do the Cupids do?" Cameron asked, and Adam snorted. "What?"

"I keep forgetting how little a lot of people know," Adam said. "Especially you and those voices in your head. What do they say about the Cupids?"

"Chosen of Ulrima Protecting the Intimacy of Demigods."

"Yep," Adam said. "That is exactly what they do. By the way, if you're wondering why it's 'Cupid' and not whatever it is in the tongue the acronym actually comes from, that's because English isn't new to Earth. It's actually been around for about two billion years. Various forms and dialects, but it exists, and is spread pretty far across the universe."

"And Latin?"

"Also immigrated to Earth," Adam snorted. "I forgot how jumpy the minds of youth could be. Anyway, the primary objective of the Cupids is to ensure that demigods have good love lifes. Or lust lifes. Whichever they prefer. They don't go out of their way to ensure it happens, but they do ensure others don't interfere. Ulrima appointed them to that position because demigods have a divine aura about them that can make things difficult in the bedroom."

"I didn't need to know that."

"Not that kind of difficult," Adam chuckled when he saw the preteen's crimson face. "I meant things like other people trying to get between them or steal them or kill their lovers, and such. Ulrima's children have it worst of all. With their divine aura, it draws people to them, even if the aura itself isn't 'sensed'. It makes it even harder for them to have happier love lifes or-you know."

Adam finished with the black chalk, connecting all of the smaller circles, then began working with white chalk, and at the same time, he began setting down pink stones that gave Cameron an icky feeling as soon as the wooden box holding them was opened.

"What are those?"

"Love rocks," Adam said. "To put simply. Actual name isn't in English. It'll help me channel to a god of love. When summoning a god, you need something that falls into their domain, and for Sebar, love rocks do. They have the power to increase love. They're also extremely rare and expensive."

That last sentence had been muttered, and the only reason Cameron even heard it was because he had moved in closer to watch what was going on better.

"Then why are you using," Cameron did a quick count, then frowned. "Fifty-four of them?"

"Fifty-four has a powerful meaning in magic," Adam answered. "There are two 'numbers of magic'. The first is eighteen."

"Eighteen?" Cameron asked. "There are eighteen elements. Five lone, and thirteen linked."

"Indeed," Adam nodded. "Thirteen is technically the third 'number of magic', as it has some pretty potent power behind it as well. But there are eighteen total elements. And the number three… simply has something very magical about it. A triskelion has three legs, and in the ones for this ritual, three swirls for each leg."

Cameron looked at the triple-swirl marks, which Adam had made, the pink love stones resting on the center of each one.

"Where do you get them?"

"The love stones?" Adam asked.

"Yeah."

"They're made of the blood of a god whose primary domain is love," Adam explained. "More than half of these actually came of Sebar's blood, which should help me guide the summoning to him even better. And before you ask, you can't simply 'make' a love stone. First, that'd require bleeding a god, which isn't a good idea in the first place and second, love stones form when they bleed and their blood mixes with certain other reagents. Don't ask me what they are, because I won't tell you."

"Okay," Cameron made a face. "How much more do you need to do?"

"Almost done," Adam placed the last stone down. "I'm about to begin the summoning."

Cameron nodded, then stepped back as Adam stood in front of the circle and smacked his hands together until there was no more chalk on his fingers.

The ancient mage took a deep breath, and as he let it out, all fifty-four candles sprung to life immediately, their flames reaching up eighteen inches in height. Every time he exhaled, the flames shrunk down to more normal-sized flames.

After eighteen breaths, the crystals began to glow, and the love stones began to vibrate, lifting up into the air as the flames returned to their eighteen-inch height, no longer following the tempo of Adam's breath.

Cameron watched as the stones begin to circle, spinning faster and faster until they turned into a pink dust.

"Oh, no," Adam said.

"Was them vaporizing a bad thing?" Cameron asked.

"Uh, no," Adam said. "That's actually supposed to happen during a summoning of a god."

"The ritual got hijacked by another god."

"Yep! An even stronger god has denied Sebar the chance to even respond to the summons!"

"The voices just said-"

"That a stronger god is hijacking the ritual?" Adam asked as the crystal marbles lifted up into the air and shattered, their dust joining the pink dust swirling around. "Yep. I'm not sure why, though, since gods can simply descend on their own, especially if they have the power to hijack a summoning ritual. If a god's hijacking this summoning, then it can't be good."

The eighteen crystal pillars began to glow with a bright light before shattering as well, joining the dust cloud that filled the ritual area. Then, all at once, the flames receded, returning to normal height for candles, the dust transforming into a flurry of rose petals that exploded outward, a powerful presence that made Cameron very uncomfortable filling the room.

When he looked back to the ritual area, Cameron was met with the pink gaze and warm smile of the god who had been summoned, who appeared to be in his late teens, maybe early twenties.

"Hello, Cameron," the god ignored the summoner. "I am Ulrima, and it is good to finally meet you, my son."