"Miss Gold?" I said, hardly believing she was there. Fragments of my door lay scattered around me, and a corpse bled out on my linoleum, but I was still relieved to see her. I set the chair down cautiously, not wanting to offend, but regretted it instantly as she covered the distance between us in three swift strides and fastened her fingers around my neck.

"I asked you a question," she hissed. I couldn't breathe. Her cold grip constricted like steel and I felt my feet leave the floor. Though I struggled, she neither moved nor relented. Spots swam in front of my eyes, nothing whatsoever like fairy lights.

"Stop it! What are you doing?" Katherine shrieked, and I felt more than saw her rushing at Miss Gold.

"Be still!" the woman shouted at her, and Katherine nearly fell face forward in her effort to obey. More words followed but they were muffled, and I couldn't understand them. Someone might have been crying.

"Please," an unnaturally calm voice cut through my waning consciousness, "I just found out magic is real. Please don't take it away from me."

The hand around my throat loosened, only a little, but it was enough that I could suck fresh air into my lungs. Miss Gold turned toward Becca and bared her teeth.

"It is true then," she whirled back to me, "What have you done with the others?"

"The other whghk—" She squeezed again, cutting me off in a feral snarl, her piercing, pale blue stare knifing straight into my skull. As my consciousness began to crumble, I imagined another face superimposed over hers, ghostly white, with hideously sharp fangs, and shining, golden eyes.

"There isn't anyone else!" Katherine shrieked.

My eyes went dark. My ears rang. I counted four heartbeats that must have been my own before the room rushed back and I dropped to the floor in a widening pool of blood that wasn't mine. Sight returned slowly, but sounds echoed and amplified between my own gasping coughs.

"What do you mean?" Miss Gold demanded, "Who is the girl?"

"My name is Becca, ma'am."

"I did not address you."

"She works at the storage facility!"

"I don't anymore."

"Be quiet! Who contacted me?"

Nobody answered for a while, then Katherine's voice, trembling, "I did."

"What did you mean by it? What has Thomas done?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me what has happened, girl!"

"Nothing!" Something inside Katherine burst, and her shouted words matched the ferocity and volume of my godmother's. "He needs you, and you were off dragging your ass who knows where just letting him figure all this shit out on his own! Now she's here and he's hurting more than ever and it's your goddamn fault!"

Miss Gold didn't answer for a moment and in the silence my vision finally returned, though I'd have preferred to see something more comforting than the blank eyes of a dead child. "Who is . . ." I croaked, then decided I wasn't ready to know, "Did you kill him?"

Miss Gold turned to regard me, eyes narrow but her demeanor had taken a sharp turn. She walked quickly to the door and set it back in place, then pulled a phone from her handbag and tapped the screen once.

"I am at the apartment. I require repairs and the immediate disposal of a body." Then she turned back to me, "Wash that off, Thomas. Rinse those clothes and give them to me."

"What do . . ."

"Do it now!" she commanded, the anger beneath her skin resurfacing, and her words went straight to my spine. I stood in the bathtub seconds later stripping down while water from the shower head poured over me.

I could hear voices from the living room but was unable to leave until I'd cleansed the blood from my skin, and I was fine with that. I should have been more troubled than I was. The kid on my floor couldn't have been more than ten.

A door slammed as I finished and wrapped a towel around my waist, gathered the stained clothing, and cautiously returned to the living room. Miss Gold stood alone and pensive, her arms crossed in front of her. When she heard me, she turned, and I braced myself for shouting or worse. Instead, she spoke softly.

"Katherine will be a great asset to you. You chose her well."

"She chose me," I replied warily.

"Perhaps," she answered and took the hagstone from my coffee table, then passed it to me. "Look at it." She indicated the body. If an aura was the imprint of a person's will against the Veil, would a corpse even have one? Did I want to know?

Partly from curiosity but mostly because I didn't want to piss her off, I held the stone up to my eye. The "child" was naked, covered in gray skin with dark spots on its shoulders and the back of its neck. A shock of black hair stuck out high on its distended skull and ran down its back like a mane, ending in a short tail. I couldn't see its face, but the ears were long and bestial, and two black, twisting horns spiraled outward from its forehead.

"What the—What—" I took a step back, dropping my wet clothes on the floor.

"It is a phouka," she answered, then dismissed the question that was on my tongue. "Specifically, a satyr. They have a very acute sense of smell and are drawn in particular to highly active pituitaries and the hormones they produce. This one is very far from home."

I looked again, noticing its well-muscled arms. It wasn't any bigger than a ten-year-old, but this was no child. "What's wrong with its legs?"

"Nothing, they are are digitigrade."

'Which means . . ."

"It means it walks on its toes, like a goat."

I looked again briefly, then let the stone fall to my side.

"It's a disguise," I said with a sigh, "I thought the hagstone showed auras and magic."

"As I have already explained, it attunes your sight to what lies beyond the Veil. Your natural eyes see a glamor. The satyr has wrapped itself within the folds of probability, and the glain neidr reveals its truth."

She glanced at her phone, then stepped toward me, "Come. You are not ready to witness what is about to take place." She picked up my wet clothes and threw them onto the café table, then took hold of my arm and steered me to the bedroom.

Katherine threw her arms around my bare chest after Miss Gold shut the door behind us, and Becca averted her eyes, blushing furiously.

"I'm sorry," Katherine said weakly, "I texted her, told her you were losing control. I didn't think she'd try to kill you. I just wanted her to come back and help."

Miss Gold folded her arms again, glaring angrily despite what she'd told me in the other room. "I have been inconvenienced more than you can know by your deceit. If not for the creature lurking close by, this would have wasted a great deal of my time and placed you all in further danger. As it stands, my arrival has been fortuitous." She pointed a finger at arm's length, straight at Katherine's face. "However, you will not lie to me again. Have I made myself clear?"

Katherine shook, but her face remained defiant, "No."

Miss Gold's eyebrows retreated from the heat blazing in her eyes, "No?"

"I really don't give a fuck what you've been doing. Your bullshit secrets are what put everyone here in danger, and we're lucky Becky . . ."

"Becca," I said reflexively, but Katherine continued unabated, building up steam.

"We're lucky she's the only accident. You're the only one we can go to with questions and we have nothing but questions. I've been fighting my own feelings every single day to help this man stay ahead of whatever the hell you did to him—"

"He was imbalanced. I merely corrected him." The calm in Miss Gold's voice threatened to break.

"He was perfect the way he was! I don't care if he was sick, you made a normal life impossible for him and you're going to fix it! I want to help so badly, but I can't. I don't know how. If there's anything you know, anything you can do to help him, you're going to do it right now or I swear I'm going to shove that magic box and everything in it straight up your fucking ass!"

Katherine panted, still worked up from her tirade. Miss Gold didn't snarl or scream, she just radiated fury like angry clouds before a thunderstorm, and having recently experienced that side of her, I feared for Katherine's safety. After a few tense moments, it faded, almost instantly, and her features grew stony and purposeful.

"Very well," she said, and three of us let out explosive sighs of relief, "Thomas, please get dressed. I must soon return to my work, but we cannot leave until the task outside is complete and in that time I will share what more I can."

I looked around the crowded room, helpless until Katherine leaned across Becca to pull a pair of sweatpants from my dresser and tossed them to me. For some reason everyone paused, waiting for me to put them on, so I pulled them up under the towel as quickly and modestly as I could. At least Becca turned away again, still blushing.

"You were concerned when I told you about the lights," I began, trying to forget I was still half dressed in a room full of women.

"Yes," she said, "but that is left for the end. There are things you must know first."

I managed to squeeze past Katherine and grab a shirt from the closet to slip it awkwardly over my head while she held onto my arm, still trembling. Becca sat on the edge of my bed, listening intently.

"A very long time ago," Miss Gold began, "the Fae were scattered. Those who crossed the Veil had little chance in this new world. Many were killed, many more simply died. Those who were stronger, more dangerous, were seen as monsters. Many myths were born from these, among them, changelings."

"Like me."

"Yes, Thomas. The offspring of human and Fae parents were born human, but in adolescence some would become Fae, leading to the belief that the Fae stole human children and replaced them with their own. Their primitive understanding wrought much mistrust, fear, and death between people of all races."

Becca nodded as if in agreement, and Miss Gold continued her story.

"Eventually a powerful being crossed into this world and succeeded in drawing other Fae to himself. These exiles banded together, finding refuge on an island in the Atlantic and crowned Finvarra their king." She paused, and I recognized the look on her face. She was editing the story as she told it, deciding which parts to skip.

"He not only desired to give displaced beings a home, he sought peace with humankind. Part of that peace included protection from the worst of the Fae, and he appointed three mighty generals, Merowech, his wife Maeve, and their son, Alberich, all of them true immortals, like Finvarra himself, as Wardens of the Veil.

"For centuries, the Fae procreated through humankind and they became a civilization, but with the free interaction between species, they also made a terrible discovery. On rare occasions, such a pairing would produce an abomination, a creature in which lived a perpetual conflict of natures, free of this world's governance, lacking rule or boundary. Such power, it was feared, could rend the Veil and unmake the world."

She paused again, taking stock of each of us. Katherine and I were captivated, but Becca seemed downright enthralled. With a nod, Miss Gold went on.

"In the end, however, the danger did not come from within. An incursion of dark beings from the outer realms, the Chthonians, denizens of chaos, breached into this world, and there was war. Human and Fae alike fought against them, but before the end, Finvarra perished, as did Alberich."

"Miss Gold," I interrupted, "this is interesting, but what does it have to do with us?"

"Be patient Thomas, you wanted answers. I believe I told you some truths would only reveal more questions. I am addressing those that are most relevant in the necessary order."

She stared, waiting for a response, and continued when I nodded.

"The war was won, but at great cost. Both humans and Fae had been devastated and many mourned, but none more than Maeve. She cursed the world she had fought for, which had cost the life of her son, and vowed she would leave it forever and return to her natural home, an impossible task.

"Merowech was more sensible. Though grieving and disillusioned of Finvarra's vision, he accepted this world as his home, but instead of making peace with humans, he hid from them. Those like-minded gathered each to their chosen lord, and from the kingdom of Fae was born two courts: the Seelie and the Unseelie."

"Summer and Winter," Becca said in a whisper. Miss Gold appraised her, apparently impressed.

"That is not what those words mean, but yes. Maeve became known as Mab, the Queen of Ice, and Merowech is Oberon, the Summer Lord."

"Oberon?" Katherine said in disbelief, "that's Shakespeare."

Miss Gold regarded her interruption less favorably than Becca's, "It is inevitable that a few humans learn something of the world that lives in secret among them. These two Courts have been at war for millennia, but on some things, they agree. For fear that the offspring of changelings might rend the Veil once more, the Fae were prohibited from mating. Today, when a changeling is born, it is taken to the court of its Fae parent. If it transforms, it is welcomed as one of them. If not, those in the Winter Court are typically killed, while Oberon keeps them as servants, never permitted to leave or breed because of the seed lying dormant within them. This law above all others is observed by every Fae who knows the price of chaos."

"Is that what this is all about?" I asked, "I'm supposed to be in some fairy court instead of college?"

"No," she shook her head, "That is an issue, but you are not the only unfettered changeling and it can be managed. Thomas, you mentioned lights. Can you describe them?"

The subject change caught me off guard, but I did my best to explain what I saw and what Katherine had helped me deduce about them. Miss Gold listened patiently and didn't answer right away when I finished.

"Your Katherine has a capacity for wisdom," she said finally, "and she is correct, though neither of you have looked deeply enough. Do you recall I told you that some may learn to see?"

"You mean auras."

"Yes, but other secrets lie hidden within the Veil as you now know, and it is apparent that you have received an unexpected gift. As your mind develops new neural pathways, you will see more clearly and come to understand their meaning."

"Which is what?" I felt impatient, like Miss Gold was deliberately holding important information just outside my reach.

She sighed, "All living things possess the ability to influence their world. This potential is manifest in the Continuum through the unmade lands, but each world is not as discreet as you believe. In the reality you perceive, many hundreds of worlds, so similar that they are nearly identical, closely overlay one another, and you pass between them constantly. Most actions vanish within this confluence like a stone in a stream, but there are subtleties that distinguish one from another. It is the answer to many mysteries."

"Déjà vu?" Becca asked, and Miss Gold again stopped to consider her.

"Yes, among others. You do not pass far enough outside your world to enter the Veil, but each intent and deed causes a shift, and every shift leaves a trace. To put it simply, these lights are the points where possibility meets action, terminals that represent the transfer of energy when a sentient will acts and is acted upon."

She checked her phone again impatiently, then continued. "It is not an unknown phenomenon and many cultures have sampled the truth of it. It is the Chi in Taoist philosophy, the Prana in Hindi, the Dunamis in ancient Greek, the Brio, Manitou, Pneuma, and Anima. It is where the line blurs between the physical and the metaphysical. The lights you perceive are paths, or more accurately, the gateways to those paths."

Katherine said, "Anima is Jungian."

"Jung only derived the word and his interpretation is lacking, as are most of the others."

"Does this anima explain what happened to Rachel?" I asked.

"Your ability to perceive and interact with it presumes upon the possibility. I believe you have imposed a geas upon her."

"A what?"

"An instruction placed within her that she is compelled to follow, though from what you have said, it is not complete."

"So, I really am controlling her."

"It is not a command, Thomas. Someone under the influence of a geas is subject to a feedback loop constructed deep within their psyche. They become obsessed until they complete it or are given a new instruction, at which point the loop breaks and they are free. A person may resist, though they cannot dismiss it, and in the attempt many have gone mad."

"Perfect," I complained, "because it wasn't bad enough before."

"Do not trouble yourself," Miss Gold waved off my anxiety, "you said this compulsion faded with time?"

"I don't know. Seems to."

"Then it is either not a true geas or an incomplete one, and I suspect you are correct to assume it is dependent on your chemistry. Access to these pathways is not free and they are not constantly open to manipulation. Some influence can be forced through, but in most cases, instilling a persistent, passive compulsion requires a willingness to submit, a sense of deep trust. It is a guess, but the ability you inherited from your father likely simulates this trust, and if that is true, then you are witnessing opportunities where these powers converge."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means your father's power creates a bond of attraction or fear through which you must pass to reach a person's will, or anima if you prefer. When the chemical bond is broken, the connection is shut and the geas will almost certainly break. It was an astute guess."

"A lucky one. How do you know about it? Is that your trick? Can you see the lights too?"

Her brow knit and she looked into my face, not just making contact or scooping out my brain with an evil eye. She connected.

"After a fashion." She admitted gravely. "Thomas, this is not an ability your father possesses."

"Then how did he get it?" Katherine asked.

Miss Gold didn't turn away from me. "Do you recall why your mother was killed?"

"You said it was revenge. Something my great-grandmother did."

"Your eighth-great-grandmother, ten generations ago, willingly broke the one law common to both Courts."

I didn't get it at first, but then the elements of Miss Gold's story began to knit together in my mind: the Fae kingdom, the war against chaos, the changeling prohibition, an unexpected power.

"Miss Gold?" I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking, "My great, great—whatever grandmother—she was a Fae, wasn't she?"

Her eyes remained on mine and I thought I saw, only for a second, a hint of regret in her nod of affirmation.