I left a message on Miss Gold's voice mail and she texted back an hour later, instructing me to wait in the office upstairs until I heard from her. The girls joined me, and we sat around the conference table with the staff laying between us while Becca scoured the Glim, flipping through pages seemingly at random and taking notes on the side.

"Nothing?" Rachel asked, taking a long drink from her sport bottle.

Becca peered over the top of the hagstone and shook her head, "Everything is gone.

"Gone? Gone how?"

"I can't find the instructions. I mean there's stuff here about the Fferyn, but it used to just show me simple spells, like say this and do that. There's nothing like that now, it just keeps talking about translations and threads and the ethereum, whatever that is. I just want to know what happened."

"Are you sure this wasn't the book's intention?" Katherine asked. Becca shook her head again and turned another page without looking up.

"I'm not sure about anything. The Fferyn used to have—I don't even know how to describe the difference. It's like trying to use a computer with no software."

"The runes are still there," I said. We'd taken turns looking at it through the hagstone, and other than its size it didn't look all that different to me.

"Yeah, but now they keep changing, like the words in the Glim." Her voice remained steady, but her manner was anxious and the reason for it was obvious. For a short time she had grasped the magic of the Fae and it was slipping through her fingers. She was desperate to get it back.

We sat in relative silence for several minutes, each in our own thoughts. The Fferyn was our only means of control over the strange world around us. If it no longer worked, all of us, not just Becca, had potentially lost a major advantage in our struggle to survive the attentions of powerful Fae. But I couldn't get my mind off the wicked looking tree that cast its shadow over our home. Its black trunk and red berries, and the fact that it had no reflection through the hagstone, made me think ominously of vampires.

Half an hour passed with no word and I was about to give up on Miss Gold when Becca looked up suddenly, startling Katherine. In the next second we all heard what had caught her attention.

"What is that?" Katherine gave me a meaningful look, clearly implying that it was my job to find out. I stood and walked slowly toward the bed, listening carefully. The rattling we'd heard stopped after a few steps and I looked back to the others with a shrug, but it immediately sounded again, louder, from within the artifact chest. Beneath the deep green cloak, the shallow, wooden bowl vibrated against the inside of the box. I pulled it free and held it away from my body.

Rachel spoke first. "What the hell, Tom? Not enough weird for one day?"

"Don't look at me," I said. It continued to vibrate, though less violently.

"Maybe it's ringing."

Everyone turned silently toward Becca, and she ducked her head in embarrassment. "I don't know, I guess I was still thinking how the Fferyn was like my phone. I keep it on vibrate so it doesn't interrupt. My phone I mean. That's what it reminded me of."

"What are we supposed to do with it?" I asked. She bit her lip and shook her head as if she had no answer, but then she opened her mouth and the words spilled out all at once.

"Well, it was in the chest so it's probably magic, and the only magic bowls I know of are used for scrying, like in Lord of the Rings when Frodo looked into the Mirror of Galadriel, which could see and hear things far away, and that's like a phone, right? And we're all here waiting for Miss Gold and I guess..." she trailed off and bit her lip, "Sorry, it's stupid."

I shrugged and brought the bowl to the table, "I don't have any better ideas. How do we answer it?"

"Water. Galadriel poured water in hers to make it work."

Rachel shrugged, taking the information in stride, and slid her bottle across the table. I set the bowl down, but instead of vibrating against the wood it just hummed softly. Becca accepted Rachels' bottle, unscrewed the top, and slowly emptied its contents into the bowl.

"Now wha—?" Katherine began, and as if in answer, the surface of the water rippled and Miss Gold's voice boomed out of the air around us.

"Thomas!"

I hesitated in surprise, but quickly shook off my stupor and answered, "Yeah, I'm here."

"Manifest before me," the disembodied voice commanded. I looked around the room, and even Becca shrugged.

"I... uh, I don't know what that means," I stammered. A full minute passed with no reply.

"Maybe it's a bad signal?" Rachel suggested and leaned over the bowl, then cursed and stumbled backward as a cloud of droplets sprayed toward the ceiling, swirling through the air in a dense mist. It began to twinkle with light, then shine, then the form of Miss Gold appeared within. After watching new growth cover our island in a matter of seconds, a mystic hologram appearing out of a wooden bowl didn't shock me. The fact that she was naked did.

"Hey, Miss G.," Rachel said, wiping the moisture from her face. "You know you're on speaker, right?"

"What are you..." then she folded her arms, staring tight-lipped around the room. "I see you have not been studying as I asked," she directed a disappointed glare in my direction. "Manifestations are more secure than simple visions, but they are more personal as well. The will transacts through the Veil. Garments do not."

"I'm cool with it if you are," Rachel said, kicking back in her seat. Katherine sat expressionless, as if the tiniest fracture in her composure would cripple her with laughter, and Becca looked as if she wanted to crawl under her chair.

"When you have remembered that you are adults and can summon enough maturity to address me properly, you may begin by explaining what happened in greater detail." She seemed to sit down, which hid much of her body from view. The rest was obscured by her crossed arms and I regained a little composure.

Rachel found her voice first and the rest of us filled in details, explaining the growth spell and the Fferyn's transformation while Miss Gold floated silently with a steely expression. Everyone avoided mentioning the black tree until I brought it up at the end.

"I see." She appraised the staff on the table beneath her. "Fferyn allwedd a tharian y Barwn Runeaid. I did not believe we would ever see it restored."

"Restored?" Katherine said, "It was broken?"

Miss Gold nodded. "The staff was created by druid lords before the first incursion and has since been held and wielded by the greatest among them. What fell to you was the head, all that has remained since it was sundered long ago."

"Then how did this happen?" Katherine asked, gesturing at the staff.

"You must look to Rebecca for that answer."

"I didn't do anything," Becca protested, but quietly, as if afraid to speak. "I just wanted the grass to grow."

"You have, nonetheless, awakened the staff of the druid king, Máele Runeaid," Miss Gold intoned, "shattered by Queen Mab herself when she conquered and subdued the Brotherhood more than twelve hundred years ago."

She seemed almost reverent, as though it was far more than a fancy stick with a few magic powers. "How did you end up with it?" I asked.

She paused to decide how much she would reveal before speaking. "It is where your story begins." She said at last. "You know that your grandmother was Fae."

I nodded.

"What you have not been told is that she was an enforcer for the Winter Court, the Last Morrigan, sent to kill the man who became her husband. He was Cionaodh, son of Aodh, chieftain of the grove. Cionaodh inherited, or some say he stole, their most powerful possessions after betraying them to Lord Oberon. These possessions reside in the chest that was passed through his line to his only living descendant."

Katherine gasped, "You mean Thomas?"

"You're kidding," I protested, "I'm part druid too?"

Miss Gold rolled her eyes, "Do not be so eager to demonstrate your ignorance. The druids were simply a covenant of humans with detailed and specific knowledge of the Veil, nothing more. You are as much a druid as the chair you are seated in."

Both relief and annoyance washed through me. "So all that stuff in the trunk..."

"Is significant and valuable. Most of the relics within are infused with power, like the mirror we are speaking through, but the Glim and the Fferyn are unique. I had hoped you would be the one to master them."

"I can't even pronounce their names right," I complained, "I'm not a wizard."

"It is good, then, that one among you has taken an interest."

Becca blushed more deeply and cleared her throat, "Miss Gold? Do you know how to use it? Can you show me?"

"I?" my godmother replied with genuine surprise. "I know only it's history. The staff was broken before I entered this world. I am old by your standards, but not as old as that."

"Is the Glim from the druids too?"

My godmother hesitated again, but finally answered, "Yes and no. It passed through them and they contributed their knowledge, but the druids were not the first to penetrate the Veil. The Glim was created by an older order, the Magi, as was its sister, the Nain. Do not ask me to explain now, we should not keep this connection open for idle chat."

"What about the tree?" I asked quickly, sensing that the conversation was about to end.

"Of that I know nothing for certain, though I have suspicions. I will ask Finola to send someone who may comprehend more. I will return in person within the next ten days. When, precisely, I cannot say."

"Thanks," I said, and she acknowledged with a nod, then vanished. The mist faded, leaving the scrying bowl empty and dry.

***

Becca spent the rest of that day shut in her room with the staff and the Glim but the rest of us retreated into mundane tasks, passing Rachel's laptop around so we could catch up on homework. There was surprisingly little I could do online with my notes stuck back at the apartment. The deadline for Katherine's essay on medieval writers was approaching quickly, however, and that kept her busy for most of the afternoon. We weren't all in the same room again until dinner, and only then because Katherine insisted we eat our meals together.

After we cleaned the kitchen, I was compelled to sit in the common room while the girls watched the next episode of Bay City Bae. It began with Shawn having acrobatic sex with Lavonda then cut to a dinner with Marco, Brittney, and Blaise, where the three of them talked about open relationships. It felt stupid and forced, like the director was exercising some weird wish fulfillment, but I might have been projecting a little. I sat with three attractive girls, each of whom I kissed at least twice each day, and none of them complained about the arrangement. They appeared content, even happy. That part of our lives seemed less real than television, less than actual magic, but if it could stay as it was without the pressure to take it further, I might eventually be happy with it too.

Just before bed, I tried keeping my promise to explore the knot of power in the back of my mind, for all the good it did. Attempting to deliberately release it, then deflect the surge as I had with Professor Barnes, seemed suddenly impossible, and in half an hour I managed to unleash my power only once, knocking Becca off her feet.

"I'm okay," she said weakly, blushing furiously. Rachel helped her up, and with that spectacular failure under my belt, I called it a night. After settling each of them in, I declined Katherine's bed, claiming restlessness, and retreated to the office instead.

"I had a hunch you might show up," a high voice greeted me as I opened the door. Amy was polishing the table with a thick rag.

"Hi," I looked around foolishly as though I expected to find more brownies scurrying around the room. "I thought you left."

"Tomorrow," she said and stood. She wore a shapeless, colorless gown, almost indistinguishable from the rag in her hand. "I stuck around because Meg is coming and I need her help with something."

"Meg? Why is she coming back?"

"She's going to take a look at your tree." Amy shrugged and tossed her rag aside, then strode to the edge of the table and sat down. "Your Becca did one hell of a job out there."

"Not on purpose."

"I've never seen anything like it. The sylphs are going to be jealous."

I recalled the winged brownies from Finn's introductions. "They're the gardeners, right?"

"Yep. Sylphs have a connection with living things. Some of them are decent healers. Back in the day they were considered forest spirits."

"Back in the day?" I took a seat at the table, careful to keep my distance. "Just how old are you?"

"I'm twenty-three," she laughed. "I'm not speaking from experience, Fae history is a big part of our education."

"So you know a lot about other Fae?"

"A bit, but you have to take it with a grain of salt. There aren't many absolutes."

"What do you mean?"

Amy shrugged and looked at her feet. "Well, me for instance. I came through the Veil on my own, without my family. The odds that I'll meet a hob from my own world are so remote that it may as well be impossible, so I'm unique, even though I look like the others in my clan."

"You seem more independent," I suggested.

"That might have more to do with how I was raised after I got here, but sure. Maybe all hobs on my world are less dependent on their families. Some brunaidh are so singular that the only thing they have in common is size, and even that fluctuates wildly. You never met Chloris, but the bhean tighe aren't much shorter than dwarves."

"Do you know what Miss Gold is?" The question was out of my mouth before it was fully formed in my mind. I wasn't even sure why I wanted to know. Amy shot me a cautious look.

"She'll be pissed if she hears you're asking around, Tom."

"Does that mean you don't know?"

She considered me for another few seconds then shrugged. "Not really. Some of the older Fae call her Old Crow, but that's mostly behind her back. She's tough as nails and she gets around quickly. I always assumed she's one of the Aes Sidhe."

"The what?"

Amy sighed and rested her chin in her hands. "I keep forgetting how much you don't know."

"I'm sorry," I said, "it's a lot to take in."

"I get it," Amy nodded. "Just keeping up can be emotionally exhausting."

"Was it like that when you came through the Veil?"

"It was a culture shock for sure. I was just a kit then, and I was alone, but it's more than that. I meant all the stuff that goes with it, even the idea of magic. Hell, I cried the first time I saw a glamor."

The unwelcome memory of a bloody child surfaced in my mind. "That was pretty shocking for me too."

"I can imagine," she grinned. "The differences go so deep, and there are so many unique natures among the Fae that you have to find common ground wherever you can. Then we slap labels on it, and those aren't always accurate. It usually boils down to appearance, or our particular attributes—our magic."

"Miss Gold does magic but I don't think it's her gift."

"That's different. The real stuff, the kind Meg does, manipulates the Veil itself, and even after working with her for years it still blows my mind. All elementals seem to have a closer connection to the Veil, and water more than the others."

"Is Meg an Aes Sidhe?"

"No, hags are a kind of nymph, nymphs are elementals. You humans narrow everything down to the tiniest differences and give them long, important sounding names like urocyon cinereoargenteus. I'm a hob. Hobs are a kind of brownie, which is a type of lare. That's a lot simpler than science."

"So what about Miss Gold makes you think she's one of the Aes Sidhe?"

Amy paused, deciding whether or not she could answer without getting into trouble. "The Aes Sidhe can do more than just tap into the Veil. They're the only Fae who are categorized by raw power. They wield cosmic forces, maybe even the aether. Most human cultures have worshiped them as gods at one time or another."

"I don't understand. I mean she's strong, sure, but a goddess?"

"Finn's the only person I've ever met that isn't at least a little afraid of her. Julius is a wood troll. I've seen him tear oaks out of the ground and break boulders in half, and when he sings to the earth it rolls and buckles like waves in the ocean. What do you think it would take to scare someone like him?"

The thought was sobering. While I tried to wrap my head around it, Amy stood and brushed off her dress. "You staying up here tonight then?" she asked and I nodded absently. "Alright, Tom, I'll head back downstairs so you can get some sleep."

"Wait," I said as she turned to go. "What kind of Fae is my dad?"

"The gean canagh? They're anthousai"

"Which means what?"

"Flower fairies."

***

As it turned out, "flower fairy" was a bit of a misnomer. When I checked with Becca the next morning, she found an entry in the Glim that classified the anthousai as having material characteristics similar to native flora. The gean canagh were paired with a kind of nightshade, something called brugmansia, which, of course, I looked up. It was a flowering shrub, usually referred to as Angel's Trumpet, that contained a variety of alkaloids including atropine and scopolomine, more commonly known as the date-rape drug.

Intellectually, I knew that the gean canagh weren't plants. Nothing about the Angel's Trumpet could explain the instant and permanent addiction, the emotional bonds, or the compulsive lust that my chemistry induced. But seeing those words on the website—date rape—as though they identified me as the living embodiment of sexual abuse, cast me into a pit of depression that lasted most of the day.

Meg appeared that afternoon, soaked and dripping, and spent a couple of hours sequestered with Amy. Afterward, she began examining the strange tree, circling it multiple times, gingerly touching the dark trunk and silver leaves. She even took a bite from one of the berries. Then she sat down several feet away from it, simply staring. Becca waited patiently under the young branches of a nearby oak, hoping for the chance to speak to her. Ennui finally overwhelmed my curiosity, however, so I stepped back from the door where I was partially hidden and stalked back into the warehouse.

I felt like sulking but I didn't want to be alone either, so when I found Rachel eating an orange in the kitchen, I took a seat quietly next to her and waited several minutes for her to ask me how I was. I should have known better. She wasn't the kind to coddle a bad mood.

"Where's Kath?" I asked after I'd given up.

"Sorting out her wardrobe, what there is of it," she answered between bites. "Trying to put together a few outfits that don't make her look like a hobo."

"You got the rest of her stuff from the dorm, didn't you?"

"Yep, but most of her things are still at your apartment." She stopped chewing and turned on me, her dark eyes accusing. "What are you doing?"

My attention snapped back to her. "Sorry, my mind's wandering. Your anima was open, and—"

"And you thought you'd get some practice in?"

"No."

"You were fiddling with it, I could tell. Warn me next time."

"I was just looking, Rach, that's all."

"Uh huh. This is why you need to get a grip, Tom. It was just a little thrill, like someone grabbed my ass—"

"You'd murder anyone who did that."

"No, only most people. I never said I didn't like it. That's why you gotta put a lid on that shit. Those little nudges do a lot more than you think. If you're not careful, you'll have a line of co-eds outside your door waiting to suck your cock."

Her extreme example made me chuckle for the first time in hours. "I doubt that, but I appreciate the warning."

"You're welcome. Now get your head out of your ass, you've been in a funk all day." She popped another wedge into her mouth. "We're counting on you to be tougher than that."

"I didn't know you noticed."

"You tried pretty fucking hard to make sure I did."

"Yeah," I admitted. She passed me a slice of her orange which I gladly accepted. "I'm learning how to manage my feelings all over again, and it's harder than I thought it would be. Sometimes I just want someone to tell me I'm not screwing everything up."

"I can't promise that," she said, peeling another orange. "But we're all here for you, Tom, try not to sweat it too much. And warn me before you try anything. If I bite my tongue because you made me cum while I'm chewing—"

"Noted."

After another few minutes, Becca entered the warehouse lost in thought with Katherine following close behind.

"Meg left," she said, stealing Rachel's half peeled orange. "She just jumped into the river."

"Did the dragon eat her?" Rachel asked.

Becca's head shot up, "What?"

"Just making sure you we're listening."

Becca looked back over her shoulder, oblivious to Rachel's teasing. "She doesn't know what the tree is but she's going to talk to Finn and some other people who might be able to help."

"Did you get the chance to talk to her about the staff?" I asked. Becca turned again and nodded.

"She said she's an artificer, not a mage, but she gave me some ideas. She mostly works magic through the things she creates, like our rings."

"She made these?" Katherine's eyebrows shot up while she examined the band circling her finger. "They're exquisite."

"Yeah. I wish I could talk to her more. She's really nice, and she knows a lot about... But that's not..." she trailed off and glanced back out the door.

"What's wrong?" Katherine urged. Becca sighed and sat on one of the stools.

"She said it wasn't my fault."

"What wasn't?"

"It wasn't normal, though, was it?"

"What?" Rachel asked with much less patience.

"I just—the tree. Meg said I didn't do that. Or the circle of grass during the binding spell, or the forest, or the Fferyn turning into a staff again. It should have been just what I asked for, but something was interfering. She said something corrupted the spell."

"Corrupted?" I said, surprised and a little alarmed. "Did she say what caused it?"

"Yeah," Becca paused again, looking apologetically at Katherine and Rachel before turning back to me, then whispered without quite meeting my eyes. "You."