Calen blinked at me, gently tugging on his arm until I let go of his wrist. I was too shocked to be embarrassed, though.

Injured arm forgotten, I bent down to pull away my tall sock, revealing the mark on the back of my ankle. I had to momentarily turn my back to Calen to show him, but when I looked back, he was staring at me with a shocked expression that I could only assume mirrored my own.

"Oh my god," he breathed, eyes moving from my Witch's Mark back to my face. "Holy shit."

"Yeah," I said.

Neither of us said anything else. I'd been dreaming of this moment for so long, and now I just... didn't know what to do. I think some part of me never expected it to happen.

Now that he was standing in front of me, though, I couldn't deny it.

Not to mention— he was perfect.

Calen was gorgeous, and not just physically. Yes, he had a beautiful face and a strong jaw, and those piercing eyes, and— Well, I could digress. I won't, though. The really mesmerizing thing about him, even more so than his physique, were his Threads.

They still danced around him in a way that fascinated me. I wondered if his Threads would start to behave normally after he'd walked in the shop door, but they hadn't. They still floated and shifted around him, moving like he was the one in control, like he couldn't be bound into place by fate. He took charge of himself somehow, and that was the really enticing thing.

That was what made my heart pound in my chest.

"Sunday?" he breathed, stepping a little closer.

I made a squeaking kind of affirmative noise, struggling for any coherent words.

"Are you alright?" Calen asked, brow furrowed, clearly keeping calm far more than I was.

"I'm... processing," I finally managed, swallowing hard.

"Me, too," he admitted as he nodded. "I... Do you want to talk about this more? Maybe later? Once it's... not... this?" He gestured broadly to the chaos of the shop, and a tiny, manic giggle slipped past my lips.

"That would be good, yeah." I took a deep, slow breath, but it did very little to slow my heart rate.

"Take this, then. I'll see you tonight."

He extended the card towards me once more. Some part of me wanted to follow along with every word he said, but another, smaller part of my brain was annoyed he assumed tonight was free.

What did it matter, though? He was my soul mate. We'd learn to communicate.

"And this is?" I blinked at the card. It was almost entirely black, front and back. There were two lines printed on one side, and after looking closer, I could see it was an address. However, the card was otherwise blank.

"I'm trying to unite the local witch community. Maybe get us some better opportunities. Based on what I've heard about this place, I thought you might be a potential candidate."

"So you're sniffing people out of hiding?" I asked, frowning. That just seemed rude and invasive.

"I'm offering witches something better than lives crushed underfoot by the magical elite."

"Thanks, but I'm good," I sighed. "I like my life exactly as ordinary as it is."

"Keep it," he said. "You might change your mind. That, and it has my phone number on it. I won't lose you, Sunday Waters."

"Oooookay," I said slowly, tucking the card in my pocket, mostly because it did have his phone number. I blushed furiously, but I tried to ignore the heat in my cheeks, my ears— all over my body, really.

Some part of me was intrigued by a witch meet up, for sure, but... I didn't feel particularly inclined to rebellion. My goal was to stay under the radar, not stage a coup of any level.

Calen reached out for my left hand, holding it in both of his as he spoke.

"We're meeting tomorrow night at nine. I hope to see you there," he murmured, looking at me through his long lashes. "And take care of that arm."

It felt like my entire brain short circuited as his lips met the back of my hand. I didn't even register him letting go of my hand and leaving the shop, I just stood there like a knot on a log, feeling that strange head rush and looking at that odd, braided, crystalline cord running from my chest, out the door, and presumably all the way to Calen.

It was only then that I remembered that Dante told me he'd wait till after the reading. However, when I checked the shop to see if he was still poking around, he seemed to have vanished without a trace. The books on the counter were in a neat pile, and none were missing, though the order had changed. So he'd looked through them and... left?

I decided my brain was too rattled, adrenaline too high, and arm too painful to worry about someone wanting to look at books and then leave. Dante did that sometimes. It wasn't a big deal. He just liked to drop in now and then, poke around, and maybe buy something. Fireball unconnected.

... Definitely unconnected, right?

Before I left, I thought it might be a good idea to check on the fire alarm, just in case. It hadn't gone off earlier, despite the smoke that still lingered in the air, and that seemed... strange.

I went to the maintenance closet to check the sprinkler system controls first. The electronic system should tell me if any of the sensors had problems. I probably didn't check it as often as I should, but the last time I checked, there hadn't been any issues. When I flicked on the lights, though, I could see that things certainly were not as I'd left them.

While most of the closet seemed in order, the panel to control the sprinklers, fire alarms, and burglar alarms was absolutely destroyed. The interface itself was smashed, but not only that, the wires were cut and dangled haphazardly from the back side of the panel.

I wasn't sure if I should be glad that I had excellent business insurance, or really, really terrified that it looked like someone had just tried to kill me.

I glared at the little business card as I shoveled fried tofu and noodles into my mouth, turning it over and over in my hand, looking for any trick or test. It didn't change into a toad, though, and it didn't start speaking, and after a while, I was forced to admit that it was just a piece of black cardstock with an address printed in white.

I smacked the card down on my table, turning my attention fully to the Chinese takeout I'd ordered. I felt like after being hit with a fireball, I deserved a treat.

The shifting pattern of Threads around Calen still needled at me, like a persistent itch I couldn't scratch. I poked at my Mei Fun with my fork, wondering if I could shift the noodles around the tofu and vegetables in any way like the Threads shifted around him.

My mom, thankfully, had been able to take care of my arm. It wasn't fully healed, but it was healed enough that I certainly would not have to go to a burn specialist. There would be scars. Hell, there already were some scars after her healing magic took over. Overall, it was much, much better than healing the slow way, though.

The downside to quick magical healing was that asking your mother to heal a third degree burn on your arm generally brought about an incredible deluge of questions. Yes, of course, she'd heal it, but the interrogation wouldn't stop until my mother was satisfied, and I didn't even have most of the answers that she wanted.

What did this? A fireball through the window, mom.

How bad does it hurt? Bad, mom.

Is there any glass in the wound? Might want to check, mom.

Who the hell shoots a fireball through a window? I really don't know, mom.

Even hours later, the healing pains hadn't entirely gone away, and the entire area itched enough to drive me up the wall even more than thinking about Calen's Threads. I covered the skin in lotion and wrapped it in bandages to keep myself from absentmindedly clawing at it, but I knew the itch wouldn't be gone for at least 24 hours. When a witch healed you, you still had to feel all the pain of healing. It was just co sensed into a shorter period, and thus much more severe for that short time. I'd heard tales that when Sylvans healed, they didn't have to worry about that nasty side effect, but I'd never confirmed it.

Hell, Dante was the only Sylvan I knew well enough to even consider asking about it, and... well, as much as I wanted him to be clear of suspicion, he wasn't entirely out of the woods. I liked him. I wanted to trust him, but...

But witches had never been friends with Sylvans. It was possible that an angry Sylvan could have fired that shot at my window, and they'd be able to do it without even thinking. Fire conjuring was incredibly difficult magic for a witch, taking a high level of both skill and stamina. For a Sylvan innately connected with magic, though, a fireball would be child's play.

I sighed, glancing back at that stupid business card. Maybe I did need to consider what Calen said. If nothing else, I hadn't met many of the local witches, and maybe some of them would have an idea who could have been behind the attack.

Up until now, I had very, very firmly been in the mindset of running my shop, keeping my head down, and generally trying to stay out of trouble with the magical community. I didn't get involved in drama or gossip, I didn't take sides in disputes, and fighting in the shop between witches and Sylvans was strictly prohibited.

Now, though... Depending on what I learned, I might need to start taking sides.

Honestly, I wasn't the most politically informed. Part of it was, as Dante had said, that witches had no government system among themselves. The Sylvan Council couldn't control what witches did because they weren't formally recognized in the Sylvan system, and witches didn't have any formal law. That meant, essentially, chaos reigned.

There was the Witches' Code, of course, but that was half ethical guide and half rules for survival. It was also very, very short, shorter than even my self-imposed guidelines on my own power.

One: Never tell completely mundane humans about the existence of true magic. It's dangerous for all parties involved to share that knowledge.

Two: What you do will return to you threefold. If you are kind, that kindness will return. If you are baneful, that will also return. Make your choices wisely.

That was it. Just the two.

There were other rules, of course, and there were other facts. For example, it was a fact that power passes in a bloodline. Marrying an entirely mundane human would, more than likely, cause the well of power in that generational bloodline to weaken. Marrying a witch from a different magical gene pool would cause it to strengthen and diversify.

That was a fact, though, not a rule, just like the fact that witches had soul mates. Both of those things led to unspoken rules, such as the fact that witches almost exclusively had relationships with other witches. They weren't a formal part of the Code, though, and in some cases could lead to serious backlash from parts of the witch community.

You see why we didn't ever establish an overarching government system?

Speaking of which, I had a few things to look into before I worried about that business card. Dante had left his paper behind in the shop, and I'd stashed it in my bag during the clean-up process. I wanted to see exactly what the reports were about, especially with Calen's invitation on the table.

It was the Sylvan Chronicle, so the reports were very obviously written from a Sylvan viewpoint, but it was informative. The majority of the article focused on increased restrictions at Veil crossing points, the gates that led to the Sylvan world. The author mentioned that some Sylvans were concerned about border guards questioning the validity of their heritage, especially those with a little human blood in the mix or those that could pass for human— were-beings and vampires generally were the highest on this list.

However, what interested me most were the few lines about witch attacks on Sylvan lands. If they'd upped border security, how were witches able to cross the Veil in the first place? It wasn't like a fence that could be climbed. It was an impenetrable, invisible, metaphysical barrier that took an immense amount of time and power to penetrate.

Whoever managed to both find a weak point and slip inside had caused absolute havoc, from poisoning water supplies to releasing a swarm of mosquitos upon a vampire town (more dangerous and significantly more annoying than you might think). Most recently, there was an attempt on the life of one of the Council members. Luckily, the would-be murderer had been apprehended, but he'd taken his own life before anyone could question him. Cyanide capsule.

Maybe I was just oblivious, but none of this seemed like it had been this bad ten years ago. What was happening? Why now?

And how had they managed to smash their way through one of the most secure barriers that existed in all space and time?