Sorcerer's Playground
Author: Theophilus Monroe; Michael Anderle Narrated Bycaleb Summers
Date: 2023-09-26 00:00:00+00:00
Description: Saving the world was hard. That was nothing compared to raising three kids . . . They said I was gifted. The most powerful mage born to our bloodline in more than a century. The dark sorcerer didn't stand a chance. I was a hero. I was famous. I was bad ass. But that was twenty years ago. Now, I'm married with three kids. I have the best lawn in our suburban neighborhood. I have a little more around the mid-section than I used to, but I've still got it. There's been a disturbance in the ether. Strange creatures are terrorizing my community. Has the dark sorcerer escaped his arcane prison? Do I
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Rights: Copyright 2023 Theophilus Monroe. All rights reserved.

SORCERER’S PLAYGROUND

GO ASK YOUR MOTHER™ BOOK 1

THEOPHILUS MONROE

MICHAEL ANDERLE

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

Copyright © 2023 LMBPN Publishing

Cover by Fantasy Book Design

Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

A Michael Anderle Production

LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact support@lmbpn.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

LMBPN Publishing

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Las Vegas, NV 89109

Version 1.00, February 2023
ebook ISBN: 979-8-88541-361-9

Print ISBN: 979-8-88878-038-1

THE SORCERER’S PLAYGROUND TEAM

Thanks to our Beta Team

Malyssa Brannon, David Laughlin, Rachel Beckford, Kelly O’Donnell, Mary Morris

Thanks to our JIT Readers

Christopher Gilliard

Veronica Stephan-Miller

Jackey Hankard-Brodie

Deb Mader

Paul Westman

Diane L. Smith

Jan Hunnicutt

If We’ve missed anyone, please let us know!

Editor

The Skyhunter Editing Team

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Author Notes - Theophilus Monroe

Author Notes - Michael Anderle

Also by Theophilus Monroe

Books By Michael Anderle

Connect with The Authors

CHAPTER ONE

I kicked my feet up on the ottoman. That might have been the hardest battle of my life. No, I didn’t take down an evil sorcerer with aspirations of world domination. I didn’t defeat a creature from another realm. Sure, I was a battlemage, but those skills didn’t serve me when it came to putting my three spawn to bed on a school night.

Twenty-one years ago, I saved the world. Today, I struggled to keep up with the dishes. Yeah, I was the battlemage who took down Caedes the Destroyer. Now I was the forty-two-year-old father of three boys who worked his butt off each day to get to this moment.

The kids were in bed. The house was quiet. Finally, I could enjoy a little alone time with Katerine, better known as Kat.

No, we weren’t going to make love. We were both too exhausted for that. After ten years of blissful marriage, we had our evening routine. The best part of the day.

Put the boys to bed, kick up our feet, and catch up on our latest shows. Tonight it was Grey’s Anatomy.

I couldn’t wait to find out who was sleeping with who this season. I think Kat and I experienced our love life vicariously through those fictional doctors. Chances were good we’d fall asleep before the end of the show, but what was the difference, anyway?

The same thing happened the last time we tried to get in a little hanky-panky. Kat fell asleep mid-tryst. I wasn’t offended. I was frigging relieved. So far, I hadn’t thrown my back out. Maybe I didn’t get to finish, but for me, that’s a win. It meant I could go to sleep, too. When you are raising boys of nine, five, and three, you take your sleep (and your brief moments of sanity) when you can get it.

I don’t mean to complain. I loved my family more than the world. The love I had for those boys made every second of chaos more than worth it. I was more in love with my wife now than I was the day we got married—even if our moments of intimacy were fewer and farther between.

Kat snuggled up next to me on the couch and I started the show.

Whaaaaaahhh!

I sighed. “Sounds like Elliot.” He was my youngest.

Kat kissed me on the cheek. “You have to work early, Tom. I’ll take this.”

I kissed my wife on the forehead. “Love ya.”

“Love you, too.”

I was supposed to go straight to bed. That’s what Kat expected. Instead, I took a moment and went out to the garage. I was a tool guy. I worked for a tool rental company. Store manager. I didn’t have every tool I needed, because I could always grab whatever I needed from work. Somehow, though, my work bench was a constantly cluttered mess. I reached for a long dusty box on my shelf.

It held my wand, which I hadn’t used since the day I vanquished Caedes. I’d bound him to an arcane prison and buried him beneath the ruins of an old warehouse in downtown St. Louis. In the years that followed, the place was leveled and they put a park there. I still took the kids there on occasion. I knew that somewhere deep beneath our feet was a sorcerer who’d nearly destroyed the world. Was he still alive? It was hard to believe he was, but as a master of the dark arts, I’d always suspected he’d find a way to escape. He never did.

After my victory, they threw a parade in my honor. I did all the media rounds. I even went on Jay Leno. I had my fifteen minutes of fame. At the time, I assumed that some other vile foe would eventually rise and I’d be the one to thwart his insidious schemes, but it never happened.

My wand went into a box. I had a name for my wand. Its name was Wand. I know, not especially creative. But when I held it, the thing came to life, almost as if it had a mind of its own.

I didn’t need Wand to access arcane power. I was born to a family of mages. The power was passed on from father to son. My boys hadn’t manifested any power yet, but someday they could.

When our oldest boy, Elijah, was born I promised Kat that I was done. We wanted to give him a normal life. I doubled down on that promise when Ezra was born and when Elliot came along nothing needed to be said. I’d always be a mage. I couldn’t deny it. I was Tom Gregory, the most powerful mage born to my family in generations. I saved the world once. They sold action figures bearing my likeness. Six months later, the world moved on. The endorsement deals stopped coming in. I had to get a job, so I applied at AAA Tool Rental. A few years later, I married the owner’s daughter. The rest, as they say, was history.

I retrieved Wand from his box. When I held Wand, my power was amplified and focused a hundred-fold. Forging a wand was something of a rite of passage in mage families. I made him on my sixteenth birthday. It was an arduous and painful process. It meant entering the arcane plane in the flesh. Not every mage in my family emerged with a wand so powerful. I don’t know if there was something special about me, or if it was dumb luck. For some reason, though, the arcane furies blessed me beyond measure. Wand made me more than a mage. When I took Wand in my hand, I was a battlemage. I was a hero. The power I felt with Wand in my hand was addictive. Power like that can change a man.

Caedes was born to a family of mages as I was. He also received a wand when he came of age. The difference was that I was loved and nurtured by my parents. They taught me to respect the power, to master it rather than allow it to master me. Caedes’ family took a different approach. They revered structure and discipline above all else. When we were kids, Caedes was a rambunctious boy. I met him at the yearly conclaves that the mage families used to attend. I’d go so far as to say we were friends. He didn’t go by that name back then. Tim Wagner was a joy, and he was as gifted as I was. When he got his wand, everything changed. He leaned into the power. He let the magic consume him. It changed him.

Some thought he was rebelling against his strict family upbringing. Others thought he was a bad seed from the start. No one knew what turned Tim to the dark side of the force. At the time, it didn’t matter. He was bad. I was good. Good guys beat bad guys. That’s how the world worked in my twenty-one-year-old mind. It was never that easy, though, not even then.

After my victory, when the rest of the world celebrated Caedes’ fall, I mourned the loss of my friend. What happened to him frightened me to the bone.

As I held Wand, it took me back to my so-called glory days. It wasn’t just the memory of being the world’s hero. It was also the power that I used to wield. I was an unstoppable force. I never allowed the power to define me, but I could have. A moment of anger, pain, or heartbreak could have sent me down a dark path. I could have reached deep into the arcane well and grabbed the alluring power that turned Tim into Caedes.

I almost did. In that final battle, when it looked like he was going to win, when he was about to blast me with a deadly spell, I almost gave in. I think that’s what he wanted me to do. If I did, together, we could have ruled the world. I never gave in. I blocked his attack. I bound him in a prison. I chose to become the world’s hero rather than its master.

Now, most people didn’t even remember my name. The world forgot me. Did I regret that? Not at all. I had more than I’d ever wanted in life—I had a family.

I missed being a battlemage, in the same way a high school football hero might miss the field, thinking fondly back on one’s younger days. Back then, I thought I was living my destiny. But life happened, the world moved on, and so did I.

I placed Wand back in his box and placed the box back on my shelf. Would the world need that battlemage again? Probably not. But a small part of me hoped it would.

A tingle remained in my body. Usually, after I set Wand down, I returned to normal. Why was the power lingering? Was Wand trying to tell me something? It wasn’t uncommon for mages to grow in power with age. Maybe that’s what was happening. My capacity for arcane magic expanded even while I wasn’t wielding it. It was like I had just drunk ten Red Bulls. The power would fade, eventually. Somehow, I had to get to sleep.

I snuck back into the house and retrieved a jug of milk from the fridge. Everyone was sleeping. No one would know. I unscrewed the cap, took a swig straight from the jug, and put it back on the shelf.

I shuffled back to my bedroom. Kat still wasn’t in bed. She was likely back in Elliot’s room trying to get him back to sleep, or perhaps she fell asleep beside him. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

I rinsed my mouth out with Listerine. Original flavor. Tasted like ass, but it was a refreshing ass. I splashed a little water on my face. I peed and went to bed.

The magic in my body still tingled, like a flow of electricity penetrating every cell in my body. I pulled the sheet and comforter over my body.

“Alexa, play binaural sleep music on repeat.”

Alexa confirmed that she understood my command. The soothing tones filled the room. I closed my eyes. Who was I kidding? It was going to take a while to get to sleep.

CHAPTER TWO

I tossed and turned for hours. Kat never made it back to bed. I probably got about two hours of sleep. When I woke up, the arcane power flowing through my body still tingled. It had either faded a little or I’d gotten used to it. Despite my lack of sleep, I had extra pep in my step.

I took a shower. I caught myself humming an old Matchbox 20 tune as the lukewarm water flowed over my body. I got dressed in my work attire—jeans, steel-toed boots, and a blue polo. I made myself a protein shake. Yeah, I might have been in my early forties, but I still believed a shake in the morning would pack on the muscle. I only worked out a couple of days a week, but a good day’s work often involved a lot of lifting.

At AAA Tool Rental, we rented just about any piece of equipment you’d need for whatever do-it-yourself project or home maintenance task someone could imagine. A lot of those items had to be lifted into customer trunks and truck beds. Sure, I was the store manager and I didn’t have to do as much lifting as the workers in the yard, but I still did my share.

Kat caught me as I was about to leave the house. She kissed me on the lips. “See you tonight, babe!”

I grinned. “Good luck getting the kids off to school and daycare.”

Kat crossed her fingers. “Let’s hope they’re more compliant today than they were yesterday.”

I chuckled. “Have you met our children? Yeah, you need all the luck you can get.”

“Give Dad my love.”

“He’s not only my father-in-law, Kat. He’s also my boss. We try to keep the PDA to a minimum.”

Kat laughed. “Well, tell him ‘hi,’ then.”

I kissed my wife again—I couldn’t kiss her too many times—and closed the door to the garage. I eyed Wand in his box on the shelf. For a split second, I thought about holding him again. I swallowed the urge, opened the garage door, and climbed into my truck.

We lived in a suburban neighborhood about thirty minutes away from my job in the city. In the rental business, we opened earlier than most places. We catered to homeowners, but we also rented to quite a few contractors, and they liked to get started on their jobs early. That meant I had to be there by seven every day and be ready to open a half hour later. We worked until six. Do the math. Those are long hours.

I passed Gregory Park on the way to work. Yeah, they named the park after me. Some people even remembered why. You’d think after saving the world from an evil sorcerer, my name would be indelibly embossed in people’s minds. Maybe it was because magic was involved, and not everyone believed it. Most folks thought Caedes was a domestic terrorist. They celebrated me not as a badass battlemage with immense power but as a common citizen who rose to the occasion. They treated the myth surrounding the details of my victory as exactly that—a fantastic myth. The action figures, the interviews, all of that, they discounted as embellishment. Some of the talking heads on the major news networks called me an opportunist, trying to cash in on my fifteen minutes of fame. Some people knew and believed the truth, but they were few and far between once the media took control of the “story.” Cashing in on my fame was an insult to the people who died at Caedes’ hand. It was no wonder that my endorsements dried up in a matter of months.

The truth was that I was never in it for the money. Still, I was twenty-one. I was young and loved the idea of fame and fortune. When one of the nation’s best-known automobile insurance companies calls you up and offers you more than you’d make in a decade to do a series of commercials, you don’t say no. I don’t care how principled you are. They didn’t run my ad too many times. They found some bozo of a professional athlete to take my place. As if he ever saved the world. Pshh.

I meant no disrespect to lives that were lost, but I’d also nearly died in the conflict. I saved the world, even if a lot of people didn’t realize the full extent of Caedes’ insidious plot.

The critics got their way. That’s why I was going to work at what I wished was a nine-to-five.

If the boss, my father-in-law, came in it wouldn’t be until after ten o’clock. Gene started the company almost forty years ago when his neighbors started borrowing his tools. He got the bright idea to charge them by the hour. Soon, AAA Tool Rental was born.

Why AAA you ask? Well, in those days, getting your company top-billing in the phone book still mattered.

Gene still owned the place, but he was all but retired. He had an office in the back with a mahogany desk surrounded by Norman Rockwell prints, he signed the checks, and he authorized major purchases, like new equipment for the fleet. As for the day-to-day operations of the business, that was on me.

I pulled up the day’s reservations on the computer. A couple of utility trailers, a skid loader, a yard of ready-mix concrete, two carpet shampooers, and a sewer snake. Eww on the sewer snake. We rented those things all the time, and they’d been through a lot of lines. There wasn’t a chemical known to man that could remove the smell from the cable.

I usually ran the counter and helped load items we had on display in the showroom. The dirtier stuff like the lawn equipment, the stinky items, and whatever we kept out on the lot was loaded by the crew.

I handled the customers, though a couple of the other workers could set up the contracts in a pinch. We had five employees in addition to me. Everyone had Sunday off. Everyone worked Saturdays. We all had our day off during the week. Mine was Wednesday, and it was the one day a week Gene worked the counter. Gene was old school and still did most of his contracts on paper. It was Thursday, which meant I had a stack of the previous day’s contracts to enter into the computer. It would take a couple of hours, depending on how busy we were, but I couldn’t start until we got through the morning rush.

Everyone scheduled to work showed up on time. You have to count your blessings. When the job has low pay and long hours, turnover is high. Half the time, if someone was going to quit, they just stopped showing up.

Customers were already lining up outside the door. The phone was ringing off the hook. We still had ten minutes until we opened, but if I didn’t take the calls now, I’d have to place them on hold while I dealt with the customers in the store.

I picked up the phone. “AAA Tool Rental, this is Tom. How can I help you?”

“Do y’all rent breast pumps?” a man with a Texas accent asked on the other line.

I snorted. “No, sir. We specialize in tools.”

“How about penis pumps?” The man laughed and hung up the phone.

I sighed. We got that call at least once a week.

I took the next call and introduced myself with the usual greeting.

“Yes, my husband wanted to know if you rent hoists.”

“What kind of hoist does he need, ma’am?”

“Roy, what kind of hoist?”

“It’s for pulling an engine!” a man, I assumed Roy, shouted in the background.

“It’s for pulling an engine.”

I nodded. “We do. We have one you can break down and one already assembled you can tow behind with a hitch.”

“Roy,” the woman shouted. “You want the one you have to assemble or the one you pull with the truck?”

“Hell if I know, woman! I just need one to pull an engine from a ’68 GTO.”

I sighed. If I had a dollar for the number of times jerks like Roy made their wives call for what they wanted when their wives didn’t know what he wanted, I’d double my salary.

“Ma’am. Either kind of engine hoist will do the job. If you have a hitch, the tow-behind version is better.”

“That sounds good to me,” the lady said. “We have a truck.”

“It’s fifty-three dollars a day or a hundred and fifty-nine for the week.”

“Roy, why didn’t you tell me it cost fifty dollars a day?”

“I don’t care how much. I have to pull this damn engine and I need it all week.”

“We’re not paying a hundred and sixty dollars for your mid-life crisis project!”

“Ma’am, would you like to reserve the hoist or not?”

Roy and his wife argued back and forth for another thirty seconds before Roy finally picked up the phone. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Thank you, sir. We’ll have it ready.”

Roy hung up.

It wasn’t an item we had to get ready. Most of our customers were good people. Working in customer service, though, you deal with a lot of dicks. I was used to handling dicks. That came out wrong, but you know what I meant.

With the phone calls out of the way, I opened the store and we got through the morning rush. The guys in the yard were running around loading equipment into customer vehicles, and one of them was busy at the concrete plant mixing a load.

A nice older gentleman rented a pressure washer. He had a truck. It’s not the heaviest item on the lot, but it’s still a two-man job. I headed out with the customer to demonstrate how the machine worked and load it into his truck.

“I’m a mule. I can do this. Let’s get it loaded.”

I pressed my lips together. It wasn’t uncommon, especially when we were busy, for a customer to lend a helping hand loading their item. This guy was pushing seventy.

I probably should have waited for one of the guys, but he didn’t want to wait. He insisted he could handle it.

I bent over to help pick it up. Always bend at the knees. He put too much back into it. We had it halfway lifted before he winced and let go, leaving the full weight of the pressure washer in my hands. In my mind, I could see it crashing to the ground. The way I had the machine gripped, there was no way I could bear the weight.

A surge of energy coursed through my body. I knew what it was. It was arcane power. The machine was over a hundred pounds, but it felt like I was lifting a feather. I set the machine down in the bed of the man’s truck.

“Damn, son. You’ve got some juice.”

I grinned. “You have no idea.”

I walked back into the store with my stomach in knots. I hadn’t used arcane power in years. I promised Kat I wouldn’t. That was the cause of the sudden twist in my gut. But damn. It also felt good. Really good.

I went back inside and started working on Gene’s stack of contracts from the day before. If I got them in the computer, it would make my job a lot easier. Our inventory wasn’t accurate until I did. Getting the contracts transferred also made it a lot easier to tell if anything was late and if someone’s card needed to be charged an extra day.

While I was working through the stack, a young woman and her teenage daughter came through the front doors. I took my place behind the desk and smiled as they approached.

“How can I help you today?”

The woman tilted her head. “You look familiar.”

I grinned. This wasn’t the first time that someone recognized me. “I get that a lot. I guess I have one of those familiar faces.”

“No, it’s not that.” The woman nudged her daughter. “Do you know who this is?”

The daughter was staring at her phone. She looked up at me briefly. “Nope.”

“Are you Tom Gregory?”

I laughed. “Last I checked.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I figured you still lived in the area. I’d never forget you. You saved my life.”

I snorted. “I did?”

“I was there at the park. Well, it wasn’t a park then, but I was driving by. I was in my car because, well, when you’re driving by, you’re usually in a car. Funny, you know?”

I grinned. “Yeah. Hilarious.”

“A red light flew out of the sky and hit my car. It stalled, then the engine burst into flames. You pulled me out of the car before it exploded.”

I rubbed my brow. I remembered her. Well, I recalled the incident. It all happened so fast. I used my magic to blast open her door. I didn’t touch her. With another spell, I pulled her from her car and set her on the sidewalk just before her car went boom. After that, one of Caedes’ acolytes blasted me with an arcane missile and knocked me off my feet. It wasn’t enough to kill me, but it rattled me. I took him down with a blast of my own a few seconds later.

“It was my pleasure, ma’am. That was a long time ago. I’m glad to see you’re well. What can I do for you today?”

The woman stared at me with an open-mouthed grin for a good five seconds. “I’m sorry. Yeah, of course. My dog peed on my couch. I was hoping you had a machine that could help me shampoo it.”

I nodded. “We most certainly do.”

The woman laughed. “Once again, you’re a lifesaver.”

CHAPTER THREE

Kat texted me about ten minutes before closing.

At the park with the kids. Join us on the way home?

I didn’t have to ask which park she was talking about. It was my park. Gregory Park.

I texted back a thumbs-up. Phones weren’t totally off-limits at work, but personal use was discouraged. So long as no one abused it, I didn’t say much. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. If I ever got on one of the guys for using his phone too much, I couldn’t be on mine more than was necessary. Emoji replies were my go-to when I was on the clock.

Gene, who had shown up a couple of hours earlier, was already heading out the door. “Have a good evening, son.”

“You, too. By the way, this morning Kat said to give you her love.”

Gene laughed. “Of course she did. Give those kids a big hug from Grandpa.”

I nodded. “Will do. Meeting them at the park after work. Have a good night.”

Gene nodded and headed out the door. The workers all clocked out and we locked up the store. I armed the security system, got in my truck, and hit the road.

The park was a couple of minutes away, but since I got off a little later than most people, the park was usually hopping by the time I got there. This wasn’t the first time I’d met up with the family at the park after work. We didn’t frequent Gregory Park merely because I was its namesake. It was the best park around, so far as playgrounds went. It was always clean, the police patrolled regularly, and there weren’t any issues with gangs or drugs at Gregory Park. At least none that I’d heard of. It had tennis courts, basketball courts, a good walking trail, and every kind of slide or jungle gym you could imagine. It wasn’t a large park, relatively speaking—a fraction of the size of St. Louis’ Forest Park. Still, it was a great place for the kids to burn off a little energy. Tired kids meant easier bedtime meant more “adult time” alone. If we had the energy. Otherwise, more “Grey’s Anatomy.”

I parked my truck next to Kat’s silver Toyota minivan. Don’t hate on minivans. When you have three kids, they’re essential. Besides, ours was a hybrid. It was functional and economical.

Ezra, my middle son, spotted me first. “Daddy!” He slid down one of the slides and ran to me. My other two boys weren’t far behind. I scooped up my boy in my arms and kissed him on the cheek as I stepped onto the grass.

I sat him down and hugged Elliot and Elijah in turn. “Hey, boys! Having fun?”

They didn’t answer my question. I didn’t expect they would. They had their own agendas. Elliot wanted me to push him on the swings. Elijah hoped I’d give him a good spin on the merry-go-round. Ezra wanted to tell me about the book he brought home from school and couldn’t wait for me to read it to him before bed.

Kat was sitting on a bench chatting with another mother. She waved at me from a distance. I smiled and waved back.

Arcane magic was in the air. Every now and then, I’d feel it at Gregory Park. It wasn’t Caedes’ arcane prison. I buried and bound him close to a mile under the surface. Anywhere arcane magic is used, it leaves a residue. After the battle I fought on these grounds, it might take a century before it dissipated. What I felt, though, was more than that. Or was it? Something was different after I took Wand in hand the night before. I didn’t know why. Hardly a month went by when I didn’t sneak Wand from his box, even if for only a few seconds. In the past, all I felt was nostalgia.

Screams sounded from the opposite side of the park and dozens of children ran in our direction.

I grabbed my boys as Kat ran over to us. “What’s going on?”

I narrowed my eyes. In the distance, a black figure swirled around a jungle gym. “It’s a shade.”

“We have to get out of here.” Kat took Ezra’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Kat. I have to handle this,” I told her.

“Tom, you shouldn’t!”

I touched her on the cheek. “I know what I promised. Right now, I have to make sure everyone is safe.”

Tears welled up in Kat’s eyes but she nodded.

I took off toward the shade, hurdling a balance beam on the way. I extended my right hand and cast an arcane barrier. It was a subtle spell, and no one would see it, but it would slow the shade down.

Shades were a side-effect of more powerful dark magic. They were more than residue. They had an intelligence to them, the magical equivalent of reptilian intelligence. They thought only of feeding—on human souls. If it touched someone, they wouldn’t die. Not right away. But it would drive its victims to inescapable despair. To be stricken by a shade was for many a fate worse than death. I’d be damned before I let that thing touch any of those kids.

With Wand, I could have dissolved the shade with a flick of the wrist. This was going to take more effort. I was rusty. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I could handle it. I had to handle it.

“Run to the parking lot!” I shouted as screaming children ran past me.

The shade followed them. Shades aren’t fast, but they move with determination. They’re relentless. The only way to escape a shade is to dissolve it, which requires a battlemage, or run far enough from the dark magic that spawned it that it lost its power. A shade could only exist in proximity to its source. The more powerful the source, the wider its range.

That meant something a lot worse than the shade was in the park. The answer was obvious, but I didn’t want to believe it.

With the children out of the area, I gathered all the power I could handle, which was more than I expected. My body could only handle so much without Wand to focus and channel it. Too powerful a blast would knock me out. Only another mage could stabilize me if I drew too much power. Too weak a spell and I’d only slow the shade down.

The shade moved toward me. It wasn’t after me specifically. The number of souls moving in the opposite direction lured it my way.

I clenched my fist and blasted an arcane missile at the shade. My vision blurred as the entire park spun around me. My spell was too strong.

I fell to my knees. The shade was gone. It worked.

“Daddy!”

I craned my neck around in time to see Elijah running toward me.

“Son, don’t…”

Elijah wrapped his arms around me. My vision cleared. My strength returned. The arcane power swelled within my chest. I squeezed my son.

“It’s all right. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Daddy, are you okay?”

I nodded. “I’m okay. What are you doing here?”

“I was afraid for you!”

I returned to my feet and ruffled my fingers through Elijah’s shaggy brown hair. “Why were you afraid?”

“I saw what you did. That blue wall…”

“You could see that?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I see it?”

I took Elijah in my arms. He was tall for a nine-year-old, but not so heavy I couldn’t carry him. “Let’s go home.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Kat and I didn’t say much on the way home. Elijah was full of questions. All I could say was that we’d talk about it later. When he’d touched me, I’d sensed his power. He was manifesting. I knew it was a possibility, but I didn’t manifest until I was eleven. The younger one manifested, the stronger they were likely to become.

Kat wouldn’t be happy about it, but we’d both known this day would come. I’d have to train him, as my father trained me. He needed to know how to navigate this power, how to control it and restrain it. At his age, a bully at school, even a poor grade on a spelling test, could trigger a release of his magic. Any emotion would bring his power to the surface. He said he was afraid. He saw the shade and he saw my magical barrier. I couldn’t blame him for that. His fear had awakened his magic, and now we had to deal with it.

After we got home, we had dinner and started the bedtime routine. The two littles still wore night diapers, Incredible Hulk-themed tonight. Every other diaper in the pack featured a cartoon image of the superhero on the front. I made the mistake of grabbing one with the Hulk and one without. It led to a fit. I had to exchange the plainer diaper for another one with the Hulk to prevent a total meltdown.

All three boys shared a room. Elliot and Ezra shared a bed, and Elijah had a bed to himself. I kissed them all goodnight and Kat lay down with the littles until they fell asleep.

I waited for her on the couch. I didn’t bother getting the television set up for a show. The doctors of Grey-Sloan would have to wait another night to share their latest exploits with us.

Kat joined me about fifteen minutes later. “We need to talk about Elijah.”

I nodded. “We knew this was coming.”

“I’m sorry, Tom,” Kat blurted. “I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?” I grabbed her hand.

“Asking you to put your wand away, to stop using magic. I don’t know. Maybe I was in denial.”

I sighed. “You weren’t wrong. You wanted a normal life for our family. If I was using magic all these years, I don’t know if I ever could have maintained my job, much less held my family together.”

“What happens next?”

“I have to train him to control his power. Until he gets his wand, it’s not only dangerous for others, but it can be dangerous for him, too.”

Kat nodded. “I know.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m afraid that might be the least of our worries right now.”

“What was that thing?”

“It was a shade.”

“I know that. But why was it there?”

“I should have seen it coming.”

“How could you know?”

I bit my lip. “I took Wand out of his box last night. It was just for a moment.”

Kat laughed. “You’ve been doing that for years, Tom.”

“You knew about that?”

“Of course I did! I’m not stupid. I chose not to say anything about it. It wasn’t like you were using magic to clean the house.”

I smiled. “I wish I could. I’m not a domestic mage. I’m a battlemage. If I tried to do that, I’d probably burn the house down.”

“Domestic mages are a thing?”

“My mother is one. Why do you think her house is always so spotless?”

“I just assumed she was obsessive-compulsive.”

“Well, she might be that, too,” I acknowledged. “But she also has housekeeping superpowers.”

“Color me jealous! I could use a dose of that!”

I steered us back on topic. “Last night was different. When I touched Wand, I felt a surge of energy. It stayed with me all day.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“A mage’s power grows over time,” I explained. “Sometimes it’s incremental and unnoticeable. There can also be leaps, surges, into a new level.”

“You think that’s what happened?”

“I don’t know. If it’s happening to me, it could be happening to him.”

“After all this time, you think he’s still alive down there in that prison?”

“If he is, and he’s trying to escape, it might explain the shade. The thing is, he’s a mile underground. If that shade manifested in the park, it scares me how powerful he might be after all this time. And if he escapes, more powerful than before, I might be the only one who has a chance to stop him.”

“It might not be him, though.”

I scratched the back of my head. “I don’t know, Kat. What are the chances that some other dark mage decided to cast a spell in that park, of all places?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment. “Someone who wants you to think it’s Caedes.”

“Or someone trying to free Caedes,” I suggested.

“You always said he didn’t have allies.”

“That’s the thing about dark sorcerers who tap into the deeper, darker, part of the arcane wells. They crave power and aren’t willing to share it. That doesn’t mean their interests don’t sometimes align. It’s not entirely unthinkable that a young dark mage might revere Caedes as some kind of dark saint or martyr. Someone who might think Caedes would reward him, or help guide him in dark power if he rescued him from his prison.”

“Or maybe that shade was just trapped somewhere left over from the battle and something released it,” Kat mused.

“Not likely, though I suppose you’re right. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Not until I have a chance to do a little digging.”

Kat’s phone dinged with an alert.

“Local news. They’re saying there was a gas leak in Gregory Park.”

I huffed. “A gas leak? That’s how they’re explaining it?”

“Can you blame them? A cloudy substance was floating in the air. Most people wouldn’t assume straightaway that it was some kind of mystical being created as a byproduct of black magic.”

“I guess you’re right. You know how I feel about the media.”

Kat read the article. “The park is closed until further notice. Maybe you should check it out tomorrow.”

“I work tomorrow.”

Kat rolled her eyes. “I’ll call Dad. There are benefits to being married to your boss’ daughter. He knew who you were before he promoted you.”

“He’s trying to retire, Kat. He depends on me to run that place.”

“There’s more at stake here than the family business, Tom.”

“I’m not sure your father will feel that way.”

“Look,” Kat began. “I’ve been telling him for years that he needs to bring up an assistant manager or someone who can pick up the slack when you need time off. We haven’t had a vacation in three years, Tom. Three years.”

“I know. The problem is that he’s depended on me so much for so long that he wouldn’t know how to train an assistant manager on our new systems. He still runs the counter through paper contracts. Do you know how big of a mess I’ll have to clean up if I take off more than a day?”

“One day won’t hurt. At least until you’ve had a chance to check out what’s going on. If it’s nothing, if it’s some young, misguided mage, maybe you can reach him and get him on the right path.”

I chuckled. “That’s wishful thinking, Kat.”

“Maybe. But if what we’re dealing with here isn’t a big deal, you can take care of it quickly and we can get on with our lives.”

“I’d still have to work with Elijah.”

“Of course, but you wouldn’t need to take extra time off. If, however, this is connected to Caedes, you need to intervene now before he gets loose. You can’t turn a blind eye to this problem because you’re worried about the company.”

I stood and grabbed my truck keys from the hook by the door. “Call your dad, then.”

“Where are you going?”

“You said it yourself. If this has something to do with Caedes I need to nip it in the bud now. If it isn’t Caedes, if it’s some other mage, every time the mage taps into dark power, the more it will consume him. Either way, there’s a chance this can’t wait until morning. If I can figure this out tonight, I might not have to miss work tomorrow.”

Kat rolled her eyes at me again, harder this time. “I’m still telling Dad that you won’t be in tomorrow.”

“Because I’m off to try to stop an evil sorcerer?”

“I’m not going to worry him with that. I’ll tell him you aren’t feeling well. It’s not a lie. I can see it in your eyes.”

“I’m fine.”

Kat shook her finger at me. “You’re a shitty liar. You’re taking tomorrow off.”

I leaned over and kissed Kat on the forehead. “Fine. Don’t wait up for me.”

Kat chuckled. “You know I will. Keep your phone on. Let me know what’s going on. Don’t leave me here worried.”

“I’m taking Wand with me. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I hope you’re right. Be careful.” Kat pressed her lips together.

I grinned widely. “Always!”

CHAPTER FIVE

I grabbed Wand from his box. “Well, buddy. Looks like we’re a team again.”

Wand wiggled a little. Yeah, he was made of wood, but when I held him, he could move as if he were rubber. Wand couldn’t speak, but he had a body language. His little wiggle communicated excitement.

I don’t know why I assumed Wand used he/him pronouns. Technically, he was a mystical object. He was genderless. It certainly had nothing to do with his phallic shape. It probably had more to do with his behavior. I could force him into my pocket. When we were connected, he was flexible and limp. Most of the time. Now and then, especially in the presence of beautiful women, he stiffened right up.

He might have done the same around anyone. If he could speak to defend himself, he’d probably tell you it was about being inconspicuous. Not likely. A mage’s wand reflects the attitudes, feelings, and even the sense of humor of the mage. It has a personality of its own, in a way, but it’s a derived personality. The problem was that the personality I had when I was sixteen was imprinted on Wand indefinitely. I’ll say this much: I don’t think it’s a mistake how he reacted around attractive females. When I was sixteen, I was a horn ball. Why? Because I was sixteen! It made sense.

When I drove alone, I blasted the music of my youth. Nineties alternative rock, grunge, and especially punk.

I embraced the whole punk thing. When I was sixteen and forged Wand, my hair was dyed blue. I shopped at thrift stores. At least, until they opened up Hot Topic. That place was great. It allowed nonconformists like me to all dress the same.

As I drove in my truck, with Wand sitting in the passenger seat beside me, it felt like the turn of the millennium all over again. I blared a little MxPx. Back in the day, a girl told me that their song Chick Magnet reminded her of me. I was oblivious. When I looked back on it, years later, I finally realized she was into me. How hadn’t I seen it? She was cute, too. She belonged to one of the mage families. Her name was Jessie. I liked her but was too shy to ask her out. She was so confident. I chuckled as I thought about those days.

No regrets. I was happy with how my life turned out. Still, like anyone else, I wondered how I’d do things differently if I had the knowledge I did now and could do things over.

I ran into Jessie a couple of years ago. She was managing a coffee shop. Never married. She was an empath mage. She always knew what you were thinking, and how you were feeling. You’d think that would be a great skill to have in relationships, but to hear her tell it, it was the opposite. She knew when the men she dated were thinking about other women, checking them out, when they were insecure, bored, or whatever. Most people cover up those feelings for good reason. They don’t mean much. They are passing and fleeting. I saw how perceiving those emotions in someone could make dating difficult.

Listening to that song reminded me that the shop she worked at was a short detour on the way back to the park. Her skills could come in handy. If a dark mage was in the area, or if Caedes was casting spells from his arcane prison, she’d sense it. She’d be able to tell me what he was up to, what he was thinking, and she’d have a good idea of what he planned to do.

I pressed my lips together. Reaching out to Jessie now for help was smart, but it was complicated. I was happily married. Working with a mage I used to like, and she knew it, would be awkward if nothing else.

I rolled my eyes and laughed at myself. She’d also know I was in love with Kat. If she sensed anything in me about her, they’d be old feelings. She was my best shot at sorting this matter out quickly so I could put my worries to rest.

I pulled off the highway and drove to Jessie’s coffee shop. I wasn’t sure if she was working, but when I pulled up, I could see her taking someone’s order at the counter. I got out of my truck and noted the closing time posted on the door. She’d be off in a few minutes.

I stepped into the coffee shop, and Jessie glanced at me with a sheepish smile on her face. I waved at her. She redirected her attention to her customer and went to the espresso machine to make his drink.

After she delivered it and he left, I approached the counter.

“Tommy Gregory. I wondered how long it would take before you showed up.” Jessie smirked.

I huffed. “Sorry. I’d tell you that running into you last time was nice but…”

“You felt awkward about it. I know. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about all that’s been going on lately.”

I tilted my head. “You know what’s happening? I fought a shade at the park this evening.”

“Can I make you a drink? It’ll be on the house.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“I know you aren’t, but maybe it’ll settle your nerves.”

“I’m not nervous!”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Tommy.”

I laughed. “No one has called me that in years. Who am I kidding? Of course I’m nervous.”

Jessie grabbed a paper cup and filled it with hot brew, placed a lid and sleeve on it, and handed it to me. “Old feelings are a bitch, huh?”

I bit my lip. “Talking about it isn’t helping. You know I’m happily married.”

Jessie raised her hand. “Whoa, boy. I know that. You see, that’s what I have to deal with every day. I feel what I feel, then I open my fat mouth and make things weird.”

I grinned. “Your mouth isn’t fat.”

“Yeah, you still think my lips are nice. Picked up on that, too.”

I cleared my throat. “Look, I need your help. I need to figure out what’s going on.”

Jessie nodded. “Of course you do.”

“Do you know anything?”

“Not exactly. I haven’t picked up on anything specific, but you’re right. Something is brewing.”

“You get off in a few minutes, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll go with you to the park. You don’t really think Tim is still alive after all these years, do you?”

“Tim died a long time ago,” I mused. “The moment he embraced dark magic. Caedes had enough power to sustain his life.”

“Of course he did. But would he? Would you, if you were trapped in an arcane prison and buried halfway to hell?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was the right thing to do, Tommy. I know you’re wondering if it was a mistake. You shouldn’t feel guilty. He killed people. A lot of people. He would have killed thousands more if you didn’t stop him.”

“Still, he was our friend once. I basically buried him alive.”

“I know what you’re thinking. He was beyond saving. It was the only way to stop him.”

“I could have killed him.”

Jessie looked at me pointedly. “If burying him still bugs your conscience, can you imagine what it would have done to you if you killed him?”

“I’m a battlemage,” I reminded her. “At least I was. I was trained to kill.”

“So are soldiers. Do you know how many of them come in here trying to hide their trauma and angst? It doesn’t matter what they trained you for, Tommy. You’re human. Killing another human being screws with people.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course I am. Do you know how many good mages, battlemages even, have turned dark after killing someone?”

“Not exactly.”

“It was a rhetorical question. I don’t think anyone keeps records of things like that. It’s happened more than you probably know.”

“They say that a lot of good battlemages became turncoats during the Arcane Wars.”

“The dark forces always have that advantage,” Jessie admitted. “Their side tempts us always. Only a handful of good mages have ever come back from that. Once you taste the darkness, once you dip into the deeper part of the wells, it’s hard to escape. Jumping into a well is easy. Climbing out of it is almost impossible.”

“How do you do it?” I asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“As an empath, it must be twice as hard for you to resist the darker powers.”

“When you fought Tim, Caedes, whatever, you only saw what he did. You didn’t feel what he felt. If you did, it would scare the shit out of you.”

“Do I want to know?”

Jessie folded her hands and leaned over the counter. Damn it if she didn’t look better in her forties than she did when we were in our early twenties. I had that thought for a split second and she smirked but didn’t say anything. I was grateful for that. “What if you got a little angry and the only way to deal with it was with rage? What if you were mad at someone and the only thought you could have was murder? You shouldn’t feel guilty about what you did to Tim. If you hadn’t bound him, he would have killed you. He wanted to.”

“You weren’t there. How do you know?”

Jessie looked away. “I was there just as you were the first time he went dark. He was jealous of you, you know. That’s one reason he welcomed the darkness. After that, well, it wasn’t just envy that fueled him. He wanted you dead.”

“That was more than a year before he killed his first victim.”

She nodded. “The seeds were there early. Darkness is like that. Once it gets its hold on you, it grows. It never stops growing.”

I stared at her. “If he’s still alive, if he’s found a way to fight his way out of that prison, he’ll be a monster.”

Jessie removed her apron and stepped out from behind the counter. She headed for the door. She turned back toward me. “We’re closed. You coming?”

“Yeah, right. Of course.”

“Stop looking at my ass, Tommy.”

“I wasn’t!” I sighed. There was no sense denying it. “Damn it, I didn’t mean to.”

Jessie laughed. “I know you didn’t. You’re a man. Don’t feel bad about it. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or even a bad husband.”

I snorted. “Right. Maybe you could just not mention it when you catch me thinking things like that.”

Jessie giggled a little. “I’ll try. It’s a good thing you can’t read my mind.”

I gulped. “Look, Jessie, I know we both liked each other back in the day. I know nothing ever happened, mostly because I was too damn shy to say anything to you. You’d think a guy who’d later save the world and defeat the most powerful dark sorcerer to ever threaten the planet would have had the courage to ask a cute girl out to a movie. But that’s in the past. Whatever you think about me, you’re right, I don’t want to know. Leave it in the past.”

Jessie laughed. “I was just thinking about how you let yourself go. Damn, Tommy. I mean, really? You used to be a work of art. You really should lay off the pizza and donuts.”

I lowered my eyes and rubbed my brow. “I don’t feel bad about that. I’m old.”

“We’re in our early forties, hon. We aren’t old. We’re seasoned. Some of us with sugar and cinnamon spice. Some of us with grease and lard.”

“Hey! That’s not nice.”

Jessie smirked. “I didn’t say you’re not cute. But don’t get any ideas. We’re friends. I don’t hold your fleeting glances against you. I’d never mess with your marriage.”

“I wasn’t even considering anything like that!”

Jessie held the door open. “I know. You’re a good man. Faithful, too. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have so much fun screwing with you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you haven’t ever touched the dark arts? You’re cruel.”

Jessie stood there staring at me for a couple of seconds. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

Jessie stared at me. “Do you know what it’s like being an empath? Every man who stares at me, who checks out my ass or gawks at my cleavage while I make his triple-shot mocha. I know everything he’s thinking. Everything he’s feeling. Married men who I could seduce in two seconds if he thought his wife would never know. That’s not you.”

I nodded. “I’m glad you know that.”

“It would take me a good ten minutes to seduce you if I wanted to!”

My jaw dropped. “Jessie!”

Jessie laughed. “I’m screwing with you again, Tommy. Your heart is so damn pure I’m surprised you don’t have bleach in your blood. Yeah, you stared at my butt for a split second. But even if I wanted to seduce you, which I don’t, you wouldn’t cross that line for anything in the world. That’s why I know I can trust you. It’s why I’m willing to go with you to the park. If you were like half the men who walk through these doors and thought like they did, I wouldn’t even point it out when I noticed you noticing me.”

I tilted my head. “Thank you, I think.”

“I lied a little before. I wasn’t just messing with you. I was testing you. I wanted to be sure that after all these years, you were still the same annoyingly noble and virtuous guy you were back then.”

“I wasn’t as pure as you thought.”

“Please! You were the definition of a momma’s boy!”

“I was not! I had desires my mom wouldn’t have approved of!”

“Yeah, but you didn’t act on them. I wanted you to ask me out back then because you were one of only a few mages I knew who I believed would treat the woman you fell in love with like she deserved. Your wife is a lucky woman.”

I stepped past the door and opened the driver’s side door to my truck. Jessie stepped around and opened the passenger side door. “Thank you for saying so.”

Jessie glanced at the seat. “Is that your wand, Tommy, or is he just happy to see me?”

I looked at Wand. Of course he was stiff as could be when Jessie climbed into the truck. I tried not to dwell on the significance of that fact. I grabbed Wand out of her seat and tossed him behind mine. “Sorry about that.”

“The truth is, Tommy. We would have been good together. That ship sailed because you didn’t have the balls back then to ask me out. Not once.”

I chuckled. “I thought you were out of my league.”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “I know you did. You were too clueless back then to realize how desirable you were. You’re an even better guy now than you were when we were young. Even if I liked you, or had feelings for you, I’d never act on it if for no other reason than I’d know it would ruin you. I’d feel your guilt, even as I sensed it when I called you out for checking me out. I couldn’t cross that line because if I did, if I even tried, you’d stop being the man you are. I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you that way.”

I started my truck and shifted it into reverse. My phone connected to my Bluetooth and played the same MxPx song I was blasting when I parked.

“Oh, that’s rich. You’re playing my old favorite band.”

I shrugged. “I still listen to them. They still make new music from time to time, you know. “

“But you’re playing Chick Magnet.”

“It doesn’t mean anything! Look, I was coming here to find you. So I listened to something that took me back to when we were friends. It worked the other way around at first. I put on the music, and it made me think of you. So, I thought you might be able to help.”

“Funny, I used to think this song reminded me of you.”

“You used to?”

“You’re married now. All that magnetism is gone,” she teased.

“Now I just attract screaming children who want snacks.”

“That actually sounds nice. I meant what I said before. You’re a good guy. Sorry if testing you like that made you uncomfortable.”

“Yeah. Well, at least the air is clear.”

“Now it’s awkward.”

“It’s fine,” I insisted.

“You can’t hide your feelings from me. I know you’re thinking this is all weird and uncomfortable.”

I gripped my steering wheel. “Well, it is. It’s not every day that you encounter someone you used to like ages ago and she starts examining your psyche to tell you that she likes you because she knows you’d never sleep with her, anyway.”

“I like you because I know you’re safe as a friend. That’s all I meant.”

“Yet, for some reason, it still feels strange and awkward.”

“Well, fuck. That’s pretty much my entire life, you know. It’s why I’ve never married and don’t have many guy friends. It’s always so goddamn awkward, even when it’s a hundred percent platonic.”

I pulled my truck back on the highway and headed for the park. “Care for a little advice?”

“Not really, but I know you’re going to give it to me anyway.”

I smiled. “You could have just kept your mouth shut. I could have walked into your coffee shop and maybe you’d tell me it was nice to see a friendly face after so many years. You’d notice a few fleeting glances but maybe you didn’t say a word about it. Instead, you’d offer to help and that was that. No awkwardness.”

Jessie looked at me. My eyes were on the road, but I could tell from my peripheral vision she was smiling widely. “You’re seriously underestimating the entertainment value of watching you squirm.”

I chuckled. “More unsolicited advice. Men don’t like to squirm. We don’t exist for your entertainment. Men like to feel like they have some control in a relationship, even if they really don’t have much at all.”

“You’re right. Can you keep a secret?”

“Not from you, apparently.”

Jessie turned away from me and looked out the window. “Being an empath hasn’t scared away as many men as you’d think. I’ve tried what you’re saying. I’ve pretended before that I didn’t know what they were thinking or feeling. The problem with that is that when I start pretending, then, I’m not being true to myself. I’ve had more than one man think he was in love with me. The problem with pretending, though, is that I can’t fall in love that way.”

I felt bad now. “You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.”

“If I respond to what I know men are feeling, I might be true to myself, but it makes me hard to love. It makes most people, not just men, uncomfortable and guarded. If I pretend that I don’t know what I do know about someone, I can’t reciprocate their feelings.”

“Damn. It must be really difficult for you.”

“Being an empath has its advantages. It’s also unimaginably lonely.”

“I’m not an empath. I’m not going to pretend I understand. I’m sure it’s hard.”

“It is,” Jessie acknowledged. “It’s funny, you know. I haven’t really talked about this with anyone before.”

“That’s one of the most understated casualties of what Caedes did. The mage families haven’t gathered since. Everyone wanted to point fingers of blame at other families.”

“There’s hardly a family out there who wasn’t impacted. Most families either had members who tried to follow Caedes’ example like copy-cats and were consumed by their own darkness, or they were so busy fighting with other families as you said that they became isolated.”

“What about your family? The Burghers weren’t always empaths. Wasn’t your dad a portal mage?”

Jessie nodded. “And my mother was a healer. Somehow, by their powers combined, I became what I am.”

“Empaths are rare,” I pointed out. “You’d make a great ally for anyone.”

“Sure, if I didn’t freak everyone out. My skills might be useful, but no one wants to be around someone who always knows what they’re feeling.”

“I don’t mind.”

Jessie raised an eyebrow. “This from the guy who said I was cruel a few minutes ago.”

I laughed a little. “Well, you were screwing with me! It’s okay, Jessie. I get it. Even our own families can be difficult. My son just manifested tonight.”

“That’s a huge deal. Congratulations.”

“I’m scared for him,” I confided. “He won’t have the chance to bond with other mages his age. We had that comradery and we still lost one of our friends to the dark arts.”

“He has you. He’ll be fine.”

I sighed. “If I’m enough.”

“All it takes is one person. Someone who understands, who is willing to guide you and help you. My parents are cold. They love me, but they’re afraid of me. I don’t know why. It’s not like they have a lot to hide. I know that my dad has been stopping at convenience stores and drinking Diet Cokes. I know my mom wants him to lay off the sodas. He’s hiding it. He knows I know and is afraid I’ll snitch.”

I laughed. “Cadillac problems.”

“Exactly! It’s not a huge deal. Still, they’re so damn insecure, even after fifty years of marriage that they’re both afraid that if the other knew what they were thinking it would rock the boat. Both of them know I can see through them. So they try to hide their thoughts. My dad will talk to me, and between his random obsessions about Diet Coke he’ll have to remind himself to ask me about my life, about the coffee shop, about my lack of success dating.”

“My mom is a domestic mage. My father was a battlemage who never had a battle to fight.”

“Why didn’t he help you with Caedes?”

“He said it was my mess. Tim was my friend. It was our responsibility to keep him in line. It was our responsibility to put him down.”

“He seriously said that to you? He blamed a bunch of other kids for letting Tim go down a dark path?”

“Like I said, it’s hard to find support when you’re a mage. Even from your own family. When I married outside of the mage families, my parents were livid.”

“It’s not traditional, but so what? It seems you’re happy, and apparently marrying a plain spirit didn’t prevent you from passing on the gift.”

“It’s a generational thing, I guess. It’s gotten better through the years, but there’s still tension in the air when they come over, undergirded by the occasional passive-aggressive comment about how unkempt our house is.”

“Your mom’s a domestic mage. That’s not even fair. She can wave her wand and the floors are sparkling. She can swirl her wand around the outside of the toilet bowl and the job is done. For what it’s worth, if you’d married an empath like me, not saying we ever were going to, your house would probably be a thousand times worse than whatever condition it’s in.”

“You don’t have a clean house?”

“Apartment,” Jessie corrected. “And, no. It’s not gross or anything. I just hate doing dishes, so I have paper plates. I don’t enjoy taking out the trash, so the paper plates pile up over the top of the garbage can. I hate laundry, too. You can see where this is going.”

“I just hope my sons, any of them who might manifest, don’t have to deal with all that shit that we did from our parents. It would be nice if they had friends who understood what they’re going through as their powers come in.”

Jessie kicked off her shoes and put her feet on my dashboard. “Sounds to me like you already have the answer. We didn’t have the support we needed from our parents, so we had to rely on each other. Your kids won’t have peers who understand, but they do have a father who supports them.”

I snorted. My eyes darted toward Jessie’s red-painted toes on my dash.

“Oh my God, Tommy. Why didn’t you tell me you were into feet?”

I gulped. “I’m not into feet, Jessie!”

Jessie smirked and put her feet back down on the floor. “Sure you aren’t.”

I gripped my steering wheel and shook my head. How freaking embarrassing.

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, you know. It’s a common thing. A lot of guys like pretty toes.”

“I told you, I’m not—”

What was the point? You couldn’t hide a damn thing from Jessie. It was no wonder she couldn’t maintain a relationship. My face turned three shades of red. I wasn’t into Jessie. Yeah, she was cute. I noticed. I never would have felt guilty about noticing her or anyone else, though. Like she said, men notice pretty women. That didn’t mean I’d cheat on my wife. The fact that she knew it and talked about it, though, that made me feel dirty, like I’d done something wrong.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like that.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t,” she insisted.

I felt bad for Jessie. I was the first person she’d talked to about the difficulties she faced as an empath in years, and she already felt like she’d crossed a line. She needed a friend. I wanted to help her, but if she brought it up every time I noticed she was pretty or had a feature I thought was nice, it was going to be hard.

I sucked it up. This was a one-time deal. She’d help me figure out what happened at the park. She’d help me identify the dark source that produced the shade. After that, I’d have to decide whether I could handle a friendship with her. No matter how you looked at it, it was weird. She was single without children. I had a family and kids. Most of our friends also had children. We had more in common. We could get together while the kids entertained themselves. How could I ever be a friend to someone like Jessie? Was it appropriate? She was lonely—I couldn’t imagine what it was like to have her gifts, how difficult it was to maintain not only romantic relationships but friendships.

But she was a mage. She understood. She could also help me help Elijah. She’d know how he felt about what he was going through even when he wasn’t sure about it himself. If Jessie and I were going to be friends, she couldn’t just be my friend. That didn’t feel right. It felt like I was cheating on Kat, even though I wasn’t. She had to be a friend to the family.

I glanced at Jessie as I pulled into the parking lot at Gregory Park. “After this, I think it would be nice if you joined our family for dinner tomorrow.”

“Are you sure your wife will be okay with that?”

I nodded. “You need friends. You need a family.”

“I’m not a part of your family, Tommy.”

“No, you aren’t,” I acknowledged. “But you know, some friends are as close as family. You can be a part of our lives.”

Jessie grinned. “That sounds nice.”

CHAPTER SIX

I grabbed Wand from behind my seat, still stiff as ever, and we both got out of my truck. I locked it with my key fob.

“Yeah, there’s something here,” Jessie murmured.

“You can sense it?”

Jessie nodded. “It’s not just feelings or thoughts. There’s magic here.”

“I cast a force field and an arcane missile here earlier,” I explained. “I was protecting my family and everyone else in the park. I had to take down the shade.”

Jessie dismissed this. “It’s not that. That’s part of it. Your spells left a little residue, but what I feel here is a lot more profound than that.”

“Is it Caedes?”

Jessie cleared her throat. She stepped off the pavement and onto the grass that led to the playground. She extended both her hands. “I don’t sense any thoughts at all. Other than yours, of course.”

“Caedes is buried a mile deep. Maybe you just can’t get that far.”

Jessie looked at me and grunted. “If he was there, if he was having any thoughts at all, I’d know it.”

I considered. “Maybe he’s asleep. There are ways that a mage can put oneself into an arcane slumber. That’s probably what I’d do if I was buried somewhere. It would be better than staring at nothing for decades.”

“Where exactly is he buried? Can you take me to the spot just over where he’s supposed to be?”

I led Jessie over toward one of the merry-go-rounds. I stomped my foot. “He should be right underneath us.”

Jessie knelt and placed her hands in the pea gravel that covered most of the playground. “I don’t think he’s there.”

“What do you mean, he isn’t there?”

“I mean he’s either dead or he escaped.”

“Are you sure?”

Jessie nodded. “Even if he was sleeping, he’d have brainwaves. I can sense everything. The electrical impulses that keep someone’s heart beating, that keep the body functioning even in a coma. There’s nothing there, Tommy.”

“You can sense all that? How do you even function?”

Jessie grabbed my hand. “You feel my touch. Is that all you feel right now?”

“Pretty much.”

“No, it isn’t. You also feel a slight breeze on your cheek, fluttering through your hair. You might have a little itch behind the knee, a slight pain in your arches from standing on your feet all day. At any given moment, the body experiences a thousand different sensations. You don’t notice them all unless you focus on them.”

I snorted. “All right. Yeah, I was standing on my feet all day. They hurt.”

“But you didn’t think about that at all until I mentioned it, until you thought about it.”

I nodded. “I guess that’s true.”

“That’s how my abilities work. I can sense thousands of feelings and emotions pouring out of anyone around me. Every brainwave that makes someone’s body function, I can feel. I don’t notice it unless I focus on it. Right now, I’m focused. I’m telling you, Tommy. Caedes isn’t here. He’s dead or gone. One or the other.”

“But when we arrived, you said you sensed something.”

“Right, there is dark magic here. A residue. Whatever created the shade you fought before was powerful.”

I held Wand in my hand. “I have to see for myself.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll phase through the earth. I can go down there and see if my arcane prison is still intact. If you’re right, if he’s dead, I’ll see his corpse. At least I’ll know we’re dealing with someone else.”

“It’s an awful coincidence that a shade would show up here of all places. Even more, why would it happen to appear when you were at the park?”

“You’re right. That’s why I can’t buy the notion that he’s not involved. This has to have something to do with Caedes.”

“Are you sure you can phase that far?”

I wasn’t, but I replied, “I don’t know why not.”

“You can’t hide your doubts from me. You’re anxious about it.”

“It’s been a long time,” I admitted. “But that’s how I buried Caedes down there to begin with. I bound him in the arcane prison. I phased the whole thing down as far as I could reach.”

“Doing it to yourself is totally different.”

“You’re right. It should be a lot easier.”

“What if you lose focus and you’re a mile under the surface?”

“I won’t,” I assured her. “I can do this.”

“I’m not that kind of mage. If you bury yourself alive, I can’t pull you out of there.”

I handed Jessie my phone and unlocked it. “If I don’t come back, find my wife’s number and call her. Tell her what happened. Tell her to call my dad. He can save me if push comes to shove.”

Jessie looked at me and narrowed her eyes. “Then why are you thinking that he might leave you down there a while to sweat it out, just to teach you a lesson?”

I laughed. “Because I know my dad. He wouldn’t leave me down there to suffocate. It’s not going to matter. I’m telling you. I can do this. I’m stronger than I used to be.”

“But you’re out of practice.”

“Do you know how my dad taught me to swim?”

“Of course I do. You’re picturing it in your mind right now. That’s horrible.”

I nodded. “He threw me right into the deep end of the pool. I panicked. Then I got my shit together and kicked my feet until I figured out how to tread water. My dad was there watching the whole time.”

“Your dad isn’t here right now.”

“But you are. You have my phone. I’ll be fine. You won’t have to call my dad. If I get a little lost, well, I’ll kick my feet until I tread my way back to the surface. Besides, if I’m in any trouble at all, you’ll know it.”

Jessie held my phone in her hand. “What if the screen locks?”

I grinned. “My pin is 1234.”

“You’re a dumbass sometimes.”

I shrugged. “It’s my phone. It’s not like I’m hiding classified documents pertaining to national security on there. What’s someone going to do if they get into it? Beat my own high score on Angry Birds?”

“You still play Angry Birds?” Jessie raised an eyebrow.

“What’s wrong with Angry Birds?”

“That’s so last decade.”

“You know my pin. You won’t need it. This will take five, maybe ten minutes. Unless Caedes is there and he wants to chat.”

“He isn’t there.”

“Then I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Be careful, Tommy.”

I gripped Wand in my right hand and thrust the tip into the ground. I had my waypoint fixed. I allowed arcane energies to swell within my body, converting my matter into energy. I blasted through the ground with no resistance.

I stopped about a mile deep where my arcane prison still glowed blue.

Jessie was right. Caedes wasn’t there. The prison was intact. I focused, peering into the prison. Dark, violet energy was flowing inside. The remnants of a portal. It wasn’t just a flowing mist. The energy was concentrated on a single gash, almost like a tear through space itself. Either Caedes used it to draw on dark power while he was there, or it was something left behind by the magic that got him out.

Caedes couldn’t cast a portal out of an arcane prison. The only way to forge a portal would be if someone created a portal to break into the prison. They couldn’t do that unless…

Unless they harnessed my magic. The only way to unlock the arcane prison, to force a portal into it, was if they had the unique signature, like DNA, that marked any spell I cast. How did they get it? I hadn’t cast a spell in years.

There was nothing left to see, so I focused my energy back to the surface. In arcane form, Wand and I were one and the same. We blasted through the earth’s crust and I re-materialized, landing on my feet with Wand in my hand.

Jessie looked at me with wide eyes. “I know what you saw.”

I nodded. “How is this even possible?”

“You really haven’t cast any spells at all in the last twenty years?”

“Nothing strong enough that it would leave behind a signature.”

“What about that force field? What about the arcane missile you cast to destroy the shade?”

I thought about it. “You’re right. Caedes was here earlier. Someone else who could wield dark magic must’ve been here at the same time. They created that shade when I was in the park because they knew I’d fight it. They baited me so they could unlock that prison and get a portal inside.”

“The real question is who was helping Caedes?”

I pressed my lips together. “Who would help Caedes? And why now, more than twenty years later?”

“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Who freed Caedes? That was the first question. Why the hell did they do it? That was the second. Jessie was going to be a big help with both questions. She was like a walking, breathing brain spy. She was an asset. She was also vulnerable, though. Her magic was worthless in a fight.

Empaths were the rarest class of mage. I theorized that this was because all empaths had difficulty with relationships. Having a relationship isn’t a prerequisite to procreation, but it helps. The gene was also recessive. Jessie’s parents weren’t empaths. Neither were her grandparents. Wherever in her ancestry the empath gene came from, it hadn’t shown itself for a while.

Battlemages like me were relatively common. Some were more powerful than others. Since there were a lot of battlemages, there was a lot of research, a lot of precedent, and a lot to draw from to learn how to wield our power. Jessie had to learn what she knew from a couple of dusty old books and trial and error. Despite my power, I’d barely scratched the surface of what I might accomplish. Thousands of books and records had been written and kept by battlemages of the past I could learn from. I had boxes of old books in my attic I hadn’t looked at in years. My father gave me most of them, and he still had a few shelves detailing the potential of our class.

Domestic mages were also common. It was probably the most functional class. As a battlemage, when there wasn’t someone to fight, my skills weren’t all that useful. I had a lot of boom and pow, but life rarely calls for boom and pow. Domestic mages could cook and clean with ease. My mom could cast a simple spell and our Thanksgiving turkey was perfectly cooked. If I tried to light up a turkey, I’d blow the thing to smithereens. My mom could cast a simple sweeping and purifying spell and the floors were spotless. I suppose I could purify a surface, but I’d also burn the house down if I tried.

Portal or gate mages—the terms were interchangeable, like soda and pop depending on where you grew up—were among the most intriguing of all the classes. Their skill was also functional. The ability to create gates and use them to move from place to place was handy. Given the price of gas, it was also economical. Whoever pulled Caedes from the prison was a powerful portal mage.

Mages didn’t usually specialize until they came of age. It often took years after a mage first manifested before their specialty revealed itself.

Since Elijah was manifesting so young, whatever class he became would have a strong foundation. His power would grow more than most in the meantime.

There was no guarantee that someone born of a mage would ever manifest. I had brown hair, but it didn’t mean my kids would inherit the same trait. There was no guarantee that the other two would develop a connection to the arcane wells. Even when both parents were mages there wasn’t a guarantee, and Kat wasn’t a mage at all. There was a better chance some of my children wouldn’t manifest.

Any mage of any class was susceptible to the temptation of the darker arts, the deeper powers of the arcane well. Sorcery—a term often associated with wielding dark arcane magic—tended to run in families. Was it nature or nurture? Hard to say. There’s a debate to be had, and it was probably some of both. They say there’s a genetic component to alcoholism, even if no one is born addicted. Some people could binge their way through their twenties and give up alcohol with no problem. Other people took one drink and were hooked from the start. Sorcery was like that. Caedes had dared to touch it once in a moment of weakness, and he couldn’t let it go.

Between twenty and thirty mage families existed worldwide, but it had been a long time since the world’s mages were organized in any meaningful sense. There used to be mage academies supported by all the families. Young potentials could go once they manifested, and they would learn to master their power. Once they specialized, they moved from the academies to the various colleges that corresponded with each class.

The last academy closed in the middle of the twentieth century. While two world wars raged, the mages took sides. The Arcane Wars were waged at the same time, each side hoping to influence the course of the world’s larger conflicts. When the mages split, support for the academies was divided. Faculties were split. The Mage Academy in St. Louis was the last to close its doors. Mostly because we midwestern mages were more stubborn than most. The writing on the wall was there for years. We tried to ignore it. We hoped we’d be the last hope, the one academy to survive to help rebirth the rest. Didn’t work out. Before our academy closed, the academies in New York, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, Nepal, Moscow, and Jerusalem all shut down.

There was an attempt in the seventies to unite the mage families in North America. We held convocations, yearly summer-long meetings where young people met, developed friendships, and attended intensive training courses. While the rest of my friends were out of school for the summers, I was at a convocation with my family. It’s where I met Tim and Jessie, along with a few others who I maintained contact with now via Facebook.

All of that was in the past. If children learned anything about their power now, it was through homeschooling. Every mage family handled that in their own way.

I dropped Jessie off at her coffee shop. She wasn’t on social media, so we exchanged phone numbers, and I invited her to dinner the next night. I wasn’t sure how I’d explain that to Kat, but she’d understand once I told her how helpful Jessie could be if we hoped to track down Caedes and whoever the portal mage was who freed him.

With a portal mage and an old battlemage teamed up, I was in for a challenge. Portal mages could be handy in a fight. They didn’t just make portals for themselves. They could put you into one if you weren’t careful. They could drop you anywhere. In the middle of the ocean, a mile deep into the earth’s crust, or up in the clouds.

This portal mage had a range of at least a mile, or he couldn’t have reached Caedes. The dark arcane powers apparently allowed him to forge an escape portal within the confines of an arcane prison.

I pulled my truck back into my garage. When I stepped inside, Kat was waiting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and her e-book reader. I didn’t know what she was reading, probably a story with a dude who had a penchant for removing his shirt far more regularly than was natural.

Kat set her reader on the table. “What did you find out?”

I sat down opposite Kat. “I met up with an old friend. One of the mage kids I used to hang out with when our families still attended the conclaves.”

“Someone who knew Caedes?”

I nodded. “She’s an empath. She can read people’s feelings and thoughts. I figured if I brought Jessie to the park, she’d be able to confirm if Caedes was still buried in his prison.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t there. I phased down there to see for myself. Sure enough, there was the residue from a portal in the prison. Someone busted him out of there.”

“Do you have any clue where he went?”

I shook my head. “I could try to track down his parents. I’m not sure they’d be especially happy to help. I was the mage who buried their son.”

“What about your friend? You said her name was Jessie?”

“Maybe she could pay them a visit. If they remember who Jessie was, though, they’ll know what she can do.”

“Does it matter? If they know something, maybe she’ll sense it.”

“It’s possible. There’s a chance that Caedes won’t be entirely sane. He’s been in that prison for twenty years. I’m guessing he put himself in an arcane slumber. Even then, after so much time, I can’t imagine he’d come back with all his wits.”

“Wouldn’t that make him easier to catch a second time?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I answered. “Especially if he has a gate mage helping him out. Not to mention, if you had to get into a fight, would you rather fight an opponent sound of mind or someone totally insane?”

Kat took a deep breath. “I see your point.”

I cleared my throat. “I think Jessie might also be able to help with Elijah.”

“How so?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know how he feels about it as his powers start to expand? I remember what it was like when I first manifested. It was confusing. I felt like I was alone in the world even though I knew I wasn’t, even though we still had conclaves and convocations in those days and I knew there were other young people going through the same thing.”

“He won’t be alone. You’ve been through it. He can lean on you, Tom.”

“Yeah, well, we were also kids once. Do you think once they become teenagers they’ll come to us with all their problems knowing that we were their age once?”

Kat laughed. “I suppose not.”

“Jessie is an asset. I’m also worried about her. If we get too close, her power doesn’t give her any way to really defend herself. I’ve asked her if she’d like to join us for dinner tomorrow.”

Kat brushed a stray brown strand of hair from her face. “I suppose I can come up with something.”

I cleared my throat. “Just remember, she can be a little abrasive. She knows what you’re feeling and thinking. She’ll respond to your feelings even if you’re trying to hide them. She means well, but it can be a little jarring at first.”

“I can’t imagine what it’s like.”

I chuckled. “It can be embarrassing.”

Kat looked at me sideways. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t talking about what it’s like to be around her. I was talking about how hard it must be to be her.”

“Right. Of course.”

“What did you think that was so embarrassing?”

I bit my lip. “Nothing.”

Kat raised an eyebrow. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

Kat laughed and rolled her eyes. “What were you thinking that she picked up on?”

“Nothing, really,” I promised. “She’s never been married. Never had kids. I was just surprised at how well she’d aged. It was a fleeting thought about how good she looked.”

“Are you attracted to her?”

“No!”

“Tom…”

“Well, she’s attractive. That doesn’t mean I’m attracted to her.”

“She noticed you looking, huh?”

I cleared my throat. “I swear, sometimes I wonder if you’re an empath mage, too!”

Kat laughed. “I know you, Tom. It’s fine. I notice hot guys, too, you know.”

I tilted my head. “You do?”

“Of course I do.”

I pouted. “You and those damned Mc-whatever doctors on Grey’s Anatomy.”

“What, you’re going to pretend to be upset about that now when you just admitted you noticed that your friend was attractive?”

“Sorry. It’s hypocritical, I know it.”

“Damn straight it is. Look, Tom. It’s not an issue unless you make it one.”

I scratched my head. “Just try to mind your thoughts when she’s around.”

“Look who’s talking!”

I grinned. “That’s fair. She’s been alone a long time. It’s hard for an empath to maintain relationships. She needs support. I was just hoping you two could be friends.”

Kat shrugged. “I’m open to it. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”

I nodded. “Understandable.”

“By the way, Dad is covering for you tomorrow. Maybe you can try and track down Caedes’ family. See if you can find anything out.”

“Jessie will be working in the morning, too. She has her own coffee shop. Java something or other. It’s right off the highway in south city.”

“Java City?”

“That’s the one!”

Kat grinned. “I’ve been there a few times. Long blonde hair?”

I chuckled. “That’s Jessie.”

Kat laughed. “She is cute!”

I sighed. “I’m going to refrain from commenting right now. I can’t think of anything I could say that wouldn’t get me in trouble.”

Kat feigned a gasp and placed her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe you!”

I rolled my eyes. “I said nothing at all. How am I still in trouble?”

Kat grabbed my hand, leaned over the table, and kissed me softly. “You’re not in trouble, babe. It’s so damn easy to get under your skin.”

“I’m going to bed.” I stood from the table.

Kat stood, came around the table, and grabbed me by the waistband of my pants. She pulled me into a deeper kiss. “Let’s go together.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The kids slept through the night. Hallelujah. We didn’t. I won’t say why. I’ll just say I was exhausted, and it wasn’t from the spells I’d cast. I left Wand in my underwear drawer for the night. I was afraid he might watch and get excited. Watch what? Me sleeping, of course. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. Say no more. The last thing I needed was an overstimulated Wand shooting off all over the room.

Kat snuck out of bed at some point to get the kids ready for school. Since she’d already arranged for me to take a day off, I didn’t bother setting my alarm. I hoped I’d get a chance to catch up on sleep, but when the kids realized I was home, it was a matter of seconds before three pairs of little feet were jumping up and down all around me.

“Wake up! Daddy! Wake up! It’s morning time!”

I groaned and pulled the blanket over my head. One of my sons straddled me and started bouncing his butt up and down on my curled-up body.

I huffed. “I’m not a bucking bronco. Go get ready for school.”

It was no use. By the time the kids started messing with Alexa, I gave up.

“Alexa, fart!” Ezra commanded.

Alexa complied.

The kids giggled as the sounds of flatulence filled the room.

“Alexa,” Elijah chimed in. “Play the butt cheeks song.”

I sighed. “There’s no such thing as—”

“Now playing Butt cheeks, Butt cheeks, Butt cheeks, by the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, on Amazon Music.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I was tempted to reach into my underwear drawer, grab Wand, and assault Alexa with an arcane missile, but I resisted. Destroying things wasn’t a good example to set for the boys.

The kids were dancing around singing along to what might have been the dumbest song in the history of the world. The song was all about butt cheeks.

Elliot was running around the room, giggling, every time the song mentioned poop. Of course the song included poop. You can’t sing a song about butt cheeks without it.

“She said poop! That’s funny, daddy!”

I ruffled my hand over Elliot’s light-brown hair as he looked up at me with his wide, dark, eyes. I kissed him on the forehead before I shuffled across the master bedroom, still in my boxers, and found a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

Kat came in about the time I finished buttoning my jeans. “Elijah and Ezra. Time to go out for the bus!”

My two oldest boys gave me hugs and followed their mom out of the room. Elijah was in third grade and Ezra was in kindergarten. Elliot went to preschool, but Kat had to drop him off and pick him up every day. She usually took him after the other two were on the bus.

“Alexa, shut up!” I commanded.

Alexa silenced the butt cheeks song.

I stepped into the bathroom. Kat and I had a “master bathroom.” The kids had their own, but for some reason, Elliot’s training toilet was on the floor in our bathroom. The toilet was shaped to look like a frog. Its mouth was the opening where you were supposed to sit. I guess you were supposed to do your business down his throat. Super weird. What were we teaching our kids?

I looked at myself in the mirror and spotted a stray two-inch hair growing from my right eyebrow. Being over forty is weird. That shit never happened when I was single in my twenties. Back then, if something went astray on my face like that, I dealt with it. Now, well, apparently a two-inch strand of hair wasn’t long enough to notice. It had to get to three inches before it caused any alarm. “Alarm” might be exaggerating. More like a quizzical stare at my reflection and a moment of curiosity about how the hell the rogue eyebrow hair survived so long. It wasn’t just my eyebrows anymore. I had to trim my ears now.

I plucked the stray hair from my eyebrow and winced. It didn’t feel good. I had a few stray hairs sticking out of my nostrils, but I never pulled those out. There are few things in life less pleasant than pulling out a nose hair. I had a little battery-powered trimmer to handle the nose and ear hair. It worked like a charm, and using it didn’t make me feel like someone had shoved an icepick straight into my brain.

I grabbed the spare tire that surrounded my mid-section and jiggled it. “Jessie was right. I let myself go.”

I heard a laugh and turned to see Kat leaning against the door frame with a shit-eating grin splitting her face. “You look great. Stop it.”

I snorted. “I didn’t know you were there. I think I’m going to start hitting the gym again.”

“When are you going to do that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get up a little early and hit the gym before work. How the hell am I going to fight a dark sorcerer if I’m out of shape?”

“So, you have a bit of a gut. I don’t know much about arcane magic, but for some reason, I don’t think a mage’s power is inversely proportional to the size of his belly. Besides, you’re talking about fighting a sorcerer who has done nothing but sit on his ass for twenty-one years.”

“We don’t know that. The prison was big enough. What if he spent all that time doing push-ups and sit-ups?”

“Then he’ll have bigger muscles than you. What really matters is the size of your wand.”

I chuckled. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. Besides, when it comes to wands, bigger isn’t always better.”

Kat smirked. “Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.”

At least I still had more than a decade before I had to have regular prostate exams. I was pretty sure that would eclipse the wincing pain of pulling out nose hairs.

I didn’t bother shaving. Kat thought I looked good with a little stubble.

“Any idea where you’re going to start today?” Kat asked.

“I thought I’d head back to the park again. Now that I know that a portal mage was involved, and it’s light out again, there might be a few clues that I missed last night.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I’ll have Wand with me. I’ll be fine.”

“They said on the news that the park was closed temporarily.”

I smirked. “Yeah, while they solved the ‘gas leak.’ There was no gas leak. They know that. They’re just closing the park to maintain the illusion. No one wants to believe that something mystical was to blame. Even if the authorities know the truth, they don’t want to cause a panic.”

I shrugged. “If I can’t get back into the park today, I’ll see if can I track down a few other mages I knew before. They might know something. If not about the portal mage, maybe they’ll know where I can find Caedes’ family.”

“Did he have any siblings?” Kat asked.

I nodded. “He had a brother, but he never manifested.”

“Sort of like your brother.”

“Right.”

“When’s the last time you talked to Adam?”

I bit my lip. “We talk a few times a year. We usually call each other on our birthdays. He’s wrapped up with his family. They spend holidays with his wife’s family.”

“You haven’t seen him since your grandfather’s funeral.”

“I know! What can I do? I’ve asked him about getting together with the kids more than once. He always says he’ll get back to me. He never does.”

“What does he have against you? Is he jealous because you have magic and he doesn’t?”

I thought about it. “I don’t think that’s it. Honestly, we’re cool. When we were both working out, we used to talk quite a bit about our routines and supplements.”

“What about your parents? Maybe you should pay them a visit and let them know what’s going on.”

I bit my lip. “I don’t know, Kat. You know my mom. She’ll worry herself into another anxiety attack. My Dad will want to help.”

“Is that a problem? He’s a battlemage, too.”

“Right, but you don’t know my dad. Despite the fact that I defeated Caedes and saved the freaking world, he always feels the need to explain how to do simple spells that I mastered a long ass time ago.”

“He’s just trying to be helpful.”

I sighed. “I know. I love my parents. I’m just not sure that it’s a good idea to get them involved right now.”

“The mage families used to communicate. Maybe they know where Caedes’ parents are. Think back to when you were twenty-one. If someone had locked you away, freezing your maturity in time, and you finally got back wouldn’t you go see your parents first?”

“Yeah, but their family isn’t like that. They aren’t close. Not emotionally. They were always single-minded, all about magic. When Tim Wagner went dark-side and became Caedes, it brought a lot of shame on their family name. Even so, like I told you last night, I’m not sure the guy who locked their son away is someone they want to see right now or ever.”

“What’s the worst that can happen? They slam the door in your face. You’re no worse off than you are now.”

I grunted. I hated it when Kat was right. Of course, she was usually right. Don’t tell her I said that. “Fine. I’ll stop by Mom and Dad’s. I’ll see if they know where the Wagners are. They used to be local. I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved elsewhere after the incident.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

I nodded. “I have to work tomorrow. I can’t miss work on a Saturday.”

Kat smiled. “Then you’d best make the best use of your extra day off.”

CHAPTER NINE

I went back to the park for the third time in twenty-four hours. Signs were posted to keep out but no one was around to enforce them. The magic lingered in the air, not as strong as the night before. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. It’s not like mages left special footprints. We had five toes on each foot like anyone else. We wore normal shoes.

Who was I kidding? I wasn’t a detective. I was a manager at an equipment rental store. What did I expect to find, anyway? A smoking gun with fingerprints left to match? If a battlemage was involved, I might see the burn marks left behind from an arcane missile or charred ground over where Caedes was buried. With a portal mage involved, there’d be little trace beyond the general residue of his magic in the air that he’d leave behind.

The only thing I could think of was that whoever broke Caedes out expected me to be there. He cast something to release the shade that lured me to fire at it without the aid of my wand. He used my magical DNA, my signature, to penetrate my prison and create a gate so Caedes could leave. If I’d had Wand with me, it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to grab my signature. Something about filtering a spell through Wand gave me more focus and prevented my magical signature from being used against me.

Whoever the gate mage was must’ve been following me, or Kat and the kids. I shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t like we went to the park every day. We went maybe once every couple of weeks. He could have been watching us for at least that long.

I looked around. The park was quiet. The breeze carried the smells of early autumn.

A gate mage could open a portal in my house and drop a bug. He could sneak in and out of my house and hide in the attic, lurking in cobwebs and pink insulation, listening to whatever we said. He could watch us in the shower if he was a pervy gate mage. I’d say he could be a mystical peeping Tom, but I didn’t much care to share that name. A peeping jerk-faced creep was more like it. For the sake of Toms everywhere, you should know that very few of us are peepers.

I called Kat and let her know I thought it best she not be home alone. Maybe the gate mage got what he wanted. More likely, now that he’d freed Caedes, my old friend/enemy—don’t the kids call that frenemy?—could use whatever intelligence his liberator gathered against me.

I suppose the trip back to the park wasn’t a total waste. The fresh air helped me get a little insight into what we were facing. It also allowed me to procrastinate. My next stop was my parents’ house.

Kat was right. They might know something about where the Wagners lived. What I was dreading wasn’t seeing my parents. It was the twenty questions my mom would have about all that had happened, most of which I wouldn’t know how to answer. She was all about the details, where I tended to focus on the big picture. Maybe it was because she was a domestic mage and I was a battlemage. Her spells were always refined and detail-oriented. Mine were always big, impressive, and sometimes destructive.

I left the park and shot a text to each of my parents to let them know I was stopping by. I suspected they’d be home. It was early, though, so I wasn’t sure if they’d be awake. It was a thirty-minute drive to Kirkwood, where they lived. St. Louis traffic sucks pretty much always.

My parents still lived in the same house where I grew up. They also had a nice waterfront home at the Lake of the Ozarks. They were thinking about moving to the lake full-time, but they never got the offer for the house they hoped for. Besides, they seemed to have doctors’ appointments all the time. I couldn’t keep up on all the various health issues they had. They were pushing seventy and, all things considered, were doing great for their age. Having a place closer to the city meant they wouldn’t have to stay with me, so I wasn’t any more eager for them to sell their home than they were.

Tom and Debbie Gregory. Yeah, my dad and I shared a name. I was “junior” and to them, I was always “Tommy.”

I knew the garage door code, and I squeezed between my parents’ two cars in the garage. My mom still drove a minivan for some reason. I didn’t know why. She didn’t drive much, and she hardly ever carried a passenger. My dad still drove a truck. I think it was a status thing, maybe a man thing. Some men feel like they need to drive something powerful because their vehicle is a reflection of their manliness. If it doesn’t drive fast, it has to have towing power. It didn’t matter if you never broke the speed limit or had to tow anything. What mattered was that you had the power, not that you used it.

I think my dad felt the same way about being a battlemage.

I grew up there, so ringing the doorbell felt weird. Besides, Mom and Dad were used to me walking in on my own, and they knew I was coming.

I climbed the short wooden staircase and opened the door that opened into my parents’ kitchen. The house smelled like pumpkin spice. My house usually smelled like ass by comparison. The only time I noticed the foul odor of my own home was after visiting my parents.

“Mom? Dad?”

“Tommy!” my mom exclaimed. “Come on in!”

I passed through the kitchen and into the living room. My parents didn’t cuddle on the couch anymore, but they still had one. They sat on matching recliners on either side of it, tapping away on their iPads. Based on the things they usually sent me, I imagined my mom was researching political conspiracy theories and my dad was surfing through memes.

I cleared my throat. “I have a problem.”

My mom set her iPad down and looked at me. “It’s not the booze, is it?”

“No, mom. It’s not the booze. I don’t drink much at all.”

“Problems with the little lady?” my dad guessed.

I sighed. “No, things with Kat are great. It’s Caedes.”

My dad set his iPad down. Now, he was interested. “What about him?”

“I think there’s a portal mage out there who broke him out of his prison. I wondered if you knew what happened to the Wagners. Maybe they’d know something.”

My mom glanced at my dad. “We haven’t heard from them in years.”

“We’re not friends,” my dad added.

“I know. I just hoped you might know where they live. Are they still in Missouri?”

My dad took a deep breath. “How did a portal mage get through your prison, Tommy?”

I bit my lip. “They tricked me. I fought a shade in the park. I think they extracted my magical signature from the spell and used it to get through.”

My mother shrugged. “Perhaps you should leave it alone. He’s been locked up in isolation for a long time. Maybe he’s learned his lesson.”

“Mom, he killed a lot of people. Dozens of mages and who knows how many others. He deserved a life sentence.”

“Tommy’s right, dear. If Timmy Wagner broke out of that prison, it’s his responsibility to handle it.”

“Tommy can’t be blamed for that sorcerer’s actions.”

“No,” I broke in. “Dad’s right. I’m the one who put him in that prison and buried him in the middle of the city. It was my decision. If I didn’t lock him up well enough, I have to be the one to deal with it. I also need your help, Mom.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Whoever this portal mage is was spying on my family. He knew we were going to the park. I think he might have a bug in my house somewhere.”

“It wouldn’t take a bug,” my dad explained. “A small gate cast somewhere inconspicuous, a portal mage could drop a recording device through on a tether and pull it right back. Your mother probably won’t find a thing.”

“I know, Dad. I just thought it was worth making sure.”

“I do more than cook and clean, you know,” my mom retorted. “I can cast a protective ward over your house.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You can do that?”

“It would mean you couldn’t cast anything while home,” my dad cautioned me.

“I don’t use my magic in the house anyway. What would I do if I could? Kill a spider with an arcane missile?”

“He’s right, dear,” my mom put in. “You know as well as anyone, a home is no place for battle magic.”

“You can’t castrate our son in his own home!”

I snorted. “She’s not talking about castrating me, Dad. I don’t need to cast spells to be a man.”

“Fine, son. If you need your mother to protect your family, that’s on you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m still protecting my family, Dad.”

My father shrugged.

“We should tell him, Tom,” my mom said.

“Tell me what?” This didn’t sound good.

My dad said nothing for a long moment, then finally heaved a sigh. “About ten years ago, the Wagners contacted us looking for a volume on gate magery.”

“Why would they ask you for that?”

“Your great-grandmother was a portal mage.”

I tilted my head. “I didn’t know that.”

My mom nodded. “She collected some of the rarest volumes on her specialization. The Wagners suspected we had them in our library.”

“We did, of course,” my dad added. “But we told them we didn’t have the books they were looking for.”

“Why were they looking for those books anyway?” I asked. “I’m guessing there was someone coming of age in their family who specialized in that direction?”

My dad nodded. “Gate magery doesn’t run in their family. It wasn’t surprising that they’d look elsewhere for help. It does, however, run in the Sato family.”

I was beginning to understand. “I’m guessing one of the Wagners married a Tokyo mage?”

“They were never married, Tommy. The child was Hana Sato’s son,” my mom explained.

I frowned. “Caedes killed her.”

My dad cleared his throat. “No one talked about it. All the families knew about it. You have to understand, after Timmy embraced the darker powers, if anyone knew that Hana’s boy was fathered by him it would have brought shame on their family.”

My jaw dropped. “Wait. You’re saying that Caedes had a child with Hana Sato?”

“If you remember, Timmy struggled with it for a while,” my mom replied. “It took years before his darkness took over. When Timmy started to lose the battle, Hana tried to take their baby boy with her back to Japan. Timmy found out about it.”

I clenched my fist. “I always knew that Caedes killed Hana. I never knew why.”

“He didn’t want her to take his son away,” my dad went on. “After he killed Hana, the dark powers consumed him. That’s what started it all.”

I grunted. “I knew Hana. She was one of our friends. I had no idea they were together.”

“They weren’t,” my mom explained. “It was a one-time thing. They were young, barely of age. None of the families at the time knew about the child. Hana didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Hana never specialized. She was showing signs of becoming a gate mage, then the next year when we saw her at convocation all those signs were gone. That must’ve been the year she was pregnant.”

“Pregnancy suppresses a mage’s magic, it usually remains dormant for some time, usually until the mother stops breastfeeding.”

I took a deep breath and shook my head. “It makes sense. I still can’t believe it.”

“It’s the truth, son,” my father assured me. “After Hana died, the Wagners took the child. I suspect they came to us looking for information on gate magery because there was no way the Sato family would help. Not after what Timmy did to Hana.”

“The Satos let the Wagners raise Hana’s baby? Why would they do that?”

“Shame is a powerful thing in Japanese culture,” my dad explained. “After all that went down with Caedes, they didn’t want anyone to know that their youngest, most promising mage had his child.”

“You think that the mage who broke Caedes out of his prison was his son?”

My mom looked thoughtful. “It certainly makes sense. I imagine the Wagners have been planning this for some time. Ever since the boy specialized.”

My father stood from his chair and straightened out his shirt. “Without the books to guide the boy, they must’ve trained the boy through trial and error. It’s dangerous. I suspect in the process, he followed in his father’s footsteps.”

I nodded. “If Caedes’ son is the gate mage responsible, he is using dark power.”

“This is our fault. We should have given them the damn books,” my mother fretted.

“No, we did the right thing,” my dad assured her. “If the Wagners hoped the boy would free Caedes, it was just a matter of time before he embraced the darkness.”

“And you have no idea where the Wagners are these days?” I pressed.

“It was ten years ago when they reached out to us,” my dad reminded me. “Even then, it was by telephone. We didn’t know where they were calling from.”

I nodded. “You still have the books on gate magery, right?”

“Of course we do.”

“Mind if I borrow them? Maybe I can learn a little about what we’re facing.”

My dad shrugged. “You can have them. I have no use for them.”

My mom stood and grabbed her purse. “Let’s go, son.”

“You’re coming?”

“Do you want me to ward your house or not?”

I wouldn’t argue with that. “I think that’s a good idea.”

CHAPTER TEN

I texted Kat to let her know that I was bringing my mom over to check our house for bugs and ward it against any arcane intruders. She responded quickly.

I’m having a cup of coffee.

She added the emoji of a coffee cup followed by a winking yellow face after her message. I sighed.

Are you at Jessie’s place?

Her response told me all I needed to know:

LOL

I rolled my eyes. If things weren’t awkward enough while Jessie was around, for my wife to meet up with her at work, hang out, and get to know one another before I had a chance to introduce them was going to make things weirder.

Mom got to work as soon as we arrived. Wisps of faint blue arcane energy swirled all around the house and I realized she wasn’t just searching the place for bugs. She was cleaning. The dishes in the sink ended up stacked on the counter. Watching my mom clean via domestic magery reminded me of how Merlin helped the Wart do his chores in The Sword and the Stone.

I wasn’t sure how my wife would feel about it. My mom couldn’t come over and leave things as they were. She had zero tolerance for dirt, dust, or stains.

I cleared my throat. “How is all of this warding the house?”

My mom shrugged as she waved her wand around her head. “Well, dear, if I’m going to ward the house, we’d best clean it first. Any mage inside the wards will be powerless so long as the wards are up. Clean first, ward later.”

I thought about telling her that she didn’t have to clean the house. I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Still, once my mom was gone, Kat wasn’t going to be thrilled about it. When my mom cleaned, she also had a propensity to put things away where she thought they should go.

I understood that it was frustrating, but at the same time my mom could clean more in a matter of minutes than my wife and I could find time to do over the course of several weeks. If we did it ourselves, we’d no sooner finish the job and the first thing we cleaned would need to be cleaned again. Worse than that. We had three little tornadoes that had a unique talent to turn a perfectly organized room into a disaster zone in a matter of minutes.

After my mom finished cleaning and tidying things up, she did a little spin and a golden blast of energy poured out of her wand as she channeled her magic around the perimeter of our home. When she completed the circle, her own wand stopped channeling.

“There you go, son. No magic will happen inside your house.”

“You didn’t find any bugs?”

“Nothing that suggests anyone was spying on you,” my mom reported. “Did you know that your second-born had a Twinkie under his bed?”

“It’s not surprising.”

“Tell your wife she needs to keep up on these things. Something like that could collect mold.”

“My wife and I share the cleaning responsibilities, Mom.”

“You work long hours. She works whenever she wants. She’s still a photographer, isn’t she?”

“She is. She takes jobs when she can,” I explained. “Mostly weddings and family sessions.”

“So her schedule is flexible. Yours isn’t. Where is she, anyway? Your house was a mess and she decided to go out on the town for the day?”

“I told her to leave. I wasn’t sure it was safe.”

My mom pressed her lips together and nodded. “But I saw on the Facebook how she took the kids to Six Flags last Saturday.”

I sighed. “First, Mom, it’s Facebook. Not the Facebook. And yes, she has a season pass. It was one of the last weekends of the year that they’re open, and I was at work.”

“Meanwhile, your house sat here a mess.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Mom, we’re not having this conversation. Besides, I’ve got a lot more on my mind right now than my wife’s housekeeping skills.”

My mom huffed. “Or lack thereof.”

“Not everyone has the aid of magic, Mom. You aren’t normal. Do you even understand that? It’s a lot harder for her to keep up the house than it was for you when I was growing up. Besides, don’t worry about the Twinkie. Those things are made from some kind of space flour. I think they’re manufactured by aliens. They don’t mold, ever.”

My phone dinged. I checked my screen. It was Kat.

I won’t be home. Having a great time. Learning alot about you as a teenager! LMAO! Kids get off the bus at four-thirty. You’ll need to pick up Elliot at daycare before five.

Just what I needed. I was supposed to be off today to get a head start on figuring out what happened with Caedes and the gate mage. Now Kat was having coffee with an old crush of mine and I was supposed to deal with the kids? I didn’t dare complain about it, though, not in front of my mom. There’s one way to ensure that I end up sleeping in the doghouse, and that’s complaining about my wife to my parents.

Seriously? I have shit to do.

I waited a few seconds for Kat to respond.

We have a lasagna in the freezer. Put it in. Jessie is coming home with me for dinner.

“Is everything okay?” my mom asked.

“I just have to make sure to get the kids off the bus and pick up Elliot from daycare. Kat wanted me to stick a frozen lasagna in the oven. Those things take forever to cook.”

My mom looked offended. “I’ll make a lasagna from scratch and I’ll keep an eye on the kids. You should start digging into those books your father gave you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can handle my grandsons.”

“I’ll still have to go pick up Elliot.”

“And when you get back, I’ll watch him, too.”

“The oldest two get off the bus in about an hour.”

My mom smiled. “Plenty of time to throw together a lasagna. You don’t have ricotta, but I can use your cottage cheese. You have everything else I need.”

I nodded. “All right. Well, thanks, Mom. I guess I’ll start researching portal magery.”

“Chop, chop!” My mom clapped her hands together.

I supposed that since my mom was cooking, she’d expect to join us for dinner as well. This was going to be an interesting evening.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I wasn’t used to welcoming the kids home, but it wasn’t the first time. I did have days off, after all. Once Elijah and Ezra got off the bus, Kat usually piled them into the van and left to pick up Elliot from his preschool. The problem was that I didn’t have car seats in my truck.

In the past, if I was off and Kat had somewhere to be, she took the truck. That way I could minivan my way to get my youngest with the other two strapped in. My oldest still had a booster, and my middle son had a big-boy car seat. We had replaced Elliot’s toddler-sized one and now he had the same model as Ezra.

I texted Kat.

Using the old car seat to pick up Elliot.

Kat texted back a thumbs-up emoji. She hated it when I used that one, even though my phone suggested it as a reply and it was an easy way to respond in the affirmative when I was busy. She was sitting at Jessie’s coffee shop, so far as I knew. Why couldn’t she type out a whole reply? Unless she and Jessie were talking. I shuddered. I was an awkward teenager. Most teenagers are, but I was especially uncomfortable in my pimpled skin. The embarrassing tales Jessie could tell would be almost as humiliating as the stories Kat could tell.

It wasn’t until I specialized that I started to come out of my shell. It was about that time that Jessie and I had several near-misses, relationship-wise. If I wasn’t too chicken-shit to ask her out, which was typically the problem, it was that she had a new boyfriend, or I had a girlfriend. It wasn’t meant to be. Life is funny that way.

My truck had an extended cab, and I installed Elliot’s old car seat behind the driver’s seat. He still fit it. Barely.

I waited out in the driveway for the bus to pull up. The house was warded, but the driveway wasn’t. If Caedes was looking for revenge, and if his son was the gate mage helping him get it, there was no way he could hurt me more than attacking my family.

I held Wand in my hand for safe measure.

It wasn’t like the school or the bus was safe from Caedes, either. Still, given all I’d learned, if Caedes’ son was spying on us at home, he knew where we lived. I didn’t know if he knew where they went to school. Kat and I would have to talk about that. If we pulled the kids out of school, we could tell the school we had COVID in the house and were quarantined for good measure. They wouldn’t question it. The truth was that we’d already had the ‘Rona twice and the kids never manifested more than a few minor symptoms. But it was an excuse that the school wouldn’t question, and it would buy us some time.

The blinking lights on the front of the bus signaled it was about to stop. The brakes squealed as the bus came to a halt, the bar on the front of the bus extended, and a few seconds later, Elijah and Ezra ran past the front of the bus with their backpacks hanging from their shoulders, into my waiting arms.

I picked up Ezra, and Elijah followed us through the garage and into the house.

“Mimi is here!” Elijah shouted back. That was the nickname they used for their grandmother. My father was “Baba.” When I was a kid, I had a Mee-Moo and Papa. They didn’t become Grandma and Grandpa until I was a little older and calling them by their nicknames struck me as too childish.

Kat and I had met online. A Facebook accountability group for folks doing an at-home workout program. Exercise helped me cope, and it assuaged the urge to use my powers after I defeated Caedes. I’d tried a lot of things before that. Overeating. Alcohol. Obsessive video gaming. Exercise was the only thing that worked. I also had a few pounds to shed. Kat lived in Seattle at the time. We got to chatting online, then we started talking on the phone. Eventually, I flew out there to meet her and the rest was history. She never met my grandmother. She died days before Kat moved in with me in St. Louis. My grandfather died when Elijah was little, when Kat was pregnant with Ezra.

My grandmother was a battlemage who never had an occasion to use her abilities. My grandfather was what mages call impotens, someone born of a mage family who never manifested. He was fine with it. He was probably the most balanced, principled person in the family, and he was the closest thing to a patriarch in our family. When he spoke, everyone listened. What he lacked in power, he made up for in wisdom. If he were still alive, he’d know exactly the right thing to do in this situation. He was the one who told me how to defeat Caedes. The arcane prison, burying him underground, all of it was his idea. He might not have had power, but he knew more about the various specializations and what we could do than anyone. He always said that he researched in hopes that if he ever did manifest, he’d know what to do. Rather than get angry about it, or depressed, he embraced his lack of magic and found real power in insight and understanding. I missed him.

The only grandparents I knew were on my mother’s side, not from the Gregory clan. We weren’t inbreeders. They belonged to the Chambers family. Since all they had were daughters, their heritage was now ours. A few Chambers mages were still out there, but I didn’t know them well. They didn’t have any kids my age when I was growing up. As for my father’s parents, I never knew them.

The lines that divided the mage families weren’t as cut-and-dried as we sometimes pretended. Most of the families were connected, somewhere, in their family trees. I was the product of the Chambers and the Gregorys. There was a portal mage out there who was both a Wagner and a Sato.

Part of me was glad the convocations didn’t happen. Some of the purebred mage families would never accept Elijah, no matter how powerful he might end up. They’d always see him as a half-breed. It was outdated and bigoted, of course, but mages tended to be a few decades behind the rest of the world when it came to issues like acceptance and equality. It’s hard to shake generations of tradition, even when those traditions were misguided and lacked foresight.

My mom felt that way at her core. She always told me she’d love anyone I chose to marry, “so long as she is a mage.” She’d come a long way since Kat and I got together, as had my father, but they still had their ways and their closeted bigotries they tried to suppress for my sake.

There was no doubt that they loved their grandsons, though. My mom hugged both the boys when they left their backpacks on the floor and ran into her arms. I picked up their backpacks and hung them on the hooks by the garage door.

“Mom, you sure you’re good with the boys?”

My mom was laughing as she tickled Ezra. “Of course! We’ll be fine, Tommy.”

I nodded. “If anything happens, call me.”

“I said we’ll be fine. We’re warded now, after all.”

I huffed. Yeah, we were warded. No one could cast a spell inside our house. That didn’t mean that Caedes couldn’t blast it from the outside, or that he couldn’t kick in the door and come in with non-magical weapons and do just as much harm. That’s the thing about mages. We’re so accustomed to working with magic that we sometimes underestimate conventional threats. I knew better. Caedes might have killed his victims back in the day with magic, but he often tortured them, too. He didn’t discriminate against non-magical means of inflicting pain.

I picked up Elliot from preschool without incident, but with Caedes out there, I was a bit on edge. Every turn I made on the way home a small part of me expected to find my old foe standing there ready to hurl a deadly blast at me. Wand was in my cup holder the whole time, and I was ready to grab it in a second and fight if needed, but it didn’t come to that. Now that my mom had warded the house, pulling into the garage with Wand was like taking a cold shower after foreplay.

When we got inside, my mom had my two older boys playing together with toys on the floor. No YouTube on the smart television. No video games. They were actually playing with toys that they’d begged for and lost interest in the day after they got them.

I’ve heard it claimed that our generation of parents struggles with discipline. Every generation looks down on the one that comes next. For the Boomers, we Gen-Xers were complacent and lacked work ethic. For us, the millennials were complacent and lacked work ethic. My kids—I didn’t have a clue what generation they belonged to—were too young to have a work ethic, but they were overstimulated by technology. Somehow, though, my mom got them to play together without the aid of an electronic device. They were playing well until I showed up and Elliot took a toy from Ezra’s pile. Ezra screamed. Elliot punched Ezra. The tattle train started, each child throwing the other under the bus.

I learned quickly as a parent that when kids are tattling on each other, no one can be trusted. Who was telling the truth? Who wasn’t? What really happened? The only way to deal with it was to shut down the entire situation. Everyone goes to time out.

If you picked sides, you encouraged tattling and emboldened whoever really started it. They needed to learn to address their issues on their own. If your brother is doing something you don’t like, and you come to tell me about it before you’ve told him, well, that’s on you, buddy.

That was my philosophy. I had a lot of philosophies. Putting them into practice was another matter. When I was a kid, going to time out worked. I had a healthy fear that if I left time out it would make things worse. My kids didn’t care. I sent them to their rooms, and they either resumed their chaos in their room, or they ran out a few seconds later freaking the frick out.

Parenting is hard. You never know if you’re doing the right thing. Sometimes, you know you’re not doing the best thing in terms of discipline, but you know you have to choose your battles. If you fight them all, the cost will be your sanity.

The latest battle was between the two littles. Elijah was left with all the toys to himself. Lucky him. I sent Ezra and Elliot to their room. I went back out to the living room to find Elijah sitting in front of the television watching some annoying “family” with too much money do ridiculous things that we could never afford to do. In this instance, they were trying to turn their entire pool into Jell-O.

Pick your battles…

My mom didn’t say a word as I did my best to establish order out of anarchy. She was busy making lasagna. With the ward up, she couldn’t use magic, so she was making it the old-fashioned way, somehow tuning out the prepubescent war zone that surrounded her. I was impressed.

I shot Kat a warning text to let her know that my mother was there and was cooking. She didn’t respond, but I wanted her to know what to expect.

With a few minutes of relative peace, I grabbed the short stack of books on gate magery that my dad gave me. These weren’t published volumes, more like hand-written journals kept by gate mages from times gone by.

That meant that the content wasn’t especially well organized. There wasn’t a table of contents or an index I could use to quickly find whatever I was looking for. I’m good at scanning pages and picking up on the themes discussed in a book with a single glance. It was a little more difficult to do that when examining old-timey cursive.

One of the volumes less resembled a mage’s journal and looked more like notes taken in a course. The front page indicated that the mage responsible had attended the now-defunct Mage Academy in London in the mid-nineteenth century.

It was more organized than the other books. I found a page that was labeled in large letters “Gate Magery and Sorcery.”

I was intrigued. I had a pair of reading glasses somewhere that I could have used, but I managed to decipher the notes.

It is dangerous for mages of all specializations to tap into the darker magic drawn from the deepest parts of the arcane wells. Nothing is more dangerous than dark gate magery.

Portals created through dark arcane magic are open to the ethereal realms. Any such portal can open up the world to creatures of unfathomable horror. Shades will inevitably follow, as with any attempt to wield the darker arcane powers, but when gate mages are involved, shades are merely the heralds of the fiends that will follow.

Fiends? That didn’t sound good. Unfathomable horror didn’t give me many warm ’n’ fuzzies either. I flipped the page. The notes revealed nothing about the class of fiends that might result from a gate mage’s sorcery. It said nothing about the specific dangers these fiends might pose and offered no advice for how to stop them. I knew nothing about the ethereal realms.

I rested my face in my hands. My palms were sweaty. My stomach was in knots.

Caedes was free. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, I feared he was the least of our problems.

Screams and cries sounded from the boys’ bedroom, and I took a calming breath before I went to investigate. Blankets spanned most of the room. They’d stripped their beds and made a fort.

“Elliot is breaking my fort!” Ezra screamed.

“I’m helping make it better!” Elliot defended himself.

I grunted. “Figure it out, guys.”

I closed the door. They wouldn’t follow my guidance, but so long as they weren’t hurting each other, I didn’t have the focus or the patience to intervene. I also knew the chances of them cleaning up the fort were slim to none, and that folding blankets was in my future. So was doing battle with ethereal fiends that I had no idea how to defeat.

When it came to fatherhood, I didn’t score a lot of clear-cut wins. Survival was paramount. An injury-free day that ended with the kids asleep in their beds was the closest thing to a win I expected. When it came to dealing with the looming threat, I feared a win would prove elusive. Surviving and minimizing casualties might be the closest thing to a victory I could expect.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kat and Jessie came walking into the house together, laughing all the while. This wasn’t how I’d expected things to go when I asked Kat about inviting Jessie over.

Jessie stepped into the house and took a deep breath. “Quiet…”

I smiled. “The wards are silencing your abilities?”

Jessie nodded. “Very nice.”

“Jessie Burgher!” my mom exclaimed, dropping a hot mitt on the counter and opening her arms.

“Nice to see you, Mrs. Gregory!” Jessie hugged my mom back. My mom knew Jessie, since she and I were of the same age and she came from a reputable mage family. I suspected that my mom hoped she and I would end up together. Kat shot me a look.

“Excuse the house. I did my best to clean up before the boys came home. But now that the wards are up…”

I sighed. “Mom, this isn’t your house. You don’t have to be embarrassed by the mess. We have kids. It’s expected.”

“It looks nice,” Kat said. “Thank you, Mom.”

“Hello, Katherine. I’ve done what I could to help since you were so busy this afternoon.”

Few things were more annoying than the passive-aggressive potshots my mom weaseled into conversations with Kat. “Mom, I told Kat to get out of the house. I was afraid it wasn’t safe.”

My mom smiled. “Of course, dear. Which is why I was glad to help.”

I rolled my eyes. Maybe I was over-analyzing my mother’s intentions and reading more into her snide remarks than was warranted. I didn’t think so, though.

Jessie jumped in. “It’s a nice house. You’ve done well for yourself, Tommy.”

I feigned a smile. “Yeah, thanks. We do what we can to keep it together. It’s a wonder, given the chaos that ensues within these walls, that the place is still standing. How are you doing?”

“I’m good! It was a quiet day at the shop. Kat and I had a nice conversation. She’s a delight, Tommy.”

I smiled and glanced at Kat. “Yeah, she is. So, what did you two talk about?”

Kat and Jessie exchanged glances and giggled.

“You two were talking about me, weren’t you?”

Kat looked surprised. “Of course we were! Why didn’t you tell me you had a country-boy phase?”

“It was only for a few months! I went straight from that to punk rock.”

Jessie laughed. “Back then, for some reason, we identified by what music we listened to.”

Kat chuckled. “It’s a teenager thing. I think if Tom and I met when we were teenagers, we never would have gotten along.”

“Yeah, you listened to pop music,” I teased her. “It represented everything that punk rock tried not to be.”

“Except the punk rock we listened to was also popular,” Jessie pointed out.

I held my fingers to my lips. “Shh. We were rebels. We were all nonconformists, in exactly the same way.”

Jessie grinned. “I know, right?”

Kat was shaking her head. “I just can’t imagine you in cowboy boots.”

“You should have seen the hubcap I wore as a belt buckle. Stylish and functional. Yee haw.”

“Why did you even get into that phase?” Kat asked. “Didn’t you grow up in the suburbs?”

“Right. But you know, country isn’t about where you live. It’s about what’s in your soul.”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, your soul went out to pasture for a whole three months. What happened? Your soul stepped in cow shit and decided to rebel again?”

“Something like that. Souls evolve. What can I say? I was trying to find myself.”

Kat grinned widely. “I’d still love to see a picture.”

Jessie tilted her head. “I might have one. Convocation of 1996.”

“I have several!” my mom chimed in. “I’d be happy to bring them over. There’s one where Tommy has his thumbs hooked in his belt, his hips turned to the side. His legs are bowed out a little like he wanted you to think he just rode a bull.”

“I was trying to mimic Garth Brooks on one of his album covers. And I rode a mechanical bronco once.”

“The quarter horse outside of Wal-Mart doesn’t count, dear.”

“Look, we have more important things to discuss.” I grabbed the book about gate mages that I was reading before. I handed it to Jessie. “Check this out.”

Jessie grabbed the book. Her eyes scanned the page. She shuddered. “That’s not good.”

“What is it?” Kat asked.

“These are course notes from a gate mage back at the Mage Academy in London,” I explained. “Old notes from the nineteenth century. When a portal mage uses dark power, his gates create openings to something called the ethereal realms. Nasty creatures can come through.”

“I don’t like this language,” Jessie murmured. “Unfathomable horror? It doesn’t sound like these creatures are peaceful explorers.”

My mom shook her head. “I told your father we should give these books to the Wagners when they asked. If they knew the consequences, perhaps they would have steered that boy in another direction.”

“We don’t know what they would have done,” I pointed out. “If they are responsible, if they trained the kid in hopes of freeing Caedes from my prison, I don’t know if a few warnings, no matter how horrific, would have stopped them. Caedes was an unfathomable horror in his own right.”

Jessie looked thoughtful. “He was also human. Technically, there was always a chance he could be redeemed.”

“Not a great chance. If I believed it was possible to save him without risking lives I would have done it.”

“No, you did the right thing,” she assured me. “I’m just saying that unless we understand more about these creatures who may or may not show up as a result of what the gate mage has done, we have to assume the worst.”

“The problem is that we don’t know what the worst entails. Unfathomable horror can come in many different forms. The way these notes read, we might be looking at a variety of creatures. That means a variety of horrors.”

Jessie ran her fingers through her hair. “And here I thought diversity was a good thing.”

“It is. When it has to do with people or good things like food at a buffet or candy on Halloween. When it comes to creatures that want to kill, pillage, and destroy, I’d rather they all be the same. Especially since I don’t know how to fight these things.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was hard to eat. It was also hard to focus on all that was happening. The kids loved their mimi’s lasagna, insofar as it ended up in their mouths. Elliot had as much on his face as he ate. Jessie was in her element, helped by the wards. The instant connection she and Kat had also helped, though it was still awkward from my perspective. Kat was the love of my life. Jessie was my teenage crush. Seeing them strike a quick friendship was weird. That my mom was tickled to see her made things even stranger.

Jessie connected with Elijah over their shared love of Minecraft. I wasn’t surprised that Jessie played games. I imagined it gave her an escape from the thousands of voices she heard in her head if she went out to a club or a bar.

My mom helped clean up after we ate, and I had to take her back home. I offered to do the same for Jessie, but she wasn’t eager to leave. For the first time in years, her mind was quiet. When Kat offered her the couch, Jessie took her up on it and I didn’t protest. If Caedes and his son knew she was helping us, she’d be a target.

When I pulled up to my parents’ house, a black BMW was parked in the driveway. My mom and I exchanged glances.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” my mom replied.

I stopped my truck and pulled my key from the ignition. “I’m coming inside.”

My mom didn’t protest. Two male voices came from the living room, one my dad’s and the other with a thick German accent.

We stepped in, and sitting next to my father on the couch was Gerhard Wagner, Tim’s father.

He turned and looked at me. I hadn’t seen him in years. His hair was greyer than I remembered and his face was riddled with more wrinkles. When I was a kid, he was the father everyone feared. He was German, so I suppose his accent gave him a stereotypical “villain” character that was fostered by Hollywood. If someone appeared in a movie with a German or a Russian accent, they were probably the bad guy—and back then, one of my favorite movies was Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A half-smile formed at Gerhard’s mouth. “It’s good to see you, son.”

I tilted my head. “Is it?”

“Why don’t you take a seat,” my father suggested. “You should hear what Mister Wagner has to say.”

I snorted. Mister Wagner? I was a grown-ass forty-two-year-old man. Did I have to refer to him as “Mister”?

“What’s this about?”

“I think you know,” Gerhard replied. “It concerns my grandson, Hans.”

My mom pulled in a chair from the kitchen and set it across from the couch, and I sat. “He’s a gate mage.”

“He’s more like his father than I’d care to admit,” Gerhard replied. “I need your help, son.”

“I’m not your son.”

“No, you aren’t. You buried my son.”

“Do you expect me to apologize for that?”

“You did what you had to do,” Gerhard allowed. “If I had the strength, I might have done the same.”

“Do you understand what your grandson has done?”

“I know he intended to rescue my boy.”

“And he succeeded.”

Gerhard looked pained. “I did not know this.”

“Well, he did. And since he used dark arcane power to do it, his gates could release any number of unknown creatures from the ethereal realms.”

Gerhard leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “We did not have the means to train the boy properly.”

“You blame me for that?” my father asked.

“I asked you for the books,” Gerhard shot back. “You refused. Had we known how to properly raise a gate mage, perhaps this could have been avoided. What did you expect to happen? A mage without guidance is apt to experiment.”

“What does Hans want?” I asked.

“He only wished to meet his father,” Gerhard insisted. “Hans has a good heart.”

My father grunted. “You said the same thing of Timothy if I recall.”

“And I was not wrong. He had a good heart. He was recently a father. He only wanted to raise his own son, but that Sato girl tried to take Hans from him.”

“So he killed her? That’s not something someone with a good heart does.”

“Timothy had his problems,” Gerhard acknowledged. “He made mistakes. He did not mean to kill her, only to stop her. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Are you saying he killed her by accident?”

Gerhard narrowed his eyes. “Of course it was an accident. After that, he spiraled. The darkness overwhelmed him. It was the only thing that numbed his grief.”

I huffed. “Yeah, a little dark magic and homicide does the trick every time.”

“Junior!” my father snapped. “Don’t be rude. Mr. Wagner is here in good faith to help.

“No, Tommy is right,” Gerhard allowed. “The incident with Hana might have been an accident, but there were no mistakes made when he killed after that. My boy had no excuse, and he deserved to be punished.”

“It wasn’t about punishment,” I protested. “It was about protecting people.”

My father raised a finger. “Yet there were some among the mage families who believed you took into your own hands what should have been the judgment of a tribunal.”

“And they knew where I buried him. They could have had a trial. I detained him. Seems to me like that was necessary before a tribunal could execute whatever justice they deemed necessary.”

“It does not matter,” Gerhard broke in. “The past is in the past. I suspect any judgment by a tribunal representing all the families would have sentenced him to execution.”

“The families were too divided,” my father reminded him. “A tribunal wasn’t possible.”

I tried to get us back on track. “Look, Mr. Wagner. I appreciate you coming to warn us. Do you have any information as to where I can find your son and grandson?

“I do not. I simply came that I might ask you to consider this from my grandson’s perspective. He lacked guidance in his discipline. He also desperately wished to meet his father.”

“He tricked me into attacking a shade so he could cast a gate into the prison.”

“Would you have helped him if he had asked?”

I considered this. I’d sworn off magic at Kat’s request except in the most emergent of situations. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know that Caedes—Timothy, sorry—had a son, much less that Hans was looking for his father. I’m a father. I have three sons myself. I would have understood why he wanted to meet his dad.”

“You might have understood. But would you have extracted my boy’s prison from the ground that they might meet?”

I sighed. “I really don’t know. I would have had to give it a lot of thought. Look, cut to the chase, Mr. Wagner. Why are you here, exactly?”

“I fear for my grandson’s safety. I understand that Hans has made a mistake and that you might not be inclined to help. However, I think you’re the only one who can protect the boy from his father. After all these years, there’s no telling the condition of Timothy’s mind. I cannot imagine he’s abandoned the darkness. If anything, it has only consumed him more.”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Hans might have freed the most notorious sorcerer in history and, on top of that, unleashed any number of deadly creatures from the ethereal realms. You want me to help him?”

“He is not so far gone as his father,” Gerhard persisted. “I believe that with your help, and the knowledge of the books that your father says are now in your possession, it might be possible to save him. The greatest regret of my life is that when Timothy fell to the dark powers, I didn’t do enough to save him. I thought he needed to be punished. What he needed was support. I don’t intend to make the same mistake with my grandson.”

I spread my thumb and forefinger across my brow. “I hear you, sir. I really do. I can’t make any promises. If there are people’s lives at stake I will have to do what I have to do.”

“I understand that. But if there is a way to save him, if you have a chance, I’m asking you to take it.”

I nodded. “I don’t know how I can entrap a gate mage, especially if he’s already deciphered the signature of my magic. An arcane prison won’t contain him.”

My father cleared his throat. “Find a way, son.”

I bit the inside of my cheek as I thought about it. “If I can find a way, if there’s any way to help your grandson, I give you my word, I’ll do whatever I have to do. Again, though, if I can’t find a way and it comes down to eliminating him or risking people’s lives, I will do what must be done.”

Gerhard’s lip quivered. “You are a noble mage, Tom Gregory. You are also the grandson of the impotens, Byron Chambers. He was a friend of mine. In truth, I don’t believe he was impotens. I believe and always have that his arcane power manifested in wisdom. If you inherited any of your grandfather’s gift, I beg you to use it.”

I hoped I wouldn’t regret this. “I’ll do what I can.”

Gerhard handed me what looked like a business card, but all it had was his name and phone number. Who gets business cards made for personal use? I took Gerhard’s card and slipped it into my back pocket.

“Once again, I’m in your debt.”

I nodded. “Don’t speak too soon. I haven’t saved the boy yet.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Gerhard didn’t know where Hans was. That meant he also wasn’t any help locating Caedes. Maybe we were lucky. Maybe Hans closed the portal he used to free his dad before any nasties escaped the ethereal realms. So far as I knew, no horrific fiends had popped up. Then again, knowing local law enforcement’s propensity to cover up anything that reeked of the supernatural, there was no telling what might be out there that I didn’t know about.

I brought Wand with me to work just in case. Besides, now that the “no magic” rule was off the table, a little arcane strength could come in handy. We didn’t have a lot of contractors who came in on Saturdays, but we’d have our hands full with homeowners and their weekend projects. Saturday was our busiest day at work, but if the world was in immediate danger, I’d bail.

I had the volume on my phone turned up. With the kids off school for the weekend, Kat and Jessie planned to stay indoors within the safe confines of my mom’s wards. That didn’t mean they were safe. It just meant that if Caedes showed up he couldn’t light them up with arcane missiles and that Hans couldn’t gate in or out of our home. If anything strange happened, Kat promised she’d let me know. I wasn’t a gate mage, but I wouldn’t hesitate to haul ass home if my family was in danger. The guys could hold down the shop for a couple of hours.

I also had another day’s worth of contracts to transfer to the system thanks to my unexpected day off. Once we got through the morning rush, I called in Jeff, one of our shop workers, to start training him on the system. He already knew how to check in returns and could handle sales. Setting up contracts wasn’t too difficult. Jeff had been with the company for five years.

We’d had a few issues with Jeff early on. He once showed up to work with his wrist hand-cuffed to a woman’s ankle. They’d lost the key and needed a pair of bolt cutters. They spent half the night like that. Other than that, which wasn’t technically an issue that impacted his employment, he’d only been late a handful of times in his five years, and never more than five or ten minutes.

When we had workers like Jeff, we treated them well. He was a prime candidate for the assistant manager position. I had a hunch that I’d be taking more time off work in the near future. The sooner I could get him trained to run the shop in my absence, the better.

A customer came in wanting five propane bottles filled. “Have a barbecue this weekend?” I asked.

“Big one. It’s for the church. Our yearly fall cookout.”

“Sounds like fun,” Jeff offered.

The other workers were busy helping other customers. “You got the ticket, Jeff?”

Jeff nodded. “Not a problem, boss.”

“I’ll fill the bottles. Take care of the counter and the phones.”

I headed outside to the propane filling station. The customer knew where to go and already had his truck backed up to the tank.

I started filling the first bottle. It only took a minute or two, and I was filling the third of five bottles when a familiar tingle caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand straight. It was arcane magic.

I pulled Wand from my pocket, turned off the gas pump, and looked around.

“I know you’re here,” I said. “I can feel your power.”

A black semi-circle formed out of thin air over our primary propane tank and a device dropped out of the gate. Several sticks of dynamite were strapped to it.

“Shit!” I shouted and ran back toward the building. I turned and formed a large arcane barrier as the device exploded. The concussive force blasted shards of metal and our customer’s truck against the barrier and the flames shot into the air. My barrier was strong, but some of the heat got through. I gripped my wand tight to maintain the barrier, extending it as far as I could and bending it around the explosion. My barrier contained the blaze and I gradually shrank it around the flames to snuff the fire out. It was working.

Sweat beaded up on my brow. The heat was so intense that even an arcane barrier couldn’t totally squelch it.

Once I extinguished the flames and released the barrier, I turned and wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt. Jeff and the customer were standing at the entrance. The sirens of fire trucks sounded in the distance. Jeff must’ve called them.

My hand, still gripping Wand, was shaking. It wasn’t from exhaustion or the power, but from excess adrenaline.

Jeff was shaking his head. “So, what they say about you is true, huh, boss?”

“That depends. What do they say about me?”

Jeff grinned. “I think you know.”

The customer was beside himself. His fingers were tangled up in his hair. “I sure hope y’all have insurance.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The fire department shut us down. With all the gasoline-powered engines on the property, if I hadn’t stopped that explosion the entire store would have gone up in flames. When I asked the fireman how long we’d be closed, he shook his head. “Not my call. From my experience, I’d say it’ll be a while. They’ll want to investigate the cause of the explosion. These tanks are usually safe. I haven’t seen one blow up once in my twenty years fighting fires.”

“You said it will be awhile. Are we talking days?”

“Probably weeks. Maybe months. These things take time.”

I sighed. That was just great. Gene wouldn’t be happy about any of it. The fall was our last hurrah before winter, which was our slowest time of year. Fall lawn season usually kept the business afloat during the lean colder months. Without it, we’d have to take a loan from the bank to stay in business. I was our family’s sole provider. Thankfully, we had enough of a nest egg that we’d survive. It wasn’t going to be easy, but we could do it. Provided we survived Hans and Caedes.

The explosion was an attempt on my life. There was no other way to explain it. They didn’t come after me with a direct magical assault. They tried to make it look like an accident.

The whole thing bore all the hallmarks of one of Caedes’ plans. When he first started killing people, mostly other mages, he used similar methods. He was concerned that if he attacked anyone directly, he’d garner the attention of other mages who might rally to stop him. Once his power grew, he got bolder. It struck me, though, that this was a job that Hans could have done on his own. Perhaps Caedes was too rusty to come at me head-on. Maybe he was so warped after being in solitary confinement for two decades that he didn’t know which way was up, and this was Hans’ attempt to get revenge on his father’s behalf. Whatever the case, it was clear that keeping my promise to Gerhard Wagner was going to be difficult. If Hans wanted me dead, saving him and rehabilitating him from his foray into the dark powers was going to be challenging.

Gene wasn’t in the building when the tank blew, but if he didn’t know about it already, he’d find out soon enough. I couldn’t wait around. What if Hans dropped a bomb like that over my house? My mom’s ward would do nothing to stop it. I had to get home.

The firefighters didn’t understand how the propane gas burned out so fast. I didn’t have a good explanation for them, so I played dumb and Jeff followed suit. The powers-that-be knew about magic, but once they realized mages were involved, things would get a lot more complicated. Especially once words like “suspected terrorist” or “mystical threat” were tossed around. The customer, whose truck exploded along with his five propane bottles, claimed he was having difficulty breathing and left in an ambulance. It was bullcrap. He was inside at the time. Apparently, he was looking for more from our insurance company than a new truck and a few gas grill bottles.

I called Kat to fill her in on what happened. She was speechless, but the family was fine. On my way home I noticed a black haze hovering in the distance in the area of Gregory Park.

I’d never seen anything like it. Magical residue isn’t visible. I needed to get home, but I couldn’t pass the park without checking out what was happening. As I got closer, the haze appeared more like a smoky fog that encapsulated the whole park. Some of the playground equipment poked out above it. At other places, the dark cloud billowed up over the park like tentacles reaching to the heavens.

I parked the truck and grabbed Wand. Mages wield arcane power, not the elements, so I couldn’t create wind. That sort of thing was reserved for Druids and witches. I’d met a few in my time. More witches than Druids. Few of them had any real power. Their skills were learned, and acquired through spiritual means, not genetic. A blast of wind from a witch or a Druid to clear the air would have been helpful. The best I could do was a concussive blast that rippled through the haze like throwing a stone into a pond.

The air was thick and odorless. A sensation like static, the tingle I usually experienced in the presence of arcane magic, combined with the darkness of it all, suggested that it had something to do with the portal Hans cast before.

I’d seen nothing the last time I went to the park. Now that he’d cast a portal at the store, I had to wonder if, in a day’s time, a similar black haze would settle there as well. Whatever this was, it took time to develop. Something passed through the gate and grew, expanded, slowly over time.

I channeled a little arcane power into the tip of Wand, giving me a blue light to see my way as I stepped through the cloud. Something caught my eye to my left, but when I turned, I saw nothing. A figure moved in my peripheral vision to my right. Again, when I looked it was gone.

Something was hiding in the haze. Probably several somethings. An ear-piercing shriek sounded from somewhere ahead of me. The smoky haze parted to the left and the right. Something black emerged. It was massive, at least three times my height. Its eyes glowed white. It had a lot of legs, more than a spider, and it charged toward me. I aimed Wand and blasted it with an arcane missile. The creature split in two. Each half grew, and now two spider-like beasts were focused on me. My magic didn’t stop the monster. It duplicated it. I didn’t know what else I could try. I threw up an arcane barrier and ran toward my truck as the two beasts slammed into my barrier behind me.

I climbed back in my truck and peeled out of the parking lot.

What the hell were those things? Ethereal fiends. My battlemagery didn’t hurt it. If anything, I fed the beast and allowed it to replicate. More frightening, it wasn’t the only thing lurking in the haze. If that cloud was growing, and these creatures thrived within it, we were looking at more than an invasion of ethereal fiends. Whatever realm they came from was expanding into our world.

I didn’t know what those spider things would have done if they got me, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t survive long enough to find out. If shades fed on human souls, there was a damned good chance these things shared their diet.

I didn’t know how to stop the haze from expanding, or how to fight the monsters within it. I had to get into my books. Maybe something in the gate mage volumes would help. There was a lot about my own specialization I could still learn. My books were at home and that’s where my family was. I couldn’t do anything about the black mass of ethereal fiends at this moment, but I could protect my family and research.

I tore down the highway, pushing my truck as fast as it would go.

Everything looked fine at home. There weren’t any dark clouds, or portals, hovering over the house.

When I got inside, Kat was waiting for me. The house smelled like chocolate chip cookies. A tray was sitting on the stovetop.

Kat hugged me. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

I nodded. “Your dad is going to be pissed.”

“It’s not your fault.”

I snorted. “It sort of was. If I wasn’t there, Hans wouldn’t have attacked.”

Kat didn’t respond. She just held me tight. The boys were laughing in the living room. “Where’s Jessie?”

Kat gestured to the living room. I walked in and found her sitting cross-legged on the floor with a video game controller in her hand. The television screen was split into four quadrants. They were playing Minecraft.

Jessie smiled at me before she returned her focus to the screen. The boys were enthralled by whatever they were building.

The stack of books on gate magery was on the coffee table. I grabbed a few more books on battlemagery from my bookshelf against the back wall and returned to the table.

“Coffee?” Kat asked.

I nodded. “That would be great.”

She came back out shortly with a plate of cookies and a hot mug of steaming java. We didn’t have a fancy coffee pot, and we didn’t have any special roasted beans. I had a tin of cheap coffee grounds. Somehow, though, Jessie had managed to work with what we had, and had made what might have been the best cup of coffee I’d ever had at home. It wasn’t as good as what she gave me at her shop, but it was nice.

I took a bite out of one of the cookies, still warm. It’s hard to beat a fresh chocolate chip cookie. Kat returned with another plate full of cookies and set it in front of the kids. She had her own cup of coffee and sat next to me. “Can I help?”

“That would be awesome.”

I explained what I saw in the park on my way home. Jessie was listening, too. At the café, she usually had to filter out dozens of voices at once, so I shouldn’t have been surprised she could continue building a Minecraft castle while listening to me.

Jessie set down her controller. “I can help.”

I smiled. “Keeping the boys entertained is helping.”

“Boys, you got this? We need more traps before we simulate a zombie attack.”

Elijah extended his right hand with a thumbs-up while his mouth was stuffed full of cookie.

I handed Jessie and Kat a couple of books on gate magery and I decided to dive into my battlemage studies. If I could do anything to thwart dark arcane power, I needed to know. I defeated Caedes by trapping him in an arcane prison, but I couldn’t cast a prison like that over the entire park. I wasn’t confident that my prison would hold it. My arcane missiles made the situation worse. What would happen if I surrounded the entire foggy mass in arcane power? Until I knew, I couldn’t attempt it.

“Look for anything about ethereal realms, creatures that divide and multiply when struck with arcane magic, or anything that might be helpful to stop Hans. I gave his grandfather my word, if there’s any way to capture him and help him, we need to try. If we can find him, and save him, he’ll be able to tell us where Caedes is.”

Jessie chuckled. “I think I have something. It’s discussing ‘ethereal fiends.’”

Kat snorted. “I hate fiends.”

Jessie grinned. “Yeah, I never met a fiend who I’d call a friend. Fiends tend to be assholes.”

I winced. “Children are present.”

“Sorry. Fiends are buttholes,” she amended.

Ezra giggled. “She said butthole!”

The other boys laughed.

I ignored this. “What does the book say about these fiends?”

“Arcane power is like their oxygen. They can’t exist apart from it.”

I pressed my lips together. “That dark cloud came from the deeper arcane wells.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Kat observed. “Didn’t you say before that if a mage tapped into that power, it corrupted them?”

“Yeah. That’s what happened to Caedes.”

Jessie gnawed on her thumbnail. “It used to be the case that when mages were trained, we were all warned to steer clear of those powers. I’m not sure if those lessons are still being taught by the families.”

“If that stuff is expanding, couldn’t it corrupt mages?” Kat asked.

I nodded. “Possibly. I felt nothing like that when I went into the cloud, but I wasn’t exactly open to it. There was an energy there, a power, that might have affected me if I tried to use it.”

“I’m not sure your magic can do much of anything to fight those monsters,” Jessie suggested. “The more magic you give them, the more power they’ll have to expand.”

I huffed. “Or divide and replicate.”

Kat shuddered. “That’s just terrifying.”

My boys were looking back at us intermittently. Their eyes were wide. “Maybe we should take this conversation into the kitchen.”

Kat nodded. “I agree. We don’t want to give the boys nightmares.”

Jessie sighed. “This whole thing is a nightmare. It’s like they are terraforming Earth to become a habitable environment. The only way to stop them might be to send their clouds of whatever back into the deeper wells.”

“If we did that, the fiends couldn’t survive.”

“Are you sure about that?” Kat asked. “Maybe they’d just start over. These creatures weren’t in the park before, but they must’ve been there ever since Hans busted his father out of your prison.”

I bit my lip. “That’s a good point.”

Jessie flipped a page and traced her finger across the words. “These aren’t corporeal beings. They emerge small and untraceable, and gradually create their environment. As their environment grows, they do too. Sort of like a goldfish in a tank that will only get so big, but if you put it in a pond, it will get huge. Provided a bigger fish doesn’t eat it first.”

“Know any bigger ethereal fish who can eat these things up?” I asked.

“Not a fish, per se. But that might be the answer. Somehow you have to confine this environment, figure out a way to prevent it from spreading. If you could move it out of our world, swallow it up in another portal that takes it into a place that operates according to ethereal rather than material physics, it would theoretically shrink them down.”

“Yeah, well, we’d need a gate mage to do that,” I reminded her. “Right now, the only one I know about is trying to kill me.”

Kat placed her hands on mine. “I think you may have to do what Gerhard Wagner asked. You have to try and save him.”

Jessie agreed. “Even if you found another gate mage, trying to create a portal that would send dark energies through the deeper wells back to an ethereal realm would require a familiarity with the kind of magic that we shouldn’t touch.”

I scratched my head. “So, you’re saying we have to try to save this kid, only to convince him to tap back into the same power that corrupted him to begin with?”

Jessie turned the page in her book. “Well, we just started researching this. We have one plan. Maybe we’ll find something else, but I can’t imagine what other options we’re going to find no matter how much digging we do through the texts.”

“How are you even going to find him?” Kat asked.

“We give him what he wants,” I replied.

Kat looked at me hard. “He’s trying to kill you. That’s not an option.”

“I won’t let him kill me, obviously. If he really is coming for me, though, maybe he can come to me. If I can get him to show himself, maybe I can talk to him. We aren’t going to stop him without taking risks. I’m a battlemage. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Jessie insisted. “I’ll come with you. If you’re going to try and convince this kid to turn from the darkness, you’ll need an empath. Someone who understands what drives him.”

“It may not be safe, Jessie.”

“Don’t think that battlemages are the only ones who have the right to stick their necks on the line to save the world. We all play a role. At least we should.”

Kat chuckled. “I agree. Perhaps once you find out where he lives, Tom, you can send your mother over to clean his house.”

I snickered. “Right. Because all mages play a part.”

“Domestic mages are supposed to protect house and home,” Jessie explained. “They create environments necessary to raise mage children right. They play a role, maybe the most important one. They just don’t do their magic on a battlefield.”

“Neither do empaths,” I pointed out.

Jessie shrugged. “I don’t know any other empaths. The way I see it, we do what only we know needs to be done because we know things no one else does.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I always gave my boys a hug and told them I loved them before I left the house. Crazy things happen. I didn’t worry most of the time, and usually when I left home I didn’t anticipate any accidents. Still, you never know for absolute certain if it is going to be the last time you see someone. With what was going on now, the risk was higher than usual.

“Daddy, I have a question.” Ezra sounded serious.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Do trees poop?”

I did a double-take. “Why are you asking?”

“We learned in school that trees get their food from the ground.”

“That’s right. They also need sunlight and water.”

“Well, in my favorite book, it says that everything that eats also poops.”

We got him a copy of Everyone Poops one year as a joke, not anticipating how much he’d love the book. “I guess that’s right, son.”

“So trees must poop right?”

I scratched the back of my head. “Of course they do. Where do you think number two pencils come from?”

Elijah snapped his head around. “Daddy!”

I laughed to myself while Kat and Jessie rolled their eyes at me. I bent over and gave Ezra and Elliot giant hugs and kisses on the cheek. I hugged Elijah as well. “Love you, boys.”

“Love you too!” Elijah said. The other two also responded with love yous.

I kissed Kat on the lips. “Love you, babe.”

“Love you too. Come back to me.”

I nodded. “I will.”

Jessie grinned. “I’ll make sure he does.”

I didn’t know where to go. Going to the park wasn’t an option. Hans might be around there observing the fruit of his labors, but I doubted it. The emergence of the fiends was a byproduct of the portal he used to free his father. It wasn’t a part of his plans.

I didn’t have any reason to believe he was close to my house, either. He didn’t attack me there. He came after me at work. It was a long shot, but when you’re looking for someone or hoping they’ll find you, the best place to start is the last place you encountered them.

I rested Wand in my cupholder and, for old times’ sake, I played a little MxPx. Nothing like a little old-school punk to get the juices flowing.

“This really brings me back,” Jessie said. “My straight-edge days.”

I laughed. “I forgot about that whole straight-edge thing.”

Jessie nodded. “Back in those days, nothing was more punk than that. When everyone we knew was drinking and sleeping together, not doing those things was counter-cultural.”

I chuckled. “Or religious.”

“Not for me. It was just a way of life.”

“I get that,” I replied. “Me too. I didn’t do a lot of that stuff, either. It was sort of like giving the world the middle finger since they thought because of how we dressed and the music we listened to we must be bad apples.”

“Those were the days. I wonder if that’s still a thing.”

I shrugged. “I don’t have a clue. Punk never really dies, though.”

My radio was blasting to one of our favorite songs by what was once our favorite band: I’m Ok, You’re Ok. The tip of Wand was bouncing to the beat.

Jessie laughed. “Battlemages get all the cool shit.”

“You didn’t ever get a wand?”

“I had one. All mages do. But it didn’t do much. Just the basic spells that all mages can do regardless of specialization. It’s basically a glorified flashlight.”

“It can heal, too.”

“A paper cut, maybe. It’ll take away the itch from a mosquito bite.”

“Your wand does nothing at all with respect to your specialization?”

Jessie sighed. “Maybe it could, but it’s not like I had anyone to guide me. If anything, when I hold my wand, the voices are louder. I’m usually trying to do the opposite.”

“Like you said before, about how you have to tune out some voices. It’s about focus. When I hold Wand, I feel more power than usual but when I channel it properly my abilities are a lot more powerful. They don’t wear me out, either.”

Jessie gave a deep belly laugh. “I almost forgot that you named your wand, Wand. You’re such a goof.”

“Look at him!” I glanced down at Wand as he still shook to the beat of the song. “It’s like he’s a person. He even likes good music and pretty girls.”

“That’s because he’s a reflection of your state of mind at sixteen. He likes what you liked back then.”

I laughed. “Well, that means he’s probably super nervous around you.”

“He has a crush on me! You know, a relationship with a wand might make sense. I bet he’s a lot less stubborn than most men.”

I huffed. “Was I stubborn when I was sixteen?”

“Not really. Shy and a little bit insecure, but good at the core.”

“Well, there you go. If you want to get into a relationship with a magic wand, just make sure you have him home every night before dark.”

Jessie snorted. “I’d say I can’t imagine having an actual relationship with a wand, but he is the right shape for that.”

“Hey! I thought you were straight edge.”

“Yeah, back at the turn of the millennium. I’m a woman now. I have needs. Besides, you used the word relationship. That’s still within the confines of the straight-edge lifestyle.”

I glanced down at Wand. He wasn’t dancing to the beat anymore. He was totally erect. “I think he likes that idea.”

Jessie tilted her head. “Damn, Tommy. When you were sixteen you really only thought about one thing, didn’t you?”

I smirked. “I was sixteen. What do you think?”

Jessie shook her head. “When I was sixteen, I wanted a lot of things. I was pretty deep. Relatively speaking.”

“Relatively speaking? You mean, relative to me?”

Jessie laughed. “Take it how you will. My wand does a lot of brooding. When I was sixteen, all I wanted was quiet. I hadn’t had a moment of peace since my specialization manifested.”

I tilted my head. “That actually makes sense. Why your wand isn’t all that helpful, I mean. You made your wand at a time when all you wanted was your ability to turn off. It makes sense that it would be more resistant to focusing your power than a wand is supposed to be. Most mages are eager to explore the full extent of their powers when they forge their wands.”

Jessie ran her fingers through her hair. “I never really thought about it like that. Makes sense, though. I screwed up my own wand. That’s why it’s useless.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s useless. It’s still a wand, forged in arcane power. Maybe it just works differently than other mage wands. If you could figure out how to use it, how to relate to it, there’s no telling what you might be able to do.” I had an idea. “Let’s go to your place and get your wand. What better time to try and figure out how it works than now?”

“Maybe a time when we aren’t trying to stop a deranged gate mage from killing you and an ethereal mass of yuck from spreading across the world?”

“Like I said, what better time to realize your full potential?”

Jessie crossed her arms. “You’re a stubborn prick, do you know that?”

“Kat tells me all the time. So, where’s your place?”

Jessie didn’t respond for a few seconds. “Just go to the coffee shop.”

“We can go straight to your apartment, or house, or whatever,” I offered.

“Go to the coffee shop,” Jessie repeated.

“Whatever you say.”

At Java City, I followed Jessie inside.

“Hey Cassie, how’s business today?”

“It’s a weekend. No morning rush. Steady business the rest of the day.”

“Just picking something up and I’ll be out of your hair.”

I scratched the back of my head and followed Jessie back to what I assumed was her office. She pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. A mattress lay on the floor and a small refrigerator was running in the corner. A portable canvas wardrobe was against a wall next to a tall dresser.

“Jessie, do you live here?”

Jessie sighed. “The shop does well, but I took out a lot of loans to start this place. I could only afford one rent payment. The business or my apartment.”

“So you literally sleep where you work?”

Jessie nodded. “I know, it’s pretty pathetic.”

“Not really. You’re running a business. It’s not always easy. Besides, some of the most significant people who made a huge difference in the world throughout history didn’t have much money. Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Johann Sebastian Bach. Just to name a few.”

Jessie tilted her head. “I wasn’t aware that Bach was poor.”

I tried to look innocent. “They say he was always baroque!”

Jessie stared at me for about a second before she snorted. “That might be the worst joke I’ve ever heard.”

I chuckled. “I’ll be here all week.”

Jessie opened her bottom dresser drawer and reached into it. She pulled out what looked like a long set of hose. She reached into it and pulled out her wand. It looked a lot like mine. Nothing extravagant by appearance. “Here she is.”

“Let’s see what she can do!”

Jessie rolled her eyes. She waved her wand around the room. “That’s it. A whole lot of nothing.”

“You’re thinking about how you want it to work. When you were sixteen, you wanted the magic to stop. Try thinking about how you don’t want it to do a damn thing.”

Jessie huffed. “That’s counterintuitive.”

“Congratulations. You know big words. Just try it.”

“But if I’m thinking I don’t want it to work, just to make it work, I’m not really thinking about it doing nothing.”

“You’re overthinking it. You were sixteen, Jessie. You weren’t so deep back then.”

“Excuse me?”

“No one is that deep at sixteen. Don’t take it personally.”

Jessie held out her wand and narrowed her eyes. Blue sparks formed on the tip of her wand. “Holy crap. It worked.”

“Look at that!”

The sparks kept firing out of Jessie’s wand. She shook it. “Well, now it won’t stop!”

“Try setting it down.”

Jessie placed her wand on the top of her dresser. It was still blasting arcane power like fireworks. Jessie grabbed her wand again. The shower stopped. Jessie looked at me. “Well, that was pretty. Not sure what it meant.”

Before I could respond, a blast of power exploded from her wand and encompassed her body. Jessie gasped. Her knees buckled. I grabbed her from behind to brace her fall.

The power faded. Jessie looked at me, her eyes radiating blue arcane magic. She winced.

“Oh my God! Tommy, it’s too much!”

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

“I can feel it all. Everyone at once. Thousands of emotions.”

“Take a deep breath and focus. Do like you usually do.”

“God, it hurts! I don’t know if I can.”

“The wand is channeling the arcane power. Focus through the wand. Tell the other voices, the ones you don’t want, to go away.”

Jessie’s hand shook as she raised her wand. She pressed it to her temple. I don’t know what prompted her to do that, but the glow from her eyes faded. She was panting, gasping for air. “It’s working.”

“What’s happening?” I asked. “What do you feel?”

“It’s silencing almost everyone. Only a few voices are still in my head. I can’t hear their thoughts, but I can feel their emotions. You’re one of them.”

“Well, I’m standing right here. You could sense my thoughts and feelings before.”

“It’s not that,” she tried to explain. “They’re mages. Dozens of them. I can even feel your son.”

I pressed my lips together. “That’s incredible. Jessie, can you feel Hans and Caedes?”

Jessie still held her wand to her head. She squinted her eyes as if she was focusing on something, but there wasn’t anything in front of her except her mattress and sheets.

“I’m getting nothing from Tim. Caedes isn’t registering. I don’t know why.”

“What about Hans?”

“He’s not far from here. All I sense is pain. Sadness, loneliness, and rage.”

“Can you take us to him?”

Jessie nodded. “I think I can. Holy crap, I can. I know exactly where he is.”

I grinned. Jessie wrapped her arms around me. “I can’t believe that dumb idea of yours worked!”

I laughed. “Well, sometimes my dumb ideas are good ones.”

Jessie held out her wand. “There’s so much to learn. Maybe I’ll be able to finally control this. I wonder what else I can do.”

I smiled. “Plenty of time to experiment later. For now, let’s go find Hans. If you couldn’t sense Caedes, maybe he skipped town already.”

“That might be why he’s sad. Still, it feels deeper than that. It’s not abandonment I’m sensing but loss.”

“Do you think he killed his own father?”

“I really don’t know,” Jessie replied. “I’m not getting thoughts. I think I still have to be close to someone, you know, in the same room or whatever for that. But I do feel his emotions.”

I nodded. “I’ll drive. You tell me where to go. We might actually have a chance to stop this if we can get to him before he does anything that plunges him deeper into the darkness. We might be too late. If he killed his own father, we might not ever be able to pull him out of the darkness.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I drove and Jessie pointed me in the general direction. Her abilities didn’t come with turn-by-turn GPS navigation, but, in the way a crow flies, she had a sense of where the feelings were coming from. She held those bearings, and I did my best to navigate the city streets to take us there.

“Right here!” Jessie exclaimed.

I looked around. “Which building?”

“He’s not in one of those buildings,” Jessie clarified. “He’s here. Right underneath us.”

I pulled over and parked on the side of the street. I saw the Lemp tower in the distance. We were between the old brewery and the mansion where the Lemp family was supposed to live. Thankfully, I knew some of my history.

“I think I know where he is.”

Jessie tilted her head. “In the sewers?”

“Not exactly. Ever hear of William Lemp?”

Jessie looked dubious. “Sort of. I know that the Lemp family used to run a brewery that once rivaled the Busch family.”

I grinned. “St. Louis history is in no small part also beer history. I took a tour of this place years ago. A lot of St. Louis is built over natural caves. In the late nineteenth century, no name was bigger than Lemp. William moved his father’s brewery here in the eighteen sixties.”

“Never took you for such a history buff.”

“I’m not. But this is one of those stories you don’t forget. It’s all true, too. Anyway, William Lemp made use of the natural caves under his new brewery. They were perfect for storing ice and aging beer. He even built tunnels connecting the caves under the brewery to those near his home.”

“The Lemp Mansion. Isn’t that a bed and breakfast now?”

I nodded. “Yeah, they make bank on people coming hoping to see a few ghosts during their stay. I don’t know much about ghosts, but if you know the rest of the story, it tracks.”

Jessie shrugged. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”

I chuckled. “After William’s son died, he retreated into a depression. He never went outside. Instead, he used the tunnels he built to go back and forth between home and work. Eventually, William was so distraught he shot himself in the head.”

“That’s horrible.”

I nodded. “His oldest son, Billy, took over the brewery but he didn’t have the same drive his father had. He turned the caves into underground swimming pools, private theaters, and hosted orgies. Real scandalous stuff back then. His wife divorced him. All his debauches became public. One of the Lemps, the youngest of Billy’s sisters, killed herself in shame. Prohibition hit and Billy shot himself just as his father had. He wasn’t the last Lemp to commit suicide there, either. I don’t remember the final body count, but there’s no story so grim as the real history of the Lemp family. Over the years, paranormal investigators have flocked here to explore the caves and the mansion. There are some pretty astounding claims about the things they’ve encountered down there. It’s said the caves go so deep that eyeless fish swim through the pools and if you try to light a match it will sputter out as soon as it’s struck.”

“That’s strange. It’s crazy the things that might exist right under our feet all the time and we don’t know about it.”

I huffed. “Like a homicidal mage, buried a mile under a park where children used to play.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, but yeah. Something like that.”

“It may be that Hans knew the story and figured the old Lemp caves were a great place to hide. He could gate himself into the caves easily enough. What if there’s more to it than that? What if there really is a darkness here, something connected to the deeper arcane wells, something that might have driven generation after generation to kill themselves. Something that a mage like Tim, or now Hans, might be drawn to, curious to explore. Once you touch the dark powers, it’s said that you’re drawn to it like a drunk to his bottle.”

Jessie stared at her wand and placed it to her temple again. “He’s down there. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

“Can you pick up his thoughts from here?”

Jessie squinted. “I should be able to. He isn’t that far. You might be right about the dark magic. It’s like there’s interference.”

“Like static or something?”

“No, it’s more like if you put a pillow over your face and tried to have a conversation. The words are there but it’s too muffled to make out.”

“Hans could get into those caves without any problem. It’s going to be more difficult for us. So far as I know, the only way to get into those caves is through the mansion or the old brewery. Even then, it’s not like the last time I toured the place I was scouting it for a mystical break-in.”

“Nothing a little sweet talk can’t handle,” Jessie suggested.

“Your plan is to flirt your way into the place? What if the place is ran by an old woman or something?”

“Flirting isn’t the only way to sweet talk. The key to winning friends and influencing others is knowing what they like, what they’re thinking.”

“I thought you always had a hard time winning friends.”

“Long-term friendships are tough to maintain, sure. Eventually, it makes folks uncomfortable when you always know what they’re thinking. In the short-term, though, if you can read someone’s mind, you could sell a glass of water to a drowning man.”

I cocked my head. “That doesn’t make sense. I’m pretty sure if someone was drowning they’d be thinking, ‘Oh, shit!’ and not much else. How are you going to sell anyone anything other than a helping hand or a life raft in that scenario?”

Jessie chuckled. “It’s just an expression, dork. Don’t overthink it. Let me do the talking. I’ll get us into those caves.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

We approached the Lemp Mansion, a flat-fronted white building with several uniform windows surrounded by black trim. Five windows on the upper floor, and four on the lower level with black double doors dividing the windows to either side. Several stone steps led to the door, which was covered by a small canopy.

I opened one of the doors and let Jessie in ahead of me. She would do the talking.

A woman in her fifties stepped out from one of the back rooms when we entered. “You’re early.”

I saw from the glimmer in Jessie’s eyes that she was already reading the woman’s thoughts. “The Lemp Experience tour. Starts at five-thirty, right?”

“That’s right,” the woman agreed. “If you aren’t signed up already, there’s a waiting list.”

Jessie nodded. “Thirty-five bucks?”

“Includes the use of an infrared camera and a tour with a paranormalist.”

“We’re not—”

Jessie held up her hand to shut me up. “We’re not your usual tourists. We certainly aren’t looking for ghosts.”

“Right!” I put in. “Because we ain’t afraid of no ghosts!”

Jessie turned toward me and narrowed her eyes. I think she was less annoyed that I stole her movie quote than she was at my general corniness.

The woman chuckled. “Well, what are you all here for, then?”

Jessie refocused her attention on the amiable lady. “You’ve been hearing strange sounds from the caves down below, haven’t you?”

The woman frowned. “How’d you know about that?”

“We just want to take a look,” Jessie assured her. “We’d like to examine the integrity of the tunnels and caves. There’s been some minor seismic activity in the area, nothing you’d notice, but it could be enough to compromise the safety of the caves.”

“What are you, geologists or something? People with the city?”

“I’m something of a construction expert,” I offered. “I know my tools.”

It wasn’t a total lie. All right, I wasn’t an expert at any specific construction, but I knew about building things, completing projects, and ensuring the safety of home foundations. All that stuff came with the job. If we ever had customers who were trying to repair a basement on their own or were in over their heads, we needed to be able to spot the danger. Sometimes, while we might lose a rental, it was better to refer our customers to experts than risk using our tools on a DIY disaster.

“That’s right,” Jessie added. “We’re with the insurance company.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “Who is our insurance company, then?”

She was probably thinking the answer even as she asked the question, and Jessie had no trouble answering. “Progressive. Flo sends her regards.”

She seemed mollified. “Still, pretty strange for an insurance company to come snooping around. Aren’t y’all usually involved after an accident?”

Jessie nodded. “Usually, but you know, it saves the company money if we can help avoid a claim to start. It’ll also keep your rates nice and low.”

I cleared my throat. “Just doing our due diligence, ma’am.”

She looked at me, then back at Jessie. “Well, it’s odd. But you know, I trust Flo. I think she’s a good person. You all must know what you’re doing.”

I smiled widely. “Flo is the best!”

“Yeah, she’s great,” Jessie confirmed.

“Right this way,” the woman instructed us. “I’d tell you all to be careful down there, but seeing since you’re from my insurance company it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to hold us liable for anything since you took it upon yourselves to inspect the place.”

“You don’t have to worry about us, ma’am,” Jessie assured her. “Like I said, it’s just standard precaution when we cover older facilities like this.”

“And if you find something, my rates won’t go up, will they?”

Jessie gave her a bright smile. “I won’t tell anyone anything that might increase your rates.”

I smirked. It was the truth. I had to hand it to Jessie. She picked up on this lady’s worries and sold her a line of bullshit that got us a free pass into the tunnels.

The lady led us down some stairs and stopped at the bottom. “I don’t go past this point.”

I tilted my head. “You don’t go in the tunnels, but you let people go ghost hunting down there?”

“It’s okay,” Jessie broke in. “We’ve got it from here.”

The woman answered anyway. “Truth is, if you spent as much time in this place as I do, you wouldn’t need infrared cameras or paranormal experts to find evidence that this place is haunted. I’ve seen plenty. I know it is. I’d just as soon stay above ground, where the troubled spirits of this place don’t cause much hassle.”

Jesse nodded. “I understand, ma’am.”

“Just tell me,” the woman went on. “You don’t have any clauses in your policy about ghosts, do you? If you see something, it’s not going to increase my rates, right?”

“No clauses in any policy I’ve ever written were about paranormal activity,” Jessie replied truthfully. “As I said before, when we leave, we won’t do anything to your rates. We’re here to make sure everyone is safe, that’s all.”

The woman turned to head back up the stairs. When she was halfway up, she turned. “Did y’all bring yourselves a change of underwear?”

“Why do you ask?” I furrowed my brow.

The woman laughed. “Because when you come up out of there, you’ll probably need them!”

I watched as the lady returned up the stairs and closed the door behind her. The tunnels had some lights, but they weren’t especially bright.

I huffed. “Well, if hunting down a portal mage wasn’t enough, might as well face a few ghosts while we’re at it.”

Jessie grinned. “I thought you weren’t afraid of no ghosts?”

“Hey, you told that joke first.”

“I did, you joke thief, you.”

“Are you sensing anything?”

“Still just feelings, emotions. The thoughts are still muffled, but Hans is here somewhere. I’m sure of it.”

I held Wand in my hand. “Better be ready. If you can’t hear him, we might not have much warning if he comes after us.”

“Oh, I’ll know if his emotions change. I might not know what he’s thinking, exactly, but if there’s a shift in what I’m sensing we can bet he’ll be coming after us.”

I nodded. “The little I know about gates and how they work, they require a precise amount of arcane power. They’re easy to dispel. Any extra arcane magic and it will overload his portals.”

“Good to know. I don’t know how we’d explain it if he sent us back to the surface and we had to convince that lady to let us back in again.”

“That’s not my worry,” I explained. “He could send us in a portal straight up into the sky and drop us. He could send us into busy traffic. Use your imagination, he could drop us pretty much anywhere we wouldn’t want to be.”

We continued through the tunnels. They were creepy, but not as bad as I expected. Jessie didn’t sense any changes. From what she said, Hans was consumed with some intense emotions. Anguish and anger. I didn’t know why. Something had him upset and pissed. Was it me? Was it something else I didn’t know about? Did it have something to do with Caedes? Probably, but since Jessie couldn’t sort out his thoughts, there wasn’t any way to know.

The tunnel turned ahead. Jessie grabbed my arm.

“Right around the corner,” she whispered.

I nodded and, with my wand extended, turned the corner. I saw a young man with dark hair, I assumed Hans, huddled over another body lying on the ground. Dark magic surrounded the body. I didn’t have to see him to surmise it was Caedes.

I took a couple of steps closer. Hans looked up. He raised his wand.

“Wait, I’m not your enemy,” I blurted.

“Take another step and I’ll gate you straight to hell.”

“You’re hurting,” Jessie observed. “What Tommy said is true. We aren’t here to fight.”

“I already tried to kill you,” Hans reminded me. “You expect me to believe you’re going to let that slide?”

“That depends,” I replied. “Your grandfather asked me to help you. I promised him I would. But you have to let me.”

“You did this to my dad!”

“I put him in an arcane prison,” I clarified. “I had no choice.”

“Look at him! It’s like he’s not even here!”

“I can help you,” I repeated. “I don’t know what I can do for your father. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“You put him in that cage! If you can help me, you could have helped him!”

“Your father killed people,” I told him.

“He killed your mother,” Jessie added.

Hans stared at us with wide eyes. “That’s a lie!”

“It’s true,” I agreed. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that his grandparents never told him the truth. “She was his first victim. If I could have saved him, I would have. My only regret is that I didn’t know, I didn’t see all that was going on until it was too late. It’s not too late for you.”

“I’ve already touched the darkness.”

“But you haven’t killed anyone.”

“I almost did.”

“You caused property damage. That’s it. Property can be fixed. Lives can’t be restored.”

Hans took two steps back. “All I ever wanted was to know my father.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up without parents. I do know you have a grandfather who loves you.”

Hans huffed. “He doesn’t love me. He’s just worried I’m going to tarnish the family name again.”

“Then don’t!” Jessie urged. “I can feel your pain. I’m an empath, that’s what I do.”

“You have a chance to do the right thing. The dark magic you’ve used has unleashed something horrible. Creatures from another realm have taken over the park.”

“I don’t know what those things are,” Hans claimed.

“We’re still working on it, but one thing I know right now is that if we have any hope of stopping them, we need you.”

“If those monsters expand their cloud, people will die,” Jessie pressed. “You don’t want that responsibility on your shoulders.”

Hans looked down at his father, and I took two more steps closer. Caedes was older. His hair was longer, and he had a beard. His eyes were plastered open and black. His mouth hung open. His chest rose and fell.

“He’s in a slumber,” I explained. “Mages can do that. It’s like hibernation.”

“How do we wake him up?”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“He could wake up at any moment,” Jessie pointed out. “It has to be his choice.”

“You may be his son, Hans, but he’s not the man he was when you were born. The darkness consumed his soul.”

“We knew him before,” Jessie added. “If you want to know who your father was before he fell into darkness, we can tell you about him.”

Hans took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling as he exhaled. I gripped his wand. His hand shook. “He really killed my mom?”

“He did,” I confirmed.

Hans’ lip quivered. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand then he aimed his wand at Caedes. “Then there’s only one thing I can do.”

“Hans, no! If you kill…”

Hans formed a portal over Caedes and lowered it over his dad. I didn’t know where he was sending him, but I knew he could kill him. I aimed my wand to dispel Hans’ gate, but before I could, a blast of black magic shot from Caedes.

He had his wand in his hand. Hans’ gate disappeared, and Caedes grabbed Hans from behind. He pressed his wand against his son’s neck.

“Tim, don’t do that! He’s your son!”

“You!” Caedes screamed. “It wasn’t enough to bury me. Now you want to do the same to my boy?”

“I’m not trying to hurt him. I’m trying to help him!”

“I can hear your thoughts,” Jessie told him. “You don’t want to do that.”

“What are you planning to do, Tim?” I asked.

“I’m not Tim! I’m Caedes!”

I nodded. “Right. You don’t have to do anything crazy.”

“Put your wand down, Tom! If you don’t, I’ll kill the boy!”

“He’ll kill him anyway,” Jessie claimed. “Then he’ll kill us.”

“Get out of my head, bitch!” Caedes screamed.

“You were waiting,” Jessie realized. “You wanted your son to kill!”

“I wanted him to kill you, Tom!”

“You put that idea in his head?” I asked.

“I didn’t have to. Perhaps I could. When you dive deep into the wells, and I’ve had years to go deeper than anyone before, there’s no limit to what one can do. If my son couldn’t avenge me and join me in the darkness, then I’ll kill you myself.”

Caedes tossed his son against the wall and aimed his wand at me. I raised an arcane barrier as an intense beam of violet power blasted against it. My barrier flickered as Caedes’ spell assaulted it with more force than any spell I’d ever seen.

“Dad!” Hans screamed. “Don’t do it!”

“You kill them or I will!”

Hans stood. He looked at me and nodded before he extended his wand and formed a gate behind us.

“It’s safe,” Jessie whispered. “He’s giving us a chance to escape.”

“We have to save him.”

“We will. We can’t overpower Caedes.”

I nodded at Hans, and Jessie and I dove into Hans’ portal.

We fell out of his gate on the street, not far from where I’d parked my truck. The ground beneath our feet rumbled.

Caedes blasted out of it and landed on the street. I aimed my wand and was going to blast him with an arcane missile when I saw he had Hans in his arms. “Interfere in my affairs again, and I’ll kill the boy.”

A cloud of black mist surrounded Caedes and Hans. It was like the haze that was expanding around the park. It faded, and they were gone.

“Damn it!” I screamed.

“He saved us,” Jessie consoled me. “That means there’s hope.”

“If Caedes doesn’t kill the boy first.”

“He might not,” Jessie suggested. “He still wants to lure him into the darkness with him. But if Hans doesn’t kill someone soon, Caedes will murder his son.”

“What changed? One moment you couldn’t hear their thoughts, then you could.”

Jessie twirled her wand in her hands. “We figured it out. Don’t ask me how, but eventually, with my wand’s help, we got through.”

“That portal he used to save us. There wasn’t any dark magic in it.”

“I know. I was afraid it would open and seed this place with more of those fiends. I think we reached him. He wouldn’t have saved us, otherwise.”

I nodded. “He still has a long way to go. The darkness won’t let go of him so easily.”

“We have to figure out how to free him before his father takes him deeper into the wells. I could feel Hans’ hate when he realized his father killed his mother. He was going to send his father straight to the earth’s core.”

I raised an eyebrow. “He could do that?”

“He wasn’t sure, but he was going to try,” Jessie told me.

“It wouldn’t have worked. That’s two attempted murders that he’s failed to complete. If we don’t save him soon, it won’t take Caedes much effort at all to push him over the edge. Did you pick up any thoughts about where Caedes took him?”

“I didn’t, but you saw that black cloud, right?”

“It was identical to the crap that the fiends are spreading around Gregory Park.”

“How much you want to bet it’s connected? Caedes isn’t a gate mage, but if he’s been diving as deep into the arcane wells as he claimed, he might be able to navigate through the haze.”

“You think he took Hans to the park?”

Jessie nodded. “That’s my guess. I’m pretty sure he didn’t take him there to climb the jungle gyms.”

I shuddered. “That blast he hit me with, he didn’t have that kind of power when I defeated him the last time. If we go into that haze, we’ll be right in his environment. I don’t think I could have taken him here. I can’t defeat him in the haze.”

Jessie placed her hand on my back. “We have to try, Tommy. If we don’t, we can’t save Hans. If we don’t save Hans, we can’t stop the fiends from spreading their haze all over the world.”

“Even if we save him, I don’t know if Hans has the strength to pull that stuff back into a portal to the ethereal realms. I don’t even know if he knows how to do it.”

“Then we’d better hit the books hard and fast and find an answer.”

“Screw the books,” I told her. “We don’t have time for that, and chances are we won’t find anything else. Kat’s poring over those books now, in between getting the kids snacks, breaking up fights over who gets to be Mario and who has to be Luigi, and cleaning Cheetos stains off the couch.”

Jessie tilted her head. “Don’t allow Cheetos on the couch.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, the answer is always simple for those who don’t have children. We tried that. No food on the couch at all. Kids have a fit one day, and the only thing that calms them down is a show and a snack. Before you know it—”

“Cheetos stains on the couch?”

I nodded. “The point is that if Kat finds anything, she’ll let us know. She’s a better researcher than I am, anyway.”

“I’m not half-bad, myself.”

“I don’t doubt that. I think we’d be better off putting your more unique skills to use.”

“What do you propose?”

“You said you can use your wand to find any mage in the area, right?”

“I’m not sure how far my range is. You were there, Tommy. I just barely figured out I could do it. This is all new to me, too.”

“All the same, we need to talk to all the families. A lot of them had issues with young people dabbling in dark powers. I’m betting a few of them have gate magery in their blood.”

Jessie looked doubtful. “You think they’ll talk to you? You know how the families are. Ever since, you know…”

“The one thing I know is that Caedes killed a lot of mages, and if he starts killing again, he’ll start attacking them first. We’re his biggest threat. I also don’t think too many of the families would be thrilled to accept ethereal fiends spreading their ecosystem around the globe.”

“You want to unite the families,” she concluded.

“I can’t do it without you. We’re drowning. The whole mage community is drowning in fear and blame. I need you to sell them a glass of water.”

“From what I could tell when I was using my wand before, there are a lot more mages in the area than I realized.”

“I don’t expect every family still has representatives in all the old host cities for the academies, but quite a few do. We might not reach all the families, but it’s a start. The more we can gather to unite and face this thing, the better chance we’ll be able to pool our knowledge and find a solution, a way to stop the spread of the haze and stop Caedes.”

“You said it yourself, Tommy. We don’t have much time.”

“Last time, I took on Caedes alone,” I reminded her. “I was the most promising battlemage from any family in generations. That’s what people used to say about me.”

“I remember,” Jessie murmured.

“Well, I let it go to my head. Maybe if I’d gathered the families then, if we stood together against Caedes, we could have saved him. Instead, I had to play the hero. I was the badass battlemage, after all. I put Caedes in that prison. I gave him two decades to do nothing but go deeper into the darkness, to get more powerful.”

“You didn’t free him from his prison.”

I shook my head. “As powerful as he was, if Hans didn’t free him, he would have gotten out eventually. Hans never learned to master his specialization properly because our families didn’t cooperate. My parents wouldn’t give the Wagners the books. I’m guessing Gerhard Wagner didn’t stop with my parents. He probably reached out to other families looking for help, too. It was the division between the families, and my ego, that led to all of this. I have to bury my ego, and the families have to bury their hatchets. The only way we can stop the fiends and Caedes now is if we stand together. We don’t have time. You’re right. But whatever time we do have, we need to spend it bringing the families together. It’s the only chance we have.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

We were planning the first convocation in more than two decades. I didn’t have the authority to do that. No one did. Not anymore. There wasn’t time to organize activities for the youth, plan training sessions, or hire a caterer. We had to get the mages together, as many as we could as soon as we could. It didn’t matter what families they came from. Jessie couldn’t sense the ancestry of the mages in the area. The more families represented, the better. Over time, if Caedes didn’t slaughter us all or the ethereal fiends didn’t take over the world first, more families might join. As I learned from the great Bill Murray, you have to start with baby steps. And, in the words of the immortal Michael Jackson, “you gotta be startin’ somethin’.” Hopefully we’d learn the lesson from the great sages of my youth, Bill and Ted, to be excellent to each other. Also, San Dimas High School football rules! Party on, dude.

Time to climb out of the rabbit hole of eighties pop-culture references and get to work. We needed a place to meet. Thankfully, my parents had a big enough house for a gathering, and my mom had the skills necessary to host an event like that in short order.

I called my dad and told him the plan. We’d be crashing his place with dozens of mages from various families. I also called Gerhard Wagner, and he assured me his family would be on board. He was concerned that his presence wouldn’t be welcomed by the other mages. I assured him that we’d deal with their concerns. Jessie gave us an advantage in that respect. We needed him, and what better time to prove to the other families that the Wagners were more than the family responsible for Caedes? I didn’t know if Hans was right, if Gerhard did care more about his family name than his grandson, but in this instance the two interests aligned. The only way to save Hans was with the help of as many mages as we could rally. The only way for Gerhard Wagner to polish the tarnish from his family name was to stand against his own son for the sake of his grandson and for the sake of the world.

I told him as much. He was a stone-cold stoic. Like in a lot of German families, showing emotion was verboten. Even over speakerphone, Jessie said she could hear the words beneath his words, the feelings hidden in the confines of his heart that he’d never dare wear on his sleeve. He was with us, whether he’d admit his true motives or not.

After that, we went on a wild goose chase all over the city. Jessie used her wand, pressed it to her temple, and located the closest mage to wherever we were.

Some of them were too young to remember Caedes and all that happened. Most of them didn’t want to talk about their power. Their families treated it as a secret. It wasn’t a surprise. We were always told not to use our powers around others if we could avoid it. People wouldn’t understand. Jessie picked up on the reluctance right away. We showed them our wands. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. It worked. When we explained what was going on, they agreed to meet. We weren’t asking them to go to the mattresses with us. Not yet. There was no harm in meeting and sharing what we knew, anything that might help us stop the haze and Caedes.

The other mages, those our age or older, were more reluctant. They remembered the old arguments, the finger-pointing, and the blame that they were all convinced fell on other mage families. Those who didn’t blame the Wagners blamed my family—my father and me. My father for not restraining me, for taking Caedes on in public and exposing mages to the world. Me for going along with it, relishing in my fifteen minutes of fame. Everyone had agreed back then that Caedes had to be stopped. They didn’t all agree that I went about it the right way.

Maybe they were right. I didn’t go to any other mages for advice before I took on Caedes. I went after him on my own, determined that I was destined to be the hero.

Hearing that Caedes was more powerful now that he’d had so much time to grow in strength didn’t do much to convince them that I was ever in the right. All I’d done was stop a killer and turn him into someone who might very well mean the end of the world.

My instinct was to defend my actions. Who could blame someone for having the balls to take on an arcane-wielding serial killer? When you’re dealing with someone that dark, that depraved, you stop him and don’t consider that any consequences that might follow could be worse than the status quo. Jessie reined me in. The families wouldn’t react well to my justifications. I had to own it and take responsibility—and promise that this time I intended to face this threat differently. Not alone, but with their help.

After that, it wasn’t hard to convince them to meet. All the families, somewhere deep down, longed for the time when the mages worked together. It’s a cliché, but we were stronger together than any of us could be on our own.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I’d never seen so many people in my parents’ house. When I was growing up, and a few of the other mages would come over for tea and dominoes, it was never more than a small crowd. The closest I’d ever seen to a crowd like this was the party my parents threw for my high school graduation. I use the term “party” loosely. It was more like a reception. Our dining room table was set up with framed yearbook photos going all the way back to kindergarten, a collection of my certificates and awards, and a few of my grade school art projects. My seventh-grade “citizen of the month” plaque was featured front and center. It wasn’t like it meant much. The teachers nominated a student and the principal chose one to give the award to every month. If you got decent grades, participated in class, and didn’t get in too many fights, it was a matter of time before you got the award. Still, my mom had never been so proud. Almost as proud as my father was when I got my Eagle Scout. Plenty of items were set up on the table to highlight my scouting accomplishments as well.

There weren’t any displays set up to embarrass me this time. Some of the same people who came then were there now—prominent mages representing the families. This time, though, they came because I invited them and with Jessie’s help convinced them to hear me out. Getting the families together again was my idea, but I couldn’t have done it without Jessie. I would have fubar’d the entire effort on my own.

My mom had prepared appetizers galore, and anything you might want to drink was set out on the kitchen island. Every kind of soda, punch, coffee, iced tea, and several kinds of liquor. Even with my mom’s abilities, it was impressive she put this all together with such short notice.

Shortly after Jessie and I arrived and started greeting the mages who were already there, Kat showed up with the boys.

I glanced at my mom. “Why are they here?”

“I invited them. This is a convocation, son. It’s for mage families. Kat might not be one of us, but at least one of your boys is.”

I hugged my mom. It was a small gesture, but recognizing that my family belonged meant more than I could put into words.

My boys ran up to me. I knelt and opened my arms, hugging all three at once. Ezra held onto my neck and wouldn’t let go. I stood and pulled him with me. Kat had a book under her arms. It was one of the books on gate magery.

“Did you find something?”

Kat nodded. “I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”

“Let me see.” I set Ezra down. He took off, following his brothers, looking for their baba. Kat handed me the book, opened it to a page she’d bookmarked with a grocery receipt, and pointed at the line.

Any gate left open, and whatever has emerged from ethereal realms, can be eliminated if the mage responsible is killed.

I closed the book. “Don’t mention this to anyone. We have to find another way.”

Kat nodded. “I just thought you should know. If it comes down to saving the world, saving our family, and doing what has to be done—”

“There’s another way. I’m going to find it.”

Kat leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I believe you.”

Jessie grabbed my arm. “They’re all here. Every mage in the city. Almost.”

I nodded. “Except for Hans and Caedes.”

“Except for them.”

My kids weren’t the only ones there. My boys found a few others, representing a couple of other mage families, and took off upstairs. My parents still had some of my old toys in my former bedroom. It wasn’t much, but the boys always had fun with my He-Man figures, GI-Joes, and Micromachines.

“Reminds you of us, doesn’t it?” Jessie asked. “When we were their age, coming to our convocations.”

I chuckled. “A bit. This isn’t exactly a convention center at a hotel. I get it, though. All kids who have no idea what’s coming, wondering if they’ll inherit their parents’ powers or something else entirely, worried they might end up impotens.”

Jessie crossed her arms. “You were thinking about that at age nine and younger?”

“Weren’t you?”

Jessie laughed. “I just wanted more candy and toys. Those worries came later.”

I nodded. “Elijah is young to manifest. It’s a little terrifying, you know? It’s one thing to go through it yourself. It’s a whole other thing when it’s your kid.”

Jessie grinned. “I know. Not from my own experience. But I know what you’re feeling.”

“Right, of course.”

“You’re worried what will happen if he has to grow up without a father, if there will even be a world left at all if you can’t stop Caedes and the haze.”

I nodded. “That’s why this has to work. It’s why I can’t take this whole thing on my shoulders alone. There’s more at stake here now than there was before. I’m not fighting for my glory, or even to save the lives of people I barely know.”

“You’re fighting for family. I don’t know, Tommy, but I think that gives you an edge. It’s something Caedes doesn’t have. With all his power, and all that darkness, he doesn’t have room in his heart anymore for family. He would have killed his son if he didn’t think he could still use him.”

I surveyed the room. Some mage families weren’t represented. The Sato family was in Tokyo. They didn’t leave anyone here after Caedes had killed Hana. Now I knew why. Other families were scattered around the world, who didn’t have anyone left in Missouri. Hopefully, this was a first step to bringing them together again, but none of that would matter if we failed.

I stepped into the living room where most of the mages were gathered. They were enjoying drinks, catching up with one another about what they’d been doing for the last twenty years. Some of them, the younger mages, were becoming acquainted for the first time.

I cleared my throat. “Thank you, everyone, for coming.”

Everyone stopped chatting and turned to look at me. “I know some of you blame me for the past. Whether I was a hero then, or a headstrong kid who was in over his head, doesn’t matter. The only thing I know is that we’re facing a threat now that could be worse than what happened back then. I’ve already explained it to you all when Jessie and I found you. Now that we’re here, together, it’s my hope that we can bring together our knowledge and experience and come up with a plan. If the ethereal haze, full of fiends you couldn’t imagine, spreads much further, it might be too much to stop. I also have reason to believe that Caedes can draw on more power from the haze, on the dark power that fills it, and will only grow stronger as it expands. This is our chance, and it might be our only chance, to stand together against it and stop it. If we can’t, it will be too late.”

My father cleared his throat. “We all agree that we’ve been divided too long, but we wield arcane power. If we attack the creatures in that haze, we’ll only give them more strength.”

I nodded. “That’s right. I tried to fight one of the fiends and my arcane missile only divided it in two. It made two creatures where there was only one before.”

“We have to save my grandson,” Gerhard spoke up. “If anyone can stop this, it’s him.”

“He’s already stepped over the line,” my father declared. “It may be too late to save him.”

“I don’t think it is,” I said. “He saved Jessie and I from his father. He used a portal to help us escape and his portal wasn’t vested with dark magic.”

“Did he or did he not attempt to kill you?” my dad asked.

“Well, he did, but there was a lot he didn’t know. I think he realizes now that was a mistake.”

“He still attempted to kill. I suspect more than once. Once a mage murders another, there’s no return from that.”

Gerhard shook his head. “No one knows if that’s true, Thomas. Simply because it hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it couldn’t be.”

“You still think your son can be saved?” My father folded his arms in front of his chest.

Gerhard grunted. “A father never gives up on his children.”

Murmurs sounded through the group. Most of the mages there had family members, or friends, who Caedes had killed. It was hard to imagine how a father might still hold out for his son after all Caedes did. As a father, though, I couldn’t imagine anything my sons might do that could ever make me stop loving them, stop hoping for the best for them. I might not always be proud of every decision they make and, heaven forbid, I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be if any of them ever killed someone, but I’d never give up hope and I’d love them no matter what. Sometimes love hurts, especially when the people you love disappoint you, but that doesn’t mean love dies. At the moment, for instance, I still loved my father, even though he was adding more tension to the room.

“I’m not giving up on Hans.” I nodded at Gerhard to reaffirm my assurance. “He is the key to stopping both the haze and probably Caedes.”

My father grunted. “I agree with you, there. He is the key.”

“With all of us united, we might have a chance to save him—”

“Save him?” My father interrupted. “It’s too late for that. My apologies, Gerhard, I know this is difficult to hear. My son knows this is true. I gave him the books that make it clear. If we kill the gate mage responsible, the haze will disappear.”

I glanced at Kat. She shrugged and shook her head. She hadn’t brought that fact to my dad’s attention. He knew it the whole time. He’d had those books for years. “Why do you think that is, Dad?”

My dad grunted. “It doesn’t matter. The fact is, we’re talking about one boy’s life to save the world.”

Gerhard stood and pointed directly at my father. “Anyone who tries to harm my grandson will have to kill me first. You don’t want that darkness on your soul. You’re a good man, Thomas. But I’ve seen what darkness can do to good men.”

I broke in. “It makes no sense that killing Hans would get rid of the haze and fiends unless the energy is connected to him somehow. That means there must be a way that he can stop it himself. If only he has the support and guidance to do it.”

A battlemage a half-decade senior to my father, Lawrence Thompson, stood. I hadn’t seen the man in years. Thompson was always a smooth talker, always winning folks over with his charm, but also was the kind who was always looking out for number one. He’d be your friend so long as it suited him. The moment he’d be better off turning against you, he would. Not everyone saw through him. Thompson wasn’t even a great battlemage. Half the time, his spells were duds. What he lacked in arcane ability, he made up for in connivery.

When Jessie and I had approached him, she told me he had a tumor and had months to live. I figured, given the prominence of his family, his support would nonetheless be beneficial. I hoped I was right about that.

“I’m with Thomas,” Thompson proclaimed. I sighed. To the older mages, my dad was Thomas and I was Tommy. “If someone has to kill the boy, I’ll do it.”

“You don’t have the strength,” I objected.

“I have enough. Whoever does it will be consumed in darkness. I’m a dying man, Tommy. Put me in a prison, like you did to the Wagner boy. I won’t live long enough for the darkness to pull me as deep as it did him.”

Jessie tugged on my wrist. I leaned over so she could whisper what she had to say. “He thinks the darkness can heal him.”

I stood. “No offense, sir. But how do we know you don’t want this just so you can tap into the dark magic and heal yourself?”

“Preposterous!” Thompson stomped his foot on the floor. “I’m offering to make a sacrifice, so no other mage here has to give himself over to the darkness, and you question my motives?”

“He isn’t questioning you,” Jessie piped up. “I know what you’re thinking. That’s exactly what you’re planning.”

“So you say! Is anyone going to believe an empath? You’re barely a mage. None of the families know how your so-called specialization works. This is nothing but a ruse to convince the families to support your uncertain and naive plan to save the boy and hope that he can figure out how to stop the threat.”

“Thompson has a point,” another older mage, who I didn’t remember, added. “Why should we trust what an empath tells us she feels? No offense, young lady, but what have you done to prove yourself to the families?”

“It’s no use.” Jessie grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. She hushed her voice. “There’s no way to prove to them that what I’m telling them is exactly what I sense.”

“I trust her!” I shouted. “She hasn’t steered me wrong yet.”

Thompson approached me. “No one questions your intentions, Tommy. Everyone knows of your bravery. You made sure of that twenty years ago. These events, though, prove that your courage is only eclipsed by your foolishness.”

Gerhard Wagner approached Thompson and pushed him away from me. “That boy risked his life to stop my son, my son, from murdering people. You wouldn’t even be standing here today if it wasn’t for that boy’s foolish bravery. My grandson didn’t have the guidance most of us did growing up. We did our best with him, but it wasn’t enough. He’s a victim of all of you, your bickering and fear. We owe that boy a chance to fix his mistake, to turn from the darkness before it’s too late.”

My father stood and straightened the collar on his shirt. “I’m sorry Gerhard. And I’m sorry to you, too, son. But Thompson is right. If he’s willing to sacrifice himself, who are we to spit in his face and deny him that chance? We can’t risk the world on the off chance that the boy might be saved, and he might be able to stop what’s happening.”

Thompson smirked at me then turned to the group. “We all owe Tommy our gratitude for bringing us together. He told me, as I’m sure he told most of you, that he wasn’t going to do this on his own. He wanted the consensus of the families.”

Several of the mages nodded in agreement.

Thompson stepped in front of me. “I say we put it to a vote. All who want to risk the world, and all of our lives, and try to save the boy, say aye.”

Gerhard Wagner and Jessie voted in my favor.

“All those who will accept my offer, and allow me to kill the boy, say aye.”

Everyone else, including my parents, voted with Thompson. He turned and rested his hand on my shoulder. “The families have spoken. I trust, Tommy, you’ll do what you must. Once I kill the boy, you’ll bury me as you did Caedes.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Then I’ll do it,” my dad offered. “If my son refuses, I’ll put you in the arcane prison and bury you myself.”

Jessie grabbed my hand. “It’s no use. They won’t be convinced.”

I clenched my fists and stomped out of the house.

Gerhard Wagner followed us. “Thank you for trying. You can’t give up now.”

“You heard the vote,” I told him. “I can’t change their minds.”

“Not now. Not here. If you can save my grandson before they kill him, perhaps they can be persuaded.”

Kat stepped up behind me. “That didn’t go well, did it?”

I shook my head. “Get the boys and take them home. We’re going after the boy.”

“My wand is at your disposal,” Gerhard vowed. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

We had to save Hans before the other mages got to him. I liked our chances. We had a couple of advantages the rest didn’t. We had an empath and the only mage who really knew the boy. I say “boy” as if he wasn’t in his early twenties. You know you’re middle-aged when you start referring to men and women in their twenties as “kids.” Hans was about the age I was when I took down his father, though. He was also capable and, depending on how much of a hold the darkness had on him, potentially dangerous.

Gerhard’s car was parked near my parents’ house, but he rode with us. Jessie took one of the seats in the back to allow old man Wagner to sit shotgun. I turned down my music straight away, as I suspected he wasn’t a fan of late-nineties pop-punk or grunge. Besides, we needed to come up with a plan.

“The only thing I know is that if one of those fiends comes after us in the haze, we can’t fight it,” I began. “It’s also hard to see, so one of those things could come on us at any second and we won’t see it coming. We might need to run.”

“Are you implying I can’t run?” Gerhard asked.

“Not at all, but you need to be prepared.”

“I might be an old man, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“What kind of tricks?” I asked.

“You can phase into arcane form, I presume.”

I nodded. “Did it not long ago. It’s how I discovered that your son escaped his prison.”

“You can use that to avoid a strike.”

I nodded. “That’s smart. There’s no telling how that will work in the haze. These creatures are ethereal. The haze is what allows them to spread across the material world.”

Gerhard nodded. “Perhaps. It shouldn’t matter. Phasing simply takes your body out of sync with the environment around you. If these things need that haze to manifest, my guess is that entering the haze makes you ethereal. If you phase, the opposite should happen.”

“Pardon me,” Jessie broke in. “I can sense that you aren’t totally confident about that.”

“Of course I’m not. This is new territory for all of us. If the haze converts what it touches into energy that the beasts can attack, it might take more energy than usual to overcome the effects of the haze. Phasing back into a material form within the haze without being changed back again will probably take a lot more power than usual. Nothing you can’t do with your wand.”

“But I can’t do that,” Jessie replied.

“You’re young and fit,” Gerhard noted. “You can run.”

My hands twisted on my steering wheel. “We may need Jessie to find Hans. If she has to run out of the haze, we won’t know where to look. The fog is so thick that it’s disorienting. It’s easy to get turned around.”

“And if Caedes is in there, we’ll be sitting ducks if I’m not there to sense his approach,” Jessie added.

Gerhard pressed his hands together and raised them to his lips. “I’ll deal with my son.”

“No offense, but you couldn’t save him from the darkness twenty years ago,” I reminded him. “Do you really think you’re going to get through to him now?”

Gerhard shrugged. “I have to try. If I fail, it should give you an opportunity to reach my grandson. Don’t worry about me. I will be fine. I need you to save Hans.”

I rubbed my brow. “I understand.”

“We can’t leave you with Caedes,” Jessie insisted.

Gerhard sighed. “I can handle myself, especially when it comes to my son. I need both of you to promise that no matter what happens, you’ll do whatever it takes to save Hans.”

“Whatever it takes. You have my word.”

The haze now enveloped the parking lot at Gregory Park. It was expanding, though not as rapidly as I’d feared. Jessie sensed Hans and Caedes before we arrived. They were in the haze, somewhere. We had to find them, avoid the fiends, and hope Caedes didn’t kill us the second he saw us. Even apart from the haze, he was too strong for me to take alone. He hadn’t only grown in strength over time, but he’d gone so deep into the darker part of the arcane wells that there was no telling what he was capable of. I felt as powerless as an ant under his boot. Especially now that he was in the haze. Would my spells hurt him at all? I knew what it did to the fiends. My arcane missiles divided them in two but didn’t split them into lesser parts. It was more like multiplication than division because the energy in the haze fed them and made each part every bit as strong as the original whole. Multiplication through division. That’s some terrifying math—and in my experience, math was always frightening.

Attacking Caedes might not create a double—if it did, that would be a nightmare—but it could make him stronger. We didn’t know enough about this haze and how our magic worked in it to bank on anything.

We were like children who’d never learned to swim belly-flopping into a shark tank.

We got out of the truck. As we approached the haze, Jessie extended her hand and touched it, like she was dipping her toe into the pool to see how cool it was. She tilted her head. “My powers work. I can sense everything in there.”

Gerhard and I exchanged glances. “Is this the best place to enter?”

Jessie shrugged. “Caedes and Hans are right at the center. In the middle of the playground.”

I nodded. “Probably where I buried him. That’s where Hans created his portal before. It’s where the magic in the haze is most concentrated.”

Gerhard stepped right in. Some people like to test the waters first. Others prefer to jump right in and get over the shock. Gerhard was apparently among the latter. I’d been in the haze before. That didn’t mean I was more eager to do it again. If anything, I knew what I was going to face. I also doubted that Caedes was a pacifying force. His presence would stir up the fiends if nothing else.

Kat often called me from another room to kill spiders. I didn’t like killing spiders, because they kill other bugs. They creeped her out, though. Try encountering a spider several times your own size, and if you weren’t scared of spiders before, you’d forever be an arachnophobe afterward. I wasn’t sure if these things were arachnids, but it was the closest parallel I could think of from the natural world.

I was waiting for one to appear at any second out of the black fog. These fiends were frightening enough on their own. Knowing they were lurking in the haze, could see us better than we could see them, and could appear at any moment was downright horrifying. It was like walking through the house at night, never knowing where a stray Lego might be waiting for you on the darkened floor. Statistically speaking, given the area of the floor relative to the area a Lego piece took up, it wasn’t likely you would step on it. Statistics are crap, though. If there’s a Lego on the floor, I’ll step on it every time. I suspected I’d have similar luck with these fiends. I didn’t know how many there were. Two at least. There could be dozens, or hundreds. So far as I was concerned, the question wasn’t if we’d encounter one but when. I could only hope we’d find Hans and Caedes first.

“Something’s coming,” Jessie whispered. “I can feel it.”

“What do you feel? Are you saying these things think?”

“Everything thinks. But yes, they’re intelligent. I can’t make out their thoughts. They don’t speak our language. But I can feel their emotions.”

“Let me guess. They’re hungry.”

Jessie pressed her wand to her temple. “They’re scared.”

“Of us?” Gerhard asked.

“No, it’s not us.”

“Caedes?” I suggested.

“Maybe. I think it’s this world. They don’t want to be here. It’s like they were pulled out of their universe and are only spreading this haze so they can survive.”

“You can pick up all of that from feelings?”

Jessie nodded. “Emotions aren’t ever in a vacuum. They always have a context. It’s all a part of it.”

“Can we avoid them?” Gerhard asked.

“Maybe. We can try.”

“That’s all we can do,” I said. “Lead the way, Jessie. If you can pick up the locations of the fiends, maybe you can get us past them.”

“It’s hard to tell where they are,” Jessie explained. “I can’t even tell how many there are. These things don’t connect to me the way people do.”

“Can you tell if there’s one straight ahead?”

Jessie pressed her wand to her temple again. “If I focus in one direction it helps. We should be good to move forward. Don’t move fast, though. Everything could change in a second.”

Jessie held her wand to her head. She was still new at this stuff, but in the haze, we were all amateurs.

She raised her opposite hand. I’d seen a few of those military shows where the leader has hand gestures to tell his fellow soldiers what to do. We didn’t have anything so formal. I took the raised hand as a signal to stop. She waved her wand around until she found another path forward. When she moved, we moved. Her ability was the closest thing to sight that we had in the haze.

The deeper we went the more I sensed the magic. It got stronger and stronger.

Gerhard nudged me. “How much further?”

I recognized some of the playground equipment. It didn’t disappear in the haze. Everything in the material world was there, colorless and shaded. “Not far.”

We passed a merry-go-round that was spinning for no apparent reason. Some of the swings were moving back and forth, but there wasn’t a palpable breeze in the haze.

If invisible little children started singing Ring Around the Rosie, I swear I would have peed my pants, and I wouldn’t have even tried to stop it. When urine trouble, that’s all you can do.

I knew where we were. I’d been to the park enough times that I recognized the first self-propelled merry-go-round and swings. Another, larger, merry-go-round sat about a hundred feet ahead, right over where I buried Caedes. Jessie said that’s where he was. I didn’t move past her yet. We were getting close, but there could still be a fiend between us and them.

I held Wand in my hand, though I couldn’t attack the fiends. I might still need to raise a shield or move into a threatening posture. Sometimes posturing is all you can do. Caedes would probably call my bluff, but he’d been in a prison for years. This haze, even if he drew power from it, was new to him, too. We were in uncharted territory, but so was he.

Jessie led us straight forward. No fiends in the way. A breeze struck my cheek and I saw the fog spinning ahead of us, right over the merry-go-round.

“Is he in there?” I whispered.

Jessie nodded. “Both of them.”

Gerhard pulled out his wand. With his free hand, he grabbed my arm. “When a mage falls deeper in the wells, it consumes him. You won’t be able to touch him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“But when a mage makes the ultimate sacrifice, it releases a surge of pure arcane magic. It can purge the darkness from another. But only one who hasn’t committed the darkest act.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. My son is lost. My grandson isn’t. I’m giving you a chance.”

“Your son wants Hans to kill. That’s what all of this is about.”

“He won’t,” Gerhard insisted. “My grandson isn’t lost. Not like Timothy.”

“You’re going to force your own son to kill you.” Jessie accused him.

“Like I said, he’s already lost. Save Hans. Help him, guide him. You gave me your word.”

I nodded. “I did, but—”

Gerhard cast something from his wand and it enveloped his body. I’d never seen anything like it. He dove into the whirlwind.

I charged after him, but the wind was too strong and it threw me back to the ground.

“What was that spell? Jessie, what was he thinking? I need to know how to get in there.”

“He’s right, Tommy. This is the only way.”

“No!” I screamed.

A bright flash of blue light swirled in the black tornado and a figure jumped out of it. He grabbed onto me.

“Hans!” I shouted.

Tears flowed from his eyes. Jessie wrapped her arms around me as Hans extended his wand and formed a portal of pure, blue, arcane power and pulled it down over us.

The next thing I knew, Hans, Jessie, and I were standing back by my truck. Hans stared back into the fog. “Grandpa…”

I put my hand on Hans’ shoulder. “What happened in there?”

“My dad, he wanted me to kill him. I refused. Grandpa tried to blast my dad with arcane magic and my dad killed him!”

“He sacrificed himself to save you,” Jessie said.

Hans rubbed his eyes. “I know.”

“Come on. I know you could probably just gate yourself home, but it’s not safe. I promised your grandfather I’d keep you safe.”

Hans nodded, so I opened the back door of the extended cab on my truck and Hans climbed in.

Jessie and I got in and I started the truck. There was one place where the other mages couldn’t hurt Hans, a place where magic wouldn’t work. It hadn’t been a full day since Hans tried to kill me, and now I was taking the boy home.

“Tommy, you’d better move fast.”

I looked at the haze through my windshield. It was expanding. Gerhard sacrificed himself. He saved Hans, but it came at the cost of sending Caedes deeper into darkness. Somehow, the haze must’ve been connected to Caedes. The darker he fell, the more he killed, and the more the darkness expanded. The more power flowed through the mist, the larger and stronger the fiends grew.

I turned my truck around and pressed my foot on the gas. My tires squealed. The haze was expanding faster than I could drive.

Hans pointed his wand straight through the windshield. A large blue gate formed in front of us, and Hans screamed, “Drive into it!”

I drove into the portal, and my truck reappeared right in front of my house.

“Nice trick,” Jessie remarked.

Hans nodded. “It worked for now. I can’t believe he killed my grandpa, his own father.”

“That’s dark,” Jessie agreed. “Too dark.”

Hans nodded. “You told me that my dad went off the deep end when he killed my mom. What do you think is going to happen now?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But if that haze is connected to his darkness, it’s going to expand a lot more and a lot faster than we thought.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Before we entered the house, I cast an arcane barrier all around it. My barrier was more formidable than most, and even if the other mages blasted it with all they had, it would likely hold. My mom had warded the place, and now that she had voted and sided with the other mages, I couldn’t risk her showing up and removing her wards so Thompson could kill Hans. I didn’t know how long it would take before they’d figure out that he was with us, but I suspected it wouldn’t be long. Mages are sneaky. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone was watching our house from a distance and saw us bring Hans in.

Hans was shaking. He was traumatized. He’d flirted with darkness. His grandfather’s sacrifice had purged it from him, but he’d also seen his own father—the man he’d freed from his prison—murder his grandfather. I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. Jessie sensed it before we entered the house. Some of it was guilt. He felt responsible. He was also angry. We had to be careful with that. If he sought vengeance and killed his father, he’d fall right back into the deeper wells.

It wouldn’t lead to darkness every time a mage killed someone. It depended on motive. In the Arcane Wars, many good mages fought and killed dark mages. Most of them didn’t fall. Some of them did. War is messy. Those who fought for justice were spared the darkness. Those who turned to vengeance, who fought the dark mages out of hatred, became the very thing they thought they were fighting against.

It was tricky. As Jessie would say, none of us are ever moved by a single feeling. We are like emotional goulash, dozens of emotions blended into one.

We went inside. The kids were in front of the television watching super-annoying YouTubers. I deleted the YouTube app from the television once, but somehow it reappeared. That nine-year-old of mine was too clever, sometimes. I suppose it could have been worse. When I wasn’t much older than him, I used to sneak upstairs to watch Beavis and Butthead. It drove my parents nuts.

What they say is true when it comes to parenting. What goes around comes around. When I tried telling my mom about some of my kids’ antics, she’d laugh hysterically and tell me about something I’d done when I was their age. In her mind, it was my just deserts.

Kat was incredible. She knew what Hans did and how he tried to kill me. Now she was offering him snacks and sweet tea. Magic hadn’t been a part of our lives for years. She always knew it was part of me, though, and she understood more than I’d ever given her credit for.

“Are you going to show him the books?” Kat asked.

I nodded. “That’s a fine idea.”

I grabbed my father’s books on gate magery and handed them to Hans. “You should have had these a long time ago. Your grandfather wanted you to have them.”

I didn’t explain the politics, the reasons why my father didn’t turn over the books. Hans either knew already or didn’t care to ask. He examined the first one and his jaw dropped. “Holy shit. Oh, sorry! Kids are here.”

I smiled. “It’s okay. I slip sometimes, too.”

“Sometimes?” Kat shot me a look. “If daily counts as sometimes.”

“My grandfather…” Hans paused a moment to gather his feelings. “He didn’t mind, but my grandmother hated curse words. She thought if I dared speak the word that should not be named, I’d immediately become a hoodlum.”

I shook my head. “Your grandfather. He really was something, wasn’t he?”

Hans nodded. “I didn’t see him do a lot of magic growing up. There just weren’t a lot of opportunities for battle magic.”

“I can relate to that.”

“Still, whenever he had a chance to do a spell, it was always impressive.”

“Do you have any clue what it was he cast when he came in that haze after you? I tried, but I couldn’t get through.”

“Well, he had a shield on him. Sort of like the one you put over your house.”

“He was also phasing,” Jessie reported. “Casting both spells at once.”

“Two at once?” I was impressed. “If he could phase and cast a shield over himself, I’m not sure how Caedes killed him.”

“My granddad dropped his shield,” Hans reported. “He gave us the choice. I couldn’t do it. My dad, sorry, Caedes, wanted me to kill him. He said it was the only way we could be together. If I hadn’t made up my mind already, when you told me he’d killed my mother, I did then. I think I was just afraid to leave him. Like, if I tried, he’d hurt me.”

“He dropped his shield on purpose?” I sighed. “He did it to save you. He said the only way to guarantee that the darkness would be purged from you was if he sacrificed himself for you.”

Hans sniffed and Kat handed him a tissue. “I need a little time, you know, just to be alone. Don’t worry. It won’t be long. I’ll leave my wand here if you’re worried.”

“I’m not worried. I get it. It’s hard to mourn how we need to in front of people.”

“I’ll take the books with me,” Hans suggested. “Maybe it will help. You know, if I can learn something, it’ll mean that my grandpa’s sacrifice meant something.”

“He did it to save your life,” I reminded Hans. “It already means something.”

Hans sighed. “But would he have done it if he didn’t think I had what it took to stop my dad and the growing fog?”

I shrugged. “I think so. You realize, those books indicate there are two ways to stop the haze. One is for the mage who cast the portal to close it. I couldn’t figure out how he does it, but maybe you’ll see something I didn’t. A lot of what I was reading didn’t make sense since my magic works different. The other way is to kill the mage responsible. The other mage families believed that eliminating you was the only sure way to stop it. Your grandad fought for you. We got there before anyone could hurt you and he gave his life for yours. If your grandfather really cared only about stopping the haze, he would have sided with the others. He did what he did because he loves you and he believes in you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Giving Hans a little space was best. I can’t say I didn’t trust him, but I wasn’t a hundred percent confident. Given his emotional state and all he’d been through as of late, he was unpredictable at best. To make matters worse, with my mother’s ward silencing any arcane power in the house, Jessie couldn’t get a read on what he was thinking or feeling. All we had to go on was a smorgasbord of understandably volatile emotions that she picked up between the park and my house. She was comfortable, as much as she could be, given the situation. He seemed genuine. It had to be a rollercoaster, though, given that not long ago he thought I was the enemy and all he wanted to do was help his father. A little information, a few threats, and witnessing his father kill his grandfather was enough to change his mind. It was still a lot to take in a short amount of time.

His portals were pure. I didn’t see or sense any dark magic when we went through the one that took us out of the haze or the one that we drove through when we fled. Gerhard also knew what he was doing. The fact that he could maintain two spells at once wasn’t what impressed me. When I took down that shade, I fired my arcane missiles while I shielded Kat and the kids. To maintain an arcane shield around his person while phased was what took me by surprise. A shield needed something tangible to attach to. A couple of landmarks in the ground, a building, a body. To phase out, to become energy, while maintaining a fully powered shield was some next-level stuff. Any mage who could pull that off and was willing to give up his life for the belief that doing so would purge the darkness from his grandson was a mage whose expertise I’d just have to trust. I wasn’t sure if Gerhard was a great father or grandfather. Hans loved him and at the same time, he resented him. Family is like that. You love each other even when you drive one another up the wall.

Jessie didn’t need her abilities to recognize what Hans was going through. He said he needed space, and it made sense. Jessie’s abilities were quieted under our roof, but she was the resident expert on emotions.

Kat agreed with her, and she was also far superior to me when it came to anything involving emotions. Maybe it’s growing up a boy, being told all my life that “feelings” are female, that I had to “man up” and swallow my emotions to do whatever I had to do. Perhaps it was because I’d see how vulnerable I could be to dark power if I allowed my emotions to pull me down.

Working with Jessie the last couple of days, and seeing how Gerhard’s emotion drove him to appeal to the person who’d buried his son to save his grandson, made me reconsider. Emotion doesn’t make someone weak. It makes us stronger, provided we face our emotions, are honest about them, and have the wisdom to know when to follow them and when to question them. Emotion could make us stronger as humans and as mages. Our feelings are part of what make us human. How can we be strong if we suppress part of ourselves?

The other night, when I pulled Wand out of his box, the power that washed over me felt stronger than anything I’d wielded before. Once I found out Caedes had escaped, I assumed we’d both grown in strength. I didn’t have a clue how powerful he’d become or how he’d managed to tap into the darkness from within an arcane prison buried a mile underground.

Without the signature of my power, no power could pass through the prison. How did Caedes dive deeper into the wells when no power could reach him from outside? The arcane well was within him. He dove deeper into the darkness within himself.

It also explained why I’d become stronger even without wielding magic for two decades. Caedes was left alone with his hatred, his rage. I spent my twenty years falling in love and starting a family. I didn’t get stronger in spite of not wielding magic. I got stronger because I dove into something more powerful than darkness. My family wasn’t a liability. They were my strength.

It made sense, theoretically. Practically? Well, that was another matter entirely. I knew from the rental business a lot about how small engines worked. I knew the tools needed to complete any number of landscaping projects or jobs around the home. Getting your hands dirty and doing the work was always a lot harder than the plan made it sound. In this instance, I didn’t have a plan. It was one thing to know the science behind why portland cement hardens, it’s another thing to know how to pour and finish a slab. Then there’s doing the work. That’s next level. For years, I’d helped customers figure out how much concrete they needed. I knew how to set up the forms and what tools they needed to finish. But when I decided to pour a slab for my back porch, I was in over my head. I had to call in help from a contractor, one of our customers, to help before the concrete hardened.

This situation was a lot like that. I could learn more from my books about my specialization. I could discern new theories after seeing how Gerhard did it. Taking all of that and confronting Caedes was another matter.

What baffled me the most was how he was so powerful with his newfound abilities so soon after he got free. What terrified me was the thought that he’d barely scratched the surface of what he might be capable of.

I heard a car door close outside, then three more. Kat looked out the window. “Tom, we have visitors.”

I walked over to the window and looked out. My dad was there, standing next to Lawrence Thompson and several other mages from the convocation. They were just outside my arcane barrier. “You’ve got to be kidding me. How did they even know we were here?”

“My grandmother.”

I turned to see Hans standing behind me. I hadn’t heard him come out of the room. If the house wasn’t warded, I would have thought he’d used a gate.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not common knowledge, but my grandmother is an empath,” Hans replied.

“Say what?” Jessie asked. “How didn’t I know this?”

“My grandfather didn’t want the others to know. He said it was dangerous. If she knew about the convocation, and she sensed it when my grandpa died, she must’ve reached out to them.”

“If she knew they were coming here to kill you…”

“She didn’t know. There’s no way. That woman would give her life for me. Just like Grandpa did.”

I tilted my head. “But if she’s an empath, wouldn’t she know already what they were thinking?”

“Not if she only reached out by phone,” Jessie suggested. “My abilities don’t work that way.”

“Grandma doesn’t get around well. That must be it.”

I nodded. “All right. Well, I’m going to go out there and handle this.”

“Handle this?” Kat asked. “You really think you can convince them to change their minds now?”

“Hans isn’t infected by darkness. Not anymore. They can’t still think that killing him is the best option.”

Hans shook his head. “I don’t know. If they know that haze is expanding and they’re desperate, do you really think they’ll take the moral high road? They’re going to do whatever they think they need to do to save their own asses.”

Kat cleared her throat.

“Sorry. Kids, I forgot. Their butts. They’re going to save their butts.”

Ezra giggled. “He said butts!”

The other boys laughed. I couldn’t help it. I laughed, too.

Kat rolled her eyes. “You’re encouraging them, honey.”

I shrugged. “What? Butts are funny!”

Kat glanced at Jessie and chuckled. “Boys never grow up, do they?”

Jessie grinned. “I don’t think they do.”

“Well, no butts about it,” I stated. “I need to go out and try to reason with these assholes.”

“One of those assholes is your father,” Kat pointed out. “Have some respect.”

I snorted. “Yeah, well, I respect him. When he isn’t wanting to kill a kid just to end a potential apocalypse.”

Hans grunted. “I’m not a kid.”

“Right. You know what I mean.”

“Besides, I can stop this,” he declared. “I know I can.”

“Pick up something from the books?”

“A few things. Not enough. Not yet. I’ve only had a few minutes, but there’s a lot there. I need more time.”

“Time is the one thing we don’t have. Not with your father—”

“Don’t call him that. He’s not my dad. He never raised me. Never did a damn thing for me.”

“I get it. But the point remains. With Caedes harnessing the power in the haze, with it expanding as he gets stronger, we can’t afford much time. I don’t think the mages are willing to sit idly by while you study books. I need something. Anything you know that I can give them that might give them hope that you really can stop this.”

Hans rubbed his brow. “Well, there is one thing. I’m not sure what to make of it.”

“I’m listening.”

“One of the books talks a little about how gates work. Those fiends in the haze, they’re ethereal, right?”

“That’s why they are spreading their haze,” I agreed. “They can’t engage the material world. Not directly.”

“They also come from a place of darkness. That’s why they aren’t attacking my fa— Caedes.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Well, the book I was looking at says that portals temporarily transfer someone to ethereal energy. That’s how someone can move from place to place. The other end of the gate puts them back together again.”

I wasn’t following. “This helps us how, exactly?”

“What if I could put you through a portal that sends you through the haze and leaves you there before you reach the other side? You’d be ethereal, just like those monsters. That means you could kill them. And Caedes couldn’t do a damn thing to you.”

“Interesting theory,” I mused. “But how would you do that exactly?”

“Send you into a gate and leave you that way without pulling you through the other side? Like I said, I need time. I don’t know how to do it. Not yet. But all you said was you needed something to stall them, right?”

“But you don’t even know if it’s possible,” Jessie reminded him.

Hans grinned. “What I don’t know, they don’t know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Hans stayed inside for now. I wasn’t sure what the response would be if he came out with me. On the one hand, it would be hard for these mages to make the case that he should die if they were looking him in the eye. On the other hand, they might lie straight to our faces because of it. They might be more inclined to tell us what we want to hear in order to lure us out. They could still do that without Hans present, but I figured their chances of shooting straight with me were better if I approached them alone.

I stepped out the front door, Wand in hand. Wand was vibrating in my hand. Almost like he was nervous. As a reflection of my sixteen-year-old self, it made sense. I was about to stand up against the grown-ups. When I was sixteen, I called my dad an asshole. That man chased me all over the house until he cornered me in my bedroom and I was left hiding under my covers shaking like a Pomeranian on the Fourth of July. He didn’t hurt me. Aside from a few harmless spankings—which was standard discipline when I was a kid—the man had never laid a hand on me, but I had still known my dad could whoop me if it came down to it.

I wasn’t afraid to stand up to my father now. I wasn’t a headstrong teenager anymore. I wasn’t the cocky twenty-one-year-old who was determined to play the hero. I had a young man in my house who made a few mistakes for the right reasons. He didn’t know the full story about his father. He only knew what his grandparents told him. All he wanted was to meet his father. When he realized his mistake, he reversed course.

I wasn’t protecting Hans only because we needed him to win the fight against Caedes and the fiends. I was protecting him because I remembered what it was like at his age. He was barely an adult. He wasn’t used to making adult decisions. In your twenties, you make mistakes. Sometimes you make big ones.

I don’t know exactly what I would have done differently if I had my forty-two-year-old wisdom when I was twenty-one. I might have still done what I did fighting Caedes. I wouldn’t have done it alone, I wouldn’t have gone after him without the help of other mages just so I could be hailed as the hero in the end. I was like most twenty-somethings. I was a strange combination of innocence and narcissism. I had an inferiority complex and an ego the size of a shopping mall.

Wand might have been nervous about defying my father, but I wasn’t. I could not justify turning a young man over to an angry mob. Sure, they had wands rather than pitchforks. They weren’t demanding Frankenstein’s head, but they’d convinced themselves that Hans’ temporary foray into darkness made him a monster.

I approached the edge of my arcane barrier. My father and Lawrence Thompson stood in front of the others.

“Give us the boy, son.”

I folded my arms with Wand still in my right hand. “I promised Gerhard I’d protect him. I intend to do that.”

“Gerhard is dead,” Thompson reminded me. “You don’t owe him anything.”

I rolled my eyes. “Even if I didn’t make Gerhard a promise, this is the right move. Gerhard’s sacrifice purged the darkness out of Hans. He’s in my house, at this very moment, busting his ass, poring over books, looking for a way to stop Caedes and the spread of the haze.”

My father tried again. “Look, son, I don’t like this any more than you do. The fact remains that there’s only one way we know for certain that we can eliminate this threat.”

“The haze is only a part of it. Say you killed Hans. The fiends are gone. How are we going to stop Caedes?”

“We’ll fight him together,” my father replied.

I looked at Thompson. “And you’re going to help us fight Caedes while you’re bound to an arcane prison and buried, becoming like him?”

“I won’t survive that long,” Thompson shot back.

“Bullshit. You’ll use the dark powers to sustain your life. Your solution isn’t a noble sacrifice. It’s a power grab. That you’re so willing to kill a young man who only wanted to meet his father, who didn’t know the truth about all his father had done, means you’re already more of a monster than that boy ever was.”

“Why are you defending the boy, son? He tried to kill you.”

“He was misguided,” I reasoned. “He didn’t realize what he was doing. He was also infected by dark magic. None of that is true anymore.”

“You’re so sure of that, son, that you’d welcome him into your home, you’d put your children, my grandchildren, in danger?”

“Jessie is with us. She had a good read on him before we brought him back. I’m telling you, he’s not a threat. He might be the best chance we have to end this!”

“He is our best chance,” Thompson agreed. “All we have to do is kill him.”

“Listen to yourself! You’re talking about murder!”

“For the sake of the greater good.”

I rolled my eyes. “The ends don’t justify the means. Every tyrant who ever was used the notion of the common good to justify his atrocities.”

“This is different,” my father retorted. “We have no other way to stop these fiends. We aren’t talking about the common good. We’re talking about the possible extinction of the human race, the survival of our world!”

“We can’t save the world by losing our humanity,” I insisted. “Do any of you think that letting Thompson cast the spell that takes a life will shield you from darkness? You’ll all be every bit as guilty as he is if you go along with this plan.”

“You can’t hide him in your house forever, son. Eventually, you’ll have to come out for food and supplies. Don’t let your children suffer so you can protect the Wagner boy.”

“That’s how you’re going to play this? Like a medieval siege?”

“I’m sorry, son,” my father offered. “But if that’s what it takes, we have no choice.”

“You do have a choice. Give Hans a chance. He has an idea to defeat the fiends. He thinks he can forge a one-sided gate and send me into the haze so I can fight those monsters.”

“A one-sided gate?” my father echoed. “There’s no guarantee he’ll be able to bring you back!”

“There are always risks in war, Dad. Fighting against evil is more than a walk in the park. In this case, I suppose that’s literally the case.”

“If this fails, son, and you cannot defeat the fiends, and we have no option but to kill the Wagner boy, you’ll disappear with the rest of the fiends.”

“I just saw a grandfather give his life for the sake of his grandson. If it takes my sacrifice to save my family, that’s what it takes.”

My father took a step forward and walked straight through my arcane barrier. I grabbed Wand. “What are you doing? How did you get through?”

“You’re my son, Tommy. You inherited your battlemagery through me. We have the same signature. It’s close enough that I can penetrate it, anyway.”

“Do it, Thomas!” Thompson shouted. “Take down the barrier!”

My dad crossed his arms. “I’m sorry, Lawrence. My son is right. If he’s going to go into the mist and fight, I’m going with him.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. “Thank you, Dad. Thank you for believing in me.”

He wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry I doubted you, son. You’re right. This is the only noble path forward.”

“I can’t believe you!” Thompson screamed.

My dad turned to look at him. “Lawrence, if we fail, do what you must. Tommy is right. So long as there’s a way that we might stop this without turning to darkness, we have to see it through.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I walked back inside with my father. The tension in the air was as thick as butter. “My dad is going to help us.”

Kat smiled and hugged my dad. “Thank you for coming around.”

My dad smiled and turned to my boys. “Guess who’s here!”

“Baba!” Elijah jumped up and ran to my dad, and Ezra and Elliot followed suit. My dad wrapped his arms around all three boys. When he stood, my dad looked back at me with glassy eyes. “This is why we fight. Forget saving the world, son. It’s about family. You don’t need to be the savior of humanity. If you can be a hero to your boys, that’s all that matters.”

I rested my hand on my dad’s shoulder. “Thank you, Dad. You’re my hero, too.”

Hans approached my dad and extended his hand. “Hans Wagner.”

My dad shook his hand. “Tom Gregory. Senior. How are you coming with those books?”

“Working on it, sir. There’s a lot to go through.”

My father nodded. “I’m familiar with them. Perhaps I can help. I’m no gate mage, but I think I know what you’re trying to do.”

Hans nodded. “I can make gates easy enough, but I’ve never made one that doesn’t open up on the other side. If my plan is going to work, I have to figure that out.”

“It’s tricky, but the answer is there,” my dad assured him. “You won’t be able to do it alone, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you in the book. It’s going to take a battlemage working with you.”

“What do I need to do?” I asked.

“You need to kill those fiends. I’ll stay with the boy.”

“I thought you were going to fight by my side.”

“I will be, son. But not against the fiends.”

“What are you talking about?”

My father glanced at Hans. “We’ll need to look it up in the books. There’s still a fracture from the ethereal realms. It’s what’s allowing the fiends to pass through. We can’t close that fracture until the fiends are gone. For the gate to work, to send Tommy through to fight the fiends in an ethereal form, you’ll have to cast a gate that passes through the fracture.”

“Will that work without infecting him with dark magic?” Hans asked.

“I believe it will,” my father replied. “So long as your portals are made from pure arcane magic.”

“So I need to take a portal into the ethereal realm,” I said. “Then what?”

“When you pass through a gate, you become ethereal energy. You already figured that much out. When a gate passes through an ethereal realm, you’ll be able to move freely. Wherever his gate takes you, you’ll have to find your way back to the fracture. You’ll have to get through the same way the fiends are coming here.”

“So I come back into the haze in ethereal form. Will my arcane magic work against them?”

“We’re in uncharted territory here, son. I believe so, but we won’t know until you try it.”

“Suppose I defeat the fiends. If that closes the fissure, how will I get back?”

“The gate mage’s portal should hold the fracture open so long as he maintains it. You’ll have to find your way back to the gate inside the ethereal realm and come back to the gate on this end. You’ll return to your physical form when you pass through the portal again.”

“But if something messes with Hans, if any of the fiends get to him and his gate falls, I’ll be stuck as some kind of ghost indefinitely?”

“So long as the fracture remains open, he can cast a new gate. If he does, it might be harder to find where it manifests on the other side, though.”

“I’ll be forging a gate blind,” Hans explained. “I can’t even visualize the ethereal realm. I’ll just have to drop it in there somewhere and hope it’s not too far from the fracture.”

“And if any fiends come after you, I’ll have to fight them. What are you doing, then, Dad?”

“I told you I’d be fighting alongside you, son. I have to protect Hans.”

“From Caedes?”

“And from Thompson,” my dad added. “When he realizes that Hans is vulnerable, that you can’t protect him, he’ll go after him.”

“Of course he will. That guy’s a snake.”

“Always has been. Still, he’s a persuasive serpent. He’s a salesman at heart. He always has an agenda. If you know he’s a salesman, you know his goal is obvious. Most of the other mages don’t see through him. I’ve seen his true colors. Fool me once. Never again.”

“So you’re going to fight Thompson?”

“If it comes to that. I figured I’d start with an arcane barrier. Usually, you can’t cast a portal through one, but you and I share a signature, son.”

Hans nodded. “I already have that. I can cast a portal through your shield.”

“Every arcane barrier has its limits. Mine are not so potent as yours, Tommy. If I have to protect Hans from both Caedes and the other mages, I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to maintain it.”

“If they get through your shield, Dad, there’s no way you’re a match for all the mages. You’re stronger than Thompson, but all he needs to do is blast Hans with an arcane missile and that will be that.”

“This isn’t going to be easy, son. You’ll be alone in there. Caedes won’t be able to hurt you, but the fiends will. You’ll have to fight hard and fast. You need to finish before my arcane barrier fails.”

“How long until we’re ready to do this?” I asked.

“Bring me the books, Hans,” my father requested. “I know where to look. It depends on how confident Hans is that he can cast the portal through the fracture the way the books describe.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

While they hit the books on gate magery, I figured I’d do well to brush up on some of my own. I didn’t know how much I could learn in the short time I had that I didn’t already know, but if I picked up one thing that would help me fight those nasty spider-like fiends on their own plane of existence, it was worth it. Battlemages had a lot of tools at their disposal, and I knew a lot, but since I hadn’t practiced in two decades, I had probably forgotten as much as I remembered. I wasn’t going to be able to master anything new, but if I could remind myself of a few skills, I’d feel better about the mission.

Jessie offered to come with me. I didn’t think she wanted to go, though. She couldn’t fight in the ethereal realm, and her abilities might not work there. I told her to stick with Hans and my father. If the other mages were on their way, preparing to attack, they needed to know in advance. If Caedes attacked, I wasn’t sure it would matter. We didn’t know if Caedes was still in the haze. I didn’t have a clue what his plans were, other than to wreak as much havoc on the world as he could in his quest for more power.

When I’d fought him before, I hadn’t known his endgame. I always assumed it was world domination. Isn’t that what bad guys are always after? Now, something told me there was more to it than that. Jessie sensed it too, but Caedes guarded his thoughts well and Jessie isn’t a mind-reader. She can’t probe someone’s mind and explore someone’s memories or motives. All she could do was read emotions and discern the thoughts that were running through someone’s mind in the moment, and she’d had a harder time discerning Caedes’ thoughts than she did with others. The dark power that coursed through his body probably had something to do with that.

I picked up a few tricks from my books that I’d forgotten. When I’d fought Caedes, before, it was the only real battle I’d ever been in. Battlemagery is one of the most useless specializations a mage can have if they are born during a time of relative peace. During the course of a normal life, there just aren’t many occasions to blow shit up. I know, it’s hard to believe, but it’s the truth. Back when the families still met for regular convocations, we had training exercises with dampeners placed on our wands to render our magic harmless. When we trained, we might as well have been playing laser tag. I’m not saying our training wasn’t helpful, but those exercises weren’t anything like real battles. At least nothing like the battle I had with Caedes. When you know you’re safe, and the worst that can happen is that you’ll be “out” until the next round, you don’t fight with a lot of adrenaline. You’re more apt to take chances, try things out, and see what works. Training was like playing video games. I’d never once played a game that I beat without dying multiple times. In the real world, we didn’t respawn and get another chance. A real fight didn’t allow a lot of opportunity for trial and error. An error in a real battle could cost you your life.

I had forgotten about scatter shots, rapid blasts of arcane magic that shot dozens of bolts from my wand like a fan in various directions. Each blast wasn’t as powerful as a direct shot from an arcane missile, but it could be effective if facing multiple foes at once. I didn’t know if a scatter shot would do a damn thing to the fiends I was facing, though. I wouldn’t know until I got into the ethereal realm and tried it. I’d never fought against anything like these fiends. When I struck them before, hitting their ethereal forms from my position as a corporeal mage, I made them stronger. What would happen when I took them on as an ethereal being myself? We assumed my spells would be more effective, but we didn’t know. If I couldn’t kill the fiends in the haze, the plan would fail. If this plan failed, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to convince even my father that killing Hans wasn’t the only option.

The only mystical creatures I knew I could defeat with arcane missiles were shades. They were created from the use of dark magic, and somehow they were different from the fiends. They were born from a mage’s darkness, not native to the ethereal realms. I could fight them because we were on the same plane of reality. The theory was that once I entered the ethereal realms, I’d be on the same plane as the fiends. Everything depended on that theory being right.

We already knew Hans could cast portals through my arcane barriers. That gave us an advantage. We could leave the house through one of his gates and Thompson and the others wouldn’t know we’d left.

Hans called his grandmother to make sure she didn’t tip them off again.

“Everything okay?” I asked after Hans hung up his phone.

Hans nodded. “Sorry, my grandmother isn’t always a hundred percent there. She sensed my grandfather’s death and freaked out. She was worried about me, too. She probably let the other mages know and didn’t even realize it.”

“She’d call them and not remember?”

Hans pressed his lips together. “She didn’t call them. It’s complicated. I’ll just say there’s a lot she does that she doesn’t remember. With her abilities…”

“What kind of ability does she have?”

“She’s an empath, sort of like Jessie. I know it’s super rare. But she can also send thoughts or feelings into people’s minds.”

“Seriously? Jessie would love to hear about that.”

“I’ll tell her later. This isn’t the time.”

“I get it. Thank you, Hans. I know that must be difficult, especially trying to mourn while also helping us figure out how to fight this haze and stop your father.”

Hans nodded. “Don’t mention it. I share some of the blame for what happened. I’m going to see this through. I can cry about what happened later.”

He walked away. I didn’t know if he was going to go cry about it now, or if he had to pee. Maybe both. I’d peed while crying before. I don’t know why. Too much booze will make you do silly things.

That was a long time ago. When life didn’t matter all that much. Back then, life was nothing but potential. Now, I had a real life, things that mattered, and people who depended on me.

I spent my last few minutes with my boys. I had no intention of dying, but I was risking my life. This was a crazy plan, by any standard. Add to that the fact that Caedes was a wild card, and that we didn’t know what he was doing or what he might do, and there was more reason to worry I might not make it home again.

When I was twenty-one and took on Caedes, I didn’t have many worries. It wasn’t just that I was over-confident in my abilities, though that was a part of it. I also didn’t have a family of my own. I knew it would destroy my parents if they lost me, but that wasn’t as troubling as the worry of what would happen to my kids if something happened to me. How would Elijah master his abilities without my guidance? What if Ezra and Elliot manifested, too? Would the other mage families help? My parents were getting older. My dad also might not come away from this battle in one piece. Everything would fall on my mother to help my boys and there was no guarantee she’d be of sound mind and body to help once the boys manifested and specialized.

I kissed each of my boys on their heads and kissed Kat on the lips. Jessie took my hand. “I can’t feel your emotions here under the wards, but I don’t need to. You’re afraid.”

“Not for me. I’m afraid for my family.”

“Channel that fear into resolve. Your family is the reason you have to succeed and survive. Fight for them.”

I nodded. “Thank you, Jessie.”

We slipped out to the backyard. I felt like a secret agent breaking into a maximum security government facility, but I was just trying to get out into my own yard without the mages stalking my house noticing. My mother’s ward was useful, but it also complicated our attempt to sneak out. Hans formed a portal as soon as we were clear of the ward. I looked back at my kids and wife and blew them a kiss before I stepped into it. My father, Jessie, and Hans followed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Hans’ gate took us about a half-mile from Gregory Park at the edge of where the haze had expanded. That was one hell of a gas leak, apparently. The authorities had evacuated the entire area. Did everyone leave? I hoped so, but I doubted it. The haze now enveloped entire neighborhoods. For anyone caught within it, it was a real-world nightmare.

“Picking up anything?” I asked Jessie.

“Caedes isn’t here,” she answered.

“That’s a surprise.”

“Best work fast,” my father warned us. “If he really is drawing strength from this thing, I find it hard to believe he won’t show up once he realizes what’s happening.”

Hans rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. When I was with him, he was working on something here. It was about more than getting power. He was trying to do something right around the fracture, where I cast the portal to pull him out of the prison.”

My father looked concerned. “Be careful, son. This could be a trap.”

I nodded. “I’m sure it is. Caedes isn’t a gate mage and doesn’t know what we are planning. He probably doesn’t even know we can do what we’re about to do. He might have a trap set, but we also have an element of surprise. Once I get back through the fracture, if all goes as we planned, his spells won’t affect me.”

“That’s the hope,” my dad agreed. “We really don’t know what he can do, though. No one in recent memory has gone so deep into the darker part of the wells. Don’t assume anything.”

“I’ll be careful. You, too, Dad. Hopefully, the other mages don’t know we’re here. They probably think we’re still back at my house.”

“They had people watching the house from all angles,” my dad reported. “They’ll know we left. It’s just a matter of time before they get here.”

“Best get up that arcane force field as soon as we arrive. Since we have the same signature, Hans can already teleport through it. I’ll work as fast as I can, but we don’t know how long it will take me to get back through the fissure, or how many of those fiends I’ll have to take down.”

Hans slapped me on the back, and I turned back to him, chuckling. “What was that about?”

“Just wanted to tell you to kick ass. If those things have asses. If they don’t, well, kick whatever is where their asses are supposed to be.”

I grinned. “I will. Be careful. If shit gets too intense, don’t risk your life. Get my dad and Jessie out of here.”

“But that might leave you stuck.”

I nodded. “Only until you get back and can cast another gate to get me out of there.”

Hans extended his wand in his hand. “Give me a second. The book said how to do this, but it’s going to be tricky.”

I didn’t bother asking how it was tricky. For a mage to explain his abilities to someone outside of his specialization was always a little bit like speaking a foreign language. I might know a little from his language, how to ask where the bathroom is and things like that, but I wasn’t conversational. My dad spoke his language better than I did, but even he understood only so much.

Hans moved his wand through the air. It wasn’t a random wave, more like he was tracing a pattern that wasn’t there. Nothing I could see. The tip of his wand exhibited a constant blue glow.

Hans smirked. “Just like picking a lock.”

“That’s hard to do,” I pointed out.

“Only if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“You know how to pick locks?”

“My grandfather taught me a lot of things most kids don’t learn,” Hans explained. “You know, picking locks, building bombs. Shit like that. That’s a conversation for another time.”

I gripped Wand and held him at my side. “That’s how you built that bomb.”

“Sorry about that.” Hans bit the inside of his cheek. “You ready to go?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

The glowing blue cherry on the tip of Hans’ wand expanded into a larger bulb of arcane energy. Then it blasted out of his wand and formed a portal in front of us. I’d moved through a few of his gates before, but I had always been in a rush. I hadn’t had a chance to really examine one. It looked like a floating puddle. It reminded me a little of Stargate. It resembled water, but rather than ripple as a lake does on a windy day, it was more like a whirlpool spinning clockwise.

“Tommy?” Jessie asked.

I turned to my old friend. “I’ll be careful.”

“More than that. I just wanted you to know, just because I can’t sense Caedes, it doesn’t mean he isn’t here.”

“Right. His magic might interfere with your abilities. I’ve faced him before. I know he’s stronger now, but I think I am, too.”

Jessie nodded. “Just remember, he’s not the goal right now. Stopping the haze comes first. Don’t let him bait you into a fight.”

“I know.” I jumped through Hans’ portal. Before, when I had traveled through gates, my feet hit the ground a split second later when I reached the other side. It was mildly jarring. This time I stepped through the gate and stayed there. The world in front of me coursed with blue and violet energies. Pure and dark arcane power. I turned around. The gate was still there.

All the arcane energy in the air was moving in one direction. If a fracture had been left behind by the dark gate that Hans used to free Caedes, it was like a leak, an open window, pulling ethereal magic and the fiends native to this realm to it. My best chance was to follow the magic. My other option was to wander randomly.

I didn’t see any fiends, nothing that resembled the spider-like monsters I’d seen in the haze. The shadows moved with intelligence, though. Some of them followed the magic and some of them fought against it, almost like they didn’t want to go. Maybe they were afraid. Jessie had already told me that much. These weren’t fiends. I just couldn’t think of a better term to use, since that’s what the books used. Technically, they were spirits of a sort. Guardians of their ethereal dimension. The spirits of what was anyone’s guess.

When I moved, my feet carried me forward but I didn’t feel any resistance with each step. It was like I was walking on a cloud. I didn’t know how I was moving forward, but so long as my legs worked and I was heading in the right direction, I wasn’t concerned with the strange physics of the place. Technically, I didn’t have legs. I was in an ethereal form—the shape of my appearance was dictated by my mind, my self-awareness, and nothing more. It was a lot like how I moved when I phased, when I turned my body into arcane energy. What looked and felt like my legs were how my mind reflected my intention to move straight ahead.

Wand still glowed in my hand. That was something, at least. I could sense the power and the bond between Wand and myself, but now it felt less like Wand was drawing energy from the arcane wells into me and more like I was the well that was feeding Wand. It didn’t feel like I was losing power, though. Wand wasn’t sucking it from me. It was awakening the power within me. As my arcane magic flowed into Wand, the power within me swelled.

I followed the flow of magic, unsure how much time was passing. Was time even a thing in this place? Would I emerge to find that only seconds had passed on Earth? Maybe I’d find out it was years later, and Elijah would be there as an old mage pulling his father, long thought dead, out of the ethereal realm. Or, worse, I’d emerge to find Caedes as Mage Emperor Supreme, everyone I knew and loved long dead.

I dismissed the thought. Nothing we’d read in the books about this realm suggested a significant incongruence of time. I’d probably watched too much science fiction.

Whatever the case, the way the energies were flowing above me and moving faster than I was made it feel like I was moving slowly, like I was walking in the opposite direction on a people mover at an airport. Even the shadowy figures flying around me were moving in a way that looked casual. They were moving to and fro, almost dancing. Meanwhile, I was churning my legs like a hamster on a wheel and only making marginally better progress.

The way the power was growing within me, you’d think I’d get stronger and I’d move faster. Maybe I was doing it wrong. A newborn baby might be adept at maximizing his potential within the womb, surrounded by amniotic fluid, but he still has to build strength and learn how the world works, how things that go up also fall down, how to work his little hands and feet, before he can take his first steps. It was like I’d just been born in this strange world and nothing worked the way I expected. Still, I was moving forward. I was more tortoise than hare, but we all know who won that race. Physics were different in the ethereal realm, but I hoped the morals of Aesop’s Fables still applied.

The longer it took, the more anxious I was. Surely the mages had found Hans, Jessie, and my dad by now. How long would his shield hold? Jessie might be able to stall them with a little mind-reading mumbo jumbo and sow a few seeds of doubt. My dad was still an influential mage. Even if Thompson had the others convinced, my dad’s change of heart might warrant a conversation. Maybe he could convince them to stand down, to give me the time I needed to finish. Knowing Thompson, though, he’d be angling for an excuse and campaigning to take down the shield to murder Hans before the haze expanded.

Wand was pulsing in my hand and I felt a tug, almost like he was trying to escape my grip. I loosened my grip a little to see what he was doing. He didn’t leave my hand. He wasn’t trying to shake himself free.

“Are you trying to tell me something? Flash once for yes, twice for no.”

Wand released a single pulse of blue arcane magic.

“You have an idea for how to get out of here faster?”

Another solitary flash.

“Do I need to cast a spell?”

Two flashes this time.

“What do I need to do? Sorry, yes or no questions. Is there something I can do?”

Wand blinked once then rattled around in my hand. I tightened my grip. When I did, Wand took off like a bullet, pulling me with him through the ethereal plane. There wasn’t wind there so I didn’t feel any breeze against my face, but we were outpacing the energies and shadows around us.

It made sense. Wand was forged in an ethereal realm. It was nothing like this. The mage families all had crystals that harnessed the power of a single gate meant to take a young mage recently specialized to the place where wands were born.

I remembered that day like it was yesterday. My father couldn’t have been prouder that I’d inherited his specialization. As a young man, I was thrilled to find out I hadn’t become a domestic mage like my mother. A lifetime of cooking and cleaning didn’t excite me. Now that I was in my forties, I had to admit her specialization was a lot more useful ninety-nine percent of the time. Still, on the rare occasion battlemagery was required, I was grateful that I was up for the task.

When I went through that portal at sixteen years old it was the most terrifying thing I’d ever experienced. I stepped through that portal and found myself floating in pure darkness. I held a plain rod, hewn from oak, hoping that an ethereal being would find it suitable and find me worthy to bind itself to me. Eventually, Wand found me. A single blue orb floating out of the darkness. He wasn’t the first to fly by. A dozen or so approached me in the darkness, poked at me, got a feel for who I was, and moved on. It felt like getting rejected by the pretty girls at a Homecoming dance. When Wand found me, he was curious and interested. I was eager to get out of the darkness and back to the real world. When he joined himself to my oaken stick, he became Wand. My personality mixed with his essence and he became something new—the wand I called Wand. Fred or Leeroy just didn’t fit. I intended to find a better name for him, but eventually, I got used to Wand.

Wand pulled me through the ethereal realm as if he was the one with all the power here, he was in control more than I was. Given that his personality was forged from my sixteen-year-old consciousness, it was a good thing the ethereal realms didn’t have any video games or pretty girls. We couldn’t afford any distractions.

Hurtling through the ethereal realm with Wand in hand, it wasn’t long before I saw what we were looking for. It was a gash, like a crescent moon, coursing with dark magic. That made sense. The portal that left the fissure was cast from the dark power that Hans used at the time. Both blue and violet energies were flowing into the fissure. Somehow, the portal changed it. The magic from this realm didn’t manifest the same way. It was hidden in the haze. Did the fissure change it, making all of it dark magic? I couldn’t tell when I was in the haze before. There was dark arcane power in the haze, but I couldn’t say if that’s all it was.

Wand didn’t hesitate or slow down at all as we approached the fissure. Just before he pulled me into the remnants of the portal, an arcane shield surrounded me. I didn’t cast it. Wand did it for me. He was protecting me.

A dark mass of energy passed through me, and I couldn’t tell if it was a fiend, a shade, or something else. It wasn’t the only one that had moved through the fissure. Others had and more would follow.

I blasted out of the fissure and found myself surrounded by earth. My old arcane prison was still there in the hole where I had buried Caedes before, and Wand pulled me straight through it. My prison worked to contain corporeal beings, but I was ethereal now.

Wand pulled me through the earth until I found myself standing on top of a spinning merry-go-round. It was the same one where Caedes had killed Gerhard, but I didn’t see Gerhard’s body. Caedes wasn’t there either. The tornado of energy still swirled around the merry-go-round, matching the pace of its spin.

I wasn’t sure how this would work. In the haze, I was in some kind of hybrid ethereal and material environment. The merry-go-round was here before. The ground that formed Gregory Park was the same ground it always was. The air was different, the energy that defined the environment was ethereal.

With Wand in my right hand, I pulled myself out of the middle of the merry-go-round along one of the metal bars to the edge. The centrifugal force should have been stronger than it was. I’d spun my boys on this same merry-go-round several times before, and I remembered riding one as a kid and what it was like. I jumped off and through the energy that surrounded us. I landed on the ground. Wand was pulsing in my hand.

I looked around to see several spider-like fiends emerge from the fog. I counted five at first, then a half-dozen more.

They looked at me from a distance, like predators waiting to pounce. I aimed my wand and blasted one of them with an arcane missile.

The fiend shook when my blast hit it, vibrating as if overwhelmed by my power, but it didn’t divide. Not this time. My power rattled around inside its frame and shot out of it in a hundred directions. The fiend was gone.

One down, who knows how many to go. I aimed at another one as it took a step back and fled. These things were scared of me. More scared of me than I was of them. The prey had become the predator, and I knew what I had to do. They scattered in different directions, but they couldn’t run forever. I was on the hunt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I chased a fiend around the perimeter of the park, and when I blasted it, the haze retreated. It was working. With each fiend I took down, the haze got smaller. That meant each one I killed gave me an advantage. It shrank the playing field, and they had less room to run. I was cornering them.

Back when I was in the Boy Scouts, they taught me “they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.” It had to do with snakes. If you ever encountered one, we were told, they’d only strike if they felt cornered. They wouldn’t come after you. In Missouri, if it was venomous, there was a good chance it was a copperhead. We had rattlers, too, and cottonmouths, but all I ever saw while on scouting trips were copperheads. A copperhead’s bite wasn’t usually deadly, but it would make you sick enough that you might wish it was. The rule was simple: if you ever turned over any stones in the woods, roll them back toward you. If there’s a copperhead underneath, you don’t want it to see you first thing. It’s more likely to strike.

If these fiends were anything like snakes, they would run as long as they felt they had a way to escape. With each one I killed, I gave them less room to run. I’d basically turned over a stone the wrong way, and they’d have no choice but to attack. There were still several left. I couldn’t blast them at once. Not with an arcane missile.

Scatter shot. Good thing I’d picked up that little gem in my books before I left. I hadn’t tried a shot like that in years, and never against a real enemy. Apart from a shade here and there, which I’d fought one at a time, I’d only ever fought Caedes. In neither instance was a scatter shot ideal. Single targets were better handled with a concentrated arcane missile.

Once I cornered the fiends, they’d get aggressive. I might be able to take out one or two the way I had the others, but not all of them. The question was whether a scatter shot would be strong enough to do the job.

I was feeling good. Amazing, actually. It was like how the power welled up within me when I took Wand from his box. This time, though, it was more intense. Something about passing through an ethereal realm, or being ethereal myself, juiced me up.

With only two fiends down, the haze was now barely beyond the park. Hans, Jessie, and my dad were blocks away. Hopefully, I’d bought them more time. The haze was shrinking, which proved our plan was working. The other mages wouldn’t let Thompson murder Hans if they didn’t have to. Thompson wasn’t a great mage, and he wasn’t strong enough alone to take down my dad’s arcane shield. He was a con man. That was his real power. I was spoiling his con.

I gave Wand a little twirl in my hand and almost dropped him. So much for trying to be smooth. At my age, the coolness ship had sailed. Now, the best I could hope for was dad-cool, which was synonymous with being as embarrassing as possible to my sons. The twirl was more than that, though. It was rehearsal. To pull off a scatter shot, I had to be ready. These fiends weren’t dumb. If I tried to corner them, all it would take was one to sneak up on me from behind. What could they do to me? I didn’t know, but I doubted they’d take me out for drinks. They’d probably take me to dinner—their dinner. I’d be the main course.

I blasted another fiend as I moved back through the haze. I hurdled a rocking horse on a spring in the playground and climbed up one of the slides for a better view.

I saw the perimeter of the haze barely covered the playground now. I could also see the fiends scattered around the edges. I aimed at one and blasted it.

“Damn, I got aim!”

Wand shook a little in my hand. “Sorry, buddy. That was all you.”

I took out another one, and as the haze shrank, it pulled the remaining fiends in closer. It was a matter of time before they’d attack. They had me surrounded, but I was the one cornering them. Why hadn’t any of them tried to attack me yet? I didn’t expect this to be so easy. I shouldn’t speak too soon, though.

A high-pitched screech filled the surrounding air. They were communicating somehow. This was it. My stomach turned. If I screwed up this scatter shot, I might not get another chance.

“All right, buddy. Here it goes.”

I raised Wand overhead and gave him a twirl in my fingers. It wasn’t the smoothest action I’d ever pulled off, but it worked. Several smaller blasts of arcane power fired out all around. The fiends charged, trying to dodge the blasts.

My scatter shot hit a few. One shot wasn’t enough, though. It slowed them down, and the fiends shrieked on contact, but it was going to take more than one blast to take them down this way.

I twirled Wand again, and this time, the blasts were stronger. The power flowed through me and out of Wand. Three of the fiends went down and disappeared as the magic overwhelmed their forms. The haze shrank again. One more twirl should do the trick.

I fumbled Wand in my hand, and one of the shots blasted into the sky above. I still managed to hit another fiend before I grabbed Wand tightly and slid down the slide. I only saw three left. I blasted one with an arcane missile when I got to the bottom of the slide, then pivoted and took down the other two.

I looked at Wand. He was glowing with pride. “We did it, buddy! Let’s get back into the fissure and find our way back to the gate.”

I ran toward the merry-go-round. A black figure, like the one that left the ethereal realm with me, floated over it. It wasn’t spinning anymore.

With the fiends gone, the haze was shrinking fast. It was flowing into the dark figure.

Once it was gone, the figure took a more definite shape. It had arms and legs. Where its eyes were supposed to be were two orbs of dark arcane power.

Then the darkness faded, and Caedes was staring at me with a wide grin splitting his face.

“Thank you for that. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“What are you talking about?” I aimed Wand at Caedes. He didn’t bother pointing his wand at me.

“We can’t hurt each other. Not like this. You’re just energy, buddy. I’m so much more than that.”

I clenched my fist and aimed Wand at Caedes anyway.

“You going to try and kill me, Tommy? It won’t work, you know. But give it a shot. Just trying to do it will give you a taste of my power. Think about it, no hard feelings, we could be some kind of force. You, me, and my boy.”

“I’m not working with you, Caedes. I already took down the fiends.”

“Right, those ‘fiends.’ More like protectors. They came from the ethereal realms to guard the magic I was trying to pull out of there. Every spell you cast in here before gave me more energy, more pull from the ethereal realm. But those bastards wouldn’t let me take it. Not all of it.”

“The fiends were trying to stop you?” I asked.

Caedes shrugged. “They were trying to restrain the power, to pull it back into the ethereal realm. We were at a bit of a stand-off, I have to say. I wouldn’t let them back in. They wouldn’t let me take their power. Thanks to you, well, it’s all mine now.”

“You absorbed the haze?”

Caedes grinned. “It’s incredible, Tommy. So much power. All those years, all the dark magic I absorbed doesn’t hold a candle to this.”

“What’s your plan, Caedes? What’s next? More murders? Take over the world?”

Caedes laughed. “Do you think I want to kill people, Tommy? I don’t kill because I enjoy it. I kill because I need it, I needed to go deeper into the well. It was the only way.”

“The only way to do what?”

“The only way to save myself. To fix my mistake. To make things right again.”

I tilted my head. “You can’t change the past. What’s done is done.”

“Maybe I can’t change what I did. But I can bring something from the past, something better. I can give her more than what I ever stole from her.” Caedes smirked.

The merry-go-round spun as Caedes extended his hands in the air. Violet dark arcane power blasted from Caedes’ hands and created another whirlwind around him.

A bang, like the loudest thunder strike I ever heard, blasted from the tornado. I might have been in ethereal form, but I felt the sound waves pass through me.

“Son!” my father shouted.

I turned and saw my dad, Hans, and Jessie running toward me. The other mages weren’t far behind. They had their wands drawn.

“Wait!” I screamed. “Don’t give him more power!”

I was too late. The battlemages from the group, my father and Thompson included, blasted the tornado with arcane energy. It turned violet the second it struck and the tornado turned more violent.

Another concussive bang blasted from the whirlwind and threw them all down on the ground.

The tornado disappeared and Caedes was there with another figure at his side.

She was beautiful. She had long black hair. She was dressed in a dark violet gown made of dark arcane power. It was Hana Sato—Hans’ mother. Caedes had brought her back from the dead and pulled her from the ethereal realms. But she was different. Her body radiated dark arcane magic.

Jessie stumbled back to her feet. “It’s Hana.”

Hans approached us. “Mother? That’s my mom?”

“It is, son,” Caedes confirmed. “Why don’t you join us? We can be a family again.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“Don’t do it, Hans!” Jessie shouted. “It’s a trick!”

Hans was speechless. Hana looked back at her son. “My baby! You’ve grown up!”

“Hans,” Jessie tried again. “That’s not your mother. Not entirely.”

“Of course it’s her, son!” Caedes insisted. “That’s why I did everything I’ve done until now. I had no choice. There’s only one way to bring back a person from the dead. It was the gravest mistake of my life, one that I’ve spent your entire life trying to fix.”

“Necromancy…” I sighed. “I can’t believe he did it.”

“So that is my mother?” Hans asked me.

“Yes, but like Jessie said, she’s barely herself. She has her memories, but the dark power used to revive her…”

“It’s me!” Hana cried. “My baby boy, believe me!”

Hans clenched his fists. His whole body was shaking. “We need you to bring Tommy home,” Jessie warned him. “Don’t let them get to you.”

Hans looked at me. “Hurry and get back. The portal is open back there where I cast it before. I can’t cast another one while it’s still open.”

I looked at Hans and nodded. He was going to try to send his parents back through the fissure in a gate. With all the magic drawn from the ethereal realms absorbed by Caedes and Hana, the fissure would close. He’d take down the gate. They’d be gone for good. It was a solid plan if they’d fall for it.

I glanced at Jessie. She heard my thoughts. She also heard what Hans was thinking. She nodded at me. “You two are thinking the same thing.”

Hans took a step forward. He glanced back at Jessie, then at me again. Jessie leaned into me. “He’s going to try to buy you time. Hurry.”

“Let him back through,” Hans told his father. “He did what you wanted him to do. He can’t stop you now.”

“He buried me for twenty years, son!”

“And you killed my mom and my grandfather, your own dad! If you expect me to put that behind me, you need to do the same thing. Let these people go.”

“All I ever wanted was to heal our family,” Caedes said. “I’d do anything to bring us together again. Now we have that chance.”

“There are some lines you shouldn’t cross, even for family,” Hans insisted.

“I had no choice, son.”

“Go now,” Jessie whispered. “I’m not sure how long he can keep them talking. This is your chance. Caedes will let you pass.”

Wand flickered in my hand. He knew what we needed to do. He tugged at me like he had when I was in the ethereal realm, and I let him lead the way. He pulled me back through the earth. It was a mile deep, but in an ethereal form, we faced no resistance. We reached the fissure, and Wand pulled me back into it.

The ethereal realm was different now. I didn’t see any arcane energy flowing in the air, trying to escape. There were still shadows, figures like the one I’d seen before. I had to wonder what that thing was. It wasn’t one of the fiends. Was it Caedes himself? Not likely. He told me he needed me to pass through that realm so I could handle the fiends for him. The whole thing was a setup. He knew I’d use Hans to get into the fissure. How he knew, I couldn’t say. He’d been diving into dark magic for a long time. Somehow he knew more about gate magery than I realized. Did he get that knowledge from the darkness? It dawned on me all of a sudden: Hans was a gate mage. He had inherited that from somewhere. There wasn’t any gate magery in the Wagner line, so he’d inherited it from his mother. Was Hana a gate mage, after all? We thought she never specialized. She’d shown some signs of gate magery, then it fizzled out. Some mages specialize late. It wasn’t unheard of, so we didn’t question it. When mages are pregnant, it also silences their magic for a time. It usually doesn’t return until the mother stops lactating, probably as a way of protecting the child from absorbing too much arcane magic as an infant. That’s why we thought she wasn’t specializing. She’d had a baby and we didn’t know it. No one did except for the Satos and the Wagners.

Somehow, diving deep into the arcane wells, Caedes had gained enough power during all those years that when Hans used dark magic to save him and the fissure was created, Caedes got his chance. He needed an empath to do it, but he managed to make a connection with Hana. Jessie didn’t do it. Hans’ grandmother was an empath, too. She could read people’s feelings and send messages. Jessie couldn’t do so much, but Jessie never had any guidance. She’d barely learned how to control her abilities when we figured out how to make her wand respond to her intentions.

Hans’ grandmother was the one who tempted Hans toward darkness. She was the one who wanted to save her son. Could I blame her? Would I do anything less for my sons, no matter what they’d done? I couldn’t say.

Then Caedes killed his father. Gerhard was the wildcard. I couldn’t imagine that was part of the plan. Once Caedes had contacted Hana, once he had a way to bring her back, it was a matter of getting as much dark power and going as deep into the well as he could so he could resurrect her.

This whole thing was a mess. Caedes dove deeper in the darkness in a foolhearted attempt to bring the mother of his child back to life after he killed her. Hans’ grandmother only wanted to save her son, to heal her family. Gerhard wanted the same. He gave his life to save Hans from the darkness his own grandmother bid him embrace. I could only imagine how weird their next holiday dinner would be. Everyone thinking they’re doing what’s best for the family, everyone desperate to make their family a family again, each of them turning to darkness to do it. Everyone except for Gerhard. He’d sacrificed himself for Hans. He couldn’t save his son, but he saved his grandson.

The biggest concern now was Hana. She had been brought back to life by dark magic, and I didn’t know exactly what that did to someone. There were stories, and none of them ended with happily ever afters. Usually, the cost of one person brought back from the dead was several more sent to the ethereal ever-after in their place.

Given the ungodly amount of dark arcane power used to raise Hana, I doubted she was planning to become a soccer mom or live in a house with a white picket fence.

Things that are dead, should stay dead.

It was hard to know the way to go in the ethereal realm without a steady stream of arcane power flowing toward the fissure. I was totally disoriented. My best guess was the fissure was in the opposite direction we were traveling. Wand seemed to know instinctively where to go. At least I hoped he did, because if he was taking me on an ethereal joy ride without any clue where we were heading, I wasn’t going to be happy.

Eventually, we got to Hans’ gate. It was still there, but I doubted it would last long. He had a plan. He was going to send his parents to the moon, or maybe Uranus. If he was powerful enough, I’d vote for the Pegasus Galaxy. Wherever he was going to send them, probably somewhere unpleasant on planet Earth, it would give us the chance to regroup with the other mages and figure out what to do next.

That raised another question: could he get a spell off to gate his parents anywhere without them stopping him?

Wand pulled me through the gate, and I sighed with relief when my feet hit the ground. Wand still pulsed in my hand. All the power I gathered in the ethereal realm remained with me.

I ran as hard as I could. The original gate was a couple of blocks away from the park. My side cramped. My knees ached. I know this is the time of the story when I was supposed to dig deep and go rushing after my enemies unthwarted by the frailties of body or mind. Let’s be honest, though. I wasn’t a twenty-one-year-old battlemage anymore.

Besides, running sucks.

I arrived back at Gregory Park in a sweat-soaked shirt, panting for air. I needed water and a massage.

Wand was still ready to spring into action, though. That sixteen-year-old attitude of his would either keep me young or give me a heart attack.

Hans turned and saw me. I grinned and turned back to see a portal form over his parents.

“Naughty boy!” Hana shouted. She snapped her finger, and the portal disappeared.

Hans took a step back. I quickly cast a protection barrier, separating us from the other mages.

Someone from behind me screamed. It was Thompson. The old fart ran through the crowd, his wand extended, and unleashed a pitiful arcane missile at Caedes.

Caedes deflected it with a swipe of his wand and shot a blast of violet energy right into Thompson. When Thompson’s body fell to the ground, Caedes gasped for air. Dark magic enveloped his body. “Yes, I needed that.”

Hana took Caedes by the hand. “Beautiful work, my love.” Hana grabbed Caedes and pulled him in close and the two kissed.

She glowed. Caedes struggled.

She was sucking the dark power right out of him.

I lowered the barrier and tried to force a prison around the two of them.

Hana dismissed my spell without taking her attention off Caedes as she drained the life and magic out of him.

Then a dark figure, vaguely channeling blue arcane energy, blasted past us.

“What the—”

“It’s Gerhard!” Jessie cried.

Hans turned and looked. “Grandpa?”

Gerhard forced his form into his son, and the arcane power overtook the energy that Hana drew out of him. When she got a taste of the arcane power, she pushed him away and spit on the ground.

She looked up, her eyes ablaze with violet flames. She extended her arms, and two balls of dark power formed in her palms. I pushed all my power into my arcane barrier.

Hans extended his wand and cast a portal. Hana’s first shot dispelled my prison, but her second shot went into Hans’ portal.

He screamed and forced the portal back over his mother. It dissipated when it hit her. She was gone.

“Did it work?” I asked.

Hans shook his head. “She escaped somehow, just before I pressed that portal over her.”

“We still need to seal that fissure,” my dad said. “If it hasn’t closed yet, this could start all over again.”

Caedes stood. His eyes were aglow with blue magic. We all took a step back.

Hans wasn’t afraid. He moved toward his father. “Grandpa?”

Caedes nodded. “I’m here.”

“What happened to my dad?”

Gerhard, using Caedes’ hand, squeezed Hans’ shoulder. “Your mother stole his dark power. She isn’t the nice young lady she once was. She was able to pass through a gate of her own the moment you tried to push one over her. In her condition, she’s basically a shade and a mage at once. She’ll feed on human souls to stay alive. She’ll grow more powerful, darker, with every feed.”

“How do we find her?” I asked.

“That won’t be a problem. The better question is how are you going to stop her? It might take a while before she shows herself. She won’t need to feed for a while now that she consumed Timothy’s power and all the souls that fueled his dark magic.”

I crossed my arms. “My bigger worry is that if she’s using dark magic to make gates, it will mean more fissures to the ethereal realm.”

Hans nodded. “Which means a lot of shades and fiends.”

“More than that,” Gerhard added. “What you saw in the ethereal realm only scratches the surface. My son was right. Those fiends were only trying to restrain the magic that he was drawing out of the fissure.”

Hans cleared his throat. “My mom just cast a portal using dark magic.”

I nodded. “Right, we covered that.”

Hans pointed over my shoulder. “I don’t think we covered that!”

I turned and something like a giant hand reached out of thin air.

“It’s come for me!” Gerhard screamed.

I aimed Wand at the hand and blasted it with an arcane missile as two other mages from behind me did the same. It wasn’t enough.

The hand grabbed Caedes’ body, still possessed by Gerhard, and pulled it back into the fissure left by Hana’s gate. A flash of light burst from where the hand had disappeared.

“Grandpa!” Hans shouted.

“I have to check on the other fissure,” I called.

I aimed my wand at the ground and phased myself into arcane energy and dropped myself through the earth. I reached the place where my prison was before, where the fissure was. It was dark. It was gone. With Caedes gone, and Gerhard returned to the ethereal realms, the fissure had closed.

I returned to the surface and materialized. Hans was seated on the ground, his face in his hands. “He’s gone. I just lost him. I just got him back. At least I thought I did.”

Jessie rested her hand on Hans’ shoulder. “He knew this was going to happen. He risked everything to come back, to tell us what we were facing. He knew he couldn’t stay.”

I sighed. “Because what’s dead should stay dead.”

Jessie tilted her head. “Not exactly Mr. Sensitive today are we, Tommy?”

Hans cleared his throat. “No, Jessie. Tom’s right. That monster wasn’t my mom. I didn’t know my mom. I’m sure she was great. She’s gone. Grandpa is gone. He died to save me. I won’t let that be for nothing. I know I’m young, and maybe I’m the last person who should be saying this, but we have to stop her. I won’t let whatever that thing is ruin my mother’s memory.”

“Would you like to hear about your mom?” Jessie asked Hans. “About the person she really was?”

I grinned. “We could tell you a few stories.”

Hans nodded. “I’d like that. First, though, we need to check on my grandmother.”

Jessie looked pleased. “I’d love to meet her, myself. I’ve never met another empath.”

Hans nodded. “I’m sure she’d be happy to meet you.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

We took Hans back to his house. He warned us that his grandmother may or may not understand what happened, but as an empath, she’d know what we were thinking.

Hans already had his key in the deadbolt and we were about to step through the front door when he asked, “You really think my grandmother is the one who turned me toward the darkness?”

“It tracks, Hans. Maybe she didn’t do it on purpose, but your grandfather sure thought she had something to do with it.”

Hans sighed. “She probably doesn’t remember.”

“She has dementia,” Jessie said. “Half the time she thinks it’s twenty years ago.”

Hans nodded. “She thinks I’m my father. Not always. Some days, she’s sharp as a razor. Those days are becoming fewer and farther between.”

I felt for him. “I’m sorry to hear that. That must be hard.”

Hans huffed. “You don’t know the half of it. Imagine having dementia, but also hearing everyone’s thoughts. Half the time I think she goes back in time in her mind just to escape what everyone’s thinking and feeling.”

“Does that work?” Jessie asked. “If she thinks it’s the nineteen-fifties, she’ll still hear what people are thinking now.”

Hans scratched his head. “That’s the thing. She was a late bloomer. A very late bloomer. She didn’t manifest until the year I was born.”

I tilted my head. “That’s a strange coincidence, don’t you think?”

“He does,” Jessie answered for him. “He thinks it’s strange, I mean.”

Hans laughed. “I can speak for myself.”

Jessie winced. “Sorry!”

“Anyway,” Hans continued. “When grandma goes back in time in her mind, her brain shuts off her abilities. It’s like she’s back to before she manifested.”

Jessie bit her lip. “You’re saying she hasn’t been an empath for as long as me? She specialized after me?”

Hans frowned. “How old are you again?”

“Thirty-nine,” Jessie offered.

I snorted. “Don’t lie.”

“Fine, I’m forty-two. Just like Tommy, here.”

Hans chuckled. “It doesn’t matter. Weird, though, to think you’re old enough to be my parents.”

“We’re the same age as your parents,” I reminded him.

Hans led us into the house. His grandmother was sitting in the living room on a recliner. She was watching The Price is Right.

“Timmy, is that you?”

Hans glanced at me. “See what I mean? Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh, come in! You’re just in time for the showcase!”

“She’s pretending,” Jessie reported. “She’s of sound mind right now.”

Hans tilted his head. “Grandma, is that right?”

“Be Timmy, Hans. I need to forget. I want to forget!”

“You know about what happened to Grandpa?” Hans asked.

His grandmother wiped her eyes and turned her head. “Jessica?”

Jessie tilted her head. “Have we met?”

“It’s been years, dear. You wouldn’t remember me.”

Jessie scratched her head. Then her eyes widened. “You’re my Aunt Rose!”

Hans looked astonished. “Wait. We’re related?”

“Why don’t you take a seat, dear? While I can still remember.”

We sat and listened as Rose told us her story. Jessie knew what she was saying before she said it. Rose was her father’s sister. Since Jessie’s father died when she was a baby, she and her mother hadn’t had much contact with her father’s side of the family, so she didn’t know her aunt. Apparently, her mother never mentioned that Rose was married to Gerhard Wagner. It never came up. Jessie’s mom didn’t like to talk about her father, much less her father’s family. It made sense. Specializations run in the family. It also meant that Tim was Jessie’s cousin. All those years palling around at convocations, and she didn’t have any clue they were related.

While we were talking, Rose’s countenance changed. She looked back at the television. “I don’t like this joker.”

“You don’t like Drew Carey?” I was astonished. “Who doesn’t like Drew?”

“I wish Bobby would come back from vacation. I don’t even know why they record these shows when he’s gone.”

Jessie sighed. “Bob Barker. I think we lost her.”

There was no way to sort out exactly what happened. We couldn’t resurrect Gerhard to ask him. I had a theory that Hans and Jessie thought was likely. If Rose could both read and communicate her thoughts, what if she went back in her mind to shortly after her abilities came in, to a time not long after I defeated and imprisoned Caedes? It made sense a grieving mother might want someone to save him, why she might be desperate. She planted that idea in Hans’ mind like an obsession.

Hans agreed that his grandmother needed more care than he could provide. It took time to arrange something like that. In the meantime, he planned to stay with her, and Jessie offered to help. She was family, after all. Hans thought it would be too confusing for his grandmother if she was there all the time, though, so Jessie offered a helping hand, however he needed it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Jessie left with me and we went back to my house. My mother was already there, and she had taken down the wards. No sense in silencing a few mages without reason. I wondered how Jessie felt about that. She’d appreciated the refuge, the one place where the voices didn’t scream at her from a thousand different directions. Still, my mother was right. We needed our abilities. There was no sense pretending that my house was an alternate reality where we were normies. We were mages. We needed Jessie’s abilities. We needed to figure out where Hana was and what she was up to. Jessie tried to use her abilities, she pressed her wand to her head and the whole shebang, but she didn’t know where Hana was. I wasn’t surprised. Hana wasn’t exactly human. She was more like a zombie, raised through dark arcane magic. Necromancy. She was as much a shade as anything, a creature from the ethereal realms who’d eventually look for human souls as a snack. If Jessie couldn’t sense her, I was afraid we wouldn’t know when she turned up until it was too late. Until she claimed a victim.

At least she didn’t have a vendetta against me. Not like Caedes did. My family was safe for now.

It was getting late, and I was starving. When Jessie and I walked into the house, I was greeted by the smell of a pot roast. Kat wasn’t a half-bad cook. She made her roast in a crock pot and spiced it up real nice, but the kids didn’t like it. She had chicken nuggets served for them along with a side of broccoli and mashed potatoes. The sides were universal. I could pass on the broccoli—most people could—but the smell of the roast sent my stomach into a growl.

“Everything handled?” Kat asked.

“Depends on what you mean by everything,” I replied. “The haze is gone. So is Caedes. I’m afraid what’s coming next might be even more terrifying.”

“Hard to imagine it being much worse than that!”

“Maybe we’ll fill you in on the details when there aren’t impressionable and easily frightened ears around,” Jessie offered.

My boys ran from the living room when they heard my voice.

Elliot got to me first. “Daddy! I love you always, Daddy!”

“I love you always too, buddy!” I picked up my youngest in my arms and held him tight. It didn’t take long before Ezra and Elijah ran into the room, though they were more focused on the plates of chicken nuggets waiting for them on the dinner table.

Kat had a place at the table set for Jessie. It was a sweet gesture and Jessie appreciated it.

“You can sit between the boys,” Kat suggested.

Given the two sippy cups, one featuring Disney characters and the other themed with Cocomelon, I knew whose was which—usual seating notwithstanding. Ezra took his place by the Mickey Mouse cup and Elliot climbed into his chair next to him.

“So, how did it feel?” Kat asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Using magic again.”

I took a bite of my roast. My eyes rolled back into my head in ecstasy. “Delicious.”

“Using magic was delicious?” Kat chuckled.

“Not so much,” I answered. “Funny thing is, all these years, I missed it. I didn’t talk much about it. You know, because we had our arrangement. I didn’t want you to feel like you were depriving me of something, you know?”

Kat considered. “Maybe that was a mistake.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, Kat. We have a pretty good life here. I don’t have any regrets.”

“Wasn’t as sweet as you remembered it, was it?”

Jessie didn’t say anything. She was busy stuffing her face. I think she knew this was a conversation my wife and I needed to have together.

I answered Kat. “It wasn’t at all like I remembered. You know, back in the day, I thought magic was everything. I thought I was some kind of superhero. Save the world. Catch the bad guy. Wait until the next threat to mankind emerged and deal with him, too.”

“It wasn’t like that now?

“I fought today because I had to, not because I wanted to. I was fighting for everything I love. For the people I love. For you and the kids. I was fighting for a boy who terrified the other mages so much that they wanted to murder the poor kid. There was a big difference between this time and before.”

“You were fighting for people you loved?”

I nodded. “And I wasn’t doing it for myself. I wasn’t out there looking for glory or recognition. I did what I had to do because it had to be done. Because the people I loved could be hurt if I didn’t.”

“Look who is all grown up!” Jessie piped up.

“Don’t give him too much credit,” Kat retorted. “He’s still a little boy at heart.”

“Were you fighting a monster?” Elijah asked.

I nodded. “I fought a bunch of them, buddy.”

“Was it scary?”

I mashed a lump of butter into my potatoes. “You know, it was. More than I expected it would be. There’s only one way to deal with something that scares you.”

“Run away!” Elijah laughed.

“All right, there are two ways. Sometimes running away is the right thing to do. At other times, though, you have to face your fears. When you do, well, I won’t say it won’t be scary, but you’ll find that you’re stronger than you thought. In ways you never imagined.”

“Am I like you, Daddy?” Elijah asked.

I made eye contact with Kat across the table. She nodded her head. “Well, we both like ice cream. I’m guessing that’s not what you mean, though.”

“It’s not. But are we getting ice cream tonight?” Elijah asked.

“Maybe, if you finish your vegetables.”

Elijah sighed. “You know, I have to think about it. Do I like ice cream more than I hate broccoli?”

I snorted. “Don’t overthink it, son. Eat your broccoli. It’s good for you.”

I popped a floret of broccoli in my mouth. “Mmm. Delicious. Tastes like nutrition, exploding in my mouth.”

Elijah huffed. “It tastes like the lawn, Dad.”

“Elijah! What did I tell you about eating grass? You’re not a horse!”

“Nay! I’m not!”

I laughed. So did Kat and Jessie.

“You really are a lot like your old man.” Jessie shook her head. “The dad jokes are starting already.”

I smirked. “Cows eat grass too, you know, but I thought it was best to mooove on to horses.”

“Daddy!” Elijah said. “That was bad!”

“And your joke was better?”

Kat snorted. “Actually, honey, his joke was a lot better.”

“What kind of roast is this?” Jessie asked. “It’s so tender!”

Kat smiled. “It’s the way I prepare it that’s the trick. It’s a standard butt roast.”

I smirked because I knew what was coming. The kids started laughing. “We’re eating a butt?” Ezra asked.

“Butts are yummy!” Elliot piped up.

I sighed. “Butts are not for eating. It’s more like the opposite.”

“But mommy said we’re eating a butt,” Elijah protested.

“It’s a roast. Honey, why couldn’t you just say it’s a chuck roast?”

“We shouldn’t lie to our children, dear.”

As I laughed, I caught a quick flash of light out of the corner of my eye, coming from Elijah’s direction. I turned and noticed his broccoli was all gone.

“What did you just do, son?”

Elijah shrugged. “I like broccoli. Yummy in my tummy.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t lie to me, son.”

Elijah stared at me for a second. With another flash of light, a round blue portal appeared over my plate and Elijah’s broccoli fell out of it.

Jessie looked impressed. “Specializing already? Didn’t he just manifest?”

I took a deep breath. “How did you know how to do that, son?”

Elijah shrugged. “I’ve been doing it for a while. And you thought I ate all my brussels sprouts the other night.”

Jessie cocked her head. “You gave them brussels sprouts? I can’t blame him if he gated them to the backyard.”

I smiled. “It looks like you’re a gate mage, son.”

Elijah nodded. “I know, Dad. I mean, I didn’t know what it’s called, but it’s pretty cool, right?”

I smiled. “Very cool. Good thing I’ve got a few books that will help.”

“Do they have pictures?” Elijah asked.

“You can read, son. Why do you need pictures?”

“Books without pictures are boring, Dad.”

“That’s not true at all,” Jessie promised. “You just haven’t read the right books! I’d give anything for a book that helped me figure out all I can do.”

I picked up my plate, reached across the table, and dumped Elijah’s broccoli back on his plate. “We’ll talk about the books later and all that you might be able to do. I’m impressed, son. But that doesn’t mean you can get out of eating your broccoli.”

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with book two, Arcane Attitude, available at Amazon.

Claim your copy today!

AUTHOR NOTES - THEOPHILUS MONROE

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

This book was a lot of fun to write for a bunch of reasons.

First, as a father of three boys myself, I wanted to write a story that mirrored my life. Many of the anecdotes between Tom and his kids came from real life. He also works in an industry that I grew up in. My father owned an equipment rental business and, while my brother was the one who ended up taking it over, I spent many long summers working the counters, helping customers, and yes, answering prank calls.

FYI—all the prank calls Tom picks up were real calls I once received while working the family biz.

Writing characters who mirror my own life isn’t really something I did a lot of until I met Michael and he encouraged it. The first series I did with Anderle, The Elven Prophecy, infused a hard-hitting urban fantasy adventure with a lot of my experience from my seven-year career as a minister. It’s been almost a decade since I worked in the ministry, but that character’s experiences and struggles with the powers-that-be were also derived from my experience.

This series engages a lot more of what life is like for me now. No, I’m not a mage who once saved the world. But, I did have a lot of youthful aspirations about saving souls and changing the world. A lot of young folks do. That kind of world-changing focus, though, was often exhausting. It’s one thing to think you’re going to change “the world” but it’s another thing to recognize that you can make a much larger impact when you focus on positively influencing people. The people you love. The people close to you. When you focus on the people near to you, the people you know and love, you never know what might happen. The people who really change the world are those who try to have a positive impact in individual people’s lives. Impacting the world is just a bonus.

I suppose Tom’s character arc reflects my own experience in that way. All my youthful ego, my pride, my self-centered desire for attention and recognition died the day my first son was born. I never thought I was a selfish person. I don’t think a lot of people saw me that way.

Still, it’s crazy how much changes when you have children. They became my world. Impacting the world and impacting my children’s lives positively, became one and the same thing at least to me.

The three boys in this book are also named after my three sons, by the way. You’ll find that Tom isn’t a perfect parent. He loses his temper sometimes. Every now and then, he lets a curse word fly by mistake… and a little one might very well repeat it.

Tom’s relationship with his wife is where the romance comes into play in the story. But this isn’t like most romances. Most books that have romance, or are romances themselves, are centered on new relationships. The initial spark. That “fire” that drives a couple into an infatuation-induced tizzy for one another. I wanted to do something different, here. Mature love, the love between a couple that endures, doesn’t have the same flood of emotion that consumes one’s every thought. It does, however, become a kind of compass that helps Tom through the trials he has to endure. Tom couldn’t do what he does in Sorcerer’s Playground if he was trying to entertain new love. His relationship with Kat, his relationship with his children, is what gives him strength.

One more thing about this series. There are a lot of bad fathers out there, don’t get me wrong. There are also a lot of amazing fathers who don’t get their due. I’m by no means a perfect father. Who is? Still, I think it’s high time that dads get their recognition. There are a lot of dads out there who spill a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to provide for their families. They put their hearts and souls into fatherhood. This book is a salute to those dads. My father was a great one, too. The hero here, Tom, is named after him. This might not be your typical urban fantasy with a young, attractive hero/heroine looking to fall in love while he or she saves the universe and defeats the bad guys. Still, I hope you’ll find something a little deeper here that you can appreciate and relate to. I’ll leave you with this: DADS REPRESENT! HOLLA!

- Theo

P.S. Apologies in advance for the bad dad jokes. I couldn’t write a book featuring a dad without them.

AUTHOR NOTES - MICHAEL ANDERLE

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

Thank you for not only reading this book but these author notes as well!

Go Theo!

Usually, when I work with a collaborator, we go back and forth on what we think we would like to work on and what we think will sell.

Just FYI, the original concept for Sorcerer’s Playground wasn’t something I thought, ‘Now this is a STELLAR idea!’

So, amazing sales? That’s going to go into the ‘Theo came up with the idea’ category because, in a few years, I want him to have the acknowledgment that the original seed for this series was Theo.

I’ve been blessed to work with Theophilus on multiple series now. He’s one of the hardest-working, most pleasant individuals; frankly, working with him is a joy.

Now, I realize his wife is probably a saint or is working her way up the Saint Ladder of Amazing Wives because Theophilus is… well, a guy.

We screw up. All guys screw up. It’s in our genetics to screw up. Why?

Just look at the chemicals produced in a male body and tell me you can’t figure out why we fight every day not to do something our partners will slap their foreheads and go, ‘Really?!’

Usually, not always, but usually, the first time we see one of our children, the chemicals change in our bodies, and that goes triple for our first child. I remember holding Joshua (my first) in my arms and telling him no one was going to touch him without coming through me.

I worked on being as good a Dad as my father was (and thankfully still is.) We make mistakes, and we have hard times being emotional at the right moments. We have three boys, which is a different experience than having three girls.

For you dads with girls, I salute you. My life was hard enough (two of our children are fraternal twins), and I shudder thinking what it must be like to raise young women. Now, supposedly girls love their dads and fight with their moms. But dads have to deal with irate moms who are upset with the girls.

It’s a lose-lose proposition. I don’t have any close friends I speak with regularly who have had daughters, so I can’t get any feedback. If you would care to place your comments in the review section of the book(s), Theo and I will get a chance to know…

Girls or Boys – which was harder?

Chat with you in the next book.

Ad Aeternitatem,

Michael Anderle

MORE STORIES with Michael newsletter HERE: https://michael.beehiiv.com/

ALSO BY THEOPHILUS MONROE

Gates of Eden Universe

The Druid Legacy

Druid’s Dance

Bard’s Tale

Ovate’s Call

Rise of the Morrigan

The Fomorian Wyrmriders

Wyrmrider Ascending

Wyrmrider Vengeance

Wyrmrider Justice

Wyrmrider Academy (Exclusive to Omnibus Edition)

The Voodoo Legacy

Voodoo Academy

Grim Tidings

Death Rites

Watery Graves

Voodoo Queen

The Legacy of a Vampire Witch

Bloody Hell

Bloody Mad

Bloody Wicked

Bloody Devils

Bloody Gods

The Legend of Nyx

Scared Shiftless

Bat Shift Crazy

No Shift, Sherlock

Shift for Brains

Shift Happens

Shift on a Shingle

The Vilokan Asylum of the Magically and Mentally Deranged

The Curse of Cain

The Mark of Cain

Cain and the Cauldron

Cain's Cobras

Crazy Cain

The Wrath of Cain

The Blood Witch Saga

Voodoo and Vampires

Witches and Wolves

Devils and Dragons

Ghouls and Grimoires

More to come!

FREE URBAN FANTASY ADVENTURE: DRUIDESS (GET IT HERE!)

GoE OMNIBUS COLLECTIONS [in Chronological Order]:

The Druid Legacy

Wyrmrider (Books 1-4)

The Voodoo Legacy

The Legacy of a Vampire Witch

The Legend of Nyx

The Vilokan Asylum of the Magically and Mentally Deranged

Other Theophilus Monroe Series

Nanoverse

[Also Available in an Omnibus Edition]

The Elven Prophecy

[Also Available in an Omnibus Edition]

Chronicles of Zoey Grimm

The Daywalker Chronicles

Go Ask Your Mother

AS T.R. MAGNUS

Kataklysm

Blightmage

Ember

Radiant

FREE EPIC: DARKWORLD (GET IT HERE!)

BOOKS BY MICHAEL ANDERLE

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