Author: Theophilus Monroe; Michael Anderle
Date: 2023-03-27 07:00:00+00:00
Description: How do you defeat a necromancer? It’s hard to make any progress when she can raise the dead to fight at her side. She isn’t raising random corpses. She’s bringing back some of the most powerful Axis mages who died during the Arcane Wars. She’s always one step ahead. What is she planning? How can I stop her if I can’t even find her? A secret society of mages is also tracking her. They want me to join their alliance. Something’s not right about these mages. Are they friends, or are they foes? They tell me they don’t like my “attitude.” Fair enough. I don’t like them much, either. If we can’t wor
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Rights: Copyright 2023 Theophilus Monroe. All rights reserved.

ARCANE ATTITUDE

GO ASK YOUR MOTHER™ BOOK 2

THEOPHILUS MONROE

MICHAEL ANDERLE

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LMBPN Publishing

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Version 1.00, March 2023
ebook ISBN: 979-8-88541-362-6

Print ISBN: 979-8-88878-295-8

THE ARCANE ATTITUDE TEAM

Thanks to our JIT Readers

Rachel Beckford

Jackey Hankard-Brodie

Veronica Stephan-Miller

Jeff Goode

Diane L. Smith

Daryl McDaniel

Jan Hunnicutt

Paul Westman

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

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Author Notes - Theophilus Monroe

Author Notes - Michael Anderle

Also by Theophilus Monroe

Books By Michael Anderle

Connect with The Authors

CHAPTER ONE

Hans’ portal dumped us in Yanaka Cemetery. Yes, the one in Tokyo. Having a gate mage on the team was handy. This wasn’t the first time he’d taken us across the ocean. He’d come a long way in the three months since I’d met him, and his gate magery was now international. I suppose interstellar gate magery was the next step. Not that we had any reason to traverse the galaxies, but you know, I’d always been a fan of Stargate SG-1.

Jessie pressed her wand to her temple. “It’s still here. We made it in time.”

Jessie was an empath mage. She could hear the thoughts of nearby people. She could detect the location of mages anywhere within about a fifty-mile radius. A week before, it was forty miles. She was getting stronger. These things we were hunting weren’t people, though. Not anymore. They didn’t have thoughts that Jessie could hear, but she could sense their emotions. Angst, mostly. If you’d been dead for years only to have a mangled and warped version of your soul stuffed back into your desiccated body, you’d have angst, too.

“Any sense that my mother is here?” Hans asked.

Jessie shook her head. “Sorry. Doesn’t mean she isn’t here. The only time we saw her, I sensed nothing at all.”

I scanned the cemetery. This was going to take some time. Yanaka Cemetery covered twenty-five acres. The cherry blossom trees were in bloom, and a sweet odor filled the air.

Hans’ mother, Hana Sato, was killed by his father when he was a baby. Tim Wagner was known thereafter by his chosen alias of Caedes, which meant destroyer, and he dove into sorcery, the dark magic from the deepest part of the arcane wells. He didn’t kill Hana on purpose, though. Hans was the product of a one-night stand. When Hana wanted to take Hans back to Tokyo to live with her family, Tim lost it. In a fit of rage, he murdered Hana and went on a killing spree. He’d already been dabbling in sorcery, and every death made him stronger and sent him deeper into the arcane wells. I’d imprisoned him more than twenty years ago. After he got out of his prison, manipulating Hans in order to do so, he’d unleashed a darkness that he used to resurrect Hana, which had been his goal all along.

Things that are dead should stay dead. It’s not just the credo of Sam and Dean Winchester from Supernatural. It was one of the old laws that used to govern the mage families. Necromancy was strictly forbidden. What comes back isn’t the same as when it died. Hana killed Tim. She sucked the life and power out of him with a kiss and then, a gate mage herself, she disappeared. The only evidence we’d found of her activities was a series of grave desecrations around the world. Whatever she was doing left a residual necromantic energy in the air that drew warped souls of mages back to their corpses and out of their graves.

This was the fifth cemetery we knew she’d hit over the previous three months. There were probably others, but we depended on whatever we learned from the Internet to identify places she’d been. Police reports of grave desecrations were one clue. So were Reddit communities, paranormal chat rooms, and message boards.

The strangest thing about it all was that while there were a few reports of strange sightings, and fleeting glances of the unexplained, only mages could see these walking corpses. Mages could do illusion magic. I imagined that Hana knew her magic might impact others and it was an attempt to cover her tracks. She was powerful, but she hadn’t been back from the grave for long. When I knew her in her former life, she’d barely identified as a gate mage and hadn’t learned much about it before she died.

All we knew for sure was that Hana was raising mages buried in cemeteries in some of the hub cities that used to be home to the mage academies. The last of the academies shut down in the middle of the twentieth century, not long after the Second World War and the Arcane Wars.

By the time we heard that Hana had hit a cemetery and arrived to check it out, she was long gone. We were usually a week or more behind. Who she raised was evident based on the charred black soil surrounding the grave of the mage she had targeted. Her magic tended to spread and spring a few unintended corpses, too. They were mindless zombie-like creatures, brought back halfway, and a single arcane missile was enough to take them out. It wasn’t a difficult task.

In our effort to track down Hana, we’d unwittingly become her clean-up crew. It wasn’t ideal, and it hadn’t gotten us any closer to finding Hana or discerning her intentions, but we didn’t have any other leads. We knew she was resurrecting powerful mages, most of whom fought in the Arcane Wars. We just didn’t know why. We didn’t know her end game.

Hans was hopeful that since this cemetery was in Tokyo, where Hana grew up and her family still lived, she might linger in the area for a while.

“Any idea how many we’re dealing with this time?”

Jessie shook her head. “Not sure, Tommy. They’re all in one area. More than the cemetery in New York. Fewer than we were dealing with in Berlin.”

I smiled. “You can call me Tom, you know. Only you and my parents call me Tommy.”

“You bet, Tommy!” Jessie smirked.

I chuckled and shook my head. “So we’re looking at between two and eleven.”

Jessie shrugged. “Nothing you can’t handle. These things aren’t exceptionally bright.”

I nodded. “I just like to be prepared.”

“Spoken like a real Boy Scout!”

I cleared my throat. “Eagle Scout, thank you very much.”

Hans laughed and shook his head. “You two really are dorks.”

I widened my eyes. “Hey, apart from the short shorts and the neckerchiefs, the scouts are badass.”

Hans raised his eyebrow. “Did you go to that summer camp where all the white people dress up like Native Americans and do rain dances?”

I raised my index finger. “Don’t diss the Order of the Arrow. That’s serious business.”

Hans snorted. “And a serious case of cultural appropriation.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“He sort of has a point,” Jessie suggested. “Grown men and boys dressing up in loincloths and running around the woods is pretty geeky and mildly offensive.”

“It’s only offensive because no twelve-year-old boy should have to see a grown-ass man wearing a loincloth,” I pointed out.

“You old people are so clueless.” Hans rolled his eyes.

“We’re not old!” Jessie and I retorted in unison.

Hans smirked. “Forty-two is old.”

“No, it isn’t,” I huffed. “Forty is the new thirty.”

“Says no one under forty.”

Jessie got back to business before I could say anything else. “They’re that way. A few acres in.” She pointed into the distance.

We headed across the cemetery. It was nicer than most of the American cemeteries I’d visited. The Japanese culture reveres one’s ancestors more than Americans tend to do.

We found the walking corpses wandering around their graves. I suppose you could call them zombies, in a sense, but as I understood popular lore, zombies were murderous and enraged creatures who fed on people’s brains. These bodies were wandering meat sacks more anxious than angry. They attacked only after we did. It was more about instinctual self-preservation than a craving for hippocampus.

Before I took a shot, we could walk right past the things and they’d hardly react. I counted seven of them. They wandered around several plots in a ten- or fifteen-yard radius around what was likely the mage Hana had raised and recruited to her growing horde.

“I’ll do this like in Berlin. Lay low. I’ll get in the middle and take them out with a scattershot. If I miss, Hans, you know what to do.”

Hans nodded. “I’ll gate you out of there so you can drop them from a distance.”

“Be ready. My scattershots aren’t precise. I doubt I’ll hit all of them.”

“I could make the gate in advance.”

I shook my head. “If my scattershot hits the gate it might dispel it. I’ll get my shot off. Don’t bother with the body count. Let’s assume I won’t get them all. Gate me back right here and I’ll finish off the survivors.”

Jessie laughed. “Survivors? Does that term apply to walking corpses?”

I smiled. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m ready when you are,” Hans offered.

I walked across the cemetery and passed a few dozen graves before I reached the wandering corpses. They didn’t smell much. They’d decomposed beyond that. They were mostly skeletons with leathery and desiccated flesh hanging from their bones, and most of this group wore traditional Japanese garb.

I found the gravestone at the center. It was Hana’s grave. She’d raised herself? When Caedes resurrected her, she’d had an ethereal body, an approximation of her former physical form projected by her warped soul’s consciousness. Why would she want her old body? I doubted she’d done it out of nostalgia. She had a reason. Since she was a gate mage, chances were good she and her body were long gone.

I raised Wand overhead. Yes, I named my wand Wand. It lacked creativity. It was meant to be temporary until I came up with a better name, but it grew on me. I gave Wand a little twirl and released several concussive blasts of arcane energy.

I saw some of the corpses fall, and a blue gate appeared behind me. I jumped through it and landed back by Hans and Jessie.

“Looks like you got all but two,” Jessie reported. “Nice work.”

I aimed Wand at the other two corpses. They were pacing with more vigor than before. They knew they were under assault. I blasted one with an arcane missile, then the other.

I shoved Wand back into my pocket. “Easy peasy.”

“Just like all the times before,” Jessie added.

I tilted my head. “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“This was different. It was Hana’s own grave at the center. She resurrected her own body.”

Hans shuddered. “That’s creepy as hell.”

“I’m not sure what it means. I say we regroup back in St. Louis and hit the books. Maybe we can sort something out.”

Jessie sighed. “We’ve already pored over all the volumes that deal with necromancy. They aren’t especially helpful.”

I scratched my head. “Well, do either of you have any better ideas?”

“I do,” Hans said. “While we’re here, we should visit my grandparents.”

I frowned. “Is this really the best time for a family reunion?”

“You’re not thinking this through,” Jessie suggested. “Hans is right. I’m following his train of thought. Hana’s parents knew her better than we ever did. Maybe they’ll have some insight into where she might be, or what she’s up to. Maybe she’s visited them since she returned.”

Hans nodded. “What she said. Having an empath on the team saves me a lot of breath. Thanks, Jess.”

Jessie giggled a little. “Any time. I’m always good for providing extra hot air. I can also find the Satos.”

CHAPTER TWO

Jessie placed her wand to her temple. A blue cherry formed at the tip of her wand and she closed her eyes. “Got them.”

“Have a direction and distance?” Hans asked.

“Sort of. I know the direction, but my abilities aren’t a GPS. It doesn’t tell me exactly how far to go in miles.”

Hans bit his lip. He pulled his phone from his pocket. “You might not have a GPS, but I do. I can use the maps to make sure I don’t accidentally gate us into traffic, or into the middle of a wall.”

“Can you look up the Sato name? Maybe get an address?”

Hans tapped at his phone a few times. “It’s a common name. There are several in the area.”

Jessie pointed straight ahead. “They’re that way.”

“I don’t see any Satos in that direction. Not exactly.”

I nodded. “Makes sense. A lot of mage families keep their addresses off the books.”

Hans extended his hand and formed a portal. “This will get us closer.”

We passed through the portal and appeared in a park, and Jessie still had the same trajectory. Another portal got us closer. After about five jumps through Hans’ gates, we landed in front of a small house.

“This is it,” Jessie claimed. “Hana’s parents are inside.”

I approached the front door, but Hans put his hand on my chest. “These are my grandparents. I should be the one to introduce myself.”

I took a step back and Hans pressed the doorbell.

An old woman answered the door.

“My name is Hans Wagner,” he began.

“I know who you are!”

“You do? I mean, of course you’d know who I was.”

“I recognize you. Your grandfather has sent us pictures. Come inside.”

I smiled. “My name is Tom Gregory. This is Jessie Burgher. We’re here—”

“Tommy and Jessie? I remember you both. You were my Hana’s friends.”

We followed Mrs. Sato inside. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about.”

“I suspected as much.”

“You know about your daughter?”

“She’s been here. She came about three months ago. Her spirit is not well.”

I sighed. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Come. Have some tea. We have much to discuss.”

Mrs. Sato led us to a small table. Her husband was there already, sipping a cup of tea himself. We made our introductions and sat. Mrs. Sato brought a few more cups to the table and poured us some hot tea. I took a sip. It was better than any tea I’d ever had.

“What is this?” Jessie asked. “I own a small coffee shop in St. Louis. We also serve a variety of teas.”

Jessie probably already knew the answer, but she was being polite. It’s always a little awkward when Jessie jumps in and answers her own questions before giving someone a chance to answer. It makes people uncomfortable.

“It is a sencha tea. Do you like it?”

Jessie nodded. “It’s fantastic. Thank you!”

Mr. Sato folded his arms in front of his chest. “There are things you must understand. Things that are often lost on Americans but are no less important if you intend to help my daughter.”

Hans cleared his throat. Aside from introductions, his grandparents weren’t behaving like he was anything more than a common guest. I didn’t remember their first names. As a teenager, attending mage convocations, the adults were always addressed formally. They didn’t offer their names to me, either, and I continued addressing them as mister and missus.

“What did my mother want when she came?” Hans asked.

“Documents and files. Registers of the mages who fought for the Axis powers during the Arcane Wars.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why would you have those records?”

“My father fought in the war. He coordinated the effort of the mages in Japan on behalf of Emperor Hirohito. He was a believer in kodo.”

I tilted my head. “What is kodo?”

“The Imperial Way. Think of it as the Japanese empire’s version of your people’s manifest destiny.”

“Why would my mother be interested in that?” Hans asked.

“Until recently, she was dead. She still is. Only now, she’s driven by tatari.”

I took a sip of my tea. “Apologies. My Japanese is a bit rusty.”

“The dead are of two sorts. There are the peaceful and steady dead, the yusurakan shisha. There are also the tatari. Wandering souls driven by envy and grudge. Traditionally, the tatari must be appeased that they might become yusurakan shisha. In most circumstances, that’s done through what you westerners think of as ancestor worship. There are services, rituals, and other such methods.”

I shook my head. “The situation with Hana isn’t like most circumstances.”

“Indeed, it is not. My daughter was at peace. She was in the otherworld, along with the spirits of those mages whom she now seeks. She’s bringing them back. Turning them into tatari.”

“Apologies for asking,” Jessie began. “You speak perfect English, but you think in Japanese. I can’t understand your thoughts. Why would Hana be interested in mages who died fighting for a cause that the Japanese people no longer embraced decades before she was even born?”

Mr. Sato pressed his hands together and raised them to his lips. “This is conjecture. I suspect as a tatari she needed spirits with unfinished business.”

I nodded. “Their unfinished business is the mages who fought alongside the allies.”

Mr. Sato nodded. “In this case, their descendants.”

Hans scratched the back of his head. “If she met these spirits in the other world, in the deepest parts of the arcane wells, why would she need their records?”

Mr. Sato grunted. “The records indicated how they each died and where they were buried.”

I pressed my lips together. “Why would she raise her own body?”

“For the same reason she didn’t use pure necromancy to bring back the Axis mages. In a body, their spirits are tethered to this world. They cannot be appeased through rituals or reverence. The only way to give them peace is to resolve their unresolved business.”

I gulped. “By killing the descendants of the allied mages.”

Mr. Sato nodded. “Every last one of them.”

Hans shook his head. “That wouldn’t include me. My father was German.”

“Precisely. You are Hana’s unfinished business.”

Hans snorted. “What does she want with me?”

“You’re her son. You’re our grandson. She wants what every mother wants. For her child to be the most he can be. To be happy, yes, but also to be successful.”

I rubbed my brow. “That could mean a lot of different things.”

Jessie sighed. “She wants to make Hans the leader of the new order of Axis mages.”

Mr. Sato tilted his head. “Your Japanese must be better than you let on.”

Jessie shook her head. “I wasn’t reading your mind. I was reading his.”

Hans sighed. “My paternal grandmother, as you know, is an empath. She can force her thoughts into the minds of others. As she’s lost her mind, not purely from dementia but overwhelmed by hearing so many thoughts at once, she retreats in her mind to a time from the past. Her father also fought for the Axis mages. In her delusions, she’s also shared her long-dead aspirations with me. The dreams her father shared with her when she was just a girl.”

“You think she passed that idea on to Hana?” I asked.

“Not likely,” Hans replied. “She doesn’t think about my mother much at all. But she did dwell on her son, my father. I wouldn’t be surprised if she connected with him when he was back.”

“Hana swallowed your father’s spirit,” Jessie whispered.

Mr. Sato grunted. “If she did that, she also has his memories and his mind. Perhaps she even shares his aspirations.”

I bit my lip. “She wants to make Hans the magical version of Hitler?”

“His heir, perhaps,” Jessie suggested. “She wants to be the next Voldemort. She’s raising the Axis mages to be her Death Eaters.”

I smirked. “A Harry Potter reference? Seriously?”

Jessie grinned. “If the wand fits, why not wield it?”

CHAPTER THREE

Hans gated us back to my house in St. Louis. The sun was high in the sky in Tokyo, but it was ten o’clock at night at home. That meant the kids were in bed. Kat was at the table sitting next to her father, my boss. At least he was my boss before the propane explosions forced us to temporarily close AAA Tool Rental.

He had a stack of papers in front of him.

“Gene? What are you doing here this time of night?”

Gene shook his head. “You really know how to make an entrance, son, you know that?”

I smirked. “You could say that. By the way, this is Hans. That’s Jessie.”

Gene stood and nodded. “I’ve heard a lot about the two of you. Look, Tommy—”

Jessie chuckled. “See, I’m not the only one who still calls you that.”

I sighed. “What’s going on?”

“I realize the timing might not be convenient. I’ve decided to retire.”

I frowned. “The business is still closed. Why make that grand announcement now, in the middle of the night?”

Gene shrugged. “It was early evening when I arrived. Kat made a fantastic dinner.”

“It was a frozen lasagna,” Kat stage-whispered.

“We’re clear to open up for business again. All the paperwork is here. I’d like to sell the company to you.”

“To me?”

“Well, to you and Katherine.”

“We can’t afford to buy the business. We’ve been living off savings for months now.”

Gene waved his hand through the air. “You’ll make payments from the company’s profits.”

“I don’t know. With everything going on right now, I’m not sure I have the time to work the business.”

“Then hire a manager,” Kat proposed. “You’re the president of the company. At least you will be when you sign the dotted line. You can work as much or as little as you deem necessary.”

I pinched my chin. “Jeff could do it. If he hasn’t found another job by now.”

Gene shook his head. “Even if he has, do you think he’d turn down a promotion to management?”

“I’d still need time to train him.”

Gene shrugged. “You don’t have to reopen tomorrow, son. I’d recommend it sooner rather than later, though. You don’t want to miss out on spring lawn season.”

“Kat’s right,” Jessie chimed in.

“I am?” Kat grinned. “I mean, of course I am. I’m always right.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Always?”

Kat nodded. “Except for the time I thought I was wrong, but I wasn’t.”

“Tommy is right, too, though,” Jessie went on. “Balancing running a business, being a father and a husband, and trying to stop Hana is a lot to handle.”

I nodded. “You’re right.”

“You aren’t sure you can handle it all. The thing is, this business with Hana is something we can handle together. It will pass. Your family will still be here.”

“We don’t know if Hana will fail. It might not pass. I have to focus on that.”

“What are you going to do?” Jessie asked. “We sort of know what she’s planning, but short of hitting more cemeteries, we don’t know where she is or how to stop her.”

“I can always fill in if needed,” Kat offered. “You forget, I worked the counter there throughout high school and for a good five years after that.”

“Kat’s right,” Gene stated. “She has as much experience as anyone to run the place.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked.

Kat shrugged. “I can’t open and close. I’ll have to get the kids off to school and be there when they get back. At least until we get something else arranged.”

“What about your photography business?” I pressed.

“I don’t have overhead. I don’t have employees. I’ll still get weddings on weekends, and I can do other shoots when I’m available. I’ll outsource the editing. It’s not a problem, Tom. We can handle this.”

“You aren’t the only one with a business,” Jessie added. “If I can do it, so can you. All you need are good people who have your back.”

I took a deep breath. Gene extended his hand. I shook it and he pulled me into a hug. “You’ve earned this, son.”

I grinned. “You’ve earned it, too. What’s next for you? Bingo nights and a membership with the Elks?”

Gene laughed. “Maybe. I was thinking Cancun. Maybe Hawaii. When we were a young couple, Lois and I traveled a lot. Then came kids and the business. Vacations are few and far between.”

Hans grinned. “I could save you on airfare if you’d like. Make it a world tour. It’s the least I could do. Sorry about dropping a bomb on your propane tanks.”

Gene patted Hans on the back. “If Tom can forgive you for failing to murder him, I can forgive the property damage. Besides, if you saw the check we got from the insurance company you might think I should be thanking you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Hans replied. “Just let me know where you’d like to go and when.”

“What’s it feel like?” Gene asked. “Going through one of those magic portals can’t be natural.”

“It feels like nothing at all,” I told him. “Technically, the gate changes your entire body into pure energy and reconstitutes you back in your material form on the other side. It’s not as scary as it sounds.”

“It puts all the pieces back where they belong, most of the time,” Hans assured Gene.

“Most of the time?” Gene frowned.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s fast and painless. It sure beats flying coach.”

“Look over the papers,” Gene urged. “If everything looks good to you, I have an appointment at the bank tomorrow. We’ll sign there. Some of the signatures require a notary.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Jessie was still staying with us. She’d had to make the choice between paying the rent for her coffee shop or for her apartment, and when she and I became reacquainted, she was living in her office at the coffee shop. Kat and I invited her to stay with us until she paid down her business loans and could afford a place of her own.

Hans stayed with his grandmother. Now that his grandfather, Gerhard, was gone, Hans was all she had. Jessie helped him out when she could—Hans’ grandmother was Jessie’s aunt, although Jessie had not known this until recently, after we saved Hans from Caedes and met Rose. Rose Wagner was Jessie’s father’s sister. Jessie’s father died shortly after she was born, and her mother rarely spoke of that side of the family.

As an empath with dementia, often retreating to the past in her mind, Rose could be dangerous. She could not only read people’s thoughts and emotions, but she could project thoughts into their minds. She’d done it with Hans and Caedes, and we suspected those thoughts were passed on to Hana when she swallowed Caedes’ spirit.

The first time Jessie met Rose, it was fine. Nothing too strange. Then the two got together when Rose was in another frame of mind, and we discovered that putting two empaths together is like putting a microphone too close to a speaker. They heard each other’s thoughts in an infinite feedback loop that nearly knocked the both of them out cold. Hans had to teleport Jessie back to our house to stop it.

Since then, Jessie helped when she could, but not as much as she’d have liked to. My mother, a domestic mage, stepped in and did what she could as well to keep the house in order. A gate mage’s way of cleaning house is dumping as much crap as possible directly through a portal to the landfill. It worked. He didn’t have to pay for trash service. My mother’s efforts picked up the slack, and she offered to ward the house so Rose’s abilities wouldn’t be so overwhelming. When my mom warded my house to protect us when Caedes had been on the loose, Jessie had enjoyed relative peace at our place. Relative, of course, because so long as you have three Midwest tornadoes spinning around the house, peace remains elusive.

It was a trade-off. If my mom warded the house, Hans couldn’t use his abilities and my mom couldn’t help by using her domestic magery to cook and clean. My mother warded Rose’s room for a while, but every time Rose left the room, her abilities flooded her mind with thoughts. Given her dementia, the sudden change made it more difficult to adjust than if she’d never had her abilities quieted to begin with. One thing that people with dementia don’t often handle well is change. Then again, a lot of people don’t deal with change well. When that change is inside your head, I imagined it was even harder for someone in Rose’s condition to understand.

We still had the option of warding the entire house if Rose’s abilities started causing problems. So far, though, with Caedes gone we didn’t have any reason to suspect she was connecting to Hana. After all, while Hana had been in St. Louis, we didn’t have any reason to think she was still there. She would come back, most likely, since Hans was there, but we didn’t know when that would be, or what exactly she’d try to do.

Kat and I had to get the kids off to school before we went to meet my father-in-law at the bank. We focused first on the older two, who rode the bus. Elijah was nine and Ezra was five, and they were in the third grade and kindergarten, respectively. Elliot, my three-year-old, went to a local preschool and we had to drive him there.

Elijah manifested a few months ago. His power was coming in a lot earlier than it did for most, though it wasn’t unheard of for children of his age to manifest. He’d also revealed his specialization. I didn’t manifest until I was twelve and didn’t specialize until two years later, and I was considered an early bloomer as mages go. While it wasn’t always true, the earlier a mage manifested the more powerful they’d typically become.

As a young gate mage, Elijah had managed to create small portals. Thankfully, he couldn’t make gates large enough yet to teleport himself. He probably wouldn’t be able to until he got a wand, which happened at sixteen, according to tradition. Most of the mage families had access via crystals that could send a mage to an ethereal realm where the spirits that inhabited and created wands resided. Thankfully, we had a little time before we had to worry about that. I wasn’t looking forward to it. How much trouble could a sixteen-year-old gate mage get into? For now, gating the broccoli off his dinner plate and into the yard was the worst we had to worry about. So long as he didn’t use his abilities at school, we could deal with it. Having Jessie around helped, too. If he was using his abilities, she’d know it.

Jessie was still sleeping on the couch with a pillow over her face as we started the morning routine.

Elijah wasn’t too much trouble in the morning, provided he was willing to get out of bed. When it came to the two littles, we never knew what mood they’d be in.

Ezra was not especially cooperative this particular morning. He didn’t want any of the clothes we picked out for him. He was at the age where he could dress himself but still wanted us to help. I tried to dress him while Kat got herself ready to go, but he screamed, “Mommy do it!” and kicked his legs out of his pants every time I tried to get them on.

Meanwhile, Elliot had taken off his night diaper and was running around the house giggling, stark naked.

Parenting is about choosing your battles. I couldn’t fight them all. Certainly not at the same time. Since Ezra had to be ready before the bus came, and since I wasn’t in the mood to chase a three-year-old around the house, I dressed Ezra first. He continued his protests, but persistence was key.

“Mommy do it!” Ezra fussed again.

“Mommy wants me to get you dressed. She’s busy.”

“No!”

Before we actually had kids, we had the delusion that we’d never teach our kids the n-word. We wanted to be affirming parents. The only people who think that way haven’t had children, yet. The word “no” is necessary. Children have to know boundaries, and “no” keeps them safe. “No, you can’t climb the bookshelves.” “No, do not unbuckle your car seat while we’re driving.” “No, the toilet is not a fort for your plastic army men.”

The downside to the necessary use of “no” is that children learn to use it, too. There are times, I suppose, when it’s good for children to say “no.” If other children in school are encouraging them to do something wrong, they should say “no.” When it came to cooperation in the morning, though, “no” wasn’t an answer I was eager to entertain.

“If you don’t get dressed now, you won’t have time to finish your breakfast before the bus arrives.”

“I want yogurt.”

“We don’t have yogurt. We’re having cereal this morning.”

“Yogurt and fruit!”

“Listen, son, I might be a mage, but I can’t materialize yogurt out of thin air.”

“I. Want. Yogurt!”

Combating a child’s force of will with logic isn’t ever successful. Rewards promised for the future worked sometimes. “I’ll buy yogurt today if you get dressed and eat your cereal!”

Ezra relented and allowed me to get him dressed. Elijah was already eating his cereal. He could handle himself. I made Ezra a bowl.

“Feed me!”

“Feed yourself. You’re a big boy.”

If he didn’t eat, he’d be hungry before lunchtime. What else could I do?

Elliot ran by me giggling, his bare butt bouncing past.

Kat was still in the bathroom doing her hair. “Babe! A little help, please!”

No reply. She was listening to Lizzo and singing along. Yeah, I just took a DNA test, too. Turns out, I was a hundred percent losing my shit.

Kat came out of the room, looking pretty. I imagined I looked like I was just released from the loony bin. “Why isn’t Elliot dressed yet?”

I gulped. “Are you serious right now?”

Elliot ran straight to Kat and she had him dressed in less than a minute.

“Why do they cooperate for you, but not me?”

Kat shook her head. “They don’t. Not always. Think about it, Tom. You work late hours. When you come home, you play with them. You’re the fun parent. I’m the one who has to be the bad guy ninety percent of the time.”

I sighed. “Well, Ezra is dressed anyway.”

Kat looked at him and laughed. “You put him in blue pants and a black shirt.”

“So what? He’s decent. It works.”

Kat shook her head and got another shirt from his closet. She changed him again and he didn’t protest.

I pressed my lips together. I had to swallow the words I wanted to say because I knew I’d regret it. Why do I even try? The answer was obvious. I do my best because I’m a dad. That’s all I could do. I love those boys more than life. I love my wife. The frustration was real.

I was in the midst of a mission to protect the world from a rogue undead mage. Saving the world was never easy, but it was nothing compared to parenting. Being a father was the biggest challenge I’d ever faced, and it was also the most rewarding thing I’d ever done.

The hug I got from each of the boys before they went out for the bus was worth it all. The “I love you, daddys” were a salve that soothed all the stress.

I rode with Kat to drop Elliot off at his preschool. From there, we went to meet Gene at the bank. We signed all the papers, and just like that, I became a business owner. There’s nothing magical about ink on a piece of paper. Somehow, though, the right ink, scribbled under certain words, could change someone’s life in ways more profound than most spells. Magery wasn’t the only kind of magic out there. There was witchcraft, Druidry, runic magic, and probably other kinds of sorcery and divination I’d never heard of. Contract law could be as powerful, albeit through mundane rather than mystical means.

They say working for yourself is freedom. When you’re signing a note that mandates making payments in excess of ten grand every month, it’s also a kind of prison. Then again, we were making payments to Kat’s father. At his age, chances were we wouldn’t pay off the note before he died, and when he and Lois passed we would inherit the business and all his financial interests, anyway. Having a business was a kind of responsibility I’d never known. Reporting to work at certain hours and collecting my salary made me a slave to nothing but the time clock. Now, no matter what it took, no matter what kind of strange hours I’d have to work to ensure the profitability of the business, I’d have to do it. Yes, Kat would help, but this was a new level of responsibility. The upside was big. Eventually, we’d be better off financially than ever before. Provided, of course, I made the right decisions.

After we finished up at the bank, I gave Jeff a call. He was getting off a shift flipping burgers, and he jumped at the opportunity to come back as a manager.

Things were working out. Under most circumstances, I would have taken Kat out to celebrate. With all that was going on, though, it was like I’d tied an anvil to my ankles and jumped into the ocean.

CHAPTER FIVE

The insurance check would cover Jeff’s salary as we trained him to reopen AAA Tool Rental. He wanted to give his bosses two weeks’ notice, but thankfully, he worked odd hours. When he was off, if it worked with us, we planned to meet him at the store and start his training. It wouldn’t take much. He knew how to write contracts, which was ninety percent of the job. Managing other employees, hiring and firing, and opening and closing, were a few of the tasks we needed to cover. I needed to make sure he understood certain OSHA standards so he could avoid violating safety protocols. After our propane tanks exploded, I anticipated that the OSHA police would be paying us special attention.

After we signed the papers, we decided to go to the store and give the place a once-over. The exploded propane station had been replaced, but before we reopened, we needed a plan. I needed to make sure everything was in order. We had to hire a few more workers to work the yard, a new mechanic for repairs, and give the whole place a deep cleaning.

If this had happened six months ago, I would have been as excited as my boys were on Christmas. I had a million ideas I wanted to implement to make the company more profitable, things that Gene agreed were good ideas, but he didn’t want to start anything that he’d have to commit to for the long term, such as opening up a second branch, setting up an online system for reservations, getting into social media including a series of YouTube videos for do-it-yourself projects featuring the equipment we rented, and a bunch of other thrilling ideas that would probably bore the snot out of anyone who wasn’t in the rental business.

For example, every item in the fleet has a general turnover. After so many hours, it’s replaced with something new. With a full-time mechanic, we could extend the life of every item in the fleet by nearly fifty percent. That would pay for the mechanic’s salary more than twice over. Brilliant, right? When I presented the idea to Gene, I thought I heard a choir of angels singing as my accompaniment, I was so excited. Gene told me to hold on to the idea and that I could implement it once I was in charge. Little did I know he was already planning his retirement. He wasn’t trying to poop on my parade. He was encouraging me to hold my horses and wait until I could make all the improvements and implement every innovation I ever dreamed about.

Now all those old dreams were coming true. The irony was that none of it thrilled me like it had before. It felt blasé, like more work to pile up on my already overflowing plate.

We decided to stop by Java City, Jessie’s coffee shop, before going to the store. Kat and I figured we’d get a cup of coffee, and I’d use my laptop to do a little research and find out if anything had happened involving Hana that we might need to address. The door dinged as we stepped in to see a line waiting at the counter. Jessie was working the espresso machines and one of her baristas was taking orders.

Jessie looked at us over the top of her machine. “Hey guys! I’ll make you whatever you want as soon as we’re caught up.”

Kat and I sat at a table and I opened up my laptop. I had a program that ran an algorithm across hundreds of news networks scanning for anything involving cemeteries. Since only mages could see the raised corpses, none of them mentioned the real-world version of The Walking Dead. Of course, the situation hadn’t devolved that far. If it ever did, I hoped I’d meet a real-world version of Daryl to stop it.

Whatever Hana was planning, I was determined to make sure it didn’t happen. Zombies were frightening. Magically powered Nazi Zombies were about as evil as I could imagine.

I didn’t write the algorithm. Jessie, the computer whiz, set up the program. It was one of the skills she picked up over the years while she holed away in her apartment, avoiding humans and the voices they forced into her head.

Nothing came up in any of the cities that once were home to the mage academies, but there was a hit for something that matched the MO of the other graves Hana had raided.

“Ysselsteyn German War Cemetery. Dozens of graves were desecrated just last night.”

“Where is that?” Kat asked.

“In the Netherlands. What I’m reading here suggests that several Nazi soldiers were reburied there after the war.”

Kat raised an eyebrow. “Dozens of graves? This sounds like it’s a much larger-scale hit than the cemeteries you’ve investigated before.”

“This case is trickier,” I explained. “People all around the area are reporting sightings of old Nazi soldiers wearing their regalia. Hideous by appearance.”

Kat tilted her head. “I thought the corpses were invisible to non-mages.”

“I suspect Hana was using some kind of illusionary magic to cloak the bodies. Probably even the ones she raised for herself.”

“Illusionary magic? That’s a thing?”

I nodded. “It’s a base skill that any mage can perform. I can’t do anything on that scale, but Hana came from the deepest parts of the arcane wells. There’s no telling how much power she could wield. I’m guessing whatever illusionary spell she used on the other sites didn’t have enough juice to cover up as many bodies as she raised at Ysselsteyn.”

“What kinds of illusions can you do?” Kat demanded.

“Not much. I mean, I might be able to make my abdominals a little more defined than they actually are,” I admitted.

Kat laughed. “You used that when we first met, didn’t you?”

I winced. “Maybe.”

“No wonder you lost your physique after our second date!”

“It wasn’t all illusion. I was doing P90X. That ab ripper routine is killer.”

“You didn’t have a six-pack, did you?”

“I did. Underneath a thin layer of blubber.”

“Thin?” Kat teased.

“It was a thin layer. Ten years ago and three children earlier.”

“Why would having children make you fat?” she protested.

“It’s called empathy,” I informed her. “All that eating-for-two talk, and the late-night ice cream cravings. I couldn’t let you go through all that alone!”

“As if the beer and cheese puffs had nothing to do with it.”

I shook my head. “Nothing at all. I work off all those calories.”

Kat rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. So what are you going to do about this thing?”

“Looks like Jessie is caught up. We get the team together and we hit the graveyard.”

I approached the counter and Jessie stepped up and told her barista she’d help us. “What’ll it be?”

I grinned. “How about a whole slew of ghouls?”

“Another cemetery?”

I nodded. “This one’s a big enchilada. A dozen graves desecrated. Sightings of dead Nazi soldiers all over the place.”

“In Berlin?”

I shook my head. “This one is in Limburg. In the Netherlands. From what I’ve found online, hundreds of Germans, Dutch, Poles, and Russians, all who fought for the Nazis, were buried there after the war.”

Jessie took a deep breath. “I overheard some of your conversation before.”

I nodded. “So you’ve got the gist of it.”

“You seriously used illusionary magic to give yourself a six-pack?”

“What can I say? I was desperate to impress a girl who was out of my league.”

Jessie laughed. “You’re such a doof. Let’s go get Hans.”

“What about the shop?” Kat asked.

“Amy can run things without me. That’s the key to owning a business, you know. Good people you can trust.”

CHAPTER SIX

Hans didn’t have a job. He didn’t need one. The Wagners always had a lot of money, although I don’t know where it came from. As I understood it, they’d had money going back generations, since before the Arcane Wars.

My parents were well off. They always lived in upper-middle-class suburbs. I grew up in Kirkwood, about half an hour out of the city, depending on traffic. My parents still lived there. The Gregory mages did fine but never had Wagner money.

The Wagners lived in an old-style mansion in Clayton. Technically, it was outside St. Louis, on the west side of Forest Park. They had one of those large red brick and marble column mansions built around the time of the World’s Fair. I don’t believe the house was in the family all that time—so far as I knew, they’d moved in there during the last twenty years or so, when they relocated after the incident with Timothy, a.k.a. Caedes. They’d always lived in gated communities and mansions. They were very private, and despite having money, they didn’t often allow strangers in their homes. They’d never had butlers, chefs, or maids.

Now that Hans was the man of the house in his early twenties, living with his aging grandmother, things changed. Hans still didn’t have a butler or a maid. My mother helped with the cleaning duties. Jessie and I both suggested he hire an in-home nurse to help with his grandmother, but he was understandably reluctant. Given Rose’s status as an empath, bringing strangers into the home was problematic. The closer an empath was to other people, the louder the person’s thoughts resonated in her mind. Rose already struggled with the flow of voices in her head. When she took herself back in time in her mind, like many who suffer from dementia do, it allowed her to quiet the voices but it didn’t actually turn off her abilities. Hans wasn’t careful about who he allowed in his house just for her sake. There was no telling what she might do if she picked up on a thought or a feeling that unsettled her. The worst part was that Rose probably wouldn’t realize what she was doing.

At the Wagner estate, Jessie stayed in the car to avoid the whole empath feedback loop and the raging headache that accompanied it.

I rang the doorbell and the notes of one of J.S. Bach’s symphonies sounded from within. The Wagners were German, not English, and the Westminster Chimes was out of the question.

Hans opened the door, his face blank and flush with color. “You’re too late.”

I tilted my head. “Too late for what?”

“My mother came.”

I gulped. “She did?”

Hans nodded. “I thought she was here for me. I tried to hit her with a gate. I was going to send her to the middle of the ocean. I knew it wouldn’t work, but it was all I could do. She gated right back two seconds later. Then, she took my grandmother.”

I took a deep breath and crossed my arms. “An empath mage could be an asset for her. She could locate mages anywhere she traveled, recruit those willing to join her cause.”

Hans nodded. “She was in her body. She wasn’t the ethereal being we met before. She said something about how she was tethered to the world now.”

I pressed my fingers to my lips. “That makes sense. As an ethereal being, any rift into the ethereal realm could suck her back in. Since dark magic creates those rifts, if she used too much power as an ethereal, she’d set up her own demise. In a body, she’ll still create rifts, but they won’t pull her back. Like Caedes before, she’ll be able to prevent the creatures who emerge from that realm from leaving. She can use them, just like your father did.”

Hans grunted. “That man was never my father.”

I nodded. “You know what I mean. Before she came here, Hana hit a cemetery in the Netherlands, Ysselsteyn. It looks like her biggest attack yet.”

“I should have expected that,” Hans mused. “A lot of my ancestors are buried there.”

“Jessie and Kat are in the van. If you’re ready, we can go.”

“You took the van, not the truck?”

“I was out with Kat. Signing those papers. Kat doesn’t like riding in my truck,” I explained.

“Is it the dust on the dashboard or the Burger King wrappers on the floor that turns her off?”

I winced. “It might be the gym bag full of sweaty unwashed clothes in the back.”

Hans shook his head. “You’ve been going to the gym?”

“Every day! Since I’ve been off work, I’m trying to get into shape.”

Hans cocked his head. “Really? Didn’t notice.”

“What do you mean? You haven’t seen me with my shirt off. I have a little line of definition right at my obliques.”

I started to raise my shirt to show him, but Hans raised his hand. “I’ll take your word for it.”

We went to the van and got Jessie. Kat said she’d check out the store and assess how much work might need to be done before we could reopen, and she’d be back home before the bus dropped off the boys.

Hans looked up the cemetery on his phone. He needed a precise visual, usually a satellite image, so he could lock his portal on the right location.

Hans made his gate, and we landed on foot to the sound of gunfire.

I quickly raised an arcane barrier. A dozen soldiers were ducked behind graves shooting at the animated Nazi corpses. The bullets didn’t do a thing. You can’t kill something already dead.

“Stay here. These people need help.”

Jessie grabbed my arm. “They’re confused. They’ll shoot you if you step out of there. For all they know, you’re responsible for this.”

I nodded. “Then I’d better drop the dead before I become one of them.”

“I could portal them out of here,” Hans offered.

I shook my head. “They’ve seen enough weird to scar them forever. They have to see me do this. They have to know that there are those who can fight this evil they’ve seen, the evil that’s coming.”

“Can you keep cover under the other side of your barrier?” Hans asked.

I nodded. “I think so. Hopefully, once I drop one, they’ll cease fire.”

I jumped through my barrier. With Wand extended in my right hand, I shot an arcane missile and blasted one of the corpses. There were too many to count.

I swung my wand in an arc and released half a scattershot. Each blast was twice as powerful that way than with a normal full circle. The dead were dropping like dead people were supposed to do, if they hadn’t been resurrected by necromancy.

I turned to see several Dutchmen with guns pointed at me. I lowered my wand.

They shouted something to me in Dutch.

“English, please?” I called.

One of the men approached. From the uniform, I presumed they represented law enforcement rather than military.

“You are American?” one of the men asked.

I nodded. “I’m here to stop the person who did this. Do you know anything?”

The man shook his head. “I only know the horror that has followed.”

“Do you have the names of the graves she desecrated?”

“I can get them. They are not men worth mourning. Nazi soldiers, the lot of them.”

I sighed. “That’s what I feared. I’m trying to stop them.”

“Why should we believe you?”

“Well, you weren’t making any headway here,” I pointed out. “The truth is, this was barely the tip of the iceberg that’s coming. The men who were raised here were powerful. The horrors that befell the world before, when they walked the earth, are nothing compared to what might happen if they aren’t stopped.”

“Look around. You can get the names from the stones.”

“There’s too much burned ground all around. I can’t sort out which graves belonged to the bodies that were taken and the ones that I just eliminated.”

“We don’t have that information, either. We didn’t know that some of the bodies were missing.”

“All right. Well, if you have a list of all the desecrated graves, I can do the research.”

The man tilted his head. “You were serious, before? Whoever did this intends to revive the Second World War?”

“Call it World War Two, Two.” I replied.

The man huffed. “That is ridiculous. You should come up with a better name.”

“Just get me the names. Hopefully, there won’t be another war and we won’t have to worry about coming up with a better name for it.”

The man narrowed his eyes. “Give us a moment to discuss the matter.”

I walked back to Jessie and Hans and dispelled my arcane barrier. Without guns pointed in our direction, there was no need for it. The officer I spoke to conversed with the rest of his group for a few minutes before he pulled a phone from his pocket. I wasn’t aware that information about grave desecrations required any authorization. It should have been public knowledge. Then again, we weren’t in America. I didn’t know squat about the laws in the Netherlands. I suspected, technically, everywhere we went overseas by way of gate was illegal. We didn’t carry passports with us. I didn’t know whether Hans or Jessie had passports. Mine was expired. If we were going to make a habit of intercontinental gate travel, it was probably something we needed to resolve. If the cops started getting too anal about identification, Hans would have to gate us out of there, lickety-split.

As the police officer hung up his phone, I felt a tingle, a surge of arcane power. I looked around and didn’t see anything.

Hans was looking straight up. “Oh shit.”

I followed his eyes in time to see a large gate fall over us.

The next thing I knew, we were standing in a windowless office of some kind. The walls were lined with bookshelves and polished mahogany panels. The furniture matched the panels: a desk with a chair behind it, three chairs arranged in a semi-circle in front of the desk, and a couch, all upholstered with red velvet cushions.

“Where the hell are we?” Jessie asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. The better question is who brought us here.”

Hans extended his hand. “This place is warded. I can’t cast a gate.”

Jessie sighed. “I can’t sense anyone’s thoughts, either.”

A blue portal formed between the desk and the chair behind it, and a man in a three-piece suit, a red tie, and a long beard appeared with a wand in hand.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

“Please have a seat. We have matters to discuss.”

I glanced at Hans, then Jessie. We shrugged and sat on our chairs.

“I apologize for bringing you here like this. My name is Ichabod Chambers.”

That got my attention. “Did you say Chambers? That’s my mother’s maiden name.”

Ichabod nodded. “Indeed, it is. I know you by reputation. And, based on that Ancestry DNA test I sent in a couple years ago. I believe your grandfather and I were cousins.”

“My grandfather? You don’t look that old.”

“Arcane magic is good for one’s complexion. If you know how to use it.”

“I know how to use it.” I protested.

“You think you know how to use it, my boy.”

“Where are we?” Jessie asked. “And if this place is warded, how did you gate inside?”

Ichabod unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a sigil tattooed across his chest. It was a symbol I’d never seen before. “Those bearing the insignia are the only ones who can cast magic within the chambers.”

I snickered. “Funny. Your name is Chambers, and you called this place chambers.”

Ichabod cocked his head. “Yes. Hilarious.”

I moved on. “Given your accent, I take it you are from England somewhere?”

Ichabod nodded. “We’re in the arcane chambers beneath what used to be London’s Mage Academy. “

“I thought the academies all closed after the World Wars.”

“They did. At least, all but ours. We closed our doors above. Those buildings are now mostly apartments and storefronts. A group of us intent on preserving our principles and methods moved the academy underground.”

“How big is this place?” I asked.

“Roughly twenty square kilometers in area.”

I widened my eyes. “Twenty square kilometers? These aren’t chambers, it’s a freaking city!”

Ichabod laughed. “Yes. I suppose it is a freaking city. Nonetheless, it’s come to my attention that you might know something about the necromancer who has been raising our former enemies.”

“It’s my mother.” Hans declared.

Ichabod narrowed his eyes. “Who are you, and who is your mother?”

“My name is Hans Wagner. I’m the son of Timothy Wagner and Hana Sato.”

Ichabod’s jaw dropped. He clenched his hand on his wand. “Bollocks! What are your intentions, boy?”

I stood. “Hans is with me. He’s not the enemy. The old families and their loyalties aren’t what they were seventy years ago.”

Ichabod loosened his grip on his wand. “We shall see about that. Blood runs thick.”

“What does ‘bollocks’ mean anyway?” Jessie interrupted.

Ichabod smirked. “I suppose the American equivalent would be ‘balls.’”

Jessie bit the inside of her cheek. “Interesting.”

“The necromancer is my mother,” Hans explained. “She was raised from the dead herself by my father, who she later killed, absorbing his spirit. I intend to help stop her.”

Ichabod cleared his throat. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment. I must speak to my colleagues.”

“Your colleagues?” I asked.

“So I know what I should do with you three.”

I huffed. “What are we? Prisoners?”

“Not exactly. But for all intents and purposes, yes. You cannot leave this place until I’ve discussed the situation with my fellow elders.”

“Discussed what with them?”

“Whether we can admit you three to our order, or if you should be punished.”

“Punished? For doing what?”

“Practicing magery on our continent without authorization.”

“How was I supposed to know I needed authorization?” I reasoned. “I didn’t even know this place existed!”

Ichabod nodded. “Which is why I must discuss the matter with my colleagues.”

Ichabod formed a portal above his head and dropped it over him. He disappeared.

I took a deep breath. “Sorry. I had no clue this was going to happen.”

Jessie smirked. “I only have one thing to say about this situation.”

“What’s that?”

Jessie stomped her foot. “Balls!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

There weren’t any doors in Ichabod’s room. He was clearly a gate mage. He didn’t need doors. I supposed they were a vulnerability. Not like there was anything in the office that anyone would want to steal unless they had a thing for books. Then again, some books could be incredibly valuable. If this place really was what was left of the London Mage Academy, chances were that these books included spells and information I’d never known. When they closed the academy in St. Louis, the local mages split up all the assets. The idea was that if mages had to share knowledge for everybody to have full knowledge, they’d have no choice but to stick together and resolve their issues. The idea failed. The families hoarded knowledge. My own father refused to give the books on gate magery to Gerhard Wagner, which was one reason Hans had slipped into dark magic for a season. Before we saved him.

“Might as well do a little light reading.” I pulled a book entitled Arcane Theory from the shelves. Jessie and Hans surveyed the shelves. Since Ichabod was a gate mage, he had a healthy collection of books that spoke to Hans’ specialization. He grabbed as many books as he could carry and dropped them on Ichabod’s desk.

Jessie huffed. “Nothing here on empaths that I can find. Go figure.”

“It’s understandable,” I pointed out. “It’s the rarest specialization.”

Jessie shook her head. “Still, you’d think he’d have at least one volume. Maybe a pamphlet.”

“This is one man’s study. If this place really is twenty square kilometers, this room barely scratches the surface of the wealth of knowledge in this place.”

Jessie glanced at the book I picked up. “Arcane Theory? Seriously?”

I flipped to the table of contents. “The first half of the book is dedicated to a variety of theories about the origins of arcane power. The rest deals with the properties of arcane magic itself. This is foundational stuff. If we understood the power we wielded better, we might be able to craft our own spells.”

A blue portal appeared in the room. I quickly shoved the book back on the shelf as Ichabod landed accompanied by a redheaded woman roughly my age.

Ichabod laughed. “You’re welcome to read. You don’t have to pretend not to look. This knowledge belongs to all of us.”

I cleared my throat. “Right. So what’s the verdict?”

“This is Mary. She’s an empath.”

“Sweet!” Jessie exclaimed. “Me, too!”

Mary smiled and nodded at Jessie. “I know.”

Jessie chuckled. “Right. You knew what I was thinking before I said it. I know how that goes.”

“Mr. Gregory here is accepted without question. Burgher and Wagner are both German names.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

Ichabod raised his hand to stop me. “I understand that. However, before we can grant them acceptance, we must ask a series of questions. Mary will read their thoughts. If all checks out, they can be admitted as well.”

“Accepted?” I interjected. “Admitted? I don’t remember applying to join anything.”

“We are the Entente mages. Our primary purpose is to prevent the resurrection of the Axis Sorcerers. In the case of Hana Sato, it appears that the term resurrection is literal. If you’re intending to fight against Sato and the new Axis, you should join us. We know all about you, Thomas. When Timothy Wagner emerged two decades ago, we were pondering a move. We debated the threat. Some of us voted against action. You did what we couldn’t. With half the knowledge you could have had if you’d been properly educated in your powers, you defeated the greatest threat to our people since the first Axis.”

“Timothy’s goal all along was to resurrect Hana,” I stated. “I put him in that arcane prison and buried him. I allowed him to spend all those years diving deeper into the darker wells.”

Ichabod rested his hand on my shoulder. “A mistake you wouldn’t have made had we acted. It’s an error you’d have avoided if only you were educated in our academy.”

“I still acted alone,” I insisted. “I didn’t take the counsel of the other mages into account.”

Ichabod tilted his head. “Your humility is a virtue, son. The truth is that we are every bit as responsible for your error as you were. We don’t want to make that mistake twice. We would like you to join us and, if all checks out with your friends, we’d like to admit them as well.”

“Are you talking about sending us to your school?” Jessie asked.

“I’m proposing an assessment of your knowledge and abilities. Some of it by written examination, other parts practical. We can design a custom curriculum for each of you that accounts for your individual deficiencies.”

I took a deep breath. “I have a family and a business. I don’t know that going back to school on top of everything else is in the cards.”

“I don’t know,” Jessie put in. “It sounds kind of nice. I have a business as well. But I’ve never had anyone who could teach me a thing about my abilities.”

I snorted. “I helped you figure out how to use your wand. You’ve made progress.”

“Progress, yes,” Jessie acknowledged. “But it’s still by trial and error. If these people can teach us a few things, why not?”

Ichabod nodded. “You should listen to her, Thomas. This doesn’t have to get in the way of your family or other responsibilities. We can help track down Hana Sato and the Axis sorcerers she’s raising from the dead. We will do what we can, but if you want to be a part of this fight, a little time invested in your education could end what might be a decade or more of war before it even starts.”

“If you all have all these resources, why do you need me at all?”

Ichabod paced around his office. “We have more knowledge than you could dream to discover in a lifetime of experimentation with your abilities. More than you could learn in whatever books you might own. We’ve trained to refine our abilities, but there are very few of us who have any real experience with battlemagery in a combat scenario. With our knowledge, and your experience, we’d be more formidable than either of us could be working alone.”

“You could work with our schedule?” I confirmed.

Ichabod shrugged. “You’ll find that despite the rigors of our education, we’re quite flexible. In truth, son, I envy you.”

I hadn’t expected that. “You do?”

“You have the semblance of a normal life. That’s not in the cards for us. I don’t want to take that from you, but it’s clear you’re intent on seeing this fight through to the end. You might not be able to maintain all your responsibilities, not to mention protect your family, with or without our help. With our help, your chances are better than without it.”

I took a deep breath. “Ask your questions. If Hans and Jessie check out, we’ll consider it.”

Ichabod smiled widely. “Before you make up your mind, presuming the interview is a success, allow me to give you a tour of our little world. Once you see the full scope of our operation, I find it hard to believe you could turn us down.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ichabod asked the questions, and Mary took notes on a legal pad the whole time as Hans and Jessie answered. It was a little silly, I thought, that they didn’t put me through the same rigamarole. I had the right last name and the right lineage. Did these people really think that mattered? People make their own choices. Neither Jessie nor Timothy was raised with Axis sympathies. I suspected the Entente mages’ caution with them had more to do with the fact that Hans was Timothy’s and Hana’s son and that Jessie was an empath. Being an empath didn’t mean Jessie wasn’t trustworthy, but it did mean that if she got the sigil, she’d know pretty much anything and everything that went on in the Entente chambers.

Some of Ichabod’s questions made sense. Had either of them ever committed a crime? If illegal immigration via magical portal counted, of course they had. Jessie overshared, probably because she knew an empath would detect the slightest untruth in any statement. She admitted to exceeding the speed limit on a regular basis and occasionally adding a few questionable deductions to her tax returns. Hans said he once stole a pack of gum at the supermarket. When he was seven. You’d think he’d lead with the fact that he once dropped a freaking bomb through a portal over a propane tank at my rental store, but that little indiscretion must’ve skipped his mind.

Some of the questions were downright absurd, but not unexpected given the situation.

“Do either of you have any ties to the Nazi Party?”

Both Hans and Jessie said no. Duh.

“What do you think about Hitler?”

“He was a dick.” Hans offered.

Jessie readily agreed.

Everyone was on the same page there.

“Have you ever tapped into dark magic?”

Great, I thought. This isn’t going to go well.

“I did,” Hans admitted. “I was misled. My grandmother, an empath, has dementia. She put a few thoughts in my head.”

“He didn’t have any guidance,” I interjected. “What do you expect would happen? His family didn’t know anything about gate magery.”

“This isn’t your interview, Thomas.”

I grunted. “Right.”

“I left it behind,” Hans went on. “When I realized what happened, when Tom and Jessie told me the truth about my parents. My grandfather sacrificed himself to purify me.”

Ichabod looked at Mary. She nodded, confirming the veracity of Hans’ words.

My stomach was in knots. “The truth is that he isn’t interested in dark magic. He has no desire to touch it again.”

Ichabod waved his hand through the air. “Mary will be the judge of that. Many of us have been tempted by the dark arts, Thomas. Such happens in times of war. Many of our finest battlemages during the Arcane Wars were lured into darkness. When they came back from it, they were more resolved than ever to fight against it. His experience with dark power need not be a liability. It may be an asset.”

Mary nodded. “It is not a deal breaker. He genuinely despises sorcery. Most of us do, largely for academic reasons. He resists the dark magic because it’s personal. It destroyed both of his parents. It was why his grandfather lost his life.”

Jessie shook her head. “I’m not interested in sorcery, either.”

Mary nodded. “I know. We empaths, we feel what others feel. You’ve not only sensed dark magic, but you’ve felt what a sorcerer feels.”

Jessie nodded. “It’s terrifying.”

Mary smiled widely. “All is well, Ichabod. I offer my recommendation for all three of them.”

“All three?” I asked. “I thought I already had a recommendation.”

Mary nodded. “I’ve been listening to your thoughts too, Mr. Gregory. Your faith in your friends is as much a part of my recommendations as the answers to our questions.”

Ichabod extended his hand to me, and I shook it. He shook Hans’ and Jessie’s hands as well. “With Mary’s recommendation comes mine. Welcome to the Entente mages.”

I smiled. “So, what’s next? Do we get fancy tattoos like yours?”

“You get that when you graduate your curriculum. Until then, there are designated unwarded areas where you can practice your skills. There’s a place I’ll show you where Hans can form gates. It’s how you’ll come and go.”

“Are those tattoos really secure?” I asked. “What if someone got a good look at one, maybe if a sorcerer killed one of you? Couldn’t they visit the closest tattoo parlor and march in here wands blazing and light everything up?”

Ichabod laughed. “There’s more to these sigils than ink and needles. It’s one of our closest guarded secrets. I don’t even know how it is done.”

I glanced at Mary. “I bet she does.”

Mary shook her head. “The secret resides with three elders who remain in another area of the chambers warded against even those of us who bear the sigil. It is there where you might go to receive your sigil upon the completion of your curriculum.”

Ichabod rested his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “How about that tour?”

CHAPTER NINE

Ichabod formed a portal in the middle of his study. We all stepped through it and found ourselves on a cobblestone road where blue lights illuminated by arcane energy cast a hue on everything. The lights must have been the product of some super-duper domestic magery. I wasn’t sure it was something my mother knew how to do, but these mages had the largest repository of ancient knowledge on earth. They knew things we American mages didn’t.

The buildings were made of stone, and none were more than two stories tall.

The cobblestone roads were narrow, but several small two-person automobiles, powered by arcane magic, navigated the streets. Rather than the roar of engines, they emitted a high-pitched buzz, almost like the ringing in my ears that resonated for a couple of days after my first MxPx concert back in 2001.

If the entire twenty square kilometers was like what I saw in front of my face, the whole place was more like a giant labyrinth than a city.

Ichabod placed his fingers between his lips and whistled, and a vehicle buzzed our way and stopped in front of us. It was short and hovered over the ground without wheels. Four doors popped open.

“Thank you, Mary. You’re dismissed.”

Mary nodded at Ichabod and walked across the street, where she opened a door and stepped into one of the buildings.

“That’s her home. I could have started this tour anywhere in the city. I figured I’d give Mary a short walk home. Get in the car.”

Ichabod sat in the driver’s seat and I took the passenger seat. Jessie and Hans sat in the back. The seats were soft like velvet.

“No seatbelts?” I asked. “I feel naked without a seatbelt.”

Ichabod chuckled. “No need. These vehicles won’t collide. Accidents don’t happen. Everything is powered by arcane magic.”

“How do you harness all this power?”

“We have a lot of mages here. As I’m sure you surmised, most of this is the work of domestic mages. They work in shifts, channeling their power into mechanisms that keep our world running.”

“You’ve been hiding here and running this city for decades like this?”

“Not exactly like this. The Entente chambers are a work in progress. We’re always making improvements. Domestic mages maintain things. Gate mages, like myself, bring in resources from the world above. Battlemages train for a war that we hope they’ll never have to fight.”

“And empaths like me?” Jessie prompted.

“Until you arrived, Mary was the only one among us. Empathic magery doesn’t run in the families that formed the Entente alliance.”

“What does she do when she’s not reading minds?”

Ichabod shrugged. “Her house is warded to silence her abilities. She does whatever she wants. Reads a lot of books, mostly. A lot of quirky fantasies by some guy with a Greek first name.”

I laughed. “Well, whatever passes the time, I suppose.”

Ichabod’s car whizzed through the streets and he pointed out a few locations of note, like a place where they kept objects useful for spells. So far as I knew, mages didn’t perform spells using herbs and animal parts. That was the purview of witches. He said that a few mages dabbled in the craft, though. They learned all manner of mystic arts that might come in useful in the event of another war.

There were places for recreation, bars and pubs, a bowling alley, and even a roller-skating rink. There were larger buildings for training called gymnasiums, but Ichabod said they didn’t have basketball courts or weight machines. They were training grounds for different classes of mages. I wasn’t sure what the gymnasiums were like. I suppose battlemages could practice by firing at targets. Gate mages could practice moving objects and themselves around a room before they went big time and attempted long-distance travel. I suspected domestic mages trained in a larger version of what used to be my bachelor pad before I met Kat. Pizza boxes, beer cans, and toilets that hadn’t been scrubbed in months. Or, while every other gymnasium probably required a clean-up crew after training sessions, to train domestic mages they’d let a few children loose on the place. If they were like my boys, they could take someplace spic and span and turn it into a disaster zone in a matter of minutes. Plenty of practice for budding domestic mages.

Ichabod took us past the academy. Technically, it was academies. There was a school for children where they learned all the things normal kids did. Those who manifested were transferred to another school where they continued a rudimentary education supplemented by explorations in the arcane arts. Then there were secondary schools: one for impotens—those who never manifested—and a separate school for those who’d manifested but hadn’t specialized. Finally, there was a school for each specialization.

Except for empaths.

“Where did Mary go when she specialized?” Jessie asked.

Ichabod scratched the back of his head. “She received private tutoring.”

“From who?” I asked. “If there were no other empaths, how did they tutor her?”

“She might be the only empath here now. She’s not the only one who has ever been. She studied with one of our elders, the late Clementine Churchill.”

“Forgive my lack of knowledge, here. But was she related to the former prime minister?” I ventured.

Ichabod laughed. “She was his wife. She was also a mage. While your President Eisenhower negotiated the surrender of the Germans in 1945, Clementine negotiated the surrender of the Axis mages. It happened on the same day, May 7th. While Clementine didn’t live among us, she maintained an influential role in our community until she died the same year as her husband in 1965.”

“She was an empath?” Jessie asked.

Ichabod nodded. “It was why she was in charge of negotiations.”

“If we agree to join you all, I presume that Mary will train me like Clementine trained her?” Jessie looked hopeful.

“It means her knowledge will be preserved. Mary and I don’t have many years left.”

I cocked my head. “I thought you extended your lives. You said some kind of arcane spell made it possible.”

Ichabod laughed. “No one can live forever, son. The magic I spoke of preserves our health and appearance, but it does not extend our lives indefinitely. Eventually, the magic will wear off and our bodies will rapidly catch up to our years.”

“Can’t you just do the magic again and keep living?”

“It can only be done once. The arcane power that sustains us draws on the soul. If we were to do it a second time it would consume the rest of our souls. Darkness would fill the void.”

“You’d become soulless sorcerers?”

Ichabod nodded. “We’d be worse than Caedes. As warped as Hana Sato. Needless to say, we’d rather die than become everything we stand against.”

“How much time do you have?” I asked.

“It’s hard to say. The magic sustaining us could wear off tomorrow or ten years from now.”

Jessie shifted in her seat. “We have to do this, Tommy. She might be my only chance to really learn about my abilities.”

I took a deep breath. “You are your own person, Jessie. I’d prefer we all make the same decision.”

Hans tilted his head. “You’re considering turning all this down?”

I shook my head. “I’m not going to make a choice like this without talking to my family.”

Ichabod pulled over his car. “I can respect that, Thomas. Let me show the three of you the place where you can come and go. If you agree to join us, come back in twenty-four hours.”

“What if we need more time than that?”

“The invitation is open,” Ichabod allowed. “But Hana’s army grows stronger by the day. Training the three of you will take more time than we probably have as it is. Given what’s at stake, twenty-four hours to make your choice is the most any of us can afford.”

CHAPTER TEN

Ichabod took us to a room of reinforced steel. I wasn’t entirely sure it was within the Entente chambers. There were cameras in the room, and a single glowing orb on a pedestal in the middle of the floor.

“How do I find this place?” Hans asked.

“Touch the orb. It’s a beacon. You’ll sense it after you leave. You should be able to use it to target your portal.”

The glowing ball brightened when Hans touched it.

“Got it.”

Ichabod nodded. “I hope to see all three of you in twenty-four hours or less.”

I pointed at the camera. “I presume you’ll see us when we show?”

“I will. And I’ll be here in a jiffy! We’ll be prepared for your assessments.”

I smiled. “Thank you for the tour. You’ve given us a lot to consider.”

Hans made a gate and we returned to my house in St. Louis. It was early evening, and Kat was pulling a store-bought pizza from the oven. Cheese, because for some odd reason, children despise toppings.

The boys ran to me for hugs. I rated better than cheese pizza for about ten seconds, then they were back at the table.

Kat ran the cutter over the pizza. “Patience, boys. It’s still too hot to eat.”

“What did you make for the grown-ups?” I asked.

Kat stepped over and kissed me on the cheek. “What? You think you’re entitled to eat or something?”

I grinned. “Yeah, sort of. But I can order something in if you didn’t make anything for us.”

Kat rolled her eyes. “The supreme pizza takes a few more minutes than the plain. It will be right up. There should be enough for all of us if you’d like to join us, Hans.”

“I’d love that. Thank you!”

Jessie didn’t need an invite. She paid her share of the groceries, and it was assumed she’d join us for meals.

Once our pizza was ready, Kat cut it up and we each grabbed a plate and a slice.

I knew Jessie and Hans were ready to accept Ichabod’s offer. Apart from the fact that I was already drowning in an ocean of responsibility, something about it all didn’t sit right with me. It wasn’t only that it sounded too good to be true. A part of me resented the fact that these mages had a flourishing community and school and kept it to themselves all these years. American mages played a pivotal role in the Arcane Wars. The Axis wouldn’t have won without us. We basically saved their asses and now they were sitting on the world’s greatest repository of arcane knowledge in the world and never thought about sharing until another threat emerged that they weren’t sure they could defeat without us.

Why did they need us?

Ichabod said it was because we had experience. Given what I’d seen in their city, I doubted my experience was much compared to the full force of their population and all their superior knowledge and training.

Then again, I was raised by a battlemage. I had resources galore to study and perfect my skill. Without the academy, I had plenty I could learn on my own. Hans had a handful of books, nothing compared to what they had in London. Jessie had even less.

There’s nothing like pizza for discussing a potentially life-altering opportunity.

Kat listened to everything I had to say while Hans and Jessie interjected a few details here or there that I neglected to mention.

The boys weren’t paying much attention while they stuffed their faces. I think Elijah had four pieces. At nine, that boy was eating like a horse. I didn’t know how his little stomach held so much food. He was a bottomless pit. Ezra and Elliot barely made it through one piece each, and, of course, they left the crust behind.

Kat took a sip of water to clear her throat. “What are the pros and cons?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure we know all the pros and cons. What we can say is that they could definitely teach us a few things.”

“More than a few things,” Jessie added.

“The downside is that I don’t know how I’m going to fit it in my schedule. Training is going to take time and I’m not sure the advantages it gives us will make up for the strength Hana gains while we’re hitting the books.”

Kat narrowed her eyes. “I know you, Tom. There’s more to your reluctance here than that.”

She was right. “I’m not sure I get it,” I admitted. “These mages hide away in these underground chambers studying, building arcane-powered automobiles, and who knows what else. Now, Hana Sato is raising Axis mages and suddenly they want our help. There are thousands of mages who live in that place. I’m not sure why they need us unless they aren’t everything they claim.”

Kat nodded. “Then it’s clear what you need to do.”

“It is?”

Jessie chuckled. “Kat has a point. The only way we can get answers to those questions is to spend more time with them.”

I snorted. “Time is the one thing we might not have.”

“We have more time than you do,” Hans said. “You can come and work on whatever curriculum they have for you when you can fit it into your schedule.”

Kat nodded. “Right now, you don’t know where Hana is. You don’t know for sure how large of an army she’s assembled.”

Jessie reached over and placed her hand on mine. “We don’t even know where Hana is going to attack or when.”

I cracked my knuckles. “If that’s your choice, I can’t stop you two from going.”

Hans shook his head. “We won’t go without you.”

I rested my elbows on the table and my chin in my palms. “I can’t keep you from this, either. Especially you, Jessie. This might be your only chance.”

Jessie shrugged. “Then don’t! Let’s go back!”

I shook my head. “He gave us twenty-four hours.”

“I checked out the store after you left,” Kat reported. “It’s not in terrible shape. You’ll know more about what needs to be done. Jeff said he’d meet us there in the morning.”

“All right,” I conceded. “We’ll meet there tomorrow. We’ll come up with an action plan to get the shop up to snuff and hire new employees. I’ll go over a few things Jeff needs to know and fill in the gaps later.”

Jessie nodded. “I should probably take care of a few things at my shop as well.”

Hans pressed his lips together. “My grandmother is still out there somewhere. No disrespect to your lives and your businesses, or whatever, but shouldn’t we start looking for her?”

Jessi sighed. “I’ll check again, but she wasn’t anywhere near the last I looked.”

“Please look one more time.”

Jessie pressed her wand to her temple. The tip glowed blue as she closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Hans. She’s still nowhere near.”

I pinched my chin. “Do you think you’d be able to sense these undead Axis mages she’s raising if they got near?”

Jessie considered. “I don’t really know. They’re mages. They’re in bodies. They’re also animated by dark power. When I sense other mages, it’s their connection to the wells that I detect. Hans, when you were corrupted, you were harder to sense but you still had a connection to good arcane power. That’s why I knew where you were. The darker Caedes got, the more powerful he became, the less I sensed him.”

I narrowed my eyes. “But Rose is an empath, and she was able to send messages to Caedes. Even if she wasn’t in the right frame of mind. I don’t believe she was touching dark power.”

“She wasn’t,” Hans confirmed.

Jessie grunted. “That’s my point. I don’t know what I’m capable of. I need to learn whatever Mary can teach me. Hans, this might be the only way we can find your mother and your grandmother.”

The boys were done eating, and from the sound of it, Elijah was already parked in front of the television watching one of his many favorite talentless YouTubers.

The other boys were pretending the floor was lava. I leaned back in my chair and peered around the corner to see them jumping between throw pillows scattered on the floor.

I chuckled. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Kat grinned. “They’re just pillows, Tom. We can’t have our boys burning their little toes on lava now, can we?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hans didn’t want to go home. The whole place reminded him of his grandparents. His grandfather was dead, having sacrificed his life to save Hans from the darkness. His grandmother was missing, abducted by Hana.

I wished I could have introduced him to the Hana Sato I used to know. The spunky girl who always had something nice to say. She was one of those people who lit up a room. That was before she was forcibly raised by necromancy and her spirit was warped by the darkness.

After Hans dropped off Jessie at her coffee shop courtesy of gate travel, he met up with us at AAA Tool Rental.

I didn’t expect him to show up, but he was welcome.

“Hans! What are you doing here?”

Hans shrugged. “I’m responsible for what happened here. I should help you get the business back on its feet.”

“I’m not sure what you can do. We’re not putting the propane station back in. With all the wood pellet grills, it isn’t as lucrative as it used to be. Besides, the insurance company will probably hike our rates if we put the tanks back on the property again.”

“You need help,” he persisted. “I could use a job. Part-time, of course. I’d need flexible hours to accommodate our training and saving the world.”

“Hans, you have plenty of money. You don’t need a job.”

“That’s right. I don’t need the money. Pay me minimum wage. That’s not what this is about. Consider the rest of what I’d earn if I made a fair wage payment for the damages.”

“We have insurance for that. It’s fine, Hans.”

Hans placed his hand on my shoulder. “It’s not. I’m not saying I want to work for you forever. I might hate it.”

I chuckled. “You probably will. Especially when you have to clean the sewer snakes or pull half a cat’s worth of fur out of the bottom of a carpet shampooer.”

Hans winced. “I wonder if there’s a way to gate away the nasty.”

I shrugged. “Arcane magic won’t burn it off. I once blasted a sewer snake with a beam of arcane power for a good five minutes. It made it worse.”

Hans raised an eyebrow. “How can you make a poop snake smell worse?”

I laughed. “In the biz, we call them turd chasers. Not to customers, though. Sewer snakes or sewer augers. Gotta keep it professional with the customers.”

“They still stink. I can’t imagine how you could make it worse.”

“To answer your question, yes, you can make a turd chaser smell worse. You cook it. Imagine, roasted sewage. I had to throw out the entire cable and replace it.”

Kat was behind the counter going through a stack of mail that accumulated while we were closed. “You really know how to sell the job, honey.”

I laughed. “I’m not trying to sell it. Hans is the one who volunteered to do it.”

“I think it would be nice. We’ll still need to hire a few full-timers, but someone who can come in when needed to pick up the slack would be helpful.”

I nodded. “When needed and when available. We still don’t know how much this academy, not to mention potential war, might take us away.”

The loud rumble of a truck without a muffler approached. It sounded like a dying brontosaurus. Well, like what I imagined the death rattle of a multi-ton long-necked dinosaur might sound like.

It was Jeff. He came in through the front door, clean-shaven with a fresh haircut, and even had his flannel button-up tucked into his jeans.

“Jeff. You’re looking dapper.”

“Well, you know, dress for success. I really appreciate this opportunity, Tom.”

I gestured toward Hans. “This is Hans. Hans, this is Jeff. Hans is a friend of the family. He has other commitments, but he’s agreed to help out around the shop.”

“Is he like you? You know, spells and whatnot?”

“And whatnot,” I agreed.

Jeff shook his head. “I’d always heard the rumblings. You know, about how you were some kind of hero or some shit. Didn’t believe it until that day you saved us from the explosion.”

I shrugged. “It was nothing.”

“Bullshit it was nothing. It was badass, man!”

Kat rolled her eyes. “My husband. The badass. You might want to watch that language around the customers, though.”

“Kat’s the real badass,” I told Jeff and Hans. “I might be able to hold my own against evil sorcerers, but she can manage three kids. That’s badass.”

Jeff chuckled. “I wouldn’t know. Don’t have any kids. That I know about, at least. I’ve got a real nice girl, though. It’s new, but there’s potential there.”

“Well, I’m happy for you,” I offered. “Looks like your life is all coming together at once.”

“Sure is! I couldn’t believe it when you called. I mean, I hoped the store would open again. Never thought you’d call to make me a manager.”

I slapped Jeff on the back. “You earned it, buddy.”

I spent about an hour with Jeff going over OSHA regulations, rental contracts, hiring and firing practices, and a few other minor details.

While we were doing that, Kat gave Hans the tour. Most of our equipment was locked up in the shop, even the items we usually kept outside, since we’d been closed so long.

Kat stayed behind with Jeff to do a little straightening up and come up with a plan to get the place back in shape to reopen. They added “Now Hiring” to our sign out front. It was one of those signs where you could change the letters to make it say what you wanted. More than once, since it was low to the ground, a few pranksters had rearranged the letters. The most recent was “Buttholes available by the hour. Inquire deep within.” At least they left the spare letters on the ground in front of the sign. Those things were more expensive than they should have been.

Hans and I gated to Jessie’s coffee shop, into her office rather than the middle of the store. Her barista, Amy, was a little confused when we stepped out of the door, but Jessie laughed. “Heard you coming. Give me about ten minutes to wrap things up and I’ll be good to go.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Hans, Jessie, and I left the coffee shop. We stepped out behind the shop so Amy wouldn’t get too confused if we went into Jessie’s office and mysteriously disappeared. Hans took us back to my place first so I could freshen up a bit and use the john. The one thing I hadn’t seen in the little room where Hans was supposed to take us was a bathroom.

Whenever we went out with the kids, even if it was just a short drive, we made sure all the kids peed first. If we didn’t, invariably, about two minutes after we left, one of them would declare that they had to potty.

Of course, Jessie’s shop had a restroom. I could have done my business there. Or, I could have done my business in my own business. See what I did there? Kids aren’t the only ones with potty jokes.

We had a dry-erase board on our refrigerator, and I wrote, “Love you all. Dad.” I expected to be home soon, but I still couldn’t shake the sinking pit in my stomach that things weren’t all unicorns and rainbows in the Entente chambers.

I went to my bedroom to change my shirt. I’ve never been a fancy dresser. I had a few flannels, but I was a t-shirt and jeans guy at heart. I had about two dozen screen-print shirts to choose from. I didn’t need that many, but I was a sucker for quirky tees.

I pulled out one of my favorites and showed it to Jessie. It said, “Got your tickets?” on the top. Then it had the picture of a wand. Under it were the words, “To the wand show!” followed by an arrow pointing straight down.

Jessie laughed and shook her head. “That’s ridiculous! Where did you get that?”

“Gag gift from Kat.”

“You can’t wear that to the Entente chambers!”

Hans grinned. “I think it’s awesome.”

Jessie grabbed another shirt from my closet. It featured a yellow smiling face with the words “Have a Nice Day” written beneath it. “I like this one,” she suggested.

“It’s a classic,” I agreed. “You can’t go wrong with the classics.”

Hans grabbed the “wand show” shirt. “Mind if I wear this one?”

Jessie sighed. “Seriously?”

I shrugged. “Boys will be boys. It’s all yours, buddy.”

“Ichabod was wearing a three-piece suit. You two are going to show up in screen-print t-shirts?”

“They’re nice t-shirts!”

Jessie shook her head. “They’re tacky.”

“What are you going to wear?”

“I have a nice pants suit.”

I snorted. “All right, Hillary.”

Jessie gasped. “I’m not Hillary! Though, I do admire her.”

Hans raised an eyebrow. “You’re a Democrat?”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “You can admire people without sharing their political views.”

I frowned. “So, you’re a Republican?”

“I’m a Libertarian, thank you very much. Not that it’s any of your business. You don’t think much about politics at all.”

I nodded. “You’re right. I don’t. I prefer to live a life of relative sanity. I always vote, though.”

Hans scratched his head. “If you’re apolitical, how do you decide who to vote for?”

“I’m disinclined to choose between the lesser of two evils,” I replied.

“You vote for one of the third-party candidates?” Hans asked.

Jessie laughed. “No, he doesn’t. He writes in his vote. You wouldn’t believe who he voted for last election.”

I grinned widely. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You voted for Kim Kardashian.” Jessie shook her head.

“I thought about voting for Kanye,” I admitted. “But then he got weird and oddly political. I figured if one reality show star could become president, why not another?”

Hans chuckled. “Isn’t that just a waste of a vote?”

“Not at all. See, no matter who gets elected, people invariably complain. This way, no matter who wins, I can say I didn’t vote for him. But I have to vote, otherwise, you know, I don’t have a right to complain.”

Jessie tilted her head. “Why would you complain if you don’t care about politics?”

“I don’t think much about politics. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. I’ve just decided that nothing they put on the news channels matters. Even the debates are a joke. If they actually discussed policy rather than trying to convince people that the other side is evil, or racist, or hates everyone’s grandparents, it might be worth paying attention to.”

Jessie chuckled. “Most people don’t vote based on policy. I hear what people are thinking. Election season sucks for an empath. You wouldn’t believe how many people vote based on which candidate they think is better looking.”

“Please, Jessie. Don’t wear the pants suit.”

“Fine. It’s jeans and t-shirts for all of us.”

Jessie had all her things in three suitcases that she kept sitting next to the couch where she slept. She rooted around in one of them and disappeared into the bathroom.

She came out a few minutes later wearing a shirt that had one word on the front: Bitch. It was printed over a rainbow and surrounded by flowers.

I extended my open palm to Hans. “That’s what I’m talking about!” He reluctantly high-fived me.

I smiled. “All right. Everyone go pee, then we’re off to London.”

Jessie smirked. “We aren’t kids, Tommy.”

I shrugged. “Everyone pees.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“We’re off! Like a cheap toupee in a windstorm!” I stepped toward Hans’ portal.

Jessie laughed. “That’s such a dad thing to say.”

“You know it!”

We went through the portal and landed back in the room with the glowing orb. We were early by almost half a day. I figured Ichabod would be thrilled that we made up our minds, and I hoped he’d show up quickly. He did say he’d be watching for us through the camera.

Maybe he didn’t expect us so soon. I imagine staring at a monitor constantly would be dull. Surely he’d check in on it periodically, if we could hold our horses for a while.

That was all we were holding, since I made everyone use the bathroom before we came. Be prepared. Learned that in the scouts.

It was an hour or so before Ichabod dropped in by a portal of his own. He left his portal open as he looked at us with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow.

“Interesting choice of apparel.”

I tugged on the bottom of my shirt. “It’s our style. What can I say?”

Ichabod shook his head. “Americans. So profane.”

“My shirt says, ‘Have a Nice Day’! How is that profane?”

“Your shirt is tolerable. The other two, however— you couldn’t wear a tie, perhaps a button-up, or at least a nice polo?”

I shook my head. “I’ll try and comb my hair next time.”

Ichabod huffed. “That would be a start. I apologize for the wait. I wasn’t expecting you so soon. I presume this means you’ve agreed to join us?”

I nodded. “We’re here for the assessment.”

“That’s another reason for my delay. It took some time to prepare. We’re ready to begin if you are.”

We stepped through Ichabod’s portal and appeared in what resembled a waiting room at a doctor’s office. Several barely padded chairs sat in a row and a glass table with stacks of magazines on top of it. An instrumental version of Helter Skelter was playing over a small speaker embedded into the suspended ceiling tiles above.

A pretty young lady with wire-rimmed glasses and her blonde hair up in a bun sat behind a glass barrier. She slid three clipboards under the window, and Ichabod handed one to each of us.

“Fill these out. We’ll call you each back when we’re ready.”

I tilted my head. “What is this?”

“The first part of your assessment. General background information. Nothing too rigorous. The hard stuff will come later, mate.”

I smirked. I wasn’t used to having a man call me his mate. I knew enough about slang on this side of the pond to realize he didn’t mean by it the same thing I might if I used the word.

I took my clipboard, and Hans and Jessie did the same. I used the ballpoint pen clipped to the top to fill out the form. There were a lot of questions about my family background. They wanted to know about when I first manifested and specialized. After that, there was a list of questions. Had I ever killed anyone with my magic? Had I studied certain texts? I didn’t know most of the texts listed, but I recognized a couple. A series of questions asked whether I’d ever experimented with other forms of magic, if I’d ever consulted a djinn, or if I’d ever practiced necromancy. I answered all those questions in the negative.

Ichabod was gone, preparing for us behind a closed door next to the receptionist.

I finished filling out the form and checked on Wand in my pocket. Under these wards, it was like he was sleeping. I didn’t feel the familiar tingle I usually did when I took him in hand.

Ichabod opened the door. “Thomas, we’re ready for you.”

“What about us?” Jessie asked.

“You’ll have to wait your turn. We only have one empath. She will be monitoring all of the assessments.”

“How long will it be?”

“Not long. Enjoy a magazine or two.”

I handed Ichabod my clipboard and followed him through the door. We walked through a long hallway that opened into what looked like a high school gymnasium, minus the basketball hoops.

Several mages in long white robes stood around the room, wearing hoods over their heads and holding wands in their hands. One of them was probably Mary. I didn’t know which one.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“We’re going to perform an illusionary spell. It will draw from your memories. We’d like you to replicate your battle with Caedes.”

“Which one?”

“The first one.”

I bit my lip. “I don’t know, Ichabod. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve re-lived those moments in my mind a thousand times. The incident even haunts my dreams.”

“It’s important we see you in action. You have experience. We need to see how your experience prepared you for whatever battles we might face together in the future.”

“So you want me to do things exactly like I did back then?”

Ichabod shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. In fact, assuming you’ve grown in power and experience, it might be better to tackle the situation as you would now knowing how things ended.”

“What about my magic? Even my wand isn’t working under your wards.”

Ichabod grinned. “It’s illusion magic, Thomas. We’ll bake your magic into the experience.”

“You can pull all of this from my mind?”

Ichabod shrugged. “Mary can.”

“And she can share what I’m seeing with the rest?”

“Of course. Shall we begin?”

I cracked my knuckles. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but I’m ready.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

All the mages extended their wands, and a blue magic formed to connect them. The magic swirled around the room. I’d never seen mages work together to produce an illusion. I’d never been able to do more than a few minor illusions, like giving myself a six-pack to impress Kat. It made sense that when mages pooled their power they could create something grander. Coupling their spell with whatever Mary was able to draw from my mind made for an impressive vision.

When the magic faded, I was standing in the rubble of several condemned and demolished warehouses. The park and playground were built later.

It’s crazy how much information the subconscious mind retains that I thought I’d long forgotten. A bird tweeting on what was left of a broken brick wall. The unseasonably cool breeze. A cumulus cloud that vaguely resembled a tyrannosaurus rex riding a unicycle.

I remembered other details because it all stayed the same. The smell of smog. The police sirens sounding from a distance. Horns honking and tires screeching. The standard downtown St. Louis audio track.

I grabbed Wand. He was glowing blue, but I knew it wasn’t real. It was a part of the illusion. It felt real, though. My hands were also smooth and free of the calluses that I’d developed over almost two decades in the tool business. I placed my hand to my abdomen. It was firm. I was young again.

I knew what was coming. Caedes had acolytes. Six low-level mages he’d recruited at his side. They didn’t die that day. When I imprisoned Caedes, they were somehow cut off from the power he’d used to compel their loyalty. They hadn’t gone so far into darkness that they couldn’t be saved, though it must’ve taken their families years to rehabilitate them. Short of someone paying the ultimate sacrifice, bringing someone back from the darkness takes time.

Of course, I’d never heard anything about what happened to Caedes’ former acolytes. The families didn’t share that kind of information. They rarely spoke at all until I brought the families who were still living in the area together to help stop Caedes after he escaped his prison.

I knew what happened first. One of the acolytes attacked a woman in her car. It was supposed to be a distraction, and it almost worked.

The same woman happened to recognize me when she came into the store not long ago. It’s funny how things like that tend to come full circle.

I heard the bang to the west and took off after it. I spotted the acolyte responsible on the way, and I hit him with a low-power arcane missile. It was enough to stun him, put him down for an hour or two, but it wouldn’t kill him.

I pulled the woman from her car. It caught fire after I got her to the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

“Do you have someone you can call?”

The woman was shaking. She nodded as tears fell from her eyes. “Thank you.”

“You need to get away from here. As far as you can.”

I knew this whole thing was a trap. Caedes had sent me a message on AIM. Yeah, I had AIM back then. Everyone did. AIM and ICQ. I also had a Myspace page.

My pager vibrated. Yes, I had a pager back then too. It showed a number I didn’t know—at least, I didn’t know it at the time. I called it later. It was Gerhard Wagner, hoping to warn me about his son’s intentions. After he learned I put Caedes—Timothy—in the ground, he hung up, and I hadn’t heard from him for two decades.

I often wondered what might have happened if I’d found a payphone and called the number before I faced off with Caedes. Perhaps he would have helped. Maybe he only wanted me to save his son, like he’d asked me to save Hans later.

It wouldn’t have mattered. In those days, everything was black and white. Caedes was a murderer. He’d killed dozens of mages and twice as many civilians. He didn’t deserve to be saved. All I cared about was stopping him.

A large cloud of dark magic formed over the broken buildings. The magic within it was violet, and bolts of something like lightning flashed through it. I knew what it was. Rather, I thought I did. Caedes was channeling as much power as he could into the cloud until it burst. The force of the pressure would destroy everything within miles. Thousands of people would die. It would be like dropping a nuclear bomb on the city, and the distraction of the woman in the car had given him the chance to power the cloud before I could stop him.

At the time, I didn’t know what Caedes was planning. I’d never seen anything like this. I’d only read about it, and the texts that described this kind of magic bomb weren’t especially detailed about how to make something like that, or how to dispel it.

When I ran back toward it, jumping over small piles of debris, my knees didn’t ache. I didn’t lose my breath. To be young again.

I aimed my wand at the cloud, like I did when this really happened. I thought for a split second about blasting it. That’s what Caedes wanted. My arcane missile would pierce the cloud and unleash it. The people who died would be on me. He was trying to make me a killer. This wasn’t an attempt to trap me or kill me. He was trying to recruit me, to convert my power into dark magic. I was always a stronger battlemage than he was, even when we were kids.

In hindsight, knowing what I knew now, he thought that if I was corrupted, he could take my power. The blast would weaken me. I’d have to put everything I had into a shield to protect myself and I’d be vulnerable after that. He’d kill me and siphon my power as I died.

Caedes was hiding behind some of the debris, though I didn’t know he was there at the time. I realized then that he wanted me to attack the cloud. I still didn’t know the mechanics of the magic he used, but with him hiding I figured out even back then that he was baiting me. He wanted me to blast the cloud. Even then, I knew that what he wanted me to do was the one thing I couldn’t do.

“Caedes!” I shouted. “I know you’re here. I’m not going to do a damn thing until you show yourself!”

I remembered how my chest tightened as I stood under the cloud of magic waiting for Caedes to appear. Even though I knew how this was going to go, and even though I knew it was all an illusion, a lesser version of the same angst-ridden sensation struck me in the heart.

I had about ten seconds to consider if I’d do anything different. That’s how long I had before Caedes showed up. At the time, those ten seconds had felt like five minutes.

“I’m going to destroy the city, Tom!” Caedes announced as he stepped up.

“If you were going to do that, you wouldn’t have called me here,” I pointed out.

“You’re my biggest threat, old friend. You could also be my greatest ally. Join me now and I’ll defuse the spell. Fight me and you’ll die in the blast.”

It was a clever move on his part. He also underestimated my strength. If I didn’t have such a massive ego at the time, I’d never have challenged him. It’s not often that one’s arrogance is also one’s salvation but, at the time, it was exactly what I needed. Caedes underestimated my strength, and I thought I was invincible.

I had to cast two spells at once: a large barrier surrounding the cloud and another one to strike Caedes.

I aimed my wand at the cloud. “I’ll never join you. And no one is going to die today.”

I formed a large arcane barrier to envelope the cloud. It took a lot of power but left me with my free hand to fight the sorcerer.

With my wand focused on containing the cloud, my spells cast by my opposite hand weren’t as easy to focus. I could channel a lot of power, even without my wand, but it was dangerous. I could release too much power and kill Caedes if I wasn’t careful. If I did that, if I murdered him, I was afraid of what that might do to me. To use arcane power to kill leaves one vulnerable to the darkness, and I wasn’t sure I could restrain my power enough as it welled up in my free hand to blast him.

Caedes’ five remaining acolytes stepped out from the rubble and used their wands to blast my barrier, but even their collective power wasn’t enough to take it down. They’d break my barrier eventually, but it could take hours. Even if they succeeded, I could cast another one before Caedes unleashed the arcane bomb on the city.

Caedes pointed his wand at me. “You think you can strike me with your open hand before I kill you with my wand?”

I shook my head. “I don’t need to.”

As he unleashed a dark bolt, a version of an arcane missile vested with dark magic, I formed a prison. I didn’t have to worry about overloading it. The stronger the better. It was the only way I knew I could stop him.

An arcane prison is a lot like the barrier I used to envelop the cloud. The difference was that the magic was more concentrated in a smaller area, and it was self-sustaining. A thousand mages could blast it with missiles and it would recharge itself faster than they could destroy it. It was harder to restrain my power when I cast without a wand, so I unleashed all my strength into the prison.

Caedes blasted it as I pushed it toward him, but his blasts bounced off it and hit the ground.

I screamed as I forced the barrier over him. Once he was surrounded and the cloud above was cut off from the mage who cast it, it lost its strength.

Caedes’ acolytes charged after me as the cloud failed, but I got to Caedes before they did. I harnessed the prison I built around him with my wand and phased myself out of material form. I pulled Caedes and the prison with me deep into the ground.

I took it almost a mile deep into the earth.

Cades screamed at me from within his prison. “You can’t do this!”

“Sorry, old friend. It’s the only way.”

Caedes unleashed as much magic as he could against the barrier. It bounced around inside his prison but he couldn’t break through.

I looked up and shot my ethereal form back to the surface.

The cloud above was gone. Caedes’ acolytes scattered when I rematerialized. Without Caedes, they didn’t have access to the dark power he channeled through them before.

My hands were shaking and sweat beaded up on my brow. Casting all that magic took a lot out of me. Despite the size of my ego at the time, even I was surprised I pulled it off.

I turned to leave, and when I did, the world around me faded from view. I was back in the Entente gymnasium surrounded by the cloaked mages who were there before.

“You did it the same way,” Ichabod noted.

I nodded. “What other choice was there?”

“You could have killed him. You could have blasted him with your free hand and eliminated him.”

I shook my head. “If I did that, I might have been infected by darkness.”

Ichabod narrowed his eyes. “In the Arcane Wars, many of our mages had to kill. We endured and persevered.”

“And some of the mages fell to the darkness.”

“Some, but not all. We won the war because we did what we had to do and we dedicated ourselves to the light, we resisted the darkness. Our fight on the inside, against the darkness, was as much a part of our war as the Axis mages.”

“You wanted to see how I performed in a battle,” I reminded him. “That’s what I showed you.”

Ichabod shook his head. “It was impressive. I’ll give you that. You have a talent. Some of our strongest battlemages don’t have the juice to do what you did. But it wouldn’t have taken as much strength to eliminate the enemy. If you’d killed Caedes then, Hana wouldn’t be here now resurrecting the Axis mages.”

“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” I reasoned.

“And you had hindsight now, with my express permission to see the fight through differently if you wished. But you still chose to do the same.”

“I was young. I was powerful. If I allowed myself to become infected with the dark powers, there’s no telling how dangerous I might become. I couldn’t take that risk.”

“If we’re going to win this new war, Thomas, you’ll have to kill. You’ll need to confront and master darkness without allowing it to consume you.”

I tilted my head. “Will I? We’re fighting against an army that’s already dead. That’s not the same thing.”

“You really think that the only enemies we’ll have to face are those Hana resurrects? There are other mages in hiding, families who’ve waited for the day when the Axis might reemerge. Killing a mage in war is different than killing in cold blood. Ending a human life always comes with a temptation to darkness, but that darkness can be resisted when your cause is just.”

I cleared my throat. “So did I pass or not?”

Ichabod laughed. “This was an assessment, not an examination. It helped us discern your abilities and where we might help you grow into a fuller mastery of your power.”

“You want to train me to kill?”

Ichabod shook his head. “You have more than enough strength to do that already. We can teach you other methods. Ultimately, we want to teach you how to protect yourself if you have to kill. For when you have to kill.”

I scratched my head. “What’s next?”

Mary lowered the hood on her cloak. “We know what we need to know.”

Ichabod patted me on the shoulder. “You’re done for now. It’s time for your friends to begin their assessments. After that, we’ll discuss your curriculum. That will be enough for today.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I returned to the waiting room. The illusion left me lightheaded, and I was eager to take a seat. Hans and Jessie showered me with questions and I gave them a general summary of my experience.

“They wanted you to try to kill him?” Jessie asked.

I shrugged. “I’m not sure. They gave me the choice. It was almost as if they were testing to see if I had the confidence and strength to do it now, even though I didn’t kill him then.”

“You did what you had to do,” Hans assured me. “There’s no way you could have known that he’d come back more powerful, or even that he intended to resurrect my mother all the while.”

I nodded. “Still, I think some of them might hang some of the blame for what’s happening now on my shoulders. If I’d killed Caedes then, none of this would be happening.”

Hans huffed. “No one knew what my father was planning. It’s not fair to blame you for anything. If you’d failed to kill him, he might have killed you and thousands more. He might have brought my mother back years ago and abducted me while I was still a baby. They could have raised me in darkness and for all we know, the world might be ruled by the Axis mages if you’d tried to kill him.”

“If I’d tried and failed,” I agreed. “I suspected even then that Caedes was prepared for that. I doubt an arcane missile would have ended it. The only reason I prevailed was because he never thought I’d try and bind him like that. He probably didn’t even know I could do it. It was a trick I’d learned just days before while researching ways to capture mages. Hell, I wasn’t totally sure it would work when I did it.”

“They want to train you to kill?” Jessie asked.

“They want me to learn how to handle the darkness if or when I have to kill so that it doesn’t overwhelm me,” I explained. “At least that’s what they said.”

She didn’t look convinced. “You don’t trust them?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t trusted them from the start, Jessie. I’m doing this for you two as much as anything. And because I’m not sure what choice we have. Hana is stronger now than Caedes ever was, and she has an army of undead Axis mages at her side. Ichabod thinks they will eventually find living allies to fight alongside them.”

Ichabod opened the door. “Mr. Wagner, we’re ready for you.”

Hans took a deep breath. “Wish me luck.”

Ichabod smirked. “As I told Thomas, this is an assessment, not a test. You won’t need luck, son. We simply must determine how much you know so we know how to start.”

Hans nodded. “Of course.”

Hans left with Ichabod, and Jessie and I sat in silence for a few seconds before she spoke up.

“What do you think they’re going to ask him to do?”

I shook my head. “No clue. Mary drew on my memories to recreate my first battle with Caedes. Perhaps she’ll confront him with something from his past when he had to use his powers.”

Jessie thought for a moment. “I have no clue what memory I have that they could use that would show them much.”

“Who knows? Maybe they’ll do something different with each of you. Different mage classes are probably assessed in different ways.”

It took about an hour before Hans finished his assessment, and Ichabod was clearly impressed by him. The two were laughing when they came out, and the older gate mage patted Hans on the back as they returned to the waiting room. Maybe it was because they were both gate mages. It made sense that Ichabod would develop more of a kinship with Hans than with Jessie or me.

“Give us a moment, Jessie,” Ichabod requested. “We’ll be ready shortly.”

Hans sat next to me. “That was incredible.”

“What was?” I asked.

“They didn’t send me into any of my memories at all. I went on a tour of some of Ichabod’s gate magery adventures in his mind. Did you know he once gated himself onto the moon?”

“How did he breathe?”

Hans grinned. “Another mage, a battlemage, cast a bubble around him with enough air to last a while.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Technically, that’s a basic arcane barrier.”

“Right. A bubble. Anyway, in the illusion, Ichabod showed me how to do it.”

Jessie scratched her head. “That’s fascinating. I’m not sure how useful it would be. I don’t suspect there was much to see on the moon.”

Hans shook his head. “It was pretty underwhelming once I got over the fact that I was on the freaking moon!”

I cleared my throat. “Technically, you were in an illusion of Ichabod’s memory of being on the moon. So you weren’t actually on the moon.”

Hans rolled his eyes. “Well, duh. Obviously. You don’t have to poop all over my parade. It was still thrilling.”

“That doesn’t sound like an assessment.” Jessie pulled a compact mirror from her pocket and touched up her makeup. “It sounds more like training.”

Hans shook his head. “Not exactly. I mean, Ichabod had me form portals in his memories elsewhere first. He was testing my limits. After I was able to travel all around the globe, he had to see if I could go further than that.”

I chuckled. “What’s next? Uranus?”

Hans snickered. “Trust me. You don’t want anyone forming a portal into Uranus.”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “Right. And you wouldn’t want to go through a portal leading there either. Talk about a new meaning for black hole!”

I tilted my head. “We’re talking about the planet here, right?”

Hans grinned. “Of course.”

I bit my lip. “Well, that’s odd, isn’t it? You apparently made an impression.”

Hans cocked his head. “Why would that be odd, Tom?”

“I’m just saying, you grew up without any guidance. You have only had books to learn from that I gave you for a few months. I’ve studied my specialization for longer than you’ve been alive. I had the benefit of having a father with my specialization. I learned a lot from the yearly convocations we used to have when I was growing up. Yet, when it came to me, Ichabod seemed more concerned than impressed.”

“Don’t be jealous, Tommy.”

“I’m not jealous, Jessie. I’m just saying, if you can gate yourself to the moon, what else can these people teach you, Hans?”

Hans shook his head. “There are a lot of things that gate mages can do besides travel. How about learning how to make permanent gates? Or, how to create a series of portals that allow others to travel quickly to a variety of places. Then, there’s creating portals that can withstand a blast from a battlemage. If I can sustain gates like that, I could make my enemies fire upon themselves. Then, Ichabod also said there’s a way to create gates with multiple destinations or filter multiple gates into a single one.”

I frowned. “What would happen if you made a gate with multiple destinations and someone stepped through it?”

“That’s the thing. If I do it the wrong way it could divide you into parts.”

“Like my torso lands in one place, my legs and head in another?”

Hans nodded. “Possibly. Or, I could use it to divide someone’s body from their ethereal spirit.”

I pinched my chin. “That might be a useful skill to master when we have to fight your mother. She raised her body because she had to tether herself to the world so that the rifts created by her dark magic don’t suck her back into the ethereal realm.”

Hans nodded. “Exactly. Think about the reverse implications. If somehow you or another mage got stuck in your ethereal form and were separated from your body, a skilled gate mage could put you together again.”

Jessie giggled. “Too bad Humpty Dumpty didn’t have a gate mage. Those king’s horses and men just didn’t have the skills to deal with his injuries.”

I chuckled. “I wonder why they sent the king’s horses and men after him to begin with. You’d think he’d do better with a physician.”

Jessie nodded. “Humpty Dumpty must’ve had a crappy HMO.”

Hans rolled his eyes. “The point is that there’s a lot to my specialization I don’t know. Travel is only one function of gate magery. I’m good there, but I have a lot to learn about other skills that I don’t yet possess.”

Ichabod opened the door again and called Jessie back. Jessie showed us two fingers as she left. “Peace out, bitches!”

“Back at you, bitch!” Hans piped up.

I backhanded him on the shoulder. “You can’t call her a bitch, dude.”

“Why not! Her shirt says ‘bitch’ on it.”

“Women can call themselves bitches,” I explained. “They can call other people bitches. So long as they aren’t actually bitches. I mean, if a girl calls another girl a bitch that leads to a lot of hissing and clawing. Still, you can’t call a woman a bitch, no matter how much she deserves it.”

“That’s not fair,” Hans protested.

I tilted my head. “How don’t you know these things?”

Hans shrugged. “I was homeschooled by my grandparents. The most social interaction I had growing up was with my cousins or via online gaming. Trust me, words like ‘bitch’ were not permitted in my house unless you were speaking literally about a female dog. If I ever said bad words I was sure to get my mouth literally washed out with a bar of soap.”

I shuddered. “I can’t imagine. You’re not as awkward socially as I’d assume, given your upbringing.”

“Thank you. I think. It’s not like I never encountered people. We attended a Lutheran church.”

“Your family is religious?”

Hans nodded. “Not just religious. They’re committed to Lutheranism. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche. We even attended services in the German tongue. They still have some of those in St. Louis. It’s one reason we stayed there.”

“What did they think about the fact that you belonged to a mage family?” I asked.

Hans shook his head. “We didn’t tell them, obviously. They wouldn’t know the difference between magery and witchcraft. Then again, it’s not like they really know what witchcraft is, either. The kind of witchcraft discussed in the Bible wasn’t at all like the nature magic that witches use today.”

“My parents dragged me to church a few times. We were technically Episcopalian, but I can’t say we were especially dedicated. My mother would get in a kick from time to time where she’d drag us every week then we’d fall out of the habit and not go at all for a year or more. Except for the holidays. I always felt out of place there as a mage. Like I was somehow this deviant who they only tolerated because they didn’t know the truth.”

Hans shrugged. “You might be surprised. There are a number of families associated with different schools of magic who are also devout members of churches. The way my grandfather put it, we are stewards of a power that was given to us by the Divine and hold a high responsibility to use it in service to Earth and all of mankind on behalf of the God who blessed us with our power.”

“That’s beautiful,” I murmured. “I wish I could relate to that. I’ve never really thought about my magic as related to religion at all.”

“But it does touch on the spirit, doesn’t it? I mean, you’ve experienced the ethereal realms. What is that if not a spiritual experience?”

I scratched my head. “One could just as easily argue that our abilities are an accident of evolution, an expansion of the human spirit into new realms that the rest of our species has yet to realize.”

“That might be true at the same time,” Hans allowed. “I don’t think any of those ideas are inherently contradictory. At least, my grandfather didn’t feel they were. Official church doctrine didn’t account for magery, he’d say, because no one knew about it when they formulated their positions.”

I patted Hans on the back. “I’m glad you have a worldview that makes sense to you. I’m pretty agnostic when it comes to those things. All I know is that I have access to a unique source of power, and I have a responsibility to use it for good rather than evil.”

“Is it always that cut and dry for you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The difference between good and evil. Between arcane magic and dark magic. How do you know when you’ve crossed over from the ‘light’ magic into the ‘dark’ stuff?”

I shrugged. “Maybe when you start having homicidal thoughts it’s a good clue you’ve gone too far.”

“We might be on the brink of another arcane war. How do we know our side is good and theirs is evil?”

“They are literally wielding dark magic,” I reminded him. “Your mother was resurrected using dark power. Your father gained that power through murder.”

Hans nodded. “Suppose we lived in a monarchy. A king might inherit the throne the usual way, or he might seize it by shedding blood. In the end, he wields the same power. It’s not the power itself that’s good or evil, it’s the means one uses to acquire it.”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Are you suggesting that we could use dark power without being infected by the darkness?”

Hans rubbed the back of his neck. “We speak of the arcane wells as if there’s the lighter stuff near the surface and the darker stuff that’s deeper down. It’s an imperfect metaphor. But consider, in a well, the water drawn from the bottom or the top is still water when it’s brought to the surface. You can’t tell the difference. Perhaps the power from the deeper part of the wells can be drawn to the surface and used just as well. You don’t have to dive into the darkness where you’re likely to drown in order to access the water at the bottom of a well.”

“Did Ichabod put these ideas in your mind?”

“My grandfather did. It’s why he believed I could be saved. It’s why he never gave up hope that my father could be redeemed also. It wasn’t the power he wielded that was the problem. It was the way he tried to gather the power that corrupted him. It’s not the magic that was to blame, but his actions.”

I shook my head. “My entire life, we were warned about the dangers of the dark powers.”

“A belief fostered in fear,” Hans suggested. “Probably a fear that was the result of the Arcane Wars. Just because the Axis mages drew on magic from the deeper part of the arcane wells doesn’t mean that the magic was to blame for their deeds. They were to blame for what they did, no matter what kind of magic they used. Hitler also used tanks. Does that mean that all tanks are evil?”

I smirked. “By that reasoning, since Hitler breathed oxygen, all oxygen breathers must be evil, too. Where is all this coming from, Hans? You haven’t talked about any of this stuff before.”

“I just think we should keep an open mind about what we might learn here. My mother is alive again. She has a body. My father might have done a lot of horrible things to bring her back, but that’s not her fault.”

I shook my head. “Ichabod was pretty clear before. He sees a war coming and believes we might need to kill our enemies if we’re going to prevail.”

“I know. Maybe he’s right. I can’t help but wonder, though, if there might be a way to save my mother. I know she’s resurrecting Axis mages. Sorcerers who fought alongside Nazis. That’s not a good thing, no matter how you look at it. You knew my mother, though. Was she evil before?”

“Not at all. She was kind. She was a delight. Then again, your father wasn’t a bad guy either. Not before he started dabbling in dark magic.”

Hans nodded. “Maybe my perspective is different since I had my own experience with dark magic after I brought my father back. The magic didn’t feel evil, Tom. It just didn’t. It was magic. What my father wanted to do with it was evil. Maybe it wasn’t dark magic that corrupted my father back in the day, but all the fear associated with it and projected on him that drove him to become what he became.”

“He killed your mother,” I reminded him.

“Not on purpose! It was his biggest regret. He was wielding magic he didn’t understand. He used it out of anger and lost control. Maybe it wasn’t the magic, but all that anger and fear that corrupted him.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not going to dive into the dark wells just to test your theory.”

“I’m not saying you should. I also don’t necessarily believe that these Entente mages have everything figured out. At the same time, they know a lot more about arcane magic than we do. They can teach us a lot.”

“Right. You and Jessie were both very clear about your desire to come here. That’s why I agreed to do this.”

“Don’t think I don’t have my reservations,” Hans assured me. “The Entente mages are committed to stopping a war. We can agree to that goal, even if we don’t drink all of their Kool-Aid.”

The door swung open and Jessie stumbled into the room, her eyes wide and glassy.

“Wait here, all of you. I’ll be back with recommendations shortly.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Ichabod.”

He left and closed the door behind him.

“What happened, Jessie?”

Jessie rubbed her brow. “I’m not sure. I was in there, Mary placed her fingers to my head, then everything went dark. The next thing I knew, Ichabod walked me back here.”

“You don’t remember what happened?” Hans asked.

Jessie sighed. “Not a damn thing.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

What the hell did they do to Jessie? Why didn’t she remember what happened? Empath magery was rare and unique. Perhaps all Mary did was read Jessie’s mind and she discerned everything the rest needed to know. It’s not like any of the other mages were qualified to make recommendations about Jessie’s curriculum. Only Mary knew what Jessie didn’t know, what her deficiencies were, or what was left that she still needed to learn.

Jessie thought she’d been back there a few minutes, but she had been gone for almost an hour. Something happened in all that time that Jessie couldn’t recall. What did they do to her? If she couldn’t remember it, I doubted asking them straight up what happened would yield an honest answer. All we could do was ask and hope that they had a reasonable and acceptable explanation.

I stood when Ichabod stepped back through the door.

“What in God’s name did you do to Jessie?”

Ichabod tilted his head. “Whatever do you mean? We assessed her abilities, the same as we did with you.”

“It wasn’t the same. I remember what I did.”

Jessie was hunched over in her chair, her head resting in her hands. “I don’t remember anything.”

Ichabod sat next to Jessie and set three clipboards down on the table. “Apologies, dear. Mary connected to your mind. She told us that when two empaths connect it can be painful for a novice who doesn’t know how to manage the link.”

Hans nodded. “Like when you and my grandmother experienced that feedback loop.”

Jessie nodded. “It hurts like hell.”

“Precisely. Mary set up a barrier to prevent that from happening. While our wards prevent you from extending your abilities outside of yourself and interfacing with others in our chambers, your abilities are still very much alive within each of you. When Mary connected to you, what you called a feedback loop was inevitable. She said you might not remember much. It was for your own benefit that you don’t. All she did was examine your recollections and experience using your power. She asked you a series of questions. Nothing out of the ordinary. She discerned your answers from within your mind.”

Jessie huffed. “You could have warned me in advance.”

“Our mistake,” Ichabod allowed. “I can assure you, though, that Mary was quite impressed by your potential. She was also sure that she could help you.”

I sighed. “Well, what’s the verdict?”

Ichabod handed each of us a clipboard. I examined mine. It had a list of courses that the mages believed I needed to take.

Jessie raised an eyebrow. “Why does mine only say independent study?”

“Because everything you need to learn, dear, can be transferred to you directly. Mary can give you the knowledge you require. You won’t need the same courses that other mages require.”

I shook my head. At least twenty different courses were listed. “How am I going to find time to do all of this?”

“You’ll notice, Thomas, that the courses are listed in order. You and Hans will both take several of the same at first. Consider them general education requirements. Basic courses concerning arcane theory, the history of magery, and the like. After that, your specialized courses are listed in order of priority. If the time comes and you’re needed before you complete the curriculum, so be it.”

“If I’m needed? To fight Hana and the Axis mages, you mean?”

Ichabod nodded. “Of course. You’ve both demonstrated a number of battle-worthy skills. You’re also both naturally talented. It’s been a long time since we’ve had recruits with your raw potential. I must emphasize the word raw. Notice the two scores on the bottom. You’re all considered level-five mages. It’s the highest score possible. It means that you have no natural limitations.”

“There are mages with lower scores?” Hans asked.

“Certainly. Some mages simply cannot wield as much power as others. They don’t have the constitution for it. The conditional score indicates your progress to date mastering your abilities.”

“I’m only a two?” I asked.

Hans grinned. “I got a three.”

I snorted. “Bragger.”

Ichabod grinned. “It means you’re only living up to two-fifths of your potential, Thomas. Battlemagery is a more diverse skill than gate magery. It is not uncommon for gate mages to realize their maximum potential with far less study and practice.”

“You seriously think I’m only a two? I mean, I know there’s a lot I can learn, but I stopped Caedes. Surely I’m better than a two.”

“Most American mages barely crack a one, son. A score of two for an untrained battlemage is well above average. Think of it this way. There’s a lot we can teach you. You’ll be surprised how much stronger you’ll become, and how much more control you’ll have over your abilities, once you’ve progressed through your curriculum.”

I took a deep breath. “I suppose having room to grow is a good thing.”

“That’s the attitude!” Ichabod clapped his hands together. “Follow me.”

“Are we done today?” I asked.

Ichabod shook his head. “Do you need to get back straight away?”

“Not really. We can manage a couple more hours, I suppose.”

“Then, chop, chop! It just so happens that your first course, Arcane Theory, is meeting in ten minutes. The current term is already underway, but only by a couple weeks. I’ll provide you materials for self-study so you can catch up.”

I tilted my head. “These classes are on a schedule? I thought you said you could be flexible with my schedule.”

“Within reason. There are three sections of the course going on currently. The others all meet during what would be the middle of your day. I presume tonight’s class would be best suited to your schedule given that you’re already here.”

I nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

Ichabod looked at Jessie. “Mary will be waiting for you. You can train with her whenever your fellows are in class.”

Jessie snorted. “Lucky me. I presume I’ll remember things this time?”

Ichabod grinned. “I should hope so! What’s the point of an education if you don’t remember it?”

“Shall I send you to your first class?” Ichabod asked.

I sighed. “Send us there? We can walk to class. It’s not far from here, I presume.”

“I’d hate for you to get lost. I’ll meet you at the doors after class.”

I tilted my head. “Don’t want us wandering free in the chambers?”

“It’s not that, son. You’re the one who is pressed for time. I’m simply doing what I can to speed things along.”

I looked at Jessie. “I guess we’ll see you soon.”

Ichabod formed a portal, and Hans and I stepped through it to find ourselves in the back of a classroom.

About twenty students were already there, and they were all young. I doubted any of them had reached puberty yet. I was like Billy Madison, several times older than any of my classmates. Hans was at least twice the age of most of them.

A man in a robe with long gray hair and a cleanly shaven face greeted us. “Welcome! I’m Professor Pritchard. You must be Misters Gregory and Wagner.”

Hans and I both nodded. “I’m Tom Gregory,” I offered.

“Wonderful. Won’t you have a seat?”

He gestured toward two empty desks at the back of the room. I sat in one, but my knees were too high to fit under the desk. Hans was even taller than me, so he looked even more squirrely at his desk.

Professor Pritchard handed each of us a spiral notebook and a pen. “You’ll want to take notes.”

“Sorry, we didn’t get a list of supplies. We didn’t even know we were coming here until two minutes ago.”

“It’s no bother. Why don’t you each introduce yourselves to the class? Say your name, where you’re from, your specialization, and something unique to you that you think might set you apart from the class.”

I snorted. “Apart from being old?”

The class laughed.

“You’re not as old as I am. Think of something less obvious.”

I took a deep breath. All of this was humiliating. I was in my early forties and I was introducing myself to a group of classmates who probably didn’t have hair in their armpits yet.

“My name is Thomas Gregory.”

“Hello, Thomas!” the class called in unison.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m from St. Louis, Missouri. I’m a battlemage. I rent tools.”

“He said he’s a tool!” one of the boys in the front piped up.

“Did not!” I shot back. “I rent tools. I’m not a tool. There’s a difference, you tool!”

The second I said it, I was embarrassed. I just called a ten-year-old a tool. That kid wasn’t much older than my own son, for Pete’s sake.

“Now, now,” Professor Pritchard broke in. “We mustn’t crack jokes at one another’s expense. I presume renting tools is your occupation?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I own a tool rental company.”

Professor Pritchard tilted his head. “That’s what you’ve chosen to share with the class? You wouldn’t care to tell them how you are the mage who bound the sorcerer Caedes?”

The class gasped. “You’re that Tom Gregory?” a girl two rows ahead asked. “We learned about you in our History of Magery class.”

I smiled. “Well, yes. As a matter of fact, that’s me.”

The girl shook her head. “Shameful.”

“Excuse me? I saved the world, you know!”

Professor Pritchard held up his hand. “Your efforts, Thomas, were valiant.”

“Why would a battlemage put a violent sorcerer in a cage?” A redheaded boy asked. “Everyone knows that’s like putting a kid in time-out in a room with all his toys. You had to know he’d come back stronger than ever.”

I grunted. “I didn’t know that. Not at the time.”

A girl with short curly hair shook her head. “Americans.”

I snorted. “Excuse me?”

Professor Pritchard gestured for quiet. “Everyone go easy on the man. It’s not his fault he wasn’t given a proper education. Let Thomas’ experience serve as a lesson to all of us how ignorance of one’s power can lead to foolishness.”

I pressed my lips together as I felt blood rush into my head. Here I thought I was something of a hero. To these young mages, I was little more than a cautionary tale.

“How about you, young lad? Why don’t you introduce yourself to the class?”

“I’m Hans Wagner.”

“Hello, Hans!”

“I’m a gate mage. Some of you might prefer the term portal mage. I’m also from St. Louis. Caedes was my father.”

Murmuring erupted across the class. I glanced at Hans. “Couldn’t pick something more innocuous?”

Hans cleared his throat. “I also put ketchup on everything. I love the stuff.”

“He’s not lying,” I shook my head. “He even puts ketchup on his broccoli.”

“Ewwww!” several students responded together.

“Hey!” Hans protested. “Broccoli is gross. Ketchup masks the flavor.”

“Are you like your father?” one of the children asked.

Hans shook his head. “To tell the truth, I barely met him. My grandfather told me that he and I were a lot alike as children. But I’m nothing like what he became.”

“What’s it like to be the son of a serial killer?” the redheaded boy who’d accosted me asked.

The class went silent waiting for Hans to respond. “I’ve never really thought about it like that. I know who my father was and what he did. I’m not so much embarrassed to be my father’s son as I am proud to be my grandfather’s grandson, if that makes sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.” Professor Pritchard smiled widely. “Might Hans’ acceptance into the academy show all of you that simply because someone might be descended from Axis mages that he can make his own choices. How each of you engage the arcane wells is a matter of your personal virtue, not your heritage. Thus, this course is essential to lay a strong foundation that each of you might build upon in your quest to defend the Entente way.”

I tilted my head. “What’s the Entente way?”

Professor Pritchard cleared his throat. “Raise your hand if you have a question, Mr. Gregory.”

I sighed and raised my hand.

“Yes, Mr. Gregory. Do you have a question?”

I stared at the professor blankly for a second. “What is the Entente way, exactly?”

Professor Pritchard returned to the front of the class. “Who can answer our new student’s question for him?”

Several hands shot up. One boy was waving his hand in the air as if he were trying to shoo away a swarm of bees.

Professor Pritchard indicated the boy. “Yes, Mr. Wilkinson.”

The boy folded his hands over his desk. “The Entente way is best summarized by the Entente motto. Strength through unity. Unity through conviction. Conviction through commitment. Commitment through knowledge. Knowledge through humility.”

“Bravo!” Professor Pritchard clapped his hands. “In summary, the path to strength is through humility.”

I raised my hand again.

“Yes, Mr. Gregory?”

“I don’t mean to be combative. But it sounds like a recipe to lasso everyone into conformity. As if we have to all think exactly the same way if we’re going to be strong.”

The curly-haired girl sighed. “Americans,” she repeated.

“Would you care to elaborate on your opinion, Mr. Gregory?”

I took a deep breath. “People can follow different paths, explore different ways of relating to their power, but still be united to a common cause. Their strength comes from a unity in diversity. People bring together their differences to work for a common goal.”

The professor cleared his throat. “Your opinion is not expected. You’ve lived in the secular world for your entire life until now. Tell me, from your experience, does a diversity of opinion ever lead to unified action? Or, do we more often find that minority opinions are relegated for the sake of a slim majority, divisions are fostered, and bitterness and disunity is the result?”

I grunted. “That might be true, but it’s worth the cost. Differences of opinion challenge the majority. Sometimes the minority opinion offers a better way. We can’t grow stronger and evolve if we aren’t ever challenged. The way I see it, if we believe we are right about something, we shouldn’t be afraid of different perspectives. If we truly value the truth, challenges to our perspectives will either make us stronger in our convictions or we’ll be forced to grow and change for the better, to get closer to the truth.”

Professor Pritchard grinned. “This is an introductory course, Mr. Gregory. We must all learn the accepted truth before we dare imagine challenging it. Perhaps you would do better to ask fewer questions and listen. Humility is what you lack. Until you achieve it, you will never find the path to strength.”

“It’s not the importance of humility I’m challenging. It’s the dots you’re connecting between humility and strength that are the issue.”

The professor stepped toward my desk and leaned over me. He fixed his eyes on mine. “Yet you still lack the humility to consider the wisdom of the Entente way.”

I swallowed hard. I raised my fingers to my lips and twisted them as if fastening my mouth shut. “I’m all ears, professor. Teach me from the wells of your incontrovertible wisdom.”

“Bloody Americans.” The professor returned to the front of the class.

The curly-haired girl stuck her tongue out at me.

I stuck my tongue out back.

“Professor!” the girl piped up. “The new boy just stuck his tongue out at me.”

“She did it first!” I shouted.

“Act your age, Mr. Gregory,” the professor snapped.

I glanced at Hans. He had his hand over his mouth to suppress his laughter.

I sighed and sank as much as I could into my undersized chair. This was going to be a long, and painful, experience.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I made it through the class without getting spitballed. The whole name of the class, Arcane Theory, was disingenuous. They taught one theory, apparently, although I’d seen a book on the subject in Ichabod’s office with a whole host of different theories. Clearly, the Entente mages had an aversion to free thinking. Get in line. Lockstep. Challenge nothing. Then again, I was in a class full of prepubescent mages. It was a wonder that any of them had specialized at all. I thought my son, Elijah, was unique in specializing so early. Apparently, among the Entente mages, early manifestation and specialization was common.

The professor didn’t so much as make eye contact with me as Hans and I left the class. I imagine having adults in the class who wouldn’t accept everything he said as the gospel truth was an inconvenience. Hans kept his mouth shut. Perhaps it was the fact that he was raised in a German family where strict rules governed all, or maybe he just knew better than to open his big fat mouth.

Ichabod was waiting for us outside the class when we left. “How did it go?”

“Isn’t there an adult class somewhere?”

“You’ll have adult classes once you get past the fundamentals.”

“Could I at least get a desk that fits me?”

Ichabod chuckled. “I’ll see what we can do.”

“How long do I have to endure this? Isn’t there some self-study or something I can do so I can test out of it?”

“If you had more time available to commit, perhaps we could expedite the process,” Ichabod suggested.

I shook my head. “Look, Ichabod, I get what you’re doing here. If you need my help with Hana, it’s probably best we try to get some practical work done sooner than later. This book knowledge is great and all, but unless boring Hana back to the grave is the way to defeat her, I’m not sure how memorizing and regurgitating Entente dogma is going to help.”

Ichabod rubbed his brow. “Given the rigors of your schedule, perhaps an independent study with a mentor can be arranged in the field.”

“In the field?”

“You can’t cast in the chambers. Using illusion to create artificial training scenarios isn’t practical. It takes too many mages to do it. Give me some time to sort out the details. We have a number of talented level-five battlemages who may be available.”

“Great! I guess you’ll send us out into the middle of nowhere so we can practice?”

Ichabod shook his head. “Your mentor will accompany you as you go about your daily life. I expect you’ll provide reasonable accommodations. It’s not too much to ask, considering you’re receiving a world-class education free of charge.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You’re going to send a mage to babysit me?”

“Not at all. This is for your convenience, Thomas. If you have a spare moment here or there, you can work in a little training. If there are any incidents involving Hana or any other sorcerers, especially since you have access to a portal mage, he can lead you to the scene and you can practice new techniques.”

“Well, I suppose that would be easier than trying to carve out a few hours every night.”

Ichabod nodded. “We can arrange your schedule so that your classroom curriculum is combined into a couple evenings a week. We have four core classes we’re insisting you complete before you can be granted full membership in our alliance. That is in addition to your field training. Once your mentor signs off on your training, and you’ve completed your courses, you will be given the sigil that gives you full access to your powers within our chambers.”

I took a deep breath. “Will all my classes be with children?”

“The path to strength begins with humility, Thomas.”

I snorted. “Yeah, that’s what Professor Poppycock said.”

“Professor Pritchard, you mean?”

“Yeah. That’s the guy. I suck with names.”

“Watch your attitude, young man,” Ichabod recommended. “You have a lot of potential. If you’d only get out of your own way, there’s no limit to what we might accomplish together.”

I grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ichabod formed a portal. Hans and I stepped through and returned to the room—wherever it was—where we came and went to and from the Entente chambers. It wasn’t warded like the rest of the chambers, so I assumed it wasn’t actually in the chambers. It was probably somewhere nearby, but given how gate magery worked it could have been anywhere. Hans didn’t know. The orb he used to focus his portals when we went there wasn’t easy to pinpoint geographically.

Jessie was waiting there, and a wide grin split her face when we showed. She hugged me.

“Did you have fun?”

“Fun? Not exactly the word I’d use.”

“Mary is badass! You wouldn’t believe how much I learned in just a couple hours. Check this out!”

Jessie held out her wand. It flashed a few pulses of blue arcane energy. The next thing I knew, I was giggling and clutching at my belly. “Stop it!”

Jessie laughed. “Tickle magic!”

The uncomfortable sensation subsided. “Are you serious?”

“It’s not just tickles. She showed me how I can channel sensations and feelings into a target.”

Hans frowned. “Mind control? My grandmother can send thoughts into people’s minds.”

“We aren’t that far along yet,” Jessie replied. “But this is pretty cool, right?”

I nodded. “Next time we face Hana, tickle her to death. We’ll win for sure.”

Jessie smirked. “That’s not the point. It’s still progress.”

“Well, I’m glad you had a better experience than I did.”

“What did you two do?”

I glanced at Ichabod, then back at Jessie. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“We’ll see you back Monday evening,” Ichabod said.

“Monday evening?” I asked.

“Mondays and Fridays. Afternoon your time, evening ours. It’s the simplest way to cram your classes into two nights rather than requiring you attend nightly.”

I scratched the back of my neck. “I think I can make that work.”

“Right. Brilliant. Your mentor will join you shortly.”

I raised an eyebrow. “He will?”

“I’ll send him to your house.”

“You know where I live?”

Ichabod grinned widely. “Of course we do. We keep tabs on mages all around the world.”

I shuddered. “Creepy, but all right. I’ll bring home a rollaway bed from the store. It’s the best I can offer. We don’t have any free bedrooms.”

“You have rollaways?” Jessie asked.

I smiled. “Trust me, Jessie. Our couch is more comfortable than those beds.”

“We made a lot of progress today. I’ll give you leave.”

Ichabod disappeared through a portal and Hans formed one of his own. We stepped through it and returned to my living room.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

We’d all had dinner, and Kat was getting the kids ready for bed. The littles were running around in their Incredible Hulk night diapers, and Elijah was in his pajamas and parked in front of the television with a bowl full of grapes. He was watching someone else play Minecraft on YouTube. Eating food and watching YouTube. When he wasn’t at his Taekwondo class or school, there was a good chance that’s what he was doing.

We really needed to start limiting screen time.

“OK, how’d it go?” Kat asked. She’d been waiting all evening to hear what had happened.

I took a deep breath and plopped down on the couch.

“That bad, huh?”

I stared at Kat for a second. “They made me go to a class.”

“You expected that, right?”

“I didn’t expect that I’d be the only adult in the class.”

Hans cleared his throat. “You weren’t the only adult in class.”

“Right. Hans was there, too. It was humiliating.”

Hans grinned. “It wasn’t that bad. If you’d kept your mouth shut it would have been fine.”

Kat narrowed her eyes at me. “What did you say, Tom?”

I cleared my throat. “I asked the professor a few tough questions. I thought that was what you were supposed to do. Isn’t school supposed to encourage critical thinking?”

Kat grinned. “In college. Maybe in high school.”

“Not in elementary school!” Hans smiled. “These were elementary-aged kids.”

“They didn’t have a class for grown-ups?”

I shook my head. “Apparently, everyone who lives in the Entente chambers goes through this curriculum at a young age. They don’t bring in rogue American mages very often.”

“It’s a little silly,” Hans suggested. “My philosophy is simple. Cooperate and graduate.”

“Good advice!” Jessie added. “That’s how I got through high school. That, and by listening to all the answers that my fellow students were thinking on my tests.”

I snorted. “Cheater.”

“I heard all the answers. It wasn’t like I could tune them out. It wasn’t intentional cheating. You could say that I heard all the right answers in my head. Just like everyone else.”

I chuckled. “Not just like anyone else.”

Kat cleared her throat. “You all probably shouldn’t talk about cheating when there’s an impressionable nine-year-old in the room.”

I winced. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Elijah piped up. “I’m not an empath. I can’t cheat like that.”

I smirked. “Yes, son. Cheating is bad. We don’t cheat.”

Elijah extended his hand with a thumbs-up. I pressed my lips together. I could think of a few ways that a gate mage might be able to cheat, but I didn’t want to give him any ideas. So long as his shenanigans were limited to gating his broccoli off the plate and into the yard, I’d call that a win. I wasn’t looking forward to his teenage years, especially when he took a serious interest in dating. If I were a gate mage, I would have gotten into all kinds of trouble in my teens.

Given what gate mages could do, I’d say it was a wonder that more of them weren’t in jail. Of course, there wasn’t a human prison on earth that could hold one.

Hans asked Jessie to search the city in case his grandmother had shown up. Jessie pressed her wand to her temple and did a check. She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not sensing her anywhere nearby.”

“Do you think Mary could look?” Hans asked. “She might have a wider range.”

“I can ask,” Jessie offered. “Speaking of which, I need a gate back there tomorrow night.”

“You’re going there more than twice a week?” I asked.

Jessie nodded. “Mary has time available every evening. I figured I might as well take advantage of that and get through this process as soon as possible.”

I sighed. “Be glad you don’t have to go through the coursework. Did she upload all that information into your head yet?”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “It’s not an upload. Not exactly. She can give me visions, and her own experiences from sitting in class. I’ll still have to go through it all, but when I do, only a few minutes will pass in the real world while I go to class in my head.”

“Why can’t they do that with us? They gave me a vision before.”

“You’re not an empath. They drew out an illusion from your own mind. It’s different when two empaths connect. I can go into her mind as much as she can mine.”

“Can you read her mind?”

Jessie shook her head. “I can access what she wants to show me. An empath can’t draw out a memory from someone unless that person is willing to give it.”

“My grandmother can put thoughts in people’s minds,” Hans mused. “Maybe if you picked up that skill, you could transfer Mary’s classes into ours.”

“I’m not that advanced. The most I can do is push a feeling into someone’s mind. I can’t do thoughts, yet. I don’t even know if it’s possible to put an entire vision in someone’s head. Like I said, the only reason Mary can do that with me is because we’re both empaths. She’s not putting her memory in my head so much as she’s giving me access to hers.”

Kat cleared her throat. “Not to change the subject, but Jeff will be at the store first thing in the morning to do some training. If you’re still interested in working there, Hans, would you like to join us?”

Hans nodded. “Sure. Might as well. Until we get a lead on Hana or my grandmother, or I have something to do with the Entente mages, I can’t think of a better way to spend my day.”

I stood from the couch. “All right, boys! Time for bed!”

“I’m hungry!” Elijah protested.

I smirked. “Then gate yourself a Twinkie.”

“Good idea!” Elijah formed a small portal. He reached into it and pulled a Twinkie from it.

Kat tilted her head. “I didn’t think we had any Twinkies.”

“We don’t,” Elijah confirmed. “But the neighbors do! Evan had one on the bus. I knew they had some.”

Kat and I made eye contact. “Put it back, Elijah.”

“You told me to get one!”

“I didn’t tell you to steal one!”

Elijah snorted. “Fine. I’m still hungry.”

Hans bit his lip. “Consider yourself lucky. When I was sixteen, I once took a six-pack of beer from the gas station.”

“Don’t give him any ideas!” Kat protested.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

After the kids were in bed, Kat and I snuggled on the couch and watched a few shows. We rarely caught a show when it aired. We usually picked it up on a streaming service later. If we were caught up on what was new, we looked for something we could binge through. We were about done working through the fifteen seasons of Supernatural. Sam and Dean’s conflict with the British Men of Letters hit close to home, in more ways than one.

We didn’t have a set bedtime. With Jessie sleeping on our couch, though, we didn’t stay up as late as we used to. Since she moved in with us, she’d adopted our evening viewing schedule and was watching the same shows we were. She was the one who recommended Supernatural. I’d only seen a few episodes before. I was glad she suggested it. She thought I was projecting the distrust that the show’s heroes had with the secretive British organization on my experience with the Entente mages. Maybe she was right. Still, I had legitimate concerns. Especially now that I’d learned that the Entente way was focused on conformity.

I’d never considered myself a conformist. Jessie and I were both “punk rockers” in our teenage years, and I still had a rebellious nature. I was innately cynical about authority in any form, especially large organizations and institutions that sought to impose their views on others.

It was that attitude that sometimes set me at odds with other mages. When I was trying to stop Caedes—the first time—I didn’t bother to consult the other mage families. Tim Wagner was my friend before he turned dark-side. I won’t say he was my best friend, but we’d palled around quite a bit during the mage convocations when we were young. In some way, I felt personally responsible for his fall. I should have seen it coming and I should have done more to help him before. It wasn’t like there weren’t warning signs. I thought that it was my responsibility to stop him. I was strong enough, I knew him better than most, and the other mages couldn’t agree on a plan to deal with him.

I was also arrogant. Growing up, all I heard from the adult mages was that I was promising, and that I had potential. Ichabod said I still had potential. I wasn’t the arrogant mage I was in my youth, but the professor thought I was. Maybe he was right, though. Perhaps I still had a few youthful tendencies that I never shook off.

The years had tamed my ego, and I didn’t think arrogance was the problem. I was genuinely cynical about the Entente mages. It wasn’t because I thought I was better than them. I knew I wasn’t. There was too much that didn’t make sense.

I understood why they took an interest in Jessie. They had one empath, and Mary was an advanced age. They needed someone to take her place when she was gone. It was why they were so interested in Hans and me that had me perplexed. They had battlemages who were every bit as capable as I was. Ichabod was a gate mage whose abilities far eclipsed Hans’.

Kat and I went to bed, and Jessie curled up with her blanket on the couch.

Kat fell asleep in a few minutes, but my head was spinning over the events of the day. I couldn’t quiet my thoughts. I couldn’t get comfortable. I tossed and turned for a couple of hours.

A familiar tingle washed over my body. Arcane magic.

Jessie didn’t release that kind of surge when she used her skills. Unless she’d picked up something new from Mary, it couldn’t be her. There was a chance that Elijah made a portal or something. Maybe he stole that Twinkie back again.

Given all that was going on, though, I couldn’t risk making any assumptions. I grabbed Wand from my nightstand and rolled out of bed.

I opened my bedroom door slowly, careful not to make too much noise. I tip-toed out of my room. The kids were still asleep, and Jessie was snoring on the couch. Unless she was casting something from her dreams, it wasn’t her. Sleep casting was rare, but not unheard of. It’s especially dangerous for gate mages. You never know where you might wake up.

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye near the kitchen. I tightened my grip around Wand and aimed at the shadowy figure. I shot a blast at whoever it was.

An arcane barrier formed around him.

The blast gave off enough light that I recognized it was a man in a black three-piece suit.

“Who are you?” I reached with my free hand to flip on the lights.

“Apologies for startling you. My name is Nigel Brimble. I’m here with the Entente mages.”

I sighed and lowered my wand. “My mentor?”

“Yes, Mr. Gregory. I must say, though, that your blast was quite impressive.”

“Thanks, I think. Don’t you people ever knock?”

“Ichabod sent me straight here. Again, my apologies. I didn’t consider that it was so late. It was morning in London when I departed.”

“What the hell?” I turned, and Jessie was sitting up rubbing her eyes.

“Jessie, this is Nigel. He’s from the Entente mages.”

Jessie snorted. “I know. Empath, duh. Could you turn off the freaking lights?”

I grinned. “Sorry. Nigel, it’s late. I haven’t slept a wink. We haven’t even had a chance to get things arranged for you here. I thought we’d have more than a few hours to prepare.”

Nigel straightened his tie. He was roughly my age, and his hair was prematurely gray. He was clean-shaven and had that same perma-constipated look on his face that was fashionable among the hoity-toity Entente mages.

“No bother! I’m well rested, so I don’t require a bed.”

I grunted. “Yeah, but I do.”

Nigel extended his index finger. “No rest for the weary! Not when evil is afoot!”

I grunted. “Evil can kiss my ass.”

“Pardon me?”

I bit my lip. “Never mind. Care for a beer?”

“That sounds delightful!”

I grabbed two from the fridge and tossed one to Nigel. He fumbled it in one hand and barely managed to snag it with his second. “Let’s go out to the garage. Everyone here is asleep.”

“Right!”

Nigel followed me out to the garage, where I leaned against my truck and cracked open my beer. Nigel did the same. He took a sip.

“Minging shit! What is this? Piss in a can?”

“It’s Bud Light. You can’t come to St. Louis without having a Bud.”

Nigel set his can on my workbench. “This Bud’s for you, mate.”

I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Right. So I thought we should get started straight away. There’s so much you need to learn.”

“Do I?” I took another sip of my beer and belched.

Nigel shook his head in disgust. “I was there for your assessment. Of course, there’s no way you’d know that. The hoods and all.”

I chuckled. “I remember. I was just there. Mind if I ask you a question, Nigel?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you really think I’m only level-two?”

“Your score is an average. I gave you a three.”

I furrowed my brow. “If that’s an average, who was the joker who gave me a one?”

“It doesn’t matter. There are some who have the opinion that if your spells don’t originate in your core, it doesn’t count.”

I raised an eyebrow. “In my core? You mean my abs?”

“More like your center. Every mage has a core. Technically it’s in your chest. An ethereal organ that’s connected to the central nervous system.”

“An ethereal organ?”

“Physicians can’t account for it. It won’t appear on medical scans. It’s why magery is genetic. Impotens, of course, don’t inherit a core. That’s why they never manifest. It’s the heart of your magic, what connects you to the arcane wells.”

I bit my lip. I’d never known there was a specific place where my magic started. “What do you mean that I wasn’t casting from my core? If all my magic is produced by my core, doesn’t that mean anything I do magic-wise is from my core?”

“We’re in St. Louis, are we not?”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“I thought so. Apologies, I came here by portal. This is where the Missouri River empties into the Mississippi. If I asked you to draw some water from the Missouri River, and you drew it from the Mississippi south of the confluence, you’d have Missouri River water, but it wouldn’t be pure. It would be diluted by the water that feeds the Mississippi.”

“You’re suggesting that I’m drawing from diluted power?”

“In a sense. While we think of humans as biological beings, in truth, all life is a magic of a sort. The spirit of the person is a force of immense power. When you use your abilities, and you cast a spell that isn’t drawn directly from your core, it is mingled with a bit of yourself.”

I tilted my head. “That’s why my magic has something of my DNA. A personal signature. Using that signature was how Caedes’ prison was penetrated.”

“Precisely! Using magic that way might be strong—the human spirit is powerful, after all—but it makes you vulnerable. A level-five mage could use it against you. They could sense your spirit in your magic and take control of it.”

“Manipulate my spirit? My human spirit?”

“The human spirit is what wields arcane power. It is one of very few forces in the world capable of doing so. However, if one’s spirit is not properly guarded, it’s possible for another mage to use your spirit to tap into your core, then use your power to control you.”

“Like a puppet of some kind?”

Nigel nodded. “That’s an apt analogy.”

I scratched my head. “I wish Professor Poopypants was as helpful as you are.”

“Poopypants?” Nigel raised an eyebrow.

“I’m bad with names. All I know is that it started with a P?”

“Pritchard?”

I nodded. “That’s the one.”

Nigel laughed so hard he snorted. He clasped his hand over his mouth, embarrassed by a momentary lapse in perfect self-control. “You might find it humorous to learn that your nickname for him is true to life.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “He shits his pants?”

“Not regularly. I’ll just say that when a lad casts an arcane missile for the first time it takes a lot out of him. Sometimes, in more ways than one.”

I grinned. “I take it you and him are around the same age?”

“We were classmates. Regular blokes, apart from our abilities. He was more of the bookish sort. Never had an affinity for battlemagery, despite it being his specialization. He never progressed beyond level three.”

“Wait. You scored me at level three. That means, in your opinion, I’m just as strong a mage as Professor Pumpernickel.”

Nigel shook his head. “Stronger. I rated you at the level you demonstrated, and you weren’t even drawing from your core. I can teach you to do that. The next time you go to class, you’ll be stronger. But don’t think that matters much and you’d be wise not to mention it. Pritchard might be a stodgy prick, but he knows his stuff. You aren’t going to get very far with him by challenging him.”

“Cooperate and graduate?” I suggested.

“Give it a go. You want out of that playground, right?”

“I can’t get out of the class fast enough.”

Nigel winked. “Here’s a little secret, mate. Ichabod wants to train you up straight and quick. That’s why I’m here. This isn’t a regular arrangement. Pritchard knows as much. He’s also a bit of a prat. If he thinks you’re faffing around and can’t be arsed to do the work, he’ll keep you in his class as long as he can get away with it.”

I cleared my throat. “You might not know a good beer when you have one, but you’re not so bad compared to the others.”

“Next time we’re in London I’ll take you out for a real bevvy,” Nigel promised. “You’ll never drink this piss again.”

I pressed my lips together. “If I ask you a question, will you answer honestly?”

“If I answer you at all, it’ll be the honest truth.”

“Why does Ichabod want to rush me through all of this? Why am I so important to all of this? Seems to me like you have a lot of battlemages, many better trained than I am, to deal with Hana and the Axis mages.”

“You’re right. If we were facing standard Axis mages, the kind of pricks the Entente fought in the Arcane Wars, we’d be ready. Hana Sato was brought back through necromancy. She’s used that power to raise others. It was the police who found you at Ysselsteyn, right?”

I nodded. “They called someone. The next thing I knew, Ichabod showed up and took us to his study.”

“The truth is we’ve been tracking Hana Sato for some time. Like you, we’ve always been a step behind. When we realized what she was doing, raising Axis mages, we suspected it was a matter of time before she hit Ysselsteyn. When she came, we were waiting. I was among the battlemages assigned to take her down. We had her outnumbered, three to one. Our magic bounced right off her. We couldn’t even take down the bodies she raised. They’re impervious to our power. When the police saw what you could do, that you dropped those buggers like flies, they reached out to us. The police were there with us when we launched our first attack. It took all we could do to get them to safety. We lost a lot of mages. Hana and her army of Axis mages took them out one by one. Ichabod and I were the only ones to get away.”

I tilted my head. “Why would your magic be ineffective against her and the corpses?”

“We believe it’s because even in her body, she’s pure arcane power. Blasting her with our magic is like attacking a water elemental with a squirt gun. Or a fire elemental with a flamethrower.”

“Elementals like that are a thing?”

“You bet your bloody arse they are. Not all that dangerous unless you piss them off.” Nigel waved his hand through the air. “That’s beside the point. There’s something about your magic that’s different. A part of the assessment was to discern whether something happened in your battle with Caedes that changed you. Something that altered your connection to the ethereal realm.”

“You didn’t see anything, did you?” I pressed.

Nigel shook his head. “Nothing that would explain it.”

I pressed my lips together. “That’s because you created an illusion from the wrong episode. My second battle with Caedes a few months ago probably explains it better.”

Nigel frowned. “How do you mean?”

“To stop Caedes and the ethereal beasts that escaped into the city, Hans made a portal that sent me straight into the fissure that the dark magic left within the prison where I trapped Caedes before. I went through a portal but didn’t emerge through the other side.”

“That translated you into an ethereal being.”

I nodded. “It was the only way I could fight the fiends that were spreading through the fog that escaped from the fissure. I passed back through the portal in the ethereal realm again, but what if doing all of that brought me back but left me with a different sort of connection to the arcane wells? What if the magic I’m wielding now is still effective against ethereals?”

“Since Hana was resurrected from the ethereal realm, as are the chaps she’s bringing back to fight alongside her, that might explain why your power is still effective. Going into that fissure was almost like invading the realm of the dead. You came back from there not by necromancy, but by a portal. But you came back from the ethereal realm no less. That’s bloody brilliant, Thomas. You can fight her because you’re just like her.”

“Well, not exactly. I’m not warped by dark magic.”

“That’s not what I mean. Your spirit was there among the dead. You came back in a body. She has a body now, too. Maybe you didn’t go as far into the ethereal realm as she did over the twenty-plus years she’s been dead, but you still went there. You also came back to the world and fought as a spirit against those fiends in the fog, as you described them. Then you came back and recovered your body when Hans’ portal rematerialized you. It’s not necromancy, but the effect on your spirit and your connection to the arcane wells is the same.”

I nodded. “That’s a possible explanation. My magic doesn’t feel any different.”

“This is uncharted territory, mate. I don’t suspect it would feel different at all.”

“If we’re right about this, it’s good news, right? It means I can defeat Hana and her army.”

Nigel shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not good news at all. She’s raising an army of some of the most dangerous mages in history. You might have a lot of potential, but you’re only one mage.”

I pressed my lips together. “Dark magic usually leaves a fissure behind, right?”

“It can if it’s wielded carelessly. It doesn’t always happen.”

“What if we can find another fissure? Hans could forge another gate like the one that sent me there. We could replicate the process that changed me.”

“It’s a risky proposition. I could run it by Ichabod and the others. Even if we can pull it off, though, we’d have to be absolutely certain that we’re right about the process that changed you. Was there anything else that happened, anything at all, that might be unusual? Something that could connect you to Hana Sato and the magic she uses?”

I took a sip of my beer. “There was one thing. Caedes released those fiends on purpose. He orchestrated the whole thing. He wanted me to fight them. They weren’t trying to spread across the earth like I thought. He was preventing them from returning to the ethereal realm. When I killed the fiends, it released their energy and Caedes absorbed it. When he was strong enough to do it, he resurrected Hana. She kissed him, and when she did, she sucked all his power out of him.”

Nigel took a deep breath. “Since you were using magic the way you do, since your spirit was mingled with the arcane blasts you used to take down the fiends, the power that Caedes absorbed was also tainted with your arcane signature. Your spirit’s DNA, for lack of a better term. That might also be why Hana Sato and anyone she’s raised using the power that she stole from Caedes is also vulnerable to your magic.”

I bit my lip. “It’s just a possibility. We don’t know for sure if that’s it or if it’s like you said. That I was essentially dead and came back like Hana.”

“It might be a combination of both. If so, we’re fucked. You may be the only one who can harm her or the mages she’s raised.”

“There might be a way we can find out for sure.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Teach me how to cast from my core. If I do that, my spirit won’t be attached to the magic at all, right?”

“Brilliant. I see where you’re going with this. If a blast from your core hurts them, we’ll know that we can duplicate your transformation with other battlemages. If the blast doesn’t hurt them at all, we’ll know that you’ll have to fight her with magic mingled with your spirit. You’ll have to stand alone against an army.”

“You said before that casting magic the way I know how is dangerous. That some mages might be able to harness the power and devise an immunity to it based on my signature.”

Nigel nodded. “That’s why you’ll have to learn how to fight both ways. Only human mages, those not raised by Hana’s power, will be able to do that. We believe that there are many mages still loyal to the Axis cause who will join Hana. We can help fight them. If you encounter them, you’ll have to be ready. Once Hana realizes that you’re the only threat to her and the undead mages, taking you out will be their top priority.”

I finished my beer and took the opened can that Nigel refused. “Well, then, we’d better start training. However this plays out, it sounds like I’m your only shot to stop them.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

I woke up Kat to let her know what was happening. The last thing I wanted was for her to wake up and find I was missing. Jessie saw Nigel. She knew, more or less, what was happening, but she didn’t know we were leaving. I told Kat to stick with the plan. She could train Jeff and Hans at the store in the morning. If I made it there, I made it there. If I didn’t, well, it was nothing to worry about.

Without a gate mage at our disposal, we had to travel the old-fashioned way, and when you’re throwing arcane missiles around, it’s generally a good idea to get as far from civilization as possible. You’d think practicing magic at night would be a good thing, but arcane power manifests like a brilliant light show. A strong arcane blast can light up the skies.

I knew a place, though it had been years since I went there to train. After I met Kat, and she got pregnant with Elijah, I set aside my wand for a while. A battlemage doesn’t have a lot of useful skills when there isn’t an enemy to fight.

I hoped the spot I had in mind was still accessible. If anyone developed anything in the area, we’d have to find someplace new. It was about an hour’s drive, even in the middle of the night without traffic, down Interstate 44. You don’t have to drive too far out of St. Louis to hit the rolling hills of the Ozarks.

I was in cargo pants and hiking boots. I knew we had a walk ahead of us after I parked the truck.

The trails I used to hike were now overgrown. Nigel, in a suit and wearing loafers, bitched the whole hike. Welcome to the Midwest, pretty boy.

We arrived at what used to be a clearing in the jungle. A few saplings were new, and tall weeds covered the ground.

Nigel shook his head. “This isn’t the gymnasium in our chambers, but I suppose it will suffice.”

I chuckled. “Look at that boulder. It still has burn marks from the last time I practiced out here.”

The boulder was about half the size it used to be. I’d hit it with a series of arcane missiles. There were several more boulders standing in the space. I never targeted trees unless they were already dead. I’ve never been a hippie or anything like that, but killing trees for no real reason was lame. That’s why I liked this spot. Rocks aren’t alive, and there were plenty of good targets I could use.

Nigel pulled out his wand. It was twisted and polished, not straight like mine. Of course, wands could flex and wobble. They were almost like living entities unto themselves. When a mage turned sixteen, at least according to our tradition in the states, we used a crystal to enter a peculiar ethereal realm. The spirit that settled on our wands mimicked the spirit of the mage at the time, and so wands developed something of a personality. Since I was sixteen at the time, my buddy Wand tended to spaz out around pretty females. He was also cocky, although that worked to my advantage in a combat scenario. When I had to fire a spell, Wand didn’t hesitate like some mages’ wands did. It didn’t take time to charge up and unload. Wand delivered a hell of a blast every time. Provided of course I wasn’t doing battle with a naked woman. I’d never been in a situation like that but if I had, knowing myself at sixteen, Wand would probably get shy, nervous, and blow his arcane load prematurely.

“Allow me to demonstrate,” Nigel said. “I’ll walk you through the process of casting from your core.”

I watched as Nigel widened his feet and aimed his wand at a boulder. “As you surely know, how your arcane power responds is an act of the will. Some mages require their wands to cast. I’m under the impression that you do not.”

I nodded. “I can cast without it, but it’s more exhausting without Wand.”

“‘Without my wand,’ you mean.”

“No. I meant what I said. I named my wand Wand.”

Nigel chuckled and shook his head. “Wanker.”

I grinned. “Dork!”

Nigel laughed. “It makes sense. It’s incredibly difficult to cast from the core without a wand. I imagine you’re drawing more arcane power from your core with your wand than without it. When you cast using your spirit, it’s not necessarily dangerous. Provided, of course, you don’t cast your entire spirit out of your body. The spirit replenishes quickly. It does leave you feeling a bit winded.”

“If that’s the case, my power might be more effective against Hana without my wand, right?” I theorized.

“Possibly. If our theory is accurate. Now, there are a number of ways a mage can communicate his will to his wand. Having observed you in action during your assessment, it appears you channel your will through your thoughts.”

I nodded. “I visualize the effect. It’s not really any different than how I cast without my wand. The process isn’t different, anyway.”

“Right. When casting from your core, you must use the process you’re familiar with but use more focus. It’s nearly impossible to do without your wand. Some mages use a shake or a flick of the wrist to cast from the core. Over time, you and your wand will develop a language of a sort. Other mages verbalize their intention. Think, Harry Potter. The word the mage speaks can give the wand the focus needed to draw directly from the core. There are advantages and disadvantages to whichever approach you take.”

“How so?”

“Well, with a verbal command, your wand can respond even if you’re not holding it. It can draw from your core at a small distance from your body. If you are committed to gestures, you lose that advantage.”

“That sounds like the better option.”

“Not necessarily. Think like a fighter. If you’re in a tussle with another bloke, the one thing you want to avoid is projecting your punches.”

“I’ve never been in a fistfight.”

“Standard training for battlemages. We’ll get there. The point is, if you give a signal before you throw a hook, maybe a shrug of the shoulder or a peculiar expression, your opponent will pick up on it and prepare to block your strike.”

I nodded. “So if I shout ‘arcane missile’ before I cast it, my enemy will know what’s coming a half-second before I release the blast.”

“Precisely. Verbal commands alert your enemy to what you’re doing. It also eliminates stealthiness. It will alert enemies to your location.”

“Wouldn’t an arcane missile reveal my location anyway?”

Nigel nodded. “That’s your strongest strike. It’s like an uppercut. It’s effective if it lands, but your enemy is more likely to see it coming than a jab.”

“So what kind of blast can I use if I’m lurking in the shadows and don’t want to expose myself?”

Nigel chuckled. “Well, if exposing yourself gives you your jollies, that’s your business, mate.”

I grinned. “You know what I mean.”

“The common terminology in our circles is a ‘cherry bomb.’”

“What’s a cherry bomb?”

“Allow me to demonstrate.” Nigel raised his wand over his head. He swung his arm forward as if he was casting a line with a fishing pole, and one of the boulders exploded as if a stick of dynamite had ignited inside the rock. “Notice, there’s no tail. The blast doesn’t manifest until it’s inside your target.”

“You use gestures rather than verbal commands?”

“I can use both. It’s tricky to train your wand that way. If you train your wand to associate a particular blast with both a command and a gesture, most wands will require you to do both simultaneously to draw the necessary power from your core. It takes a bit of practice before a wand learns that it should respond the same way to a matching command or gesture.”

“How much practice?”

Nigel aimed at another boulder. “Cherry bomb.”

The boulder exploded the same way the first one did. “It took a year of daily practice before my wand mastered it. Given that we haven’t been at war for years, I had the time. You may not have that luxury.”

“Can I split it? Cherry bombs are already better if I’m trying to be sneaky. Lobbing bombs at mages from behind the bushes or whatever. It would make sense to use a gesture for those. Since arcane missiles will give away my position, maybe use a verbal cue for those.”

Nigel nodded. “That’s a reasonable plan. Why don’t you give it a shot?”

“How do I teach my wand to draw from my core based on the gesture?”

“Start visualizing as you do when you cast. Now that I’ve shown you a cherry bomb, you can cast a mental picture. Use the gesture. Keep practicing. Through repetition, your wand will learn to associate the gesture with the spell.”

“How do I know when my wand is drawing from my core?”

Nigel grinned widely. “You’ll know.”

I raised Wand overhead and mimicked Nigel’s gesture, tossing my arm forward as if I were fishing. I visualized what I saw Nigel do before. I aimed at the boulder.

It cracked.

I sighed. “How was that?”

“It’s not pulling from your core. Keep going.”

I cast cherry bomb after cherry bomb at the same boulder probably a hundred times. Dozens of cracks spider-webbed across the surface.

My shoulder ached like a Major League pitcher after tossing a complete game. I wasn’t putting a ton of force behind the gesture, but the repeated motion took a toll on my forty-two-year-old joints.

After about a hundred and fifty attempts, the boulder started to break apart. I wasn’t sure if it was the accumulation of blasts or if my cherry bombs were getting stronger.

Then all at once, I landed one and the entire boulder exploded with a bang. I shielded my face as a few chunks of rock flew in my direction. Nigel threw up an arcane barrier just in time.

I exhaled a shaky breath. “Thanks for that. You saved my pretty face.”

Nigel grinned. “You did it. That was bloody brilliant.”

I rubbed my shoulder. “Cool. Maybe we can do something else now.”

Nigel shook his head. “We’ll move on once you’ve cast ten cherry bombs from your core in a row. Once you’ve done that, you can be confident your wand has mastered the skill.”

It took another two hundred attempts, give or take, before I strung ten cherry bombs together in a row. I thought my arm was going to fall off. I also reduced the whole clearing to a field of gravel. I was going to need a new spot before we worked on my missiles.

Nigel reluctantly agreed to take a break. It was early morning, and Kat was supposed to be at the store with Hans and Jeff. I figured we could use a good breakfast. I could also use a nap. I hadn’t stayed up all night in years, and it was taking a toll.

I figured we could stop by the store, check in on Kat and the others, go get breakfast, then hit the sack for a couple of hours. I expected Nigel to protest but was pleasantly surprised when he agreed.

“Sleep is good. If you sleep with your wand, it will strengthen your connection.”

I grinned. “Are you sure Kat won’t get jealous?”

Nigel made a face. “That depends on the nature of your relationship with your wand.”

“Nothing like that.” I crossed my heart and laughed.

“Your wand can benefit from rest as much as you will. After that, we’ll find a place to work on your missiles.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Driving tired sucks. My eyes wanted to close. My mind was screaming, “You’d better not, fool!” It was like someone had tied a Looney Toons Acme anvil to each of my eyelids.

Nigel helped. The more we talked the easier it was to stay awake. He was a pure-blooded battlemage. Both his parents were battlemages. He wasn’t as old as Ichabod or Mary, but he hadn’t relied on arcane magic to preserve his youth. He was the age he looked. Despite his expertise, he’d never been in a real mage battle. Very few mages had, though, so that wasn’t surprising.

He also had six children. I could barely manage my three. His kids were older than mine. His youngest was sixteen. Still, I couldn’t imagine the chaos that must’ve been the Brimble household when his munchkins were little.

Nigel said that he and his ex-wife raised the children in the chambers. She was from a mage family but was impotens. He didn’t go into details, but he said they’d divorced a couple of years ago. His ex-wife left, and the children who were still living at home left with her.

We exchanged funny stories about our kids. I told Nigel about how my wife wasn’t from a mage family, and he didn’t flinch. I figured the Entente mages, a relatively close and closed community, would think that intermarrying with normies was taboo. Even my parents had struggled with it. Nigel was more curious than anything.

“Have you considered enrolling your son?”

I bit my lip. “Not really. I’ve only known about the Entente academy for a couple days.”

“You’re not a portal mage. He could certainly benefit from our school.”

I nodded. “I’m sure he could. He still needs a rudimentary education.”

“We provide all of that as well.”

I pressed my lips together. “To be completely honest, it’s something Kat and I would have to discuss. Certainly not until this Axis problem is dealt with. I’m not sure it’s safe.”

“There’s not a safer place in the world, mate. Do you think your family is safer in your house? If you’re a target, the Axis mages may use your family to get to you.”

I nodded. “I can’t lie. It’s a worry. The war is between the Axis and Entente mages. You might believe that your chambers are safe, but you’re also vulnerable. If the Axis mages learn that I’m the biggest threat, they might come after the Entente alliance thinking they can take you all down without any resistance.”

“Unless you’re with us. We need you, Thomas.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “I understand.”

“The best way to keep your family safe is to stay clear of them until this is over.”

I gripped my steering wheel. “That makes sense, but I don’t think that tracks. They could still take my family and use them to draw me out of your chambers. If I’m here, at least I can protect them.”

We pulled up to the store. We’d had to surround the store with a fence. We had too much equipment on the lot that was easy picking for thieves, and even with cameras and fences, we had the occasional break-in. After I unlocked and swung open the gates, I parked my truck between Kat’s car and Jeff’s truck.

Nigel followed me inside. After the night and the hike in and out of the woods, you’d think he’d be disheveled, but somehow, he still looked prim and proper.

Kat was at the front desk doing something on the store computer. She looked up when we walked in.

“Hey, baby! How was the night?”

“Educational. Kat, this is Nigel.”

Kat stepped out from around the corner and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“A pleasure.” Nigel bowed his head slightly.

“Where are Jeff and Hans?” I asked.

“In the shop. They’re going through the inventory, servicing everything up. Making sure things are ready for the grand reopening, whenever that is.”

“Any applications?”

Kat nodded. “That’s what I was going through on the computer when you arrived. We have a few who might be promising.”

“Good. Bring them in for interviews. Hopefully I’ll be available. Things are heating up with Hana, so I might have to skip out if I’m needed.”

“Understood. We can handle it. Save the world. Let me worry about the business.”

I leaned over and kissed Kat on the cheek. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“I know what you’d do. Probably nothing at all. You’d be a hot mess.”

I glanced at Nigel. “It’s true. She’s my secret weapon.”

“I understand. Betsy always kept me in line. Without her, I get myself into all kinds of trouble.”

“You? Get in trouble?” I teased. “I can’t imagine.”

“Don’t let appearances fool you, mate. I’ve always been what you might call a rebellious spirit. One time, at a dinner party, I set my fork down on the right side of my plate.”

I gasped. “You don’t say!”

Nigel chuckled. “It was scandalous!”

Kat smirked. “A rebel without a cause!”

Nigel shook his fist in the air. “You know it, love!”

“We’re not staying long. We’re going to grab a rollaway for Nigel and head home to get a little shuteye. It was a long night.”

“Say hello to Jeff and Hans before you leave.”

We went back into the shop. A little table with protective glasses sat inside the door. I put a set on and handed one to Nigel. “OSHA regulations.”

Nigel put his glasses on. “Understood.”

Jeff was at the workbench repairing a small engine. Hans was on the ground, covered in oil, changing the oil in a lawn aerator.

“Getting everything in order?” I asked.

Jeff dropped a wrench and stepped over. “Hey, Boss! We’re getting the fleet in tip-top shape.”

Hans looked up at me. He had a black smear of grease or oil spread across his cheek. “This work is messy.”

I chuckled. “It certainly can be. Changing oil?”

“Jeff is teaching me how to service every item in the fleet. Who would have thought that there was so much to learn in this business?”

I grinned. “There is. You don’t have to learn everything at once. You’ll have to learn a lot on the job. It took me a couple years before I had everything down. I’m still learning things all the time.”

“We all are,” Nigel interjected. “I’m from the Entente alliance. You must be Hans Wagner.”

Hans grinned. “Seriously? I never would have guessed.”

“I can’t blame you for not noticing. We pride ourselves in blending in.”

Hans smirked. I wasn’t sure if Nigel hadn’t picked up on Hans’ sarcasm or if he was being sarcastic himself.

I chuckled and nudged Nigel. “Apart from the accent, the suit, the posture, and pretty much everything about your appearance, I’d never think you weren’t from around here.”

Nigel winked at me and offered his hand to Hans. “The name’s Nigel Brimble.”

Hans shook Nigel’s hand. After he let go, Nigel saw his palm was covered in engine oil and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his soiled hand.

Carrying a handkerchief was another thing to set him apart from the average American. Handkerchiefs were supposed to be civilized, somehow. Carried by people of higher society. I didn’t get it. Once you use one, you’re carrying a snot-soiled rag around with you the rest of the day. How was that more civilized than blowing your boogies into a few squares of toilet paper or a tissue?

“Keep up the good work,” I told Hans. “We’re going to pick up a bed for Nigel here and be on our way.”

Hans nodded. “Kat said you were training all night.”

I rubbed my brow. “We were. Nigel taught me how to cast from my core. I’m surprised I have enough energy left to stand.”

Hans wiped his hands on his jeans and stood. “From your core? What does that mean?”

“It’s complicated,” Nigel replied. “The same principle applies to mages of every class, but I cannot explain the mechanics to you. I’m not familiar with your specialization. I’m certain Ichabod will explain it to you tonight.”

“He wishes to train with me tonight?” Hans asked.

“He intends to meet you here. Not in this place specifically. At Thomas’ house. Portal mages can train anywhere. You can also go anywhere. I imagine he has a few locations in mind.”

“I was already planning to send Jessie there. She has a session planned with Mary.”

Nigel nodded. “Wait for Ichabod. He’ll send her directly to Mary. If he’s off training with you, he won’t be able to meet her at the usual spot.”

I grabbed one of our rollaway beds and took it out the front doors to lift it into my truck bed.

When we got back to the house I set up the bed for Nigel next to the couch in the living room and set sheets on the bed. “Sleep if you like. You’re free to watch something on TV if you’re not tired. I’m going to crash.”

“Do you have anything I might eat?”

I snorted. “We did say we were going to get breakfast, didn’t we? Help yourself to whatever you can find in the kitchen. It’s an electric stove. Pots and pans are in the lower cabinets to the right of the stove if you’d like to fry yourself up some bacon and eggs.”

“Delightful. Don’t worry about me, Thomas. I can take care of myself.”

I nodded and shuffled my feet back to my bedroom. I needed a shower but was too tired to bother, so I stripped down to my boxers and crawled into bed.

I fell asleep moments after my head hit the pillow. I think I had a few dreams, but I rarely remember them for more than a few moments after I wake.

I didn’t know how long I’d slept, but I woke to the sound of voices in the living room. I rolled out of bed as my bedroom door swung open. It was Nigel.

“Good. You’re up. Get dressed. We have to leave.”

“Leave where?”

“I’ll explain shortly.”

I slipped on a pair of cargo pants and a t-shirt and stepped out of the bedroom. Everyone was there. Kat and the kids. Jessie and Hans. Ichabod was with Nigel.

Ichabod approached me. “Nigel has shared with me your theory. About how you might be able to stop Hana and her resurrected abominations.”

I nodded. “Right. It was just a theory.”

“We’ll have to go with it. We’ve managed to track Hana Sato. She’s at the Schweinebrück.”

“The what?” I scratched my head.

“Pig Bridge. In Magdeburg, Germany.”

I nodded. “All right. What do you want to do?”

“It’s where the ashes of the high sorcerer of the Axis mages were hidden. You’ve probably heard of him. He went by the name of Goebbels.”

I titled my head. “He was a mage?”

“An empath,” Ichabod confirmed. “He was Hitler’s minister of propaganda. He used his skills to brainwash thousands.”

I shook my head. “If Hana Sato was there, it’s already too late.”

“It will be more difficult to reanimate him from cremains. I’m not even sure if it’s possible. Whatever the case, Hana is attempting to bring him back. She mustn’t. His abilities could sway hundreds of mages to the Axis cause.”

“Allow me to retrieve my wand and put on my boots. Do we know how many of Hana’s resurrected sorcerers she has with her?”

“Not all of them. Only a small contingent. This might be our best chance to take her out.”

I hurried back to my room to put on my boots and grabbed Wand from my nightstand. I ran back to the living room, where Kat kissed me on the cheek and my boys hugged me.

Ichabod formed a portal. “Hurry. We haven’t much time.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Jessie and Hans joined Ichabod, Nigel, and me as we passed through the portal and appeared in a jungle.

“Where’s this pig bridge?”

Ichabod pointed straight ahead. “Not far. We have to strike before Hana knows we’re here.”

“Was it necessary to bring everyone?”

“If I’m killed or captured, you’ll need Hans to get back. In any battle, it’s wise to have more than one portal mage. If we’re too late, we’ll need an empath to shield us from Goebbels’ influence.”

I glanced at Jessie. “Can you do that?”

Jessie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“She can. Her very presence will complicate the sorcerer empath’s efforts. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“We have to protect Hans. Hana wants him. Her family believes that she intends to recruit him to her cause. Goebbels must be how she intends to do that.”

Ichabod nodded. “If it comes to that, I’ll send him to safety before she can take him.”

“Unless she casts a portal over him first.”

“If she does that, I can portal away,” Hans insisted.

“You might not be able to if Goebbels is raised,” Nigel cautioned. “Remember, Thomas, what we learned before. Hit Hana with magic mingled with your spirit before she resurrects Goebbels. I know we aren’t sure what explains your abilities, but this isn’t the time to experiment with casting from the core.”

“If Goebbels is already raised, take him out first,” Ichabod suggested. “As dangerous as the Sato girl might be, he’s an even greater threat.”

We moved through the trees, and when we got closer Ichabod took Nigel’s hand and they extended their wands. A blue mist, arcane energy, fell around us.

“What are you doing?”

“An illusion,” Ichabod replied. “A cloaking spell. It should allow us to get close without being seen. And remember: cherry bombs might not work. Not if it’s the condition of your spirit that allows your magic to harm Hana and the others.”

“I can cast one without my wand if I must.”

“You haven’t practiced that. Use an arcane missile. You’ll get one shot. Make it count.”

Violet energy flashed in the distance. It was dark magic, the necromantic power that Hana was using to resurrect the dead.

“She’s already begun,” Ichabod said. “We must hurry.”

We ran as hard as we could through the trees until we reached the edge of the water. There was a wooden bridge to the left. Hana stood on the bridge holding a jar in her hand. She was channeling dark magic into it.

“Do it now!” Nigel shouted.

I aimed Wand at Hana and released an arcane missile. It shot right at her, then it hit something and dissipated. A violet energy around the bridge flashed.

“It’s a barrier!” I screamed. “She’s got a battlemage with her.”

A dozen other mages stood around her. Their skin was emaciated and they wore old military uniforms, some with red bands on their arms.

“Where did they come from?” I asked.

Ichabod huffed. “They were using an illusion, too. There are more sorcerers here than we realized.”

“We need to get out of here,” Nigel insisted. “We can’t get through the barrier. We’re outnumbered and only Thomas’ magic can hurt them.”

Ichabod shook his head. “We can’t let them raise Goebbels!”

Hana’s power was flowing out of the jar as Goebbels’ remains were forming into a body.

“I’ll try and overpower the barrier. It’s our only shot.”

I blasted the barrier again. It still held, so I shot it a third time.

Nigel grabbed my hand. “Stop. If you take down the barrier, the sorcerers will be able to shoot back at us as well.”

“I can get us out of here before they do,” Ichabod shouted. “Take down the barrier and kill Goebbels!”

Jessie screamed. “My head!”

I didn’t have time to consider which Entente mage had the better argument. Nigel didn’t speak up again, so I shot the barrier.

Hana formed a portal over her head. An arcane missile might not be able to penetrate the barrier, but a gate could.

I didn’t know where Hana had gone, but Goebbels was still there. He was disoriented, clutching his skull. The feedback between Jessie and him was impacting both of them.

Jessie fell to her knees, clutching at her temples.

“Can you form a portal from here inside the barrier?” I asked. “I can shoot through it and if the exit portal is small enough, I might be able to take out Goebbels.”

“Where the bloody hell did Sato go?” Nigel asked.

“Never mind that!” Ichabod shouted. “This might work.”

He formed a portal, and when I saw the blue glow appear over Goebbels, I shot a missile through it. It blasted Goebbels and his body exploded into a mist.

“Brilliant!” Ichabod cheered. “Let’s get out of here!” He raised his wand and formed another gate, and Nigel grabbed Jessie and pulled her through it.

Hans ran to the portal next, but before he could step through, another portal formed in front of Ichabod’s gate. It was a violet portal, forged from Hana’s dark magic.

Hans took a step back, but the portal pulled back and enveloped him, then disappeared.

“No!” I screamed. I turned, looking for Hana. She had to be around somewhere.

“There’s no time,” Ichabod insisted. “She’s got him. We have no choice but to go. He’s a gate mage. Goebbels is gone. Hans can handle himself.”

“I’m not leaving without him!”

“They could be on the other side of the world by now for all we know. Unless you can take out a dozen sorcerers at once, we have to leave.”

I clenched my fist and aimed at the dark barrier protecting the sorcerers again. I blasted it over and over. “Damn it!” I screamed.

Ichabod grabbed my arm. “We’ll find the boy. Or he’ll find us.”

“I’m not leaving!” I yelled, but Ichabod extended his wand and pulled his portal over both of us.

We appeared back in Ichabod’s office in the Entente chambers.

“Damn you, Ichabod!”

“I saved your bloody life. We can’t risk you being killed. You’re our only hope.”

“Hana has Hans! She knows he’s a gate mage. You really think she doesn’t have a plan to hold him?”

“Goebbels probably was her plan.”

“How do we know that was even Goebbels?” I demanded. “It could have been any old Nazi’s cremains that she used.”

Jessie nodded. “He’s right. After Tommy killed the man we thought was Goebbels, my head still ached. She resurrected Goebbels on that bridge. But it wasn’t the one he killed.”

Ichabod banged his fist on his desk. “It might not have been anyone at all. Another fucking illusion. Goebbels is still on that bridge.”

“Then send us back!” I shouted.

Nigel put his hand on my back. “It’s no use, mate. I’m sorry. If Goebbels was still on that bridge, Hana needed him. If I were to guess, he left in the same portal that Hana used when she escaped. Jessie still felt him because she was out there in the jungle somewhere.”

“Then we can track them down.”

Ichabod shook his head. “They might have been in the jungle when we left, but they won’t be there anymore. I’m sorry, lad. If we have a chance to save Hans, we’ll do it. Even if we could find them, and Mary and Jessie might be able to do it if they combine their power, it would be a suicide mission.”

I pressed my lips together. “Hana kidnapped Hans’ grandmother. She’s also an empath. She might have been there on the bridge as well.”

Jessie nodded. “That’s right. Perhaps you did kill Goebbels.”

Ichabod tilted his head. “If Hana Sato already has an empath, she didn’t need Goebbels at all. If another empath was there the whole time, why didn’t your head start to hurt until Hana resurrected him?”

Jessie sighed. “With Rose, it’s hit or miss. She’s not entirely in her right mind. Sometimes she turns her power off. At other times her abilities interfere with mine. She could have been on the bridge and I didn’t connect to her until after Rose realized Hans was nearby and she sensed his presence.”

I shook my head. “Maybe we killed Goebbels. Maybe I destroyed an illusion. Maybe Rose was there. Perhaps she wasn’t. Either way, Hana has an empath. We’re still screwed either way.”

Jessie shook her head. “Not necessarily. Rose might have been supportive of the Axis powers in her youth, and Hana has likely been using that. With Rose’s dementia, she often retreated into her memories. Hans can bring her back to the present. He does it often when he talks to her. Let’s pray that Goebbels is dead. That he was the one you killed. Hans might be able to influence his grandmother. He could reach her and use her against Hana.”

Ichabod shook his head. “Pure speculation. All we know is that Hana has an empath. Hans is gone. Until we know for sure what we’re dealing with, we can’t risk going after them again. So long as Hana has a battlemage with her, a sorcerer who can create arcane barriers, we won’t even be able to sneak up on her.”

“That’s not necessarily true. We can use a portal to attack Hana the same way I shot Goebbels. If that was Goebbels, I mean.”

Ichabod narrowed his eyes. “It looked like him, but again, illusions could be responsible for that. For now, we have to prepare for the worst.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ichabod left us in his office while he went to consult with other Entente mages. I paced back and forth while Nigel grabbed a bottle of scotch from Ichabod’s desk and poured a small amount into three glasses.

I didn’t know how Ichabod felt about us drinking his scotch, but I didn’t care. We shouldn’t have taken Hans along. We knew that Hana wanted him. He was her son.

We also hadn’t learned a damn thing that would help us. We weren’t sure if I’d killed Goebbels, if the dick that Hana raised was Goebbels, or if she raised an illusion. She could have taken his real ashes with her somewhere else to raise him. Was Hans’ grandmother with her at the time? I’d only blasted the shell with arcane missiles. I didn’t shoot from my core. We needed to test that so we’d know if taking a trip through the ethereal realms changed me and could change others. It was one of two theories that might explain why my magic was effective against them.

To make matters worse, since we were within the Entente wards, Jessie couldn’t reach out to search for Hans. Chances were slim that he was nearby anyway, though.

I sighed. “Do you think there might be a way that we can combine your empathic abilities with Mary’s and extend your reach?”

Jessie shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“It’s possible,” Nigel suggested. “Other classes can combine their magic in a variety of ways. We’d have to talk to Mary.”

“Even if an empath can’t find Hana and the sorcerers since their magic is darker, Hans is with them,” I pointed out. “If we can expand their reach, we have a better chance of tracking them than before.”

Nigel pulled his phone from his pocket. “Brilliant. I’m sharing that idea with Ichabod and Mary. The biggest problem with that is since our empaths can’t detect the sorcerers, we won’t have any idea what we’re facing if we go after him.”

“We don’t believe Hana will hurt him,” Jessie put in. “He resisted his father’s attempt to lure him into sorcery. I have to believe he’ll stand against his mother as well. Hans knows that the corrupted monster who emerged as Hana isn’t the same person she used to be.”

Nigel rubbed his brow. “Abducting an unwilling portal mage is foolish. As a portal mage herself, she must realize as much.”

“Hana never learned her specialization in life,” I explained. “She’d barely shown signs of gate magery before she was pregnant. Her abilities were quieted while she was with child. It wasn’t long after she gave birth to Hans that Caedes killed her.”

“She probably doesn’t know a lot about her own specialization. No more than what Hans knows,” Jessie speculated.

“It’s hard to say what she can do,” Nigel pointed out. “She’s not likely the only portal mage among the dead she’s raised and recruited. There’s also no telling what she’s capable of since she’s spent two decades in the ethereal realm, closer to the dark power she wields than anyone living ever could be.”

A tingle flooded over my body. Ichabod was forming a portal. I jumped out of the way. The last thing you want to happen is for a portal to open right on your body. I wasn’t sure what would happen. Maybe it would pull me through it to the other side. It might also empty those who go through it straight into my bowels. Not a pleasant experience for anyone involved.

Ichabod appeared through the portal with Mary. “I received your message, Nigel. We have a plan.”

“Thank God,” I muttered.

“What are you thinking?” Nigel asked.

“Mary believes she and Jessie can work together to expand their radius. I can take us to several sites where we know Hana has been. I have another list of sites formerly known as strongholds for the old Axis sorcerers.”

“Since Hans is with them, we finally have a chance to track them down,” Mary added. “It might take a while. We’ll be taking shots into the dark. Even with our empathic abilities combined, I doubt we’ll be able to cover more than a few hundred square kilometers.”

“How do we combine our powers?” Jessie asked.

“Use the spell you did before when you tracked down the mages in St. Louis. Since you already know how to do that, it will make things easier. We’ll hold hands. I can use my abilities to piggyback on your magic and it should expand your range considerably.”

“I’m on board. When can we leave?”

Ichabod held up a finger. “About that. This might be our only chance to stop Hana. If we save Hans, we’ll lose our ability to track her. The plan isn’t to only save the boy, but to save him and destroy her and her growing Axis army.”

I tilted my head. “How do we know we can do that? I’m the only one who can hurt them.”

“I want you to lead our battlemages through the ethereal realms. We’re going to attempt to duplicate what you did before, when you fought Caedes.”

Nigel sighed. “I already told you when we spoke before. That’s only one theory about why Thomas’ magic is effective against them. We’re not certain it will work.”

“Right,” Ichabod allowed. “It could also be that she absorbed something of Mr. Gregory’s spirit when she swallowed Caedes’ essence. We believe that’s unlikely. Doing something like that would typically have the opposite effect. It’s more likely that if she did have something of Thomas’ spirit within her, she’d be immune, not vulnerable to his attacks.”

“Technically I haven’t fought her yet,” I reminded him. “Not directly.”

“You’re right. But since your magic works against those she’s raised in the cemeteries, it should be effective against the other Axis sorcerers even if it won’t stop her. We’d rather have one rogue undead sorcerer to deal with than see the entire Axis army resurrected.”

“It’s not a perfect plan, but Ichabod is right,” Nigel admitted. “This might be the best chance we have to stop them before the situation devolves into an all-out war.”

I pressed my lips together. “There’s one problem with this. In order to create a portal like the one Hans made that sent me into the ethereal realm, we’ll need a fissure created by dark arcane magic.”

Ichabod nodded. “Agreed. I told you before, Thomas, that in war we must often confront darkness and learn to master it lest it control us. I can do it. As you know, I’m a lot older than I look. I don’t relish it in the slightest, but I can form a portal using arcane power from the deeper wells. It should leave a fissure behind that we can use. I know how to create the kind of portal that Hans used when he did the same thing before.”

I took a deep breath. “The fissure may create a kind of mist. Before, Caedes was harnessing the mist. He prevented the fiends from the ethereal dimension from going back through it. Since we don’t know exactly the mechanism involved that might have made my magic effective against ethereals, we may need to replicate that. We’ll have to pull fiends into the world and give us an environment where we can emerge into the world before returning through the fissure and back through the partial gate.”

Ichabod patted me on the back. “Allow us to worry about that, mate. We just need you to lead us through, to show us the way. As you showed us your first battle with Caedes and did everything the same as you did before, do the same for us now. Only this time it will not be an illusion. It will be real.”

“We’ll need a place to do it. We can’t do it inside the chambers. I don’t think you’d want to if we could. You don’t want that ethereal mist spreading through your community.”

“The Entente alliance owns a small island in the South Pacific. We often use it for training. It’s the best location for something like this. If the mist spreads at all, it would have to cross hundreds of miles of ocean before it threatened anyone.”

I nodded. “So step one. We recondition your battlemages so their magic will be effective against the sorcerers. Then we hop around the world to track them down using the empath’s abilities?”

“We’ll leave the army on the island. Once we locate Hana, Hans, and the others, we’ll bring our army down upon them through a portal. They won’t know what hit them.”

“All right. I’ll do this. I do have one request, though.”

“What’s that?” Ichabod asked.

“Can I get some extra credit for it? Something that will help me pass that damn arcane theory class?”

Ichabod laughed. “I’m sure something can be arranged.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ichabod sent us to the island. It was a beautiful place. It was hot, but the breeze coming off the ocean made it pleasant. The island was covered by a thick jungle. The songs and chirps of exotic birds, the shrieks of monkeys, and a variety of animal sounds I couldn’t identify filled the air. I hoped we didn’t have to go far but didn’t think we would. The one thing I knew about jungles from all the Discovery Channel documentaries I’d seen was that they are home to many things that could kill you. It was a good thing Nigel was with us. Those documentaries were always narrated by British dudes, and he had the voice of a great narrator. Maybe he could give us a tour.

Ichabod left as soon as we arrived. He had to gather the other Entente battlemages.

“We’re good here, right?” I asked Nigel.

“I suppose so. Why do you ask?”

I pointed at the jungle. The tree line wasn’t far from the beach where we stood. “I bet that place is a haven for venomous snakes. I hate snakes.”

Jessie snickered. “He doesn’t just hate snakes. He’s terrified of them.”

“Stop reading my thoughts!”

Jessie giggled. “I’d say they’re more afraid of you than you are of them, but since I’m in your head, that might not be true.”

Nigel removed his loafers and socks to shake one of the socks out. “We’ve been here for thirty seconds, and I already have sand in my shoe.”

I was glad I was wearing boots. They were technically my work boots. Steel toes. More comfortable than you’d think. They also came up high enough on my ankles that sand wasn’t an issue. Not yet, anyway.

Mary was with us and was scanning the area. Since this was a known training ground for the Entente alliance, it was important to be sure that no one was there. When you’re casting an ethereal mist filled with nasty spider-like shadow creatures, it’s a good idea to make sure no one is around to become fiend food.

Jessie kicked off her shoes and skipped around the beach, allowing the waves to carry the ocean water over her feet.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Enjoying the beach. The way I see it, you guys are going to be busy with portals and ethereal mist and all that crap. I don’t have anything to do until that part’s done. Might as well take advantage. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a beach.”

With all that was going on, I wasn’t sure how she could enjoy herself, even if we were in a tropical paradise. I was worried about Hans. Jessie was different when it came to emotions, though. She was so accustomed to tuning out other people’s thoughts and feelings that she often did the same with her own. It wasn’t that she wasn’t worried or upset. I knew she was. But what was worrying going to accomplish right now? Sitting around brooding wouldn’t help Hans. I suppose wading into the ocean was as good a way to spend the time as any. Maybe it was good for her to take her mind off what was going on. I didn’t have that luxury. I wasn’t so skilled at shaking my angst and anger. I tried to bottle it up the best I could, but I usually needed an outlet to channel it to prevent myself from imploding. Sometimes I went to the gym or went for a jog, which helped take the edge off. Right now, the only thing that would assuage my angst was saving Hans. Launching a flurry of arcane missiles at something nasty wouldn’t hurt either.

Part of me was looking forward to this little ethereal adventure with the Entente battlemages. It gave me something to do. A chance to kick something’s ass, although I wasn’t sure the ethereal fiends had literal asses to kick. They had to, right? I mean, everyone poops.

Mary made her way over to Jessie and kicked her shoes off. “Mind if I walk with you, Jessie? We’ll have some time here. Perhaps we can work on your skills.”

“I’d love that!” Jessie smiled widely.

Nigel pulled me aside and we practiced launching cherry bombs into the water without my wand. While casting from my core was a skill I was glad to have, my sloppier approach was exactly what we needed when we faced off with Hana and her Axis minions.

Each cherry bomb created an impressive blast of water. The process was similar to what I did before, except I didn’t use Wand. I tossed my cherry bombs overhead as if I were throwing a baseball, and luckily I was better at throwing my magic than real balls. I’ve never had a great throwing arm. When tossing cherry bombs, the destination was more a matter of my mind than it was my technique.

I pretended I was Patrick Mahomes launching a pigskin sixty yards to a receiver and visualized an imaginary ball of light flying through the air. The blast of water confirmed the connection.

“You’re doing great!” Nigel assured me. “It’s not so hard, really. It’s just a matter of practicing. You don’t want your first attempt at something like this to be in the middle of a fight.”

“Any other helpful skills you could teach me while we have the time?”

“There are several strikes I could teach you. Casting apart from your core, though, will take a lot out of you. You should probably reserve your strength for the ethereal fiends and Hana’s sorcerers.”

“You’re probably right,” I conceded. “I’d just like to be prepared.”

Nigel patted me on the back. “If our plan works, and this process conditions our battlemages, I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re more than capable of handling whatever the sorcerers might throw at us.”

I cracked my knuckles. “In that case, I suppose you’re right. We should save our energy. How long will it take Ichabod to get back here with the others?”

“It shouldn’t take long. There’s an alert system in the chambers. It’s just a matter of all the battlemages meeting him at the rally point so he can form a gate to bring them here.”

I glanced out at Jessie and Mary. They were holding hands as the waves splashed against their legs, and with her free hand, Jessie had her wand pressed to her temple. They weren’t going to find any mages out there other than us, unless the Entente mages had a base on the island I didn’t know about. Still, it was good they were practicing.

I didn’t know Hana’s plans with Hans exactly. I only knew her endgame. Still, whatever she was doing with him, it couldn’t be good. The sooner we got to him the better.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A much larger portal than the one we came through formed about a hundred yards down the beach from where we stood, and cloaked battlemages filed through. I wasn’t counting them, but I’d guess nearly a hundred lined up in perfect rows along the beach.

Ichabod came through last and dispelled his portal. Jessie and Mary stayed where they were, and Nigel and I jogged toward them. Running on a beach is about twice as tiring as running on a sidewalk or on a track, but least the sand softened my steps and was easier on the joints.

Ichabod was holding a small orb full of violet magic in his hand.

“Is that dark magic?” I asked.

Ichabod nodded. “We need a fissure to the ethereal realm. This should do that without compromising any of our mages in the process.”

I grinned. “Clever.”

“I told you we had ways of harnessing dark power.”

I bit my lip. “It begs the question, though. How did you harness that power to begin with?”

“During the Arcane Wars, some of our mages managed to capture some of the enemy’s magic. We have a fair quantity in storage. Only a few of us can access it, for obvious reasons.”

“Are you sure this will work?”

Ichabod nodded. “Without a sorcerer’s will to direct it, the power itself is innocuous, but it will accomplish what we need it to do.”

“We’ll still need to draw out the fiends so they spread the ethereal mist over an area,” I reminded him.

“We have that handled. There’s more than one way to draw out ethereal entities. It won’t require the use of dark magic.”

“Well, if you’re confident this will work, I’m ready. You can cast a partial gate into the fissure, correct?” I confirmed.

“Of course I can.”

I nodded. “You’ll have to stay out here to form the opposite end of the gate. We’ll have to move through the ethereal realm and find the fissure itself. If it works like it happened last time, it shouldn’t be too far from the gate that takes us into the fissure. We’ll move through the ethereal mist after it expands out here. The only way to dissipate the mist that I know of is to fight the fiends or release them and allow them to go back into the fissure. After that’s dealt with, we’ll go back into the fissure and through the original gate. Make sure it connects to an exit back here on the beach.”

“I understand the process,” Ichabod assured me. “Let us hope this works. We may not have a chance to test it until we arrive to fight the Axis sorcerers.”

“And to save Hans,” I added. “Also his grandmother, if she’s there with him.”

Ichabod bowed his head slightly. “Of course.”

He didn’t want to create the fissure too close to the ocean, so Nigel and I followed Ichabod into the jungle. In an ethereal form, walking on water should have been possible but it was an unnecessary risk. The more the mist stayed over land, the simpler it would be to deal with the fiends when they emerged.

I still didn’t know how Ichabod planned to draw the fiends out, but I was already asking too many questions. He was the sort who took it personally if you probed too much, as if by asking questions I was somehow doubting his abilities. That wasn’t the case. I was sure he could do any number of things I’d never imagined. I still wanted to know how it was going to work. I was an Eagle Scout, after all. Be prepared. The best way to prepare for something was by being familiar with how all the processes worked. This wasn’t a milk run. So far as I knew, I was the only mage who’d ever done something like this.

Ichabod wanted to make this as much like my original venture as possible. That meant every battlemage assembled needed to toss a few missiles at the fiends. Since we had a hundred battlemages gathered, this was going to be a much larger-scale ethereal incursion into the material realm than what I’d experienced at Gregory Park. The thing Ichabod couldn’t replicate was the role Caedes played in the scenario. There weren’t a lot of dark sorcerers who’d spent the last two decades imprisoned who could help. Who was I to question whether that was necessary, though? I was in a third-grade level class on arcane theory. Ichabod had the equivalent of a master’s degree in the subject. If he believed this would work, I had to trust he was right.

Not that I trusted Ichabod entirely. I trusted Nigel more. Nigel was an astute graduate of the academy as well, and he didn’t protest Ichabod’s plan, so I buttoned my lips and kept my doubts to myself.

I saw things move behind foliage as we pushed through the jungle. I didn’t know what creatures were lurking out there, and I didn’t want to find out. Those ethereal fiends would be terrifying enough. The fiends looked like giant, shadowy spiders. They were as tall as three men, and if ethereal beings had any weight, I imagined they were heavier than a tractor-trailer.

Anyone with common sense would find those fiends a thousand times more terrifying than snakes, or whatever creatures were lurking in the distance. That’s the thing about fear. It’s rarely rational.

“This will suffice,” Ichabod announced. He smashed the orb against a tree and the dark magic swirled around the tree’s trunk before shooting deeper into the jungle.

“Bloody hell!” Ichabod shouted.

“What just happened?”

“Unpurposed dark magic is unpredictable. It will form the fissure we require. Only now, we’ll have to find it.”

I huffed. “Great. Just when I thought we were done with the jungle.”

Nigel grunted at Ichabod. “You pompous arse. I could have contained it with an arcane barrier if only you’d bothered to consider for a moment that you cannot control dark power.”

My eyes widened in disbelief. I preferred Nigel to Ichabod so far as Entente mages went. I hadn’t yet detected anything but respect between the two men, but clearly they had a history I wasn’t privy to.

“We’ll find it soon enough. Pull your knickers out of your bum, Nigel.”

“Shove your wand deeper into yours, and we’ll call it even.”

I couldn’t help myself. I suppressed my laughter as best I could, but it wasn’t enough. Ichabod snapped his gaze back to me.

“Follow me, Thomas. I said we’d find it and we will.”

“How far could it have gone?” I asked.

“It’s arcane power,” Nigel replied. “Now that it’s unrestrained, it’s likely repelled by mages who might harness it. When we wield arcane power, we do so according to its nature. When a sorcerer harnesses it, he manipulates it, bends it to his will.”

“You talk like the magic itself is intelligent.”

Nigel shrugged. “Perhaps it is.”

Ichabod rolled his eyes. “Nonsense, Nigel. Perhaps you should join Gregory in class. You could use a refresher. Arcane power is a force. It’s not alive.”

“According to accepted theory,” Nigel stressed. “But progress is impossible unless what’s accepted is questioned and tested.”

I smiled. “See, that’s what I tried to say in class. I was chastised for it.”

Ichabod narrowed his eyes. “It is not the Entente way.”

I sighed. “How about we stop bickering and find the damn fissure. The sooner we do, the sooner we can get on with this and start looking for Hans.”

Ichabod shook his head. “You’ve got attitude, Thomas.”

“Attitude? I’m not the one caught up in some kind of wand-measuring contest. Finding Hans is my priority. Killing Hana might be yours. Whatever the case, our goals align. We’re not going to get anywhere if we don’t work together.”

Nigel nodded. “Agreed.”

Ichabod took a deep breath and tugged at the collar of his suit coat. “Very well. Let us begin the search.”

“If the magic is fleeing mages who might harness it, the more we look for it the farther away it will go,” I pointed out.

Ichabod rolled his eyes. “If you’re so brilliant, Thomas, would you have us not look for it at all?”

I shook my head. “Magic like that will dissipate sooner or later. At least in my experience it will. I can usually sense a tingle when in a place where arcane residue persists.”

“Seriously?” Nigel asked. “I’ve never had such a sensation.”

I bit my lip. “I thought it was common.”

“It isn’t,” Ichabod replied. “Not with dark power, at least. Not unless you’ve touched it.”

“I haven’t ever touched dark power. Not like that. I’ve been attacked by it more than once. Perhaps that explains my sensitivity.”

“Can you track it?” Nigel asked.

I shrugged. “Perhaps. If I follow the sensation that the arcane residue leaves behind, I should be able to keep us on its path.”

Ichabod took a deep breath and shook his head. I don’t think he liked depending on an untrained, uneducated American mage for anything. That I was the only one who could harm the resurrected Axis sorcerers was a bitter pill he’d already swallowed. He clearly wasn’t keen on swallowing another one, but he didn’t have a choice.

Stoking Ichabod’s envy was satisfying enough that it pacified my general distaste for the jungle. I touched the tree that the dark power had encircled. The tingle confirmed that I was on the right track, and I followed the tingle from the tree in the direction that the power fled.

Ichabod and Nigel followed, the army of battlemages marching behind like lemmings.

I hummed the children’s song Following the Leader as I moved through the tingling trail of the dark power.

When the tingle faded, I course-corrected until the sensation intensified again. It was the first time I’d done anything like this, and I was as surprised as anyone that it was working.

It took all my attention and focus to keep track of the trail. The farther we got, the less palpable the sensation, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It meant the power was nearly gone. Wherever it ended, that’s where we’d find the fissure.

It took nearly an hour, but I found it. A long vertical violet crack through space itself that hovered a few feet above the ground and glowed brilliantly.

“Time to go to work, Ichabod.”

The portal mage huffed and pressed himself past me. And he thought I was the one with the attitude that needed adjusting?

Ichabod extended his wand and traced a circle in the air, and a blue portal formed in front of the fissure. It spun with his wand. The faster he moved his wand, the faster the portal turned.

Nigel stepped up beside me and rested his hand on my shoulder.

“What’s he doing?” I asked.

“I’m not a portal mage, but I’ve seen this before. It’s like a vacuum. When a portal mage spins his gate that way, it pulls things into it. He’s using the portal to draw the fiends out of the fissure.”

I tilted my head. “Fascinating.”

A black mist like the one I’d seen in Gregory Park emerged from the fissure, and Ichabod stepped back. I took the cue and moved back as well. When a mass of the mist formed, I spotted dozens of fiends within it. They were small. For now. As the mass grew, they’d grow.

“If we need more, an arcane blast will divide them. They’ll replicate. I can’t do it. If my magic is still attuned to ethereal power, it will kill them.”

Nigel nodded. “I’m on it.”

“When they grow the mist will expand with them. We should have enough to work with.”

“That’s sufficient, Ichabod.” Nigel stepped in front of him. “Clear the mist and create the half portal into the fissure as planned.”

“You’re certain it’s sufficient?” Ichabod asked.

I nodded. “Pure arcane power will help the fiends divide and replicate. Hopefully it won’t consume the whole island. We need enough fiends that each of the battlemages can kill at least one after we reemerge.”

Nigel nodded. “I won’t pass through the portal until I’m certain we have plenty.”

“Be careful, Nigel. These creatures are immune to your power in their present state. They feed on it. You’ll also be vulnerable. They can harm you even if you can’t damage them.”

Nigel grinned. “I’ll be fine, mate. Get as far from the mist as possible. I’ll meet you outside of it and we’ll enter the ethereal realm together.”

Nigel blasted the mist with a wave of arcane energy big enough to zap all of the fiends within. Each of them replicated at once, and the mist expanded.

“We need to move fast, Ichabod.”

Ichabod grinned. “No, we don’t.” He extended his wand and formed a portal. He reached toward it with his free hand and gripped the air. When he did, he took off running, pulling the portal with him.

“Follow me or go through the portal. It’s up to you.”

I ran behind Ichabod as the portal swallowed up the battlemages one by one. When we reached the end of the line, the mist was right behind us. Ichabod pulled his gate over both of us, and we landed back on the beach.

I looked back over the jungle. The mist had grown over the trees and was expanding in our direction.

“I hope we’re far enough away.”

Ichabod shook his head. “If we aren’t, we haven’t anywhere else to go. Let’s hope Nigel has sense enough to stop blasting those fiends before the mist overwhelms all of us.”

“If I have to, I can go in and kill some of the fiends. It should slow the spread.”

“If we don’t have enough of them, we can’t be certain this will work for all our battlemages.”

I nodded. “Understood. But it’s best we have as many mages capable to fight the Axis sorcerers as possible than have none at all.”

The mist nearly reached the edge of the jungle before it stopped expanding. I’d have exhaled in relief if I was certain it meant that Nigel had finished replicating the fiends, but if they’d killed him, it would have the same effect. He was the only member of the Entente alliance I trusted, and I also liked the man. He was the only mage I’d met who thought for himself.

My heart thumped hard in my chest as I peered into the mist-filled jungle.

“I’ll forge the portal into the fissure. We should begin sending our battlemages through. If Nigel makes it out, I’ll send him in after you.”

I raised my hand. “I should go in first. I told Nigel I’d be here when he came out. I need to know he made it through.”

I looked around. I didn’t see Jessie and Mary. They must’ve been somewhere down the shore.

I turned back to the mist. My stomach was in knots. “All right. Form the gate.”

Ichabod nodded. He formed the portal on the beach.

I was about to step through it when I looked back one last time and saw Nigel run out of the mist. He was clutching at his side. I knew the feeling. Runner’s cramps. I ran back to him and steadied him on his feet.

“You did it!”

“Bloody right I did. Come on. Let’s get on with this.”

Ichabod didn’t look at Nigel. He turned and moved toward the shore. “I’ll be here waiting.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Nigel and I went through first. I looked around. I wasn’t sure if this was the same part of the ethereal dimension I’d visited before, but it looked alike. I hadn’t explored the place, but I got the sense it was a lot like Kansas. No matter how far you ventured into it, it all looked the same.

We moved to the side of the portal as the other battlemages made their way through.

“How do we find the fissure?” Nigel asked.

I reached into my pocket and retrieved Wand. He was all aglow with blue light. “Our wands are forged in an ethereal realm. They can show us the way.”

Nigel pulled out his wand. It glowed like mine. “Well, look at that!”

Some of the battlemages followed our lead and held their wands out in the same manner. Back in high school I once attended a vigil for a classmate who’d died in an accident. We marched in a similar way carrying candles. This was like that, but more brilliant. I had to hope the arcane-light vigil didn’t portend a similar untimely loss. I’d only known Hans for a few months, but he’d become like a fourth son to me, and I’d promised his grandfather I would protect him. At the time, I’d meant I would save him from Caedes, but I intended to hold to that vow.

Wand tugged at my hand. If I allowed it, he would have taken off, pulling me through the ethereal air. In truth, we weren’t in bodies at all. It was how gates worked. The gate dematerialized a person when he stepped through it and put him back together on the other side. Going through only one-half of a gate left us as ethereal beings. We were no different from the dead. The thought of it was horrifying, but I’d been through this before. So long as we reached the fissure and returned through it and back through the gate, we’d be fine. The actual dead resided somewhere deeper in the ethereal dimension, which was a good thing. The last thing we needed was more properly dead folk wandering the world.

We reached the fissure. It was high above the ground. “Let your wands pull you through!” I shouted.

The battlemages all extended their wands, and they each left the ground and flew through the fissure.

Nigel chuckled. “That’s bloody brilliant, mate.”

I smiled. “Americans. Right?”

Nigel laughed and extended his wand. I did the same, and we also flew through the fissure. When we landed back in the jungle, the fiends were everywhere.

The battlemages knew what to do. They could only kill one each. Arcane missiles flew in every direction, and the shrieks from the fiends were deafening. These creatures didn’t ask for this. They didn’t deserve to die. They were guardians, protectors of the ethereal realm. Slaughtering them like this made me sick to my stomach. It was necessary, but I didn’t revel in it.

Nigel took one out himself. When he did, he returned through the fissure, but I stayed behind until all the battlemages were safe and through again.

The vigil with wand light back to the portal was fitting. The mages didn’t feel the loss like I did. They were cheering and singing songs as we marched back through the ethereal realm to the portal.

When we all cleared the portal and landed on the beach, Ichabod dispelled it.

Nigel patted me on the back. “We did it!”

I shook my head. “The fissure still needs to be closed.”

“How do we do that?”

I pointed at Ichabod. “Come here.”

Ichabod sauntered over. “You summon me now?”

I shook my head. “We have to close the fissure. You can do it. Cast a portal like you did before into the fissure. Split your portal and envelop it with the other end. It will close the fissure.”

Ichabod sighed. “We need to get going.”

“We can’t leave a fissure like that open.”

Ichabod rolled his eyes but he cast a gate. Nigel and I followed him through.

“You didn’t need to follow me. I’ll do it.”

I nodded. “It’s for your safety. We don’t know what lurks in the jungle. I also needed to ensure that all the fiends were gone. I don’t see any mist so we should be fine to close it.”

Ichabod did as I’d instructed. He cast a split portal with one end in the fissure. He pulled the other end of the portal over it and the fissure closed.

I frowned.

“What is it?” Nigel asked.

I pressed my lips together. “I’ll tell you later.”

With the fissure closed, Ichabod portaled us back to the beach.

Ichabod ushered the battlemages through another portal. While he did that I went with Nigel to recover Mary and Jessie.

We were alone as we walked.

“Care to speak of what’s troubling you now?” he asked.

“I suspected it before, but I had to see it for myself to be certain,” I replied.

“What is it?” he repeated.

I stopped walking and looked at Nigel. “Only the mage who produced the dark magic that creates the fissure can close it.”

Nigel tilted his head. “Ichabod closed it.”

I nodded. “He did. That means there’s something he hasn’t been sharing with us. I don’t think he got that orb from storage. He created it himself. The first clue was how vigorously the magic fled from him when he broke the orb. Now that he closed the gate, it’s certain. Ichabod is dealing with dark magic.”

Nigel grabbed me by the shoulders. “You mustn’t mention this to anyone.”

I looked down the shore to see Mary and Jessie walking in our direction. “It may be too late for that. The empaths will know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Nigel urged caution. Using dark magic was discouraged, but no rules specifically forbade it, mostly because there wasn’t a clear line between what constituted light and dark arcane power. It’s hard to erect hard and fast laws to define hard and fast lines that don’t exist. There was also wartime precedent. A few of the more accomplished mages who could handle the dark powers without being corrupted had to use them to defend against the enemy.

I was conflicted about it myself. If Ichabod hadn’t done what he did, we wouldn’t be prepared to rescue Hans. Ichabod was the one who told me before that their training prepared mages to master dark powers so they wouldn’t end up infected by them. He was talking about the temptation toward the dark that follows when a mage uses magic to kill. I understood what he meant at the time. This was different.

This wasn’t common practice. If it were acceptable, Ichabod wouldn’t have lied about where he got the orb of dark magic. It might have raised some eyebrows if Ichabod admitted that he’d created the orb, but lying about it suggested he was hiding something. I was afraid this discovery was the tip of a larger iceberg.

Though our personalities clashed, I never thought before that Ichabod was a bad person. He struck me as a rules stickler. That’s never been me. I’ve always looked at rules and laws as a safeguard to evoke when someone got out of hand or was harming others. I was once banned from the /toolrental Reddit forum for posting a link to our company’s website. I’d seen a dozen other folks do the same so figured no harm, no foul. Well, the moderator, who was probably a small-dicked momma’s boy who felt like his “mod” status made him someone important, perma-banned me invoking a rule that said self-promotion was only allowed after I’d participated in the discussion for a minimum of ten weeks. Who the hell wants to discuss tool rental regularly on an online forum for ten weeks?

The point is this: I always prioritized the purpose of a law over the strict letter. If a law was there to keep people safe, but someone danced on the line without putting anyone in danger, no harm was done. Driving ten or fifteen miles per hour over the limit in the middle of the night when you’re the only one on the road isn’t the same as doing it during rush hour.

Ichabod struck me as the sort of guy who would quote bylaws in a meeting to prevent an organization from doing something that everyone wanted to do. He was probably in an inappropriate relationship with a corncob.

None of this made him evil or conniving, though.

No, bending the rules doesn’t bother me. It might have even improved my impression of him if he’d been honest from the start. It was the deceit that raised suspicion. Knowing he’d used dark magic and lied about it changed things.

Mary and Jessie didn’t say anything to me about it, but I found it hard to believe that they didn’t hear our conversation. I didn’t know about Mary, but Jessie rarely missed anything. Unless Mary intentionally tuned out outside voices, she knew too. She either wasn’t worried about it, kept her concerns to herself, or she’d known all along.

Ichabod sent the other battlemages back to the chambers first and told them to remain on standby. They needed to be prepared to move at a moment’s notice.

It was a lot easier to bounce around searching for Hana and Hans with a smaller party.

We went to Ysselsteyn first. Mary and Jessie joined hands, and while Mary boosted Jessie’s power, Jessie held her wand to her temple. She lowered it and shook her head.

“He’s not here.”

Ichabod nodded and cast another portal. We repeated the process several times. We hit all the cemeteries I’d visited before and a few where known Axis mages were buried.

The cemeteries were all dead ends. See what I did there?

We went to St. Louis and checked there. I insisted. I wanted to make sure that my family was safe. Thankfully, we didn’t find Hana and Hans there. We traveled to all the old cities where there used to be mage academies: New York, Berlin, Tokyo, and several others. Those spots took a little longer. A lot of mages still lived in those places. Jessie had to sort through all the mages she detected to determine whether Hans was among them.

Unfortunately, empath magery didn’t come with a search bar. She had to examine every mage she sensed and listen to their thoughts long enough to identify them. She hadn’t been able to do that before. She couldn’t hear thoughts across long distances. Mary’s extra juice made it possible.

Axis mages had strongholds in the Arcane Wars in several locations in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Japan, and there were still a lot of mages in those places. At least the cities that had both mage academies and old Axis strongholds allowed us to kill two birds with one stone, but it still took a lot of time. Most concerning was how many mages from families formerly belonging to the Axis powers were out there. Thankfully, Jessie didn’t detect any thoughts or conversations indicating that they were preparing for a war. Most of them were thinking about how to get their laundry done, what they were going to fix for dinner or other mundane subjects.

Jessie’s eyes were getting heavy. I could see on her face that this was taking a lot out of her. She was acting as a conduit for another empath whose power was at least as strong as hers. It wasn’t only her power she was using, but she was the one doing the heavy lifting. She was using their combined power to examine large swaths of territory. If the magic alone didn’t exhaust her, the sheer mental focus required to examine so many mages surely did.

We passed through what might have been the twentieth or thirtieth portal Ichabod made for our search. I’d lost count. We landed back in Ichabod’s office.

“What the hell?” I asked. “We can’t give up.”

“The empaths need a break. We also need to come up with another strategy.”

Nigel tilted his head. “We haven’t searched London. It’s such an obvious one we must’ve overlooked it.”

Ichabod’s eyes shifted back and forth. “You really believe that Hana would make a base here? This is our stronghold. It would be foolish.”

I snorted. “What’s the difference? She’s a gate mage like you. Keeping a distance from the enemy isn’t really any protection at all.”

“Thomas has a point,” Mary put in. “We know they have at least one empath. They may even have Goebbels. As the saying goes, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. They could be using their empath to spy on us.”

Ichabod shook his head. “You really think their empaths could penetrate our wards?”

Mary shrugged. “I could do it if I had enough power at my disposal. They’re dealing with dark magic, Ichabod. Most of their sorcerers have been dead for the better part of a century, bathing in the deepest parts of the arcane wells. It’s certainly possible, if not likely.”

Ichabod grunted. “Even if they could spy on us with their empaths, I don’t care how strong they are. Without the sigil, they couldn’t cast within the chambers.”

I scratched my head. “They might not need to. When Caedes was attacking the mage families, he often combined his magic with conventional attacks. Hana is a gate mage. She could set a bomb close to the chambers, or several bombs all around, and bury everyone in here alive.”

“Thomas is right,” Nigel added. “The Axis mages often used similar tactics during the Arcane Wars. She has some of their best generals and strategists with her.”

“We should have checked London first,” I groaned. “Hana doesn’t know we have other mages who can wield power against her. She also doesn’t want to give us more time to figure out how to eliminate her. If I were her, this is the first place I’d attack.”

“We don’t even know that Hana Sato knows about the chambers! She was your age in life, was she not, Gregory?”

“You’re being foolish!” Nigel interjected. “You know as well as any of us that the Axis sorcerers are providing her with intelligence.”

I clenched my fists. “Why are you so reluctant to allow Mary and Jessie to search London? Perhaps you don’t want us to find them. What was that we just did? A wild goose chase? An attempt to stall so Hana could make her move against the chambers?”

“Preposterous! I won’t entertain this nonsense. You think I’d betray the Entente alliance?”

“We know you produced the dark magic to create the fissure.”

Ichabod stepped up to me and poked me in the chest. “I’ve devoted my life to the service of the Entente mages. I will not stand for an American mage who only learned of our existence days ago to accuse me of treachery.”

Mary narrowed her eyes. “You’re guarding your thoughts, Ichabod. You’re also anxious right now.”

Violet magic emanated from Ichabod’s eyes. “Get out of my head!”

“Is it true?” Nigel pushed. “Are you helping Hana Sato? Do you intend to betray our alliance?”

“Why would I have helped you all just now acquire the power needed to defeat her if I was?”

I shrugged. “Maybe because it made for a good excuse to empty the city of battlemages.”

“He’s right,” Mary exclaimed. “The battlemages aren’t even in the chambers. I don’t sense them. Where are they, Ichabod?”

Ichabod turned and grabbed his wand.

I grabbed mine by instinct, but I couldn’t cast anything in his room. Nigel could. He aimed his wand at Ichabod.

“Tell us where you sent the battlemages!”

Ichabod looked over his shoulder and smirked. “Up your arse, and to the left.”

Before Nigel could blast him, Ichabod formed a portal in front of himself. He disappeared when his portal did.

I slammed my fist against the wall. “Damn it! There’s not a door in this damned place. We don’t have a portal mage. I’m powerless here. So is Jessie. Is there a way out of here?”

A tingle washed over me. A force I knew. A violet glow formed around all the walls of the room.

“What is that?” Jessie asked.

I shook my head. “It’s an arcane prison. Forged from dark magic.”

Nigel shook his head. “We’re trapped. There’s no way out. That pompous prick. If I get my hands on him again…”

“I’m with you, buddy.”

Mary shook her head. “I should have seen it coming. He’s always been hard to read.”

“He’s a disciplined soldier,” Nigel reminded her. “There are techniques to shield one’s mind against empaths that were taught in the Arcane Wars to resist Goebbels’ influence.”

“Why would he betray the Entente mages?” Jessie asked.

Nigel narrowed his eyes. “He’s a lot older than he looks. Tell me, Mary. You’ve used life-extending magic as he has. You’ve known him longer than the rest of us. Is there any reason to suspect that he’s not who he claims to be?”

Mary considered. “It’s hard to say. He came from good stock. At least that’s what he claimed. In the wake of the Arcane Wars, we were desperate for powerful mages who might stand with us to fight. He did fight. He worked his way up in reputation.”

“What if he isn’t who he claims at all?” I suggested. “Could he be a mole planted by the Axis mages here during the war?”

Mary shrugged. “It’s possible. I’d think, over the years, I’d have picked up something. I have to admit, though, he’s been more guarded ever since the threat of Hana Sato and the Axis reemerged.”

Nigel nodded. “He knew the Axis lost in the war. If he was a mole, he would have done anything to blend in, to become a part of our community. The Axis was a lost cause.”

I nodded. “Until it wasn’t.”

Jessie sat on the edge of Ichabod’s desk. “We have an empath and a battlemage here who can still use magic. We need to put our minds together and figure out a way to get out of here before Hana and the Axis sorcerers attack the chambers.”

Nigel shook his head. “Even if I could blast through these walls, I can’t break through a prison forged from dark magic.”

I grabbed a stack of books from Ichabod’s shelf and tossed them on the desk.

“What are you doing?” Jessie asked.

“We have a wealth of knowledge here. Perhaps there’s something we don’t know about that could help us break through his prison.”

Nigel sighed. “I don’t have any better suggestions. Do you really think that Ichabod would leave us with resources that we could use against him?”

I shrugged. “He didn’t anticipate that we were going to find him out so soon. He probably intended to deal with us eventually. This was the only option he had at the moment to take us off the map. Even so, if there is an answer in these books, he’s probably banking on the fact that we won’t find it before Hana destroys the chambers.”

Nigel nodded. “Well, mates. I hope you all can read fast.”

Mary grunted. “Supposing we did get out of here, we’d have to find the battlemages to stand a chance against Sato.”

“He could have sent them anywhere,” I pointed out. “I don’t suppose they have cell phones, do they?”

Nigel shook his head. “Not likely. Service sucks in the chambers. Most of them have lived here their entire lives. They never had need of phones.”

I flipped open the first book on the stack. “I knew I should have taken that speed-reading course they were selling on TV.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I scanned the tables of contents and indexes of the books first. We didn’t have time to sort through every page. We were looking for anything to do with dispelling dark magic, arcane prisons, magical restraints, or anything that jumped out at us as useful in our predicament.

It’s crazy how much the scholars of magery have written through the years and how useless most of it is. A lot of the books reminded me of when you go to the Internet to look up a recipe. You have to scan past all kinds of crap, personal stories about the recipe, how the person came up with the recipe, a few ads, and a million pictures before you actually get to the recipe itself. It’s frustrating as hell. These books were as bad if not worse.

I stood to put a few books back on the shelf and grab another stack.

Jessie glanced at me. “Hey, Tommy. Is that Wand in your pocket or is he just happy to see me?”

I winked. “Well, he’s an emanation of my sixteen-year-old self, so I’d say so.”

Jessie chuckled. “You should whip it out.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right.”

“Seriously, though. He’s poking out of your pocket. He’s glowing.”

I pulled out Wand. A faint blue glow was pulsing at the tip. “Interesting. I thought my magic didn’t work here.”

Nigel stepped over and touched my wand. I know how that sounds. Get your mind out of the gutter. “That’s not your magic,” he observed.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Nigel grinned. “How about that? You didn’t trust Ichabod from the start, did you?”

“Not really.”

“I’m guessing you’ve never had much trust in authority figures, have you?”

“Punk never dies.”

“That’s Ichabod’s magic,” Nigel explained. “Your wand must’ve taken it upon himself to capture some of his magical signature while we were passing through his portals.”

“If we have Ichabod’s magical DNA, we should be able to dispel the prison,” I mused. “Can you harness it yourself?”

Nigel touched his wand to mine. Again—minds out of the gutter! He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s transferable.”

I bit my lip. “Well, it won’t do us much good. The wards here still prevent me from casting in the chambers.”

Nigel grinned widely. “Unless I give you the sigil.”

“You can do that?”

“It will be painful. The mages who usually do this have an anesthetic that makes the process more tolerable. Since my magic is already attuned to these wards, I’ll have to use a steady beam of arcane magic to draw it into your chest.”

Jessie winced. “That sounds awful.”

“Won’t you get into trouble for doing that? I haven’t passed the classes, you know.”

Nigel shrugged. “I’m your mentor. I’ll make an executive decision. If it allows us to save the chambers, I think it’s understandable.”

I could get behind this attitude. “Right. Rules are meant to be broken.”

“When there’s a good reason,” Nigel qualified. “This certainly is.”

“All right. What do I need to do?”

“Take off your shirt. Jessie, Mary. You two may need to hold him down. This is going to make getting a regular tattoo feel like a trip to the day spa.”

I took off my shirt. “You go to day spas?”

Nigel looked surprised. “Of course. Doesn’t everybody?”

I swung my arm across Ichabod’s desk and cleared it off like I was starring in an adult film and the pizza delivery girl had just shown up.

I laid across the desk on my back. Jessie held my legs down, and Mary held my arms. I could probably overpower them if I got too desperate, but I didn’t intend to fight back. Mind over mutilated man-chest. I had to endure this.

Nigel leaned over me. I didn’t know the spell he would use, but when the beam of arcane energy struck my skin I retched in pain. I’ve never been much of a screamer when I got hurt, but it took everything I could not to shriek like a lobster in a pot of boiling water.

The symbol predated what was considered the Second World War. The Arcane Wars persisted during the years between the World Wars. Thus, the term “Entente,” which was originally the triple-Entente during World War I, continued under the same name among the mages after the wars. Even though more than three mage families formed the alliance, the sigil was what Nigel called a valknut: three interlocking triangles.

I hoped Nigel was good at casting straight lines. If not, I was going to be stuck with a crappy arcane tattoo for the rest of my life. Better to be scarred than dead, though. Besides, chicks dig scars. Hopefully Kat, the only chick I was interested in, did as well.

I clenched my fists and my teeth. My flesh burned as Nigel blasted the sigil into my skin. It smelled like Jeffrey Dahmer’s kitchen. For a half-second, I considered going vegan. Then I dismissed the thought. If I became a vegan, it would be a big missed steak.

Even when I was effectively being tortured, I never lost my dad jokes.

“Done!” Nigel declared.

“Am I bleeding?” I struggled to sit up.

Nigel shook his head. “The arcane magic cauterizes the wound as it burns. It will be tender for a few weeks. I recommend Aquaphor and loose-fitting shirts.”

Jessie shook her head. “It’s a shame all your t-shirts are a size too small.”

“It makes my arms look bigger,” I insisted.

“Do you know how to blast the barrier with Ichabod’s signature to unlock it?”

I pressed my lips together. “I know the theory. I’ve never done it in practice.”

“If you were a gate mage it would be easier. You could cast right through the portal. You’re going to have to take it down completely. That’s going to take a lot of energy.”

“From the core?” I asked.

Nigel nodded. “Ichabod’s magical signature is in your wand. It should piggyback on your strike so long as your spirit isn’t mingled with it.”

“I haven’t practiced an arcane missile from my core yet. Will cherry bombs work?”

“Not as effectively. You may only get one or two shots at this before Ichabod’s magic is burned.”

“It took me more than a hundred tries throwing cherry bombs before I cast them straight from my core. I don’t know if I can do this with a missile.”

“You can,” Nigel assured me. “Allow your wand to take the lead. Don’t force your magic into the wand. The wand has to draw the magic out of you. Relax and let it fly.”

I usually gripped my wand tight when I cast, but Nigel said to relax so I held Wand with only as much strength as I needed to maintain my aim. I could have shot my missile anywhere. The prison was all around us. I took a deep breath. I’d tried meditating a couple of times, and I used one of those techniques now. I imagined a relaxing, calming wave spreading from the floor, through my feet, up my shins and legs, across my torso and chest to my shoulders, and down my arms. My head was already feeling light. Probably due to all my blood rushing to the wound in my chest.

I thought about an arcane missile but didn’t try to force it. The pulsing glow on Wand intensified into a blinding bright light. Wand gathered as much power from my core as it could and unleashed the strongest arcane missile I’d ever cast.

The magical barrier fizzled and flashed a few times. Then it dissipated.

“It worked!” Jessie wrapped her arms around me.

I winced. “The chest!”

“Sorry!”

“Have it in you for another one?” Nigel extended his wand toward the wall.

I nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Stone crumbled around us as Nigel and I blasted through the walls that separated Ichabod’s room from the rest of the chambers. The ground under my feet shook, but not from our arcane missiles. The chambers were under attack.

“We have to get through! How much farther?”

Nigel shot another blast at the stone. “It shouldn’t be far. These portal mage studies are only ten or fifteen feet set into the stone around the perimeter of the chambers.”

I followed Nigel’s shot with one of my own. This time, the stone blasted forward into the opening on the other side. “We’re through!”

Mary and Jessie followed us out of Ichabod’s study and to the streets.

Portals were forming out of thin air, and bombs were dropping from them, one after another, all around the city.

“It looks like Ichabod took your idea about the bombs.”

I nodded. “Since he can cast portals into the chambers, it’s more devastating than I imagined.”

“We need a portal mage.”

“Isn’t there another way out?”

Nigel shook his head. “We depend on portal mages to come and go. It makes us safer from outside intruders.”

I huffed. “The fire marshals must love that.”

“There are portal mages at the evacuation rally point,” Mary explained. “They’re sending the mages out of the chambers to the city.”

“Can you sense where Ichabod or Hans are?”

“Almost straight above us,” she reported. “The portal mages are sending them straight to Hana and the others. Their lights in my mind are going out almost as quickly as I can sense them leaving the chambers.”

“Pick your poison,” I mused. “Die when the chambers collapse or go to the surface and die at the hands of the sorcerers.”

We ran to the evacuation point. Nigel waved his hand in the air. “Stop! You’re sending them to die!”

“We have to get everyone out of here,” a portal mage insisted. “Bombs are dropping all over the chambers.”

“It’s Evander, isn’t it?” Nigel asked.

The portal mage, Evander, nodded.

“There are Axis sorcerers, raised from their graves, on the surface. They’re impervious to arcane magic.” Nigel pointed at me. “This man and I know how to fight them.”

“Come with us,” I requested. “There are other portal mages who can help.”

“We have to continue evacuations.”

“Not straight to the surface,” Nigel pointed out. “We just have to send them elsewhere.”

“Give me a moment.” Mary placed her wand to her temple. “All right, it’s done. The portal mages know to send them all far away.”

Nigel nodded. “Good. Evander, we need you to send us to the surface. The city is straight overhead. Send us about a hundred meters to the north. That will give us space to regroup so we can fight back.”

“Ichabod has betrayed us,” I informed him.

Evander gasped. “Seriously?”

“We may need a gate mage to stand a chance against him. He’ll undoubtedly try and remove us. The enemy, Hana Sato, is also a gate mage.”

“I can’t dispel another portal mage’s gates,” Evander protested. “You may be able to do it with a blast straight from the core.”

Nigel nodded. “He’s right. You’re strong enough, Thomas. Most mages aren’t. You should be able to shoot down any of Ichabod’s gates. Between the two of us, we may be able to get to them.”

“Evander,” I said. “There’s a boy, maybe an old woman as well. A portal mage and an empath. If we can engage the other mages, can you get them to safety?”

“I can try,” Evander said. “Ichabod is the strongest of all the Entente portal mages. You’ll have to deal with him at the same time. If we have a precise location of the people you’re attempting to rescue I can sneak in and get them out of there fast. While they aren’t looking.”

Mary nodded. “I can give you the exact location. I’ll press it into your mind.”

“Is Goebbels with them?” I asked.

Mary shook her head. “I can’t say. I can’t sense the resurrected. If Hans’ grandmother is the only empath they have, we’ll gain a considerable advantage if we can save both of them.”

“Can you send them back to my house in St. Louis?” I asked.

“I can give him the location,” Jessie offered.

“This is the best chance we’ll have. With only two of us, we can’t defeat all of Hana Sato’s sorcerers, but we should be able to distract them enough to get Hans and his grandmother out of there.”

“We need those battlemages. I wish we knew where Ichabod sent them.”

Nigel shook his head. “We’ll be lucky if he didn’t send them to the bloody moon. I wouldn’t hold out much hope they’re still alive. If Ichabod intended to betray us from the start, the only reason he’d allow them to gain the power to defeat the sorcerers is if he knew he was going to murder them before they had a chance to go to battle. If it wasn’t the moon, they’re at the bottom of the ocean.”

“That raises a question,” I said. “I’ve traveled by Ichabod’s portals, too. Why wouldn’t he kill me? He had plenty of opportunities.”

Nigel shook his head. “I cannot say for certain. You did say that your magic destroyed the fiends in St. Louis, that Caedes absorbed their power, and Hana stole his. Correct?”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“It may be that a part of your spirit is melded to her newfound power. That’s the thing about one’s spirit. Your body replicates it and replenishes it when you cast it away. It’s like blood. Still, whatever of yourself you’ve cast into the ether is a part of you. If you were to die, whatever it’s connected to would as well.”

“So she isn’t killing me because if she did, she’d die too?”

“Probably not. But she’d lose a considerable amount of power. She probably won’t kill you unless she has no option. Don’t back her into a corner. Don’t put her in a position where she’d rather be powerless than dead again. If you face her, you have to drop her straight away. Take her by surprise.”

“I doubt I’ll have that chance. Right now, the priority is to save Hans and his grandmother. We’ll worry about Hana and Ichabod later.”

Nigel turned to Evander. “How many people were evacuated to the surface before we arrived?”

“Nearly half of the Entente alliance.”

“Fuck.” Nigel shook his head. “At least we can save the rest.”

“Take us to the surface, Evander.”

Evander formed a portal.

“Remember,” Mary told him. “I’ll give you the locations where Hans and his grandmother are. Then, where we need you to send them.”

Evander nodded. “Understood.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Evander sent us several blocks from Hana’s army. If their empath—whether it was Hans’ grandmother or Goebbels—sensed us, they’d know we were coming, so we had to act fast.

Mary held Jessie’s hand and they used their collective power to ensure that Evander had the instructions he needed.

I had to hope this Evander guy was good, but it wasn’t like we had much choice. He looked shocked when we told him about Ichabod’s betrayal, and his surprise turned to disgust in the blink of an eye. Mary was reading him. Jessie trusted Mary, and I trusted Jessie, so if Mary believed Evander was up to the task and trustworthy, we were good. Then again, Ichabod had evaded Mary’s detection for years.

Evander fled through another gate while Nigel and I charged toward the sorcerers. Defeating them wasn’t likely, but Evander needed a distraction.

Ichabod knew the evacuation protocols. The whole thing was a massive setup. The bombs would kill some people. The rest, they intended to murder as they fled to the surface. If half the mages were already evacuated, and many more died in the chambers from the explosions, a minority remained. So far, this hadn’t been a battle. It was a slaughter.

Nigel and I ran as hard as we could. We wouldn’t know if our venture into the ethereal realm worked against these bastards until Nigel got off a good shot.

He hit a resurrected sorcerer in an old SS uniform. The sorcerer exploded on contact, and pieces of his flesh and uniform flew everywhere.

I threw arcane missiles. Now that we knew what had made the change, I could cast from my core. After the successful missile back in Ichabod’s office, these missiles worked much the same way. Wand directed them from my core and they took out one after the next.

Hana was in there somewhere, but too many Axis mages were around to see where exactly. So long as we had her attention, though, Evander had a chance.

I hoped Nigel was right and that Hana wouldn’t kill me. Not just because I didn’t want to die. Who wants to die? But it also gave us leverage. It meant she’d have to try to capture me, which would take more time and effort on her part.

The sorcerers shot a few blasts in our direction, and Nigel blocked them with an arcane shield.

They didn’t charge after us like I’d expected they would. Instead, they backed up. Were they really afraid of us? That couldn’t be it. Hana was planning something. She had a strategy, but I didn’t have a clue what it was.

A blue flash in the middle of the group signaled that Evander had arrived. Another blue flash from a second portal suggested he got away with Hans and, hopefully, his grandmother.

Jessie’s voice echoed in my mind. It’s all clear!

“You’re talking to me?” I asked out loud.

Learning a few things from Mary. Plus, combining our efforts helps. Evander did it. He found Hans and his grandmother. Somehow they silenced Hans’ power.

“We’ll deal with that later. Good news!”

“What is it?” Nigel asked.

“Evander saved Hans and his grandmother!”

“Brilliant. We should get out of here.”

We were standing exactly where the sorcerers had been when we first arrived, in a park, surrounded by tall buildings. The bodies of forty or fifty Entente mages were laid out. Some had been blasted into pieces, their limbs scattered. Others were intact but no less dead. The sorcerers were all gathered on a street.

Hana stepped out in front of them. Nigel shot a blast, but one of her battlemages formed a shield around her. I threw a cherry bomb and it exploded on contact with the barrier.

Hana had her wand extended. Purple magic swirled around us.

“What the hell?” I asked.

Ichabod disappeared! Jessie screamed in my head. He might be going after Hans and his grandmother.

“Does he know where we took them?”

No, but I’m sure your house will be one of the first places he checks.

Hana’s dark arcane energy swirled around the grasses where we stood.

Several of the bodies rose. Their eyes were aglow with violet energy.

“Bollocks!” Nigel groaned. “She’s raising more mages!”

I quickly formed an arcane barrier bubble over us. “How can she control them?”

“She’s not resurrecting their spirits. She’s channeling her will through them. Bloody necromancers!”

“Will she be able to wield their power?”

“Each of them according to their own abilities. The core is separate from the spirit. It remains with the body.”

It made sense, now, among other reasons, why Hana had resurrected herself. It gave her access to her core.

The undead Entente mages, under Hana’s thrall, attacked my barrier. It was holding, but I wasn’t sure how long we could keep it up. Nigel grabbed my hand. His power piggy-backed on mine and strengthened the barrier.

Hana and the Axis sorcerers joined the undead Entente. She approached my barrier. Her eyes were black as sin.

“Hello, Tommy.”

“You aren’t Hana.”

“But I am.”

“The Hana I knew was good!”

“I’m better than good. Consider me an upgrade. Hana 2.0.”

“Funny. What the hell are you doing? Why are you resurrecting the Axis?”

“I’m doing it for Hans! Where did you take him?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know? You’ll never be able to convince Hans to join you.”

“I will. I’ve already made progress. He’s strong, I’ll give him that. But the allure of this power is irresistible.”

“He resisted it when his father tempted him with it. He’ll resist you, too.”

“Where is he, Tommy?”

“It’s Tom. We’re not kids anymore, Hana.”

“Where is my son!”

“To quote your treacherous gate mage, ‘Up your ass and to the left.’”

Nigel looked at me. “You’re talking about her son. That was a very weird thing to say.”

I winced. “Yeah, you’re right. The point, Hana, is that he won’t ever give in. I know that boy. He’s like a son to me.”

“He is my son! When our power reigns supreme, I’ll give him the world! More than you ever could. What have you done for him, really? Gave him a minimum wage job at your store?”

“He told you about that, eh?”

“We took it from his mind.”

“You used his grandmother to probe his mind? How sick are you?”

Hana laughed. “She’s not as helpful as I’d hoped. She’s no loss. We got by with her for a time.”

Another man stepped up beside Hana. “Meet my new empath.”

“Goebbels!” Nigel huffed.

“So it was an illusion before.”

“Not at all. That’s the thing about the dead. They all look so much alike when you first resurrect them. Especially those brought back from ashes. You killed a very skilled battlemage. Good for you.”

“You won’t kill me,” I predicted.

“Won’t I?”

“Your power is connected to my spirit.”

Hana smirked. “You’re smarter than you used to be.”

I shrugged and nodded toward Nigel. “I had help.”

“I don’t have to kill you, old friend, and a part of me would prefer not to. I’ll rip Hans from you. I’ll destroy your family and the world itself. I’m not sure if I’ll do it in that order. If Hans won’t claim the world with me, well, I’ll claim the world and wrap it up for him in a bow. His birthday is next month, after all. I have a lot of work to do.”

“I’ll stop you!” I screamed.

Hana laughed. “You can’t even get out of here. I’ll have you buried in a prison. After what you did to his father, I’d call that sweet justice.”

“I’m not the one who killed Timothy.”

“He gave himself to me. It was a gift. His life for mine. He owed me one.”

“You won’t get me.”

“I will. Where are you going to go? We have you surrounded. Your shield is strong. You were always impressive. You were the one with all the potential. Who’s the strong one now?”

I narrowed my eyes. Hana laughed and turned. “Unleash your fury, boys.”

Blast after blast of dark power struck my barrier. She was right. It wasn’t going to hold forever. It wouldn’t hold another minute, not with that much power assaulting it at once. Even with Nigel’s power combined with mine, we didn’t have a chance. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Hana put me in a prison, though. I could see it all. She’d bury me and she’d bring me back to make me watch when she assaulted everyone I cared about, then bury me again. So long as I was alive, her power was safe.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

Nigel shook his head. “When the barrier falls, we fight like hell.”

“They’ll kill you.”

Nigel nodded. “It’s been an honor to fight by your side, Thomas.”

“Likewise.”

The barrier was sparking. It was losing strength.

A blue light appeared in the shield with us.

Hans stepped out of it. “Time to go!”

“How the hell did you—”

“I’ll explain later. By the looks of it, you don’t have much time at all.”

Nigel and I jumped into Hans’ portal and crashed onto my living room floor. Hans landed right behind us.

“Close one!” Hans said. “Thanks for the save.”

I laughed. “Back at you!”

Evander was sitting on my couch. Kat had already loaded him up with a plate of cookies.

“How did you get there to save us?” I asked.

Hans laughed. “You surely haven’t forgotten, Tom. When I busted my father out of that prison, I’d used your magic to do it. I don’t know how I’m still holding it, but I can still penetrate your barriers.”

Nigel grinned. “Impressive.”

Hans chuckled. “I know, right?”

“Jessie and Mary are still out there.”

“I know. She told me. Be right back.”

“Wait!” Evander called. “We can’t risk you getting captured again.” To us, he said, “Don’t eat my cookies while I’m gone.”

Evander formed a portal and stepped through. He left it open, and two seconds later he reappeared with Jessie and Mary in tow. He pocketed his wand and picked up his plate of cookies.

Mary and Jessie both winced.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s your grandmother,” Jessie replied. “She’s here, right?”

Hans nodded. “She’s resting in Tom’s and Kat’s bed. Why?”

“Her mind is warped,” Mary said.

“Well, yeah. She has dementia.”

“It’s not that.” Mary rubbed her brow. “She’s screaming, it’s like she’s trying to reach Hana again but can’t get through. She’s too far away.”

Hans sighed. “Hana really did a number on her. She made my grandmother think it was still 1943.”

“Can you help her?” I asked.

Mary took a deep breath. “I’ll try.”

“Hans. Can you get my mother? We need to ward this place again. I suspect Ichabod will come looking for you at any time.”

Hans nodded. “I’ll grab her. Besides, we could use a domestic mage around here.”

I looked around. Toys were scattered everywhere. My boys were screaming and giggling in their bedroom. They’d done quite a job on the house.

I shook my head. “I’m not going to have my mother clean up for the boys. They have to learn to clean up their own messes.”

“Agreed!” Kat leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Now go say hello to the kids. We were all worried about you.”

I smiled and hurried back to the boys’ room, where they jumped on me and gave me hugs. The force of their little bodies against my chest hurt like hell. That wound was going to take some time to heal. At the moment, though, I didn’t care. I kissed each of them on the tops of their heads.

I was home. Just minutes ago, I had been face-to-face with Hana Sato. She had threatened my family. I didn’t know how we’d stop her, but the one thing I knew for sure was that I wasn’t leaving their side again. Not for a moment. Not until I knew they were safe.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Hans showed up with my mother, and she had a gazillion questions, like always. I had to stop her.

“Look. We could be in danger. A gate mage who has been here before is looking for us. It’s a matter of time before he checks the house. I’m surprised he hasn’t already. We need to ward it. Now!”

My mom tilted her head. “One gate mage?”

“Who could be bringing with him a bunch of mages who fought for the Axis in the Arcane Wars.”

My mom cocked her head. “That’s not that scary. You’re worried about a bunch of old people?”

“You’re really out of the loop, Mom. Hana Sato resurrected them. She used necromancy. Damn it. Stop asking questions and just ward the house.”

“Watch your mouth, young man. You might be a high-and-mighty battlemage with a penchant for saving the world, but I’m still your mother. It takes time to ward a place. You have what, two gate mages? You can move. Take them somewhere this other mage doesn’t know about.”

“She has a point,” Kat interjected. “We could go to the store. Plenty of rollaways there. There’s a television in the meeting room and a kitchen in the break room. We could get by until you can shut down this gate mage or we can get the house fully warded.”

“As we just witnessed, wards are not a guarantee against incursion,” Nigel put in.

My mom finally caught sight of Mary. She tilted her head. “Mary Whittaker?”

“Do I know you?”

“Debra Gregory. I was Debra Chambers the last time we saw each other.”

Mary gasped. “Well, how about that? It’s been decades!”

“You haven’t changed a bit! How did you do it?”

Mary grinned. “There’s an anti-aging spell that’s preserved many of us. It’s an awfully painful process, though. Having your telomeres magically altered is anything but pleasant.”

“That’s why I never did it,” Nigel admitted. “I’m fine living a regular life.”

“As am I,” Mary added. “But until now, I was the only empath among the Entente. I did it for the sake of the community.”

“I hate to break up your reunion, but we need to make a decision. Ward the house or leave. I think going to the store would be the best option for now.”

The kids must’ve overheard us. They were standing in the hallway. “Do you have YouTube there?”

“Sorry, Elijah. I don’t think our television in the training room has apps.”

“That’s fine! I’ll bring the Firestick!”

I rolled my eyes. “Grab whatever you want to bring. We’re leaving in five minutes whether you’re ready or not. Even five minutes might be too long.”

The kids packed their school backpacks full of toys and who knows what else. Kat ran around with a trash bag and scooped clothes out of everyone’s drawers. It wasn’t like we couldn’t come back and grab a few things. I could come back with Hans or Evander at any time and get whatever we forgot. Still, it was a good idea to bring whatever we could so long as we could gather it quickly.

Five minutes came and went. Hans knew where the store was, so he cast the portal. We went through it and landed in the showroom of the store. A part of me was always a little anxious when the kids came to work—a tool rental place isn’t exactly child-proof. I wasn’t worried about the nine- and five-year-olds, but my three-year-old, Elliot, was headstrong. It didn’t matter how many times you told him “no.” If he wanted to do something, he’d ignore you until you physically stopped him or he got hurt. Kat was pretty good about keeping an eye on him, and having my mother along would also help. As a domestic mage, she could clean things up and magically take care of the most obvious hazards faster than the rest of us combined doing it the old-fashioned way. It also wouldn’t hurt to give the place a good cleaning before the grand reopening, whenever the hell that was going to be.

Mary and Jessie were using their powers to monitor the entire area. Once Ichabod came looking for us, the plan was that Evander, Nigel, and I would ambush him. I still wasn’t sure the best way to deal with him, though. I wasn’t comfortable killing the man, no matter how much I detested him. He was the one who told me I should be more comfortable with killing. Well, wouldn’t you know. It all made sense now. He’d been dipping his toes into the deeper arcane wells for years, since long before he infiltrated the Entente chambers as a spy.

I couldn’t bury him like I did with Caedes. He was already in touch with dark magic. All that would do was give him time to dive deeper into the dark wells from within and grow stronger.

The best plan was to capture him and interrogate him. Try to find out what Hana was doing, her full plan, and what weaknesses we might exploit. We’d force him to admit what he did to the other battlemages, and if there was a chance they were alive, we could save them. We could use their help.

I set up several rollaway beds. We had about twenty of them. We didn’t have sheets, but I did the best I could with moving blankets. They weren’t especially soft, but they were thick and could keep a person warm.

My phone was dead. I’d been gone a while, and arcane power tended to take a toll on batteries. I imagined the journey into the ethereal realm did it in.

I dug through the drawers behind the counter where I kept a spare charger. I plugged my phone in and gave it a minute to come back to life before I navigated to an app and ordered a few pizzas.

My mother was walking the perimeter of the property casting wards that covered everything inside our fences. It took a little effort, but I requested that she keep my office unwarded. She had to set up separate anti-wards in the four corners of my office to do it. We needed a place where Jessie and Mary could continue searching the area. It was also a good idea to have a spot where we could gate in and out.

I hadn’t been in my office much since I took over the business. Gene’s Norman Rockwell prints were still hanging on the walls. I didn’t understand the appeal, but Gene liked them. It was probably classier than anything I’d have chosen to hang on the walls.

When I was young, I decorated my room and later my bachelor pad with posters of rock bands, professional athletes, and Carmen Electra. None of those were viable options for a business professional.

Evander and Nigel were having what looked like a heated conversation in the corner. I probably wasn’t welcome but I approached anyway.

“What’s going on?”

Evander cleared his throat. “Apologies, Thomas. I’m concerned about the Entente mages. There are still many within the chambers who don’t realize the threat we’re facing.”

Nigel nodded. “He wants to go back. However, Hana wants Hans. He’s the key to everything. Ichabod won’t likely come after him alone. He’ll bring others. Perhaps Hana will join him if he locates us. We’re already shorthanded if we’re forced to fight.”

I nodded. “Well, the solution is simple. Bring more mages here. Those you’re certain can be trusted. None who lived during the height of the Axis sorcerers.”

Evander looked thoughtful. “What do you think, Nigel?”

Nigel grinned. “Not a bad plan. It’s only a matter of time before Hana destroys all the chambers. I doubt Ichabod is the only portal mage working with her. He might be looking for Hans, but I don’t think she’ll let up on her assault on the chambers.”

“My mother is warding the whole place. We have a large yard. Probably don’t have enough beds for everyone, and certainly not enough space for the entire population of the chambers. With their diminished numbers, we may be able to gather whatever survivors remain. If need be, we can find other accommodations.”

Nigel nodded. “We need to find another way to equip the Entente mages left to fight. We have gate mages, but no one here deals with dark magic.”

Hans stepped into the conversation. He was listening from a distance. “That’s not entirely true.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother was bathing me in dark magic while she held me. It overwhelmed my abilities. I couldn’t cast any gates. I don’t have any dark power left within me, but I think my wand might.”

Hans pulled out his wand. In his grip, arcane power flowed up and down its length. Most of it was blue but there were a few violet streaks.

“That might work,” Nigel said. “We’d need a space to cast a fissure. It would be best not to do it in the city.”

“I can do it,” Hans said. “You should stay here with your family, Thomas.”

“I can accompany you,” Nigel added. “I’ve done this once before. I can lead whatever mages we find through the ethereal dimension.”

“If the sorcerers show, we’ll have nothing but the wards to protect us. Wards couldn’t save the chambers. They won’t save us here, either.”

“I’ll come back here after we get the survivors to a remote location,” Evander said. “If we’re found, I can alert the others.”

I pressed my lips together. “Perhaps we can use this to our advantage.”

“What are you thinking?” Nigel asked.

“Keep the other mages somewhere remote. If Hana and Ichabod think we’re vulnerable, they’re more likely to come after us. Let them think we’re few and our defenses are weak. They won’t know that we have a space within these wards where we can cast. When they come upon us, we’ll send for the other mages. We’ll take them by surprise and stop them once and for all.”

Nigel pressed his lips together. “They may not send any more sorcerers after us than they think they need. Their first goal is going to be to get Hans back.”

I nodded. “Their second goal is to capture me. Hana won’t be able to resist a chance to accomplish both goals at once.”

Nigel grinned. “Even with our diminished numbers, we should have more than enough mages if properly attuned to ethereal magic to take them out. Especially if we take them by surprise. Even Ichabod won’t realize we’ve recruited more mages who can fight.”

“It’s a plan. You’d best get going soon. Ichabod will search my house first. When he realizes we’re not there, he’ll search elsewhere. He’ll likely retrieve Goebbels to assist. When he does that, it won’t take long for him to locate us.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The pizza arrived as Nigel, Evander, and Hans were ready to leave. I didn’t like the idea of sending both gate mages, but Evander needed to see for himself if his family was alive. He wasn’t married and had no children, but he had parents and two siblings. He’d done so much for us already that I could hardly tell him not to go. Hans had to go because his wand carried the dark magic needed to forge another fissure.

Evander promised he’d return as soon as they gathered whatever mages were left. Mary also agreed to go with them. Since most of the chambers were already evacuated, she’d need to help them locate as many as they could find who were already out. She’d come back with Evander. Jessie had plenty of strength to search the city. She’d learned a lot working with Mary and had never been so confident in her abilities.

Everyone leaving took a piece of pizza with them. Hans took three. He stacked them together like a pizza sandwich. To be twenty again. When you could eat as much pizza, drink as much beer, and do just about anything else you wanted without incurring the wrath of acid reflux. Hell, when I was twenty, I could drink like a fish and wake up the next morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to conquer my day. Now, if I had more than two beers, I’d have a headache. More than four and I’d get the beer shits. Drink much more than a six-pack and I’d be useless for half the next day.

Kat was tending to Hans’ grandmother. She was doing well under the wards. Much better than usual. She didn’t think she was in the nineteen forties anymore, so that was an improvement. According to Hans, she often retreated in her mind to the past, using her dementia to her advantage, to quiet the voices in her mind. Under my mother’s wards, she didn’t have to. Once my mother finished with the wards, she joined Rose and Kat turned her attention to the boys, who’d hooked up their Nintendo Switch to the television in our meeting room.

I peeked in on them. They were playing a Mario Brothers game and they were fighting over who got to be Mario. None of them wanted to be Luigi. I never understood that. Mario and Luigi were practically the same. Their characters didn’t play any differently in the game. Poor Luigi. Every bit as talented as his brother but half the fans.

I didn’t get in the middle of their fight. I knew how it would go. One of the boys would probably stomp his foot and say, “If I can’t be Mario, I’m not playing.”

There was no way to settle that dispute other than by random chance. Or by playing rock, paper, scissors. Then, we’d have to convince them to agree to take turns being Mario. If the current Mario holder refused to relinquish control, he was done. No more games.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would pacify the boys for a while. I brought them their cheese pizza and left it on the meeting table. We had a stack of paper plates in the break room that I also brought up.

I pulled Kat aside to explain the plan. I expected she’d be anxious.

“That’s a relief.”

“It is?”

Kat nodded. “We can’t live on the run, Tom. You have a chance to stop those bastards.”

“You aren’t worried I’ll fail?”

“I’m always worried about something happening to you, Tom. Any time you’re gone doing mage shit, my worry nearly drives me up the wall. But you are who you are. You always find a way to prevail. You always fight for your family.”

The meeting room was across the hall from my office. Jessie called me in. I kissed Kat on the cheek and went in. “What is it?”

“I just thought you should know. Ichabod went to your house.”

I gulped. “I expected he would.”

“He didn’t stay long. He flashed into my view and out again in less than a minute.”

“Watch for him to show again. He hasn’t fallen into dark magic completely yet or you wouldn’t have sensed him. Let’s hope he doesn’t go that deep into the wells before he comes back to St. Louis.”

“How long would it take him to get fully corrupted by dark power?”

I shook my head. “It’s hard to say. It doesn’t happen all at once. He’s spent years suppressing it in the chambers.”

“So long as he isn’t completely corrupted to the core, I’ll be able to sense him.”

“He’d have to kill several men to descend to darkness that quickly.”

Jessie tilted her head. “Wouldn’t murdering the battlemages do that?”

I laughed. “To quote Nigel—bloody brilliant! I hadn’t thought of that. He couldn’t have killed them. Not directly. He was still trying to masquerade as an Entente mage.”

“So they’re still alive?”

I shrugged. “There’s no way to know. He couldn’t kill them directly, but there are loopholes. He could drop them in the middle of a desert, days separated from any water. He could set them on a small ledge high in the mountains without any way to get down but fall to one’s death. Still, there is a chance they’re out there. We’ll tell Mary and Evander when they get back. I don’t know how we’ll find them, but if we survive this battle, we’ll have to try.”

Jessie grinned. “You mean when we survive this battle.”

I smiled. “Overconfidence can make one careless. We have a plan, but there are no guarantees. This won’t be easy. But I’ll fight my ass off.”

“You’re fighting for Kat and the kids. They’re fighting for power. I’d say that gives you the edge.”

“There’s one hitch to this whole plan.”

Jessie nodded. “I can hear your thoughts. I know you’re worried about killing.”

“There’s no way to stop them without killing.”

“Is it really killing if you’re ending those raised by necromancy?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. Ichabod is human.”

“You don’t have to be the one to blast him to the grave.”

“How can I ask another mage to kill if I’m unwilling to do it myself?”

“Ichabod was a treacherous ass. Don’t get me wrong. But he fought for the Axis powers. He also managed to live among the Entente for decades.”

I shrugged. “He went to them as a mole. I doubt he killed anyone in the war.”

“Do you think he can be saved?”

I considered this. “Someone has to want to be saved from the darkness. He’s chosen his path.”

Jessie nodded. “Then he’s also chosen his fate. If it comes down to you to kill him, if you have to do it to save your family, there’s no darkness in that.”

I grinned. “Hans said something similar to me before. He said the line between the darkness and the night is like a large expanse of gray. Perhaps there is a difference between killing out of anger, rage, or ambition and killing to protect people you love.”

“Of course there’s a difference. It’s the difference between night and day. Between darkness and light. The boundary between the dark arcane power and the light might be gray. But your choices are not. If you must kill Ichabod, or anyone, don’t do it out of spite, or because you’re pissed about his betrayal. It should not be done in vengeance. There’s nothing dark, no matter the act, about protecting innocent people. Especially not when it’s people you love.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I stayed in my office with Jessie, which was where Evander and Mary would return. It was the only place they could gate onto the property now that my mother’s wards were up.

Jessie was scanning the area. She couldn’t carry on a conversion and do her job at the same time, so I killed time going through my desk. There was a lot that Gene left behind. Nothing of importance. A lot of pens with various business names printed on them. Several notepads. An adding machine. A computer on the desk connected to the store’s system, but Gene never used it for anything but solitaire. Nothing was quite as entertaining as seeing the old man’s eyes widen with excitement when he won and the cards cascaded across the screen. I wasn’t sure that new computers included solitaire anymore, but this wasn’t a new computer. It could run the store’s systems, but it was one of the first things I’d have to replace if I lived long enough to see the place reopen. If we didn’t bloody the whole neighborhood in a mage war. If the store was standing when all was said and done.

A couple of hours passed before Evander and Mary returned, but the smiles on their faces suggested the news was good.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It wasn’t too difficult. Nearly all the mages were out of the chambers. There were only a handful trapped in the rubble. We were able to gate them out of there.”

“What about Hana and the sorcerers?”

“They’d left,” Mary said. “At least they weren’t nearby.”

“Ichabod showed up at my house briefly then left. Jessie is monitoring the area. We expect he’ll be back sooner rather than later. Probably with Hana and Goebbels. Who knows how many others.”

Mary rested her hand on Jessie’s shoulder. “Care to take a break? I can take over for a while.”

Jessie sighed. “That would be fantastic. Thank you.”

“Did Hans and Nigel take them somewhere to make the fissure?”

Evander nodded. “Nigel said he knew a place. Somewhere Ichabod didn’t know about.”

“What about your family?”

Evander took a deep breath. “They are well. It’s a small miracle. I feared the worst. My parents are both portal mages as are my siblings. They were all involved in the evacuations, so they weren’t sent out with those who died.”

“They weren’t saving more people in the rubble before you arrived?”

“They didn’t know anyone survived. Mary sensed them. The chambers are almost completely destroyed. The wards no longer hold.”

I huffed. “Well, I’m glad the scar on my chest was good for a one-off escape at least.”

Evander nodded. “Mary told me about that. It must have been horrific. When I was marked, I had the benefit of anesthesia.”

“We were trapped in Ichabod’s office. I’m just glad it worked.”

“If you didn’t do it, we’d all be dead. Thank you, Thomas.”

I tilted my head. “You’re welcome.”

Evander huffed. “For decades we’ve languished in those caverns, preparing for a war that might never come. The second the threat rises, we’re destroyed in a day. Who would have dreamed it would take an outsider to save us, to give us a fighting chance.”

“I didn’t save everyone,” I pointed out. “We didn’t even save most of them.”

“But you saved our cause. Perhaps it’s time we reconsider certain aspects of the Entente way.”

I placed my hand on Evander’s shoulder. “At this point, we’ve saved the cause for the day.”

Evander grinned. “We never have more than the day. Get through it, and you never know, there just might be a tomorrow.”

Mary tapped her fingers on my desk. “Ichabod is in the area. A few miles to the north.”

I nodded. “If Goebbels is with him, they’ll be here soon. Evander, you’d better go. Bring everyone back as soon as possible. Remember, if the Axis army is here, our best shot will be to attack them from behind. Take them by surprise.”

“We have two gate mages on the other side. We should have a good number of battlemages ready to fight. We can divide and hit them from multiple sides.”

“I’ll hold them off as long as I can,” I promised. “I can use an arcane shield to hold them off for a while. When it fails they’ll be able to get through the gates without much difficulty. It’s just a padlock and a chain-link fence. After that, the wards will stop their magic, but they’ll outnumber us. They won’t need magic to beat us.”

“We’ll get back as soon as we can. Good luck, Thomas.”

I nodded. “You too.”

Evander disappeared in his own portal. Mary was monitoring Ichabod’s location. A fair number of mages were in the city, so just like Jessie had to search all the cities we visited when we were looking for Hans before, it would take Goebbels a while to find us. The best thing we could do was try to think about nothing that would betray who we were. He’d have to listen a while from a distance to try to sort it out. Since Mary and Jessie were also empaths, though, if their signals got crossed, it might give us away. The most I could do was think happy thoughts. It wouldn’t allow me to fly. Mostly because I didn’t have any pixie dust and I wasn’t Peter Pan. But if I dedicated my mind to things that anyone might think about at any given time, it might give us a few extra minutes. Since I didn’t know when Goebbels would be probing my mind, specifically, I had to stay vigilant.

I thought about politics. I never think about politics. Which side was right? Neither. That was easy enough. Which side was good and morally true? Again, the answer was clearly neither of them. Maybe in the next election I’d vote for Abraham Lincoln. Raising folks from the dead was fashionable these days. Anything was possible.

Not a good thought to have. Thinking about necromancy was a dead giveaway. I know. I’m hilarious.

I fired up Gene’s old computer. I think he was still running Windows XP. Talk about old school. A solitaire shortcut was the only thing on the desktop. I had to put it there for Gene so he could find it. The game took a modest amount of concentration. Thinking about hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades wasn’t anything that would draw Goebbels’ attention. Even then, it was hard to keep my thoughts dedicated to the game, knowing what I was anticipating. It’s hard not to think about something intentionally. Thinking about not wanting to think about something brought the very thing you didn’t want to think about to mind.

I hadn’t played solitaire in so long that it took me a moment to recall the rules of the game. Confusion was good. It took up brain space.

I still had fleeting thoughts that I couldn’t completely silence. Like, how long would it take Nigel to lead them through the ethereal realm, fight the fiends, and get back again? Could I time all of this just right to give away our position so that when the mages returned they’d catch them at their most vulnerable time?

Just hearing Mary or Jessie breathe made me think of them. More thoughts that Goebbels could latch on to.

I took the solitaire game to the point where I didn’t have any moves left to make and restarted it.

Maybe if I worked on some math problems it would tax my mind a little more. Fuck that. I hated math. If two trains are moving on a track toward each other, the first is moving thirty miles per hour, and the second at forty-three miles per hour, and there are two miles between them, how long before they crash? It didn’t matter. If I was on one of those trains I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit down and do the math. By the time I figured out the stupid problem I’d be dead. I’m jumping off the damn train and running as far from the crash site as possible.

“He’s moving!” Mary shouted.

I quickly grabbed my wand and formed a barrier around the property. It wouldn’t take long for them to get through a portal. Ichabod could make some big portals, too. You know what they say about mages with big portals. They have small wands.

I opened the security camera feed on the computer. I couldn’t leave the office and do much of anything due to my mom’s wards. The slow computer eventually brought up the feed. It was choppy but I could see the area in front of the store and beyond the gates. I also saw Ichabod’s portal. The ex-dead sorcerers stepped through it. They must’ve had their orders. They also must’ve been battlemages. They blasted my barrier with dark arcane missiles, but I held Wand and channeled as much energy as I could from my core to maintain the shield. Before, even with Nigel’s power combined with mine, it didn’t last long. That was a much smaller, more concentrated barrier, and I kept it fully powered for a while. As more sorcerers filtered through Ichabod’s portal and the numbers increased, they were able to do more damage to the shield faster than I could charge it back up.

My mother walked in with Rose, who said, “I want to help.”

I’d hardly heard Rose say more than a handful of words before. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I don’t like this room. The voices are back. But those are bad people. I saw what they were doing to my grandson.”

“Three empaths might be able to do something,” Mary offered. “Goebbels is strong, but if we combine our powers we might be able to create enough confusion that the sorcerers will slow down the attack.”

My mom helped Rose over to the desk and I gave her my chair. I was still channeling my power to the shield. It was hard to know how well I was doing since we were stuck in my office and the shield was outside, and the cameras didn’t pick it up.

Jessie and Mary each grabbed one of Rose’s hands and they formed a circle.

Some of the sorcerers stopped firing at the shield. Some of them kept it up.

“It’s working. Keep going. Buy us as much time as you can.”

I knew it wouldn’t work forever. They were managing to dissuade about half of the sorcerers who passed through the portal from blasting my shield. When Goebbels and Hana stepped through, some of them started firing again. It was a battle of the minds.

Since I couldn’t see my shield, I had to go by feel, which wasn’t exactly reliable. Especially since casting from my core was new. If the shield fell, I didn’t know if I’d be able to get another one up. It takes a couple of seconds for the shield to get to full strength, and with so many sorcerers shooting at the shield, it probably wouldn’t get a chance to manifest at all, much less power up.

The portal was still open, but Ichabod hadn’t come through yet. The mindless Entente mage corpses came through next. The sorcerers spread out and the corpses gathered in front of the gate. It wasn’t hard to figure out what they were going to do. Once they took down the shield, the Entente zombies would throw themselves at the gate until they broke through. That much force from that many animated bodies that didn’t feel pain could bend the gates even if they didn’t manage to break the lock.

A police car pulled up behind them with its lights flashing.

“Damn it, you idiot!” I shouted.

Sure enough. Hana directed some kind of charge at the car, and it exploded in a second. Hana was a gate mage. She’d gone so deep into the wells and absorbed so much from Caedes that she seemed to be able to wield the power of a battlemage and a gate mage all at once. I didn’t have a clue what else she could do. Necromancy wasn’t a part of any mage’s specialty. It’s awfully hard to defeat an enemy when you don’t know the full extent of their capabilities.

Wand shook in my hand and my magic lost its connection to the shield. That meant the shield had failed. I tried to cast another one, but as I expected, it barely formed before it fell again.

I did the next best thing. I formed a smaller shield that protected my office and the meeting room. It would keep the empaths and my family safe.

I ran out of my office and grabbed a chainsaw from a shelf in the showroom. It was already gassed up and ready to go.

“Thomas!” Kat shouted from behind my newly forged shield. “You can’t be serious!”

“I have to buy as much time as I can. I love you!”

“I love you too!”

I took off through the doors and across the parking lot as the Entente corpses threw themselves at the gate. The sorcerers aimed and fired at me, but the second their missiles crossed my mom’s wards they dissipated.

I couldn’t take on the whole army with a chainsaw, but when they bent the gate enough that one could get through at a time, I was good. The mindless dead mages came at me drooling and snarling, one by one. I sawed one across the gut. I took out another one’s legs. Blood flew everywhere.

“Come on, you bastards!” I screamed.

Hana watched from a distance, smirking. She knew I was making my last stand. She also knew that once they made a bigger hole in the gate, their numbers would overwhelm me.

Ichabod’s gate was gone. He was standing next to Hana and Goebbels, every bit as entertained by the zombie bloodbath as Hana was. Whatever. This wasn’t for their amusement. I was buying time. I could only pray it would be enough.

It was a heavy-duty gate. More than once, thieves had rammed their trucks into the gates to break in. When we’d reinforced it along with the rest of the fence, we’d welded several metal cross-pieces across the chain-link to make it more resilient. It had saved us from a few robberies, and now it saved my life.

Two portals formed behind the sorcerers. One on the left side of their group, the other on the right.

They were large portals, and Entente battlemages jumped through five or six at a time to unleash their newly modified magic on the sorcerers.

Hana quickly formed a shield around herself, Ichabod, and Goebbels, but the Entente battlemages closed in on the other sorcerers too fast for a shield to keep them out. So many missiles and blasts fired at close range combined with a shower of blood to turn into a mist in the air. I couldn’t tell which side was winning, but our reinforcements kept coming through and some of the sorcerers weren’t fighting, thanks to the efforts of Rose, Jessie, and Mary.

We were gaining the advantage.

I continued swinging my chainsaw at the zombies as they came through. They weren’t focused on the gate anymore. Most of them had turned their attention to our Entente army.

Once the zombies stopped pushing through the hole in the gate, I crawled through it. With Wand in my hand, I aimed missile after missile at the sorcerers.

I saw a few portals form as Hans and Evander started gating the sorcerers away. Hopefully to the center of the earth. Wherever it was, it was someplace inhospitable.

Nigel was back, too. He had taken a shot to his shoulder, and he wasn’t the only one. More than a few of the Entente battlemages took hits. Some of them fell and died. Some of them exploded. Not as many as our side was taking out, though.

Even with his injury, Nigel was the best. He knew more ways to attack than I’d ever dreamed. He forged a beam of arcane energy that turned his wand into something like a lightsaber, and he cut it through one sorcerer after another. I was going to have to make him teach me that trick.

Hana barked something at Ichabod, and he stepped out from her violet shield to form a massive portal over everyone. Hana and Goebbels ran back, taking her shield with them for cover. She formed a barrier around Hans that would hold him there when Ichabod portaled away the rest.

The portal was so large he was going to force it over everyone. He’d take their sorcerers with them, but they were losing anyway. This was a last-ditch effort to take as many of us with them as possible. Wherever he formed the portal to, it was someplace deadly. The empaths inside wouldn’t be much use after that. It would be up to me to take out Hana and Goebbels alone.

I charged after Ichabod as he slowly pulled his portal down. I didn’t know if I had enough power to dispel it. Even if I did, he’d form it again. There was only one way to end this.

I aimed my wand at Ichabod, and when I had a clean shot I screamed and released the strongest arcane missile I’d ever conjured.

Ichabod exploded on contact. His portal dissipated.

“How’s that for good old-fashioned made-in-America battlemagery, asshole!”

Hans formed a portal of his own inside the shield Hana had erected around him, and jumped through.

A moment later, Jessie reported, Hans is with us! through her empathic abilities.

I released an exhale. This wasn’t over.

Nigel and I and the rest of the surviving battlemages surrounded Hana and Goebbels. We unloaded one spell after another at her barrier. She was strong. I didn’t know if her strength had any limits.

Hana glared at me through the shield.

I fired a missile at her, and with my free hand I flipped her off.

She twirled her wand over her head to form a small portal and pull it over Goebbels and herself. When she did, her shield disappeared.

I lowered my wand. “We were so close!”

Nigel patted me on the back. “I’ll call that a win. She brought her whole army here and we eliminated all of them.”

I shook my head. “Almost all of them. With Goebbels, and his ability to influence people’s minds, I have a feeling the war isn’t over.”

“It’s not over,” Evander agreed. “But this was a victory.”

I pulled my keys from my pocket and unlocked the gate. It was mangled and bent, and it scraped the concrete when I pulled it open.

“Thank you, everyone!” I shouted. “If it wasn’t for you, we couldn’t have done this. I know a lot of you lost a lot of people today. Some of your brothers and sisters died in the chambers. Others at the hands of Hana and her sorcerers above. Still more lost their lives here. If it wasn’t for you showing up when you did, we wouldn’t have made it. You saved me. You saved my family. For that, I’ll be forever in your debt.”

Evander shook his head. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that the debt owed is to you. Many died today, but none of us would have survived without you. There are still others, more from our community back in London, who do not possess the skill for battle, who also would not be alive today if not for you.”

“This war is not over,” Nigel said. “We need to regroup. We need to band together. We need a new home. I propose that we return to London and gather our families and fellow Entente brothers and sisters. We should bring them here. We must unite with these American mages and any other mages here who are willing to join us. We are stronger together than we’ve ever been in isolation. It’s time to forge a new alliance.”

The battlemages cheered and followed me through the gates.

“Before you leave, why don’t you come inside? I don’t have much in the way of food, but I’d like to introduce you all to my family. Until we find a place for everyone to stay, you’re welcome to gather here. Consider AAA Tool Rental command central until further notice.”

Nigel slung his arm over my shoulders as we strolled back toward the store.

“Are you okay leading your soldiers here?” I asked. “We can probably put everyone up in hotels until we find a more permanent solution.”

“My soldiers?” Nigel huffed. “I think these battlemages want to follow you, Thomas.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? I don’t know nearly as much as you do. That whole Luke Skywalker thing. Dude, that was badass.”

“Wasn’t it though? Bloody brilliant if I don’t say so myself.”

I grinned. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“I can still teach you a lot about battlemagery, Thomas, but it was your leadership that saw us through all of this. Leadership doesn’t come from the arcane wells. It comes from the heart. It comes from the spirit. When it comes to that, I think you’ve more than proven yourself.”

“I’m not going to assume anything just yet. There are hundreds more mages from the Entente chambers who will be arriving here soon. Whoever is going to lead them should be their choice.”

Nigel laughed. “I don’t think that will be much of an issue.”

I nodded. “All right. Well, I do have one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Lose the suit and tie, man. Get yourself a good pair of jeans and a t-shirt.”

“What’s wrong with my suit?”

“Nothing is wrong with it. If you were attending a wedding or going to church. If I’m going to lead anybody, I have a strict no dress-code policy.”

“Then I can wear whatever I bloody well please!”

“You can. But as a friend, dude. Come on.”

“I’ll tell you what. You find a good English pub here in America and let me take you out for a real bevvy, and I’ll lose the suit.”

I extended my hand. “It’s a deal.”

We shook hands and went inside.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

We had one public restroom in the rental store, and the line of battlemages wrapped around the showroom. Hans offered to set up a portal that dumped straight into the Mississippi. The men could all gather around it and pee into it at once.

The visual was too disturbing to give serious consideration. “We have a restroom. People can wait in a line.”

I pulled Nigel aside along with Jessie and Mary. “Nigel, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What’s that?”

“We were talking while you were gone. After Ichabod portaled away the first group of battlemages, the dark power didn’t overwhelm him. He retained control. Murdering that many people, even for someone as practiced as Ichabod, would send someone deep into the darkness.”

Nigel tilted his head. “You think they might still be alive out there?”

I nodded. “I think it’s possible. We have to look for them. Wherever Ichabod sent them, it was probably a place where surviving wasn’t likely. He couldn’t have killed them directly. That means we might not have a lot of time.”

“How do you propose we start looking for them?” Nigel asked. “It’s a large world. There’s a lot of ground to cover.”

“With two empaths at once, we can search a large area,” Mary said. “Jessie and I can go with a gate mage and search any place where we think Ichabod might have sent them.”

Nigel pressed his lips together. “The poles would be a place to start. He also could have sent them to any number of stranded islands around the globe. Searching those out would be a lot more difficult.”

I scratched my head. “Can you use the arcane energy from any mage to enhance your range?”

“Theoretically, it’s possible,” Mary replied. “Scanning the entire globe would still be rather difficult. Even if we had the power to do it.”

Jessie shook her head. “Not necessarily. If we can sense where mages are all over the world, we don’t need to bother looking in safe places. None of the places where mages are known to live.”

“You’re right!” Mary exclaimed. “We’re looking for about a hundred mages in a place where no one would choose to live.”

“If I was Ichabod, I’d probably send them somewhere they might freeze to death,” I mused. “Somewhere far from civilization. Antarctica, maybe.”

Nigel nodded. “We can check the poles and then if they’re not there do a sweep of the oceans.”

“Provided we can channel enough power,” Mary added.

I shrugged. “We won’t know if we don’t try, right?”

I went to the counter and picked up the phone. We had an intercom system that ran through the telephones. We used it to announce customer orders to guys working in the yard. It wasn’t the best system, but it was the way Gene had always done it. I was in favor of replacing it with small radios. For now, the system still worked, and it was the easiest way to get everyone’s attention.

I pressed the intercom button and spoke into the phone. “Attention. We need everyone to gather in the showroom. There are a hundred more battlemages out there lost we need to find, and we need everyone’s help to do it.”

It didn’t take long until everyone was gathered. Some of the battlemages still needed to pee, but they could do that later.

“Everyone form a circle and join hands,” Mary instructed. “Open your power and channel it through the circle. Jessie and I are going to use the power to find our brothers and sisters.”

We had a big showroom with a lot of shelves holding tools, and we managed to form a rather oddly shaped connection that weaved around a few of the shelves. It wasn’t a perfect circle, but it wasn’t the shape that mattered so much as the connection.

Elijah ran up and grabbed my hand. “Can I help, Dad?”

“Sure, son. Just let whatever magic you can access flow into the circle. When the ladies start to channel, you’ll feel a tingle, a slight pull. Just let it go.”

“Like Elsa from Frozen?”

I laughed. “Sure. Sort of like that.”

“Cool!”

The circle didn’t totally connect. The empath at the end needed to press her wand to her temple for it to work. Still, the magic flowed like electricity through the group. Jessie was at the end. I assumed that Mary would take point on this since she was more experienced, but she insisted that Jessie had more raw power of her own and had a better chance.

The tingle spread all around. Blue magic swirled around the room.

Elijah giggled. “It tickles!”

“Let it go.”

I watched Jessie from the opposite side of the room. Her eyes were closed as she focused.

They shot open. “I found them!”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“They’re on a glacier in the arctic. They must be freezing.”

“We need an empath, just in case they’re scattered and we need to gather them together quickly.”

“I’ll go!” Mary jumped in. “These are my people. I want to do it.”

“Also we need a gate mage.”

Evander raised his head. “Allow me to do it.”

“I’m coming with you,” I insisted.

“Me too,” Nigel added. “You’re just in a t-shirt, Thomas. You might want to bundle up.”

I shrugged. I looked at Elijah and smirked. “The cold never bothered me, anyway.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Jessie shared the location with Mary and Evander, and we found the battlemages huddled together for warmth on the glacier. We didn’t need Mary to do any extra searching. They were all there. The temperature was so cold it was downright shocking, and I regretted not wearing more than a t-shirt. I was also a little worried that my nipples were going to poke straight through. That would have been embarrassing.

It had been more than half a day since Ichabod sent them there. Most of the battlemages were blue. Mages can heal themselves from minor injuries. It was one of those universal abilities that all mages shared, like illusion. I’d never been able to do more than heal a bruise or a paper cut, but still, it was something. We can also draw on our power to warm ourselves to a point. Had they been regular non-magical folk, they probably wouldn’t have made it.

Their faces and hands were blue. They weren’t dressed for the cold. The last I’d seen them, we were on an island in the South Pacific. Out of the frying pan and into the ice box.

We didn’t linger. I could barely stand it for a few minutes. That these battlemages had been here for several hours was unthinkable.

When Elsa said the cold didn’t bother her, I don’t think she’d ever been stranded on a glacier in the arctic. Don’t tell my boys I said so, but I was beginning to think she was full of crap. Even if you were an ice mage like Elsa—which wasn’t a specialization that existed in the real world—this was more than anyone made of flesh and blood could endure for long.

Evander couldn’t portal them all at once into the showroom. Instead, he sent them into the yard, where we had enough room to teleport them together. One giant portal took us all back to St. Louis at once.

Jessie must’ve sensed our return, because the mages inside came out when we arrived and helped the frozen mages inside. It was going to take them a little time to recover. Cold like that hits the bone. They were still shivering and, probably, were in shock by the sudden temperature change.

“Do we need a doctor?” Kat asked as we gathered furniture pads to use as blankets.

Nigel shook his head. “Their power will help them recover soon. I think they’ll be fine.”

I sighed in relief. I’d thought they were all dead. Saving these mages was at least as big a victory as the one we had against the sorcerers.

Nigel patted me on the back. “You did it again.”

“That was Jessie. She found them.”

“You were the one who realized that Ichabod hadn’t murdered them. We’d have presumed them dead if you didn’t sort it out.”

I chuckled. “It was a lucky stroke of insight.”

Nigel shook his head. “Luck had nothing to do with it. You know, mate. I did a bit of looking into your family history when I was first approached about mentoring you. You’re the grandson of Byron Chambers.”

I grinned. “How do you know of him? He was impotens.”

Nigel laughed. “Hardly! He was the son of one of the founders of the alliance. Asbury Chambers. There’s a rare gift among mages. It’s called ‘the sight’ or ‘insight.’ Some who receive the gift are impotens, and they don’t have a separate specialization. Others receive the gift alongside their specialization.”

“What does this gift do?”

“It’s hard to discern. It’s a unique ability to see connections, to see the big picture. It’s wisdom, but more than that. It tends to be passed on in families. It often skips a generation or two. I believe you have it.”

I snorted. “Me? I’m a damn fool. I’m hardly wise.”

“That’s also one of the traits,” Nigel explained. “Wisdom is ironic. The wiser one is, the more he recognizes what he does not know.”

“I still do a lot of dumb things. Just ask Kat. She’ll tell you.”

“We’re all free to behave contrary to what we know is wise. You have the gift. I don’t have a doubt in my mind. You are destined to lead us. It is your legacy.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

We had more than two hundred mages who needed places to stay. They’d lived in isolation from the real world, in a sort of commune, for their entire lives. They didn’t just need places to live. They needed education in the real world. How to shop. How to use a credit card—and how not to use one, which was probably the bigger and more difficult lesson.

None of them were American citizens. Our governments recognized our existence as mages. They tended to ignore our communities and families most of the time. Nigel was able to work a few connections he had with the British Parliament to speak to our government to issue them visas. Full citizenship would take a while, but it was a possibility for any who wanted to go through the process.

Both our governments also recognized the threat of an all-out war between sects of mages and how it could potentially threaten people’s lives. In the weeks that followed our victory over Hana and the sorcerers, I’d had a few phone calls with notable senators and even the Secretary of Homeland Security. I had their support, mostly. They were understandably apprehensive. I was a civilian, after all, but since the Brits had a more open relationship with their government than we did with ours, our leaders followed their lead and recommendations. Nigel told his contacts that I should be trusted as the new leader of the mage alliance. The officials I spoke to had a lot of questions, but they didn’t challenge it. I got the impression that they’d prefer to operate as if we didn’t exist—which meant doing whatever I could to allow them to continue to operate “as if.”

The connections we made with the government also got us access to an old hospital on Jefferson that was scheduled for demolition. The government purchased it for us. It had a lot of rooms. Great places for the mages to settle once we got the place fixed up. Thankfully, I had all the tools we needed to do it ourselves. So far as the politicians were concerned, giving us a facility was generous enough. Getting it fixed up to meet our needs was on us.

Jessie and Hans also moved in, and Hans brought his grandmother with him. With more people to help, especially an experienced empath like Mary, she was doing well. My mother set up wards in Rose’s room so she’d have a place of solace. With Mary’s tutelage, the feedback headaches that often happened when they got together were all but eliminated. They struck on rare occasions but were easily eliminated with a little focus. I didn’t know exactly how it worked. That was empath business.

So far as the family went, things got back to normal. I knew it was a matter of time before Hana and Goebbels made a move. He’d probably brainwash mages around the world to join their cause. We did our best to monitor the situation. So far, especially since our empaths couldn’t sense Hana or Goebbels, we hadn’t picked up on anything of note. They were planning something. They knew we had empaths monitoring mage activities around the globe. When Hana made her next move, we were pretty sure it would be a big one. Whatever happened, our mages would be ready.

I split my time three ways. Leading an alliance of mages, running a business, and being a father is a lot to handle.

We reopened the store and business was booming as we caught the tail end of the spring lawn season and went into summer. Jeff was doing great as our manager, so my wacky schedule wasn’t much of a problem. Hans came to work when he could. Usually on Saturday and once or twice during the week. He was learning fast. While the work was hard, he enjoyed the change of pace.

Professor Pritchard was among the survivors, and probably the last holdout among the former Entente mages to accept my leadership. He and I didn’t get off on the right foot. I think he was surprised when I asked him to head up a new mage academy. Since our mages no longer lived in an isolated community, it was an after-school program. They had classes three times a week when the public schools were in session and more regularly when they were out of session. It wasn’t as rigorous as the schooling the mages received in the chambers, but our new alliance wasn’t so bound up by rules and tradition as the old one was. It took Pritchard a while to adapt, but he was doing his best to be as flexible as possible.

Most people don’t handle change well. I never did. Usually, though, it’s small changes that trouble someone the most. The former Entente mages had seen their entire lives turned upside down. A few bumps in the road were expected. For the most part, though, they were a grateful bunch. When you’ve faced death and survived, it tends to shift one’s perspective.

Nigel was fond of reminding me, whenever I questioned my skills as a leader or whether the mages accepted me that if it wasn’t for me, none of them would be alive. Their cause would be lost. The Axis would have grown and taken over not only the mage community but probably the world.

I still thought he was overstating my role in all of that. When I articulated my doubts, Nigel quickly pointed out that humility was the beginning of the path toward strength. The old Entente way had that right—even if they added a few steps in the middle that I didn’t agree with.

I didn’t plan to move my whole family into the new facility. Kat wasn’t a mage, and we still had two young boys who might or might not manifest. I didn’t want to upset their lives and, besides, sometimes I think leaders are more effective when they put a little distance between themselves and their peeps. My management philosophy—be it in the rental industry or in the mage community—was to foster other leaders, and to give people a sense of ownership in their tasks and jobs. This new alliance wasn’t my alliance. I may have been a leader, but I was no one’s boss. My job was to lead by example. I know, technically, I was also leading an army, and that wasn’t a very military-like approach. Still, I felt it was best this way.

I was still working on the American mage families. Bringing them together was a lot more difficult than I’d hoped. The last time I tried to do that, before the last time I’d fought Caedes, they’d voted to kill Hans to close the fissure in Gregory Park. I was right to fight against them, but some of them still blamed me for both Caedes and Hana.

All in all, though, I was happy with how things settled out. My house was still the occasional disaster zone. My boys still fought with each other, but then they also played together and hugged each other. Brothers will be brothers. I cherished every moment. Even the difficult ones. I had a lot of responsibilities. A lot of people depended on me. More than ever. But I was a father before anything else. And that was the way I liked it.

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with book three, Battlemage Redux, available at Amazon.

Claim your copy today!

AUTHOR NOTES - THEOPHILUS MONROE

MARCH 19, 2023

As a father of three boys, I’ve learned a lot about how different they all are. When it comes to playing with blocks, there are at least two kinds of kids: builders and destroyers.

My second son is a builder. He’ll build the tallest block tower he can and insist that no one touch it. He’ll keep that thing standing on his bedroom floor or his shelf as long as possible until, inevitably, something knocks it over. Then, it’s freak out city. Usually because it’s one of his brothers who was responsible.

My youngest is a destroyer. He only builds towers so he can get the satisfaction of knocking them down again. If you’re a destroyer, and don’t care much for the building process, how much better is it when someone else has already done the arduous work of stacking blocks for you?

I couldn’t count how many times Toddler-Zilla rampaged his way across my second son’s block towers. The result? A lot of tattling and fighting.

When it came to this book, I got the play the role of both builder and destroyer. Over Arcane Attitude I built up an entire underground world where mages had lived and thrived for centuries. They trained and waited for the time when the Axis mages might return so they could stop them. So much for that!  Before this book is over, well, if you got this far, I’ll trust you know what happened.

I’m somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty books right now. A lot has changed from the first few. I used to take so much pride in the characters, worlds, and magical systems I built that making the sometimes necessary decision to kill them off or destroy them was painful.  There were a few times when I had to kill off a character. It moved me to the brink of tears as I typed the murderous words on my keyboard.

Now, though? Destroying things is almost just as fun as building them. Why? Maybe it’s just the thrill of destruction. Fire, Fire, Fire! Fire is cool!  Heh heh heh.  More than that, though, it also opens up the chance for something new that wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t built the first thing to begin with.

Hopefully I accomplished this as the Entente alliance skips across the pond and sets up a new headquarters in Tom’s hometown. Will these “underground” mages make it in the real world? Will the be able to figure out how to live in society all the while banding together to stop the undead Axis mages once and for all?

That’s what the next book is for.  Hold on tight!  Author-Zilla is about to rampage!  (Dad-Zilla is also as corny as ever).

-Theo

AUTHOR NOTES - MICHAEL ANDERLE

MARCH 20, 2023

Thank you for not only reading this book but these author notes as well.

The Importance of Consequences, or "Why did we just kill them?"

Today, I want to talk about something that weighs heavily on the minds of authors…

Character deaths.

When writing a story, it's crucial to make our readers believe that something bad can and will happen to the characters you've come to know and love. This creates a sense of tension and stakes that keep you engaged and emotionally invested. Unfortunately, this often means having to kill off characters to drive home the point that no one is safe.

It's not an easy decision, but it's necessary to maintain the element of suspense.

Sacrificing New Characters

As an author, it's easy to become attached to the characters you've created. Toward the end of the Kurtherian Gambit series, I knew that someone had to die, but I didn't want to part with any of my beloved characters.

Frankly, I had so many readers roast me alive for a death about ten books previous that I wasn't ready to weather that storm again.

Thus, I made a decision: I would create new characters that readers would grow to care about, only to have them tragically taken away within the same book. It's a tough choice, but it served the story well and helped to keep the narrative fresh and unpredictable.

Unfortunately, I grew to love those characters as well, and it hurt like a sumbitch when I killed them off.

Tread Carefully with Canine Casualties

I'm looking at me when I killed a dog in the Brownstone series. Someone told me I couldn't do it.

I did it. Probably won't do it again.

So, a word of caution to fellow authors: if you decide to kill off a dog in your story, you had better be prepared for the emotional backlash.

Readers tend to form strong connections with canine characters, and the death of a dog can evoke incredibly intense reactions.

As a writer, it's important to consider the potential consequences of such a decision and weigh them against the impact it will have on your story and your life. Like, your social media account could blow up…and up…and up. I still have people talking to me today about something I did seven years ago.

(Editor's note: We remind you every chance we get. You do foolishly leave yourself open. Just sayin’.)

In conclusion, the responsibility of an author when it comes to character deaths is a heavy one.

We have to balance the need for tension and stakes with the emotional attachment of our readers. Creating new characters to sacrifice can be a solution, but it's not without its own set of challenges. And when it comes to killing off a beloved pet, tread carefully since the heat that follows might be more than you bargained for.

Thank you for joining me on this journey, and I hope you enjoyed the story. I look forward to sharing more tales with you in the future!

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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