“No? Just got here. What else can we see? Most of us are into trails except for Makenna. She’s always bitching about her upload speeds and lighting and- anyway, she’s not the outdoorsy type.” Her smile was apologetic. “She’s also my older sister, so when she asked to come along, I kinda had to say yes.”

  “Like a little brother, but addicted to her phone?” I asked, still on high alert after learning that her sister was a magical villain of unknown intentions. I didn’t want her to know, despite the possibility that I might be forced to banish or harm Tiffany. It was out of my hands. Evil has no place in Halfway, and by engaging in malice within our borders, she made her decision. Inside. I felt myself begin to deflate at the oncoming storm. Sometimes being an agent of justice sucks.

  “Worse. She’s in the media. It’s like, her life.” Bridget smiled again, and I saw that her lie had been in knowing who I was. She recognized me. I could see it.

  “What does she do?” I asked. I was in the minefield, and I knew it. Whatever this girl answered was going to change the course of her life, one way or another. She just didn’t know it. Yet.

  “She’s a producer. She hit it big right out of college with a web series, and then she started producing shows on a network. I think she signed a movie deal, too, but I’m not sure. We’re sisters, but she’s kind of weird about her business. It’s like she tries to protect me from it or something.” Bridget shrugged at the mysteries of older sisters, a topic that worried her only a little given how she kept looking around at the diner in rapt amazement.

  “Not your natural habitat?” I asked her.

  “No, it’s friendly. Warm. I mean, there are places like this back home, but,” she shrugged, unable to put the authenticity of Halfway into words. It wasn’t unheard of. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people in the diner, and if they take a moment to look around, they wonder what the secret sauce is that makes our town so inviting.

  Naturally, it’s magic.

  I’m only partly kidding, but that’s part of it. Gran and I work hard to keep the weird at bay, and even then, sometimes, we miss.

  “One of the reasons why I love it.” I let her off the hook and avoided asking her why Tiffany was a thief, because she might not know, and I had the advantage. For now.

  “Anyway, thanks. And you said The Pines?” she asked.

  “Get the garlic rolls. You can thank me later,” I said, and her smile was genuine.

  “I will.” She turned back to her table and I went back to the kitchen, wondering why a television producer would care about Wulfric, and what Sub or Die meant. I intended to find out both, but not until after work and then a long bath.

  I have priorities, after all.

  Chapter Nineteen: The Zero Club

  “I’m out of wine. And I’m submerged,” I called out as I lifted my toes up out of the bubbles. They sparkled because of the glittery bath bomb, and I fought the urge to make tiny Godzilla noises like my foot was emerging to wreck Tokyo. I heard Wulfric coming down the hall, his shadow filling the doorway a moment later.

  “How may I be of service to you, dearest?” he asked me.

  “Before I answer that, what are you wearing?” I asked him.

  He looked down in confusion. “These are, I believe, soccer shorts. The shirt is from The Pines.”

  “I know that. Where did you get them? They actually fit. Kind of a miracle.”

  “I purchased a large bag of clothes for big and tall men, and now, I am wearing the items as I need them. Before you ask, I got them at the consignment shop across from the bank. I paid ten dollars,” he said triumphantly. “I am considering taking up golf next year. There were several golf shirts in the bag, and I feel duty bound to engage in the sport now that I have appropriate togs.”

  “Togs?” I fought a whoop, sliding back in the bubbles for a minute, then rising halfway to hold my wine glass out. “I need wine and an explanation where you learned that word. Stat.”

  “I assume stat means to hurry, but I’ll do neither if you mock me for becoming more cultured. As to your second question, Brendan loaned me a stack of vintage magazines about being a gentleman and living the good life. I intend to do both, despite your,” he surveyed my wet hair and pleading expression, “unsavory comportment.”

  “Un—wait a minute. How old are these magazines? What magazine?”

  “Town and Country, and I believe the date was 1966. A good year for raspberries, if I remember correctly, as well as—”

  “Sometimes I forget you’re a billion years old,” I groused.

  “I’m nowhere close to that, love. I am, however, going to get you another glass of wine.” His eyes flicked down to my pile of clothing next to the bath. Amelia’s penguin peeped out from one of my pockets, its cheery blue and white face splashed from a minor accident I had getting into the tub. Actually, I almost fell in head first, but he didn’t need to know that. Tubs are challenging for people my height. So are stairs. And getting into trucks.

  “Oh. Girl at the diner said Amelia dropped it, gave it to me. She said nice things about you, but I’m not going to tell you because I don’t want your ego getting out of control,” I said while smirking. Take that, handsome.

  Wulfric grew very still, and I felt the air in the room change. “When did she say she found it?”

  He had my attention. I sat up at the tub’s edge, sifting the conversation with Bridget. “She didn’t. She implied it was today, at the lakeside. Why?” My witchy senses slammed into overdrive, cutting through the pleasant fog of wine and fragrant bath steam.

  “I wasn’t with Amelia at the lake. Nowhere near, in fact,” he said slowly.

  “Where were you?”

  “Here, to begin, but then at my shop, then at Gran’s. We went into the market with Gran, then she dropped us off at Anna’s. I walked home from there after getting coffee at the gas station.”

  “Were you followed at all?” It was a silly question, given his years as a stalking, hunting vampire-ranger-nature guy, but still, I had to ask.

  He considered it for a minute, eyes closed and flickering as he rewound the day. “If we were, they used magic.”

  “Magic?” I asked, alarmed. “Why do you say that?”

  “Town wasn’t terribly busy, and my awareness was not compromised. I had Amelia’s hand, which means—”

  “You were radiating that dad thing you do. Got it.” When Wulfric is alone, he’s cautious. When he’s with people he loves, he’s gives off this nearly feral awareness, always watching and figuring angles and who or what is nearby. It’s an unconscious reaction he has to the world around him, and it makes scaring him impossible. Not even Gus tries to stalk him anymore.

  Wulfric sat down next to the tub, cross legged and filling up the whole bathroom with his presence. “Carlie. I don’t tell you how to be a witch, not usually, but I am going to make a suggestion.”

  “Go ahead, love.” He didn’t give advice, at least not often, so I listened.

  “Take two days off work. Go into the cellar, cast a spell or two, talk to Brendan. Walk in the woods and see and feel what is happening. Do the things that make your heart fill with the kind of magic that protects us in ways I cannot, because the alternative is something I don’t wish to consider,” he said.

  “Which is?”

  He leaned back, eyes to the foggy ceiling, then looked at his hands. They were big hands, capable of great kindness. And great violence. “I will defend you. Amelia. Myself. Halfway. And I will do it in a manner that is much cruder than yours. I’m not capable of focus like you are. I am a hammer. You are a scalpel, and the things climbing out of the ground are a sign of sickness. They’re not natural. They never have been, and now, someone chooses to dally with the idea that we can be harmed for reasons known only to them.” His grin was cool, but when he reached out to hold my hand, his fingers were warm. “We will disabuse them of that notion.”

  I kissed his hand. “We will. I’ll start tonight.”

  “What will you do?”

  “You go to Amelia. Stay near her. I’m going into the woods—no, don’t look at me like that, these are my woods, too. I’m going into the woods, then I’ll look at each site, but not in the light of day.”

  “Site?”

  “Where something came out of the ground. They’re not doing it in the daytime, but we haven’t had rain for a few days, so the emergence will hold something of the event. Like an echo. I’ll look under the moonlight, see if anything speaks to me. I should have listened to my instincts as soon as I fried that first mushroom guy. There’s no use pretending it’s going away without a nudge from your friendly neighborhood witches,” I told him.

  “One condition,” he said.

  “Name it.”

  “Finish your bath. Just because you have to hunt evil is no reason to waste your bath bomb,” he said, casting an eye at the ring of glitter around the tub.

  “You really get me,” I said, and then he kissed me, leaving in a swirl of steam as I considered the woods, and my magic, and gaps in both of them.

  Chapter Twenty: Nature Girl

  I picked my way through the tumble of fall with crunchy steps, making my way up the path behind the public beach. There was no sense in trying to be stealthy, leaves covered the ground in carpet, just waiting for my boots to give away my approach. The moon was high enough to give me light to see, and the path was wide and clear. It was a good night to be out, even if it was for a glorified snoop.

  I knew of two locations where mushroom creatures had clawed their way out of the ground—at least, two places that were close enough to check out without having Gran drive me. I needed a clear head and solitude for my sampling mission. Sometimes, a witch has to understand that the little things depend on one person, and one person alone. Teamwork is a wonderful thing, but self-reliance goes a long way toward letting a young witch like me age into an older witch without being smushed or eaten or converted into any number of unsavory beasties. My job hazards are quite different from most women my age, but I’m not complaining. I get to use magic, and that’s reward enough for the hiccups that evil tends to throw my way.

  After a cool walk under the moon and wide belt of the Milky Way, I came to the hillside that Wulfric had saved some of my dignity by helping smash the fungi of doom, or whatever it was. The hole was still there, under the tree, and a light scent of decay clung to the ground with stubborn effect.

  I did the only logical thing when I have time to think. I sat down, picked up a handful of dirt, and considered it. Something erupted from this innocent ground, brought to life with foul magic and then leaving behind monster good—which covered me and Wulfric—and a lot of questions. Fungi monsters are symbolic of a place between life and death. They spring up from dead things, bloom, and then fade away, which meant there was a catalyst for the event, and it was entirely possible I held the clue in my hand.

  “Never mind, I know I do.” I held my charms up, letting a trickle of magic fill my palm. “Let’s see who’s home.”

  I tipped one hand over the other, watching with a sense of awe as the motes of blue light spilled down onto the dirt like an ethereal waterfall. They danced over the dirt, finding cracks and crannies and places to land, pulsing with good cheer as the raw, unbridled magic of my family reached through the Everafter to make a connection—any connection—with some other kind of sorcery.

  I felt it as a sensation, then an insistent nudge, like the memory of leaving your door unlocked when you’re out to dinner.

  The motes danced anew, flicking up and down, through the dirt and then settling into my palm as they began to fade, their mission complete.

  “Hmph.” I let the sensation wash over me, and then through me. I felt hints of otherness that could only be the fungi man, a confused pastiche of thoughts that overlay each other, fighting for something in my mind—

  “Ah. They’re hiding,” I muttered. The echoes of magic didn’t want to be known. “Shy little fellas, aren’t you?” I asked the inert lump of dirt, but it was too late for the caster. I had seeds of something planted deep in my witchy psyche, and it was only a matter of quieting my mind before I could tease them out like a reluctant thread.

  It was a man. Then, it wasn’t a man, and then it was a woman, her true face hidden under a costume of something else. In my mind’s eye she was plain, then beautiful, and then shining with confidence before she turned away again, her power dark and hidden.

  A shy witch, or not a witch at all, but why the signs of a man? I knew warlocks paired with truly evil witches, but that was such a rare event I had to consider something else more likely. I needed to walk, and let the night welcome me even as my mind ran free to decipher the magical remnants of a spell that brought life from the earth, if in a shape that did no one any good at all.

  “Okay, kid.” I lifted a boot over the remains of a log, quietly vanishing into the earth one season at a time. “I wish Gus was here to listen, but you are, right sister?” I looked up to the moon, shy behind a wispy cloud being hustled past by the breeze aloft. “A handful of mushrooms. Magic left over. Not my magic, and not Gran’s.”

  So far, so good. I was cutting across the secondary trail that ran behind the town boathouse where we stored rental canoes and life vests that were always stained with suntan lotion and mildew. My path would bring me in a general line between the site of the first incident and the last. If something was—

  I stopped. There was no pattern. There would never be a pattern, because the magic I’d found was raw, and unfocused. “Hmph.” I ran my hand through my hair, feeling the wind knots that appeared without invitation. I’d need a bath after going all nature girl, but for now, I felt close to the earth. Close to my magic, and edging toward a ghostly memory of a man and a woman who were causing a violation in my town.

  “Ignorance,” I said out loud, but no one answered. Except my own instincts. “They’re ignorant, and they don’t understand.”

  Either the temperature dropped, or I was letting my emotions run wild. probably a little of both given the chill that raced up my spine with unwelcome speed. There are three kinds of magic in the world. The good kind, under control of a witch who wants to preserve life and peace, and the bad kind. Blood magic is almost always fatal, spreads like disease, and causes pain and loss on a scale of such grandeur that to use it more than once means giving your soul to the darkness.

  Then, there is the third kind, and in some ways, it’s the most dangerous.

  Untamed magic done by amateurs is like a wildfire started by a lazy camper. They might not have intended to burn down an entire mountain, but they did, and when the ashes have cooled, there can be only one source for blame. The person who lit the spark.

  “Maybe I should look for a couple wearing robes and pointy hats?” I asked the moon, smiling despite my anger. If it was unintentional magic, then I might be able to get away with a spell of suggestion, a sort of strongly worded letter in the form of magic that would dissuade the dabblers from raising any more gooey mushroom people.

  But. There was another possibility, and it hinged on a simple idea. Malice.

  I could forgive ignorant magical interlopers. I could not forgive the same person if they had malice in their heart. Usually, a simple spell of detection could direct me to my target, but in the case of another witch, that was the same thing as waving a sign around that I was snooping into their life with possibly violent intent. I needed to find a pattern where none existed, and that meant guessing where the next fungal invader would dig their way out.

  I looked at my hand. It was stained not from magic, but gritty dirt, and the pieces fell into place. I’d found the magical element, but the physical element was just ground up rock, left to season for a few thousand years. If the fungal men rose in the same kind of places, then knowing that would let me predict where to go for the next awakening. I needed a rock expert, and I had one on the end of my phone.

  I sent a text, since I knew he was still charmed by the entire process of instant messages.

  Hey, Exit. Want to come dig in the dirt for magical critters?

  Chapter Twenty-One: Skulk and Dagger

  I took Wulfric’s advice and ditched work for two days, which worked out well since Eli called me and unleashed a ten-minute torrent of excited speech which, when I got to the bottom of it, meant he was having lunch with the mystery woman.

  Since I love secret missions and espionage in general, I told him I would wear a disguise and be close enough to their booth at The Pines for me to overhear their entire conversation. What I didn’t tell him was that I would be wearing a magical disguise, so he wouldn’t know it was me, and that I would be sitting with Alex, who would throw him further off my trail.

  I also failed to mention I wanted to be close enough to intervene in the event his lunch date turned out to be a maniacal mushroom woman wearing a pantsuit or something. Don’t laugh; I saw a ghoul dressed up like a stripper, and based on how much money she had jammed in her garter, either the lighting was low or the guys didn’t really care she was dead. And a cannibal. And kind of scary. Then again, she had really good hair for a dead girl, and I never got to ask her why because I froze her into a billion little pieces. So much for beauty secrets of the dead and fabulous.

  Wulfric was already off to his shop, working on what he promised would be a revolution in the cross-country ski industry. For me, the entire sport is in the never gonna happen category, sort of like dunking a basketball. I don’t like running unless I have to, and I don’t like the idea of running while wearing giant boards strapped to my feet while snow falls on me as I gasp for breath. If Wulfric put tiny engines on each ski, he would have my attention. If he didn’t, he would have my love and support and maybe a high-five, but that was about it.

  While he was making sawdust and difficult sporting goods, I took out a small vial I’ve had in reserve for months, gave it a searching look, and drank it. It tasted sweet, with hints of flowers and windswept grasses, just after a summer storm has rolled through.