The mushrooms were killing her.

  “What happened here?”

  “The Hudson Witch will explain,” Emyrith answered.

  I spread my palms against the fire. It hissed and crackled, spitting embers while popping air. I wondered if Emyrith had started it with the same incantation he’d used to heat the doorknob. Unless there was another way to transfer heat with a wave of a hand, that was a direct use of evocation, which made one of his talents evocation.

  Looking around, everyone was doing their own thing. Despite Victor Valentine being the last one to arrive, Granny Valentine didn’t look worried. Then again, the Hudson Witch never said anything about the order being a factor.

  Mina had just pushed me down the hill for the love of the game.

  I couldn’t let this keep happening. That was how bullying started. They do little things that they can get away with by claiming it was just a harmless joke. Then the victim looks like they’re the ones making a big deal out of it. Then they continue, pushing and pushing, until it gathers a momentum of its own.

  Either Mina was testing the waters, seeing how much she could get away with, or she was one of those flat-out crazy girls. I didn’t know which was worse.

  “Mr. Hallow,” Emyrith said suddenly, breaking me out of my thoughts about Mina, “Here, take this.”

  He handed me a thick wool blanket, which I took and wrapped around my shoulders. Emyrith had the same one, except his was wrapped around both him and his familiar, Ruth the Lwa.

  “Hey, Jain!” she said, waving her small doll arms.

  I gave her a grunt, still too cold to really respond.

  ‘Caller, your lips are blue,” Hwari said.

  “Not really my color, I know,” I said gravely, but Hwari didn’t understand the quip. I wondered if there would ever come a time when I could joke around with my familiars, or at least have them understand the novelty of it. I wasn’t expecting guffaws or anything. I’d settle for an amused chuckle.

  “I’m sorry to do this, but would you mind briefing me on what’s happened with you since we last met?” Emyrith asked.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same question.”

  “Fair,” He said. “Then I’ll go first. One of the reasons why I gave so little room for the contestants to prepare was because I was afraid of giving Society too much time to do the same. But I was mistaken. They already had a favor set up with the Table for an occasion such as this, and called it in. The Table put a price on your head in response. Are you aware?”

  “The bounty,” I spat. “I’m aware.”

  “Ah, I see. You’ve already encountered them, haven’t you?”

  “One of the wickermen, and a dabbler contracted to a fae,” I said blithely. “Right in Assad’s warehouse.”

  “I’m assuming that’s how you managed to contract yourself to Wol and Hwari,” Emyrith said. “I had heard that Assad had a deal with your mother years ago. It was probably in preparation for this.”

  “Getting off tangent, Emmie,” Ruth said.

  I was pretty sure it was either ‘get on a tangent’ or ‘go off on a tangent’, not whatever the Lwa said. I didn’t voice my opinion.

  “I’ve been meeting with the different forces of the Table, talking with them and calling in favors to try and mitigate Society’s influence. A few have recognized the gravity of this matter and agreed to pledge neutrality.”

  I frowned. “Who?”

  Emyrith lowered his voice, leaning in. “The Sewer Mistress, the Medallion, the godling house, and the Ravok family.”

  I counted them mentally. “Count the Intellect Transit and Assad too. I did a favor for the Intellect, and Assad said something that makes me think he wants to hold onto his poker chips until more cards are out on the table.”

  “You did a favor for the Intellect?”

  I nearly reached into my back pocket and brought out the knife, then decided against it.

  I trusted Emyrith to be my lawyer. But more than that? I wasn’t sure. I also had a gut feeling that keeping cards like the eldritch knife close to my chest was the more practitioner-like move.

  “Yeah. Also, Rosefinch Valstein is my second. She’s paying a favor back to the Intellect.”

  I don’t think Emyrith missed the little switch-up and hesitation I did with my hands. But he continued the line of conversation. “Rosefinch wouldn’t be your second unless the Valstein head has also taken a neutral stance. That’s—”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Seven,” I said, “Eight, if we count the Hudson Witch.” I quickly looked in her direction to see if she heard. She was too engrossed in watching the Mother Tree’s interaction with the horrifying mushroom children.

  “Which leaves the Wickerman and Seiryo Holdings,” Emyrith said. Then, in a rare display of emotion, he clenched his fist. “This is going to be close.”

  That meant there were ten table members in total. I could’ve worked it out myself, but it had been one hell of a day. “Ok, mind explaining to me why this matters?”

  “Because of the Table’s general influence in New York. You’ve seen the forces?”

  “The three stooges? Alpha, Beta, Gamma?”

  Emyrith’s nod was curt. “Yes. But others.”

  “Like the Wickerman’s human internship farm, where being offered a full-time job means you’re a perpetual burn victim. Or those deer masks that follow the Hudson Witch around.”

  “As you say,” Emyrith said. “But not limited to manpower. They have influence, as you have already experienced through the bounty.”

  I waved my unburnt hand in front of the fire, while keeping the bandaged arm away from it and in the chilly winds. In my medically untrained mind, the cold would help it heal somehow. Besides, it didn’t ache when it was near frozen. “Well, the second trial is tomorrow. I think eight is pretty good.”

  Emyrith didn’t answer.

  Oh shit.

  Wol leapt up on my uninjured lap. “Explain, Lawyer.”

  “His name is Emmie,” Ruth said suddenly, reminding me of her presence.

  Wol ignored her. “My practitioner has been through fire, fang and claw, hunger, sleeplessness, and braved winter’s cold to get here. All on the promise that this was to end tomorrow. That was what he was told by his representative. You. We are owed an explanation.”

  “Wol,” I said softly.

  “No, Jain,” Wol said, his light voice growing sharp, “Your body will not last past tomorrow.”

  Emyrith stared into the fire. “The Hudson Witch has changed things. That’s all I can say for now.”

  “Changed things so that the second trial won’t end tomorrow at the very least,” I said, “And you’re worried that whatever party has not pledged neutrality will be free to act against me if Society puts the squeeze on them.”

  “Not just them, Mr. Hallow. Any other force that’s looking for an opportunity to prove themselves or inject themselves into this playing field will be looking to do so.”

  “And Mina and Victor are surrounded by other practitioners, so they’re going to go after the easiest guy. Yours truly, me.” I said, then swore. “Fuck.”

  My mind immediately came to the likes of Kita, or Menele. There were some other creepy, dangerous-looking preternaturals at the Town Hall meeting that I didn’t want to remember. Then there were the Table’s own personal supercops: Alpha, Beta, Gamma. Would they act if the orders only came from two of the Table members?

  I needed to know more about Seiryo Holdings. For Christ’s sake, they sounded like a corporation of some sort.

  Just as I was about to ask Emyrith, I heard the Hudson Witch speak up.

  “The last of you has arrived. Then let us begin the first Trial.”

  Focus on the trial first. Worry about the politics later. That’s what I told myself as I stood to my feet, just in time to see Victor Valentine descend the hill.

  Wherever he went, the snow melted.

  Steam rose from Victor’s body, resembling tendrils of white cigarette smoke against the night air. Every step Victor took, a foot of snow in every direction began to melt into a puddle on the ground. His Salamander stood on its four toes with chest held high. The flames were no longer dormant embers that licked around the scales; they were combustion engines that produced a continual wave of fire that extended about six inches out from the small reptilian figure.

  My first response was to ask Wol how he was doing this. I slapped it down.

  This time, I wanted to figure it out myself.

  I opened my Third Eye and put my hand out towards the ground with the palm facing it. I didn’t consciously do it, I just thought it would help. I heard about this thing called multisensory learning, an educational method that uses more than just hearing lectures and looking at notes. Taste, touch, smell— maybe it applied here too. In reality, I thought it’d be better to point it towards Victor, but I wanted to be discreet about it. So I pretended my hand was an antenna, trying to pick up whatever supernatural energy was leaking out of Victor’s working.

  The first thing I could tell was that the salamander stood out bright against the night air. He —or she— was like a small sun, radiating enough light to make my eyes hurt. I stopped staring directly at him and carefully put Victor as the main focus of my sight. Victor, by contrast, was a dull red that gave off waves of magical energy.

  Somehow, Victor was pulling the Salamander’s fire and transforming it into pure heat. I remember Mr. Hom talking about it in physics class: the first law of thermodynamics. You can’t create or destroy energy, only move it.

  But even from what little I knew about magic, there were a few different ways that Victor could be doing this. He could be simply utilizing the familiar bond and using the salamander as a power source to fuel a minor evocation working. Following that line of thought, I wondered how much more difficult it was to control something like fire and control the heat. I wasn’t an evocator, but I doubted it was as easy as turning the knob on a stove.

  The second theory was similar to what I did: thaumaturgy. Maybe he had connected himself to the salamander. It would be easy, using their bond as the link. I doubted there would be much symbolism required in there. I was about ninety-nine percent sure that once the familiar-practitioner contract was created, the two were bound in more ways than they knew. Thaumaturgy was a good guess here.

  But whatever was done through thaumaturgy, one of them had to have a talent in evocation. I mean, it went without saying, the salamander was a familiar built to give off heat, which screamed evocator to me.

  I went through the two possibilities, searching for more, and finally reached a dead end. Without more information, I couldn’t deduce more about Victor. I gave in and asked Wol. “What working is that?”

  “Either an application of evocation through their familiar bond, or thaumaturgy,” Wol said, which only confirmed what I already knew.

  “That’s what I thought too,” I said, my tone disappointed. “I was hoping for more.”

  Wol looked up at me with faint surprise. “What made you think that?”

  “Everything you’ve taught me so far about practices,” I said. “There’s no way to drill down into more specifics?”

  “No. It could also be neither. An instrument or a trinket could serve as a channel,” He said.

  I clicked my tongue. “A trinket is a one-time use thing. I feel like that’s overkill just to stay warm. I got here just fine.”

  “Barely,” Wol said.

  “Barely,” I begrudgingly admitted. “But I feel like he wouldn’t waste a trinket like that.” I tried to remember what little I knew about Victor. So far, he seemed laid-back. Lazy even. I shrugged. “Maybe he did use a trinket.”

  Damn. I really wanted to narrow it down to fewer possibilities.

  “But heat is a physical manifestation of his practice, and his familiar is definitely giving off heat. It’s down to evocation and thaumaturgy. Maybe transmutation. Nothing else works with heat like that. They just can’t,” I said to no one in particular.

  Someone answered me anyways. “You’ve changed, Mr. Hallow.”

  Emyrith was staring at me.

  I shrugged. “A lot happened.”

  He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes danced the same way they did when we first met, with amusement. “It was only two days ago you went through the ritual. Now you’re discussing a rival practitioner’s magical discipline with one of your familiars. I also know you got here through a working of your own. When the Hudson Witch said that she would leave it to each practitioner to arrive here… I was half afraid you’d never come,” He said. “Now I see that fear was unfounded.”

  “Yeah, except it cost me an arm and a leg,” I said. I waved my bandaged hand and leg in the cast. “Literally.”

  “They will heal,” Emyrith said wisely. “But this rapid growth you’ve achieved by surviving through those dangers? That will never disappear.”

  One thing people need to know about me is that I’m not really used to compliments. When someone compliments me like that —except a teacher’s casual ‘good job’ when I get an A or something— I literally want to crawl under a rock and disappear. I don’t know why. Some people love being praised. Me? I get embarrassed and not know what to do with myself.

  “I mean, I guess, yeah. You’re right,” I quipped, not knowing what else to say. Heat crept up my neck and to the top of my ears. “T’is but a flesh wound.”

  I don’t think Emyrith got the reference because he didn’t say anything. It goes without saying, neither did Wol and Hwari.

  God, I really needed to hang around different people and preternaturals.