As I trailed after Ro down an unfamiliar street in an unsavory-looking part of town, I once again questioned what exactly had led me to be in this situation, and what chance I had of getting out of it with my sanity intact. It wasn't looking good.

Ro was in cat form, having said he would stand out less that way, but he was drawing stares, nonetheless. We both were, as we'd been up and down this street three times already. Apparently, our destination—Janelle's Spells—could only be found by following a very specific set of directions, some of which were rather odd.

Ro stopped at a crosswalk and sat on his haunches, waiting for the light to change. I stood beside him, trying to ignore the fact I was standing next to a cat. A young woman joined us and exclaimed with delight when she noticed Ro. She bent down to pet him, and he arched his back and held his tail aloft, purring loudly.

"Stop that. I can see your butt, you freak," I muttered.

The woman glanced up at me with a shocked expression, stood, straightened her skirt, and hurried away.

Mortification seared my face.

"I'm so sorry—I wasn't talking to you!" I called after her. "I was... talking to the... to my cat."

She kept walking.

I glared at Ro. He winked at me, and I knew he'd be laughing if he could.

The light changed, and he trotted out along the crosswalk. I followed, slouching my shoulders, and then sighed as he circled a streetlamp three times. Flinching against the public judgements of my mental health, I did the same. Then he set off down the sidewalk, back the way we came.

I rubbed my brow. It was barely 9 am, and I already had a headache. You'd think the universe would give me a break on the day after the worst day of my life, but so far this one wasn't shaping up to be much better than the last.

After a quick breakfast of cold cereal, Ro had informed me we had something of a journey ahead of us.

"We'll take the bus downtown," he'd said, "then walk from the station. You're up for walking, aren't you?"

"Why can't we take my car?" I'd asked, confused.

"Because your car is gone," he'd said. "I had it towed."

After a shock and a quick investigation, I'd discovered he was telling the truth. I'd expressed my disappointment and distress, and he'd given me that pitying look again.

"You've never made someone disappear before, have you?" he'd asked.

I'd admitted I hadn't. "Have you?"

He'd only shrugged, and informed me that the simplest solution was to evade the 'human police' until I knew how to reliably get them off my back. "Your father certainly did," he'd said, his expression darkening.

"But if I just explained..." I'd protested weakly.

"Yes, because you have such a wonderful alibi," he'd said, perhaps sarcastically. "You found your boyfriend murdered, called 911, hung up, fled the scene, ran away to your father's house—your father, who was also murdered, by the way. Of course, walking in on your boyfriend getting banged by another man couldn't possibly be considered motive, could it? And your new daemon familiar can vouch for you, of course."

With it laid out so plainly, I'd clearly envisioned a long and unpleasant future for myself in the state penitentiary—or mental facility, more likely—and agreed to go along with his plan.

And so, he'd taken cat form, and we'd both taken the bus downtown (at least he got to ride free), and proceeded to wander up and down streets, and around several blocks, weaving our way around lampposts and between trees, until at last he stopped before a plain black door in a brick wall.

I blinked at it. We'd been past this spot four times already, and I was almost certain the door hadn't been here before.

I glanced from side to side. There was a bar on the left, and a vintage vinyl shop on the right, and not much space in between.

Ro looked up at me expectantly. I shrugged, reached for the handle, and opened the door.

It swung inwards to reveal a dimly lit space that smelled of incense and dry, dusty things. It was cool and dark, and a mellow chime tinkled softly as the door fell shut. My eyes adjusted, and I saw two rows of many tall shelves, with a long narrow aisle between. Signs hanging from the ceiling labeled each row, like a very strange supermarket.

The first few weren't that odd (Essential Oils; Herbs—leaves, roots, flowers; Gems—A-Z) but further in they grew more unusual. I saw Grave Dirt—blessed & unblessed and Holy Water (sanctified), Anglican–Zoroastrian.

I paused about halfway down, at a row labeled Skulls, and stared. Some I recognized from old textbooks and a vague interest in science—rat, cat, dog, various birds—others looked like nothing I'd ever seen before, and some were most definitely human. I reached towards one of these, morbidly drawn to the bony grin and empty, eyeless voids, when a voice at my back made me jump out of my skin.

"You lost?"

I spun, and found myself face to face with a large woman wearing a purple sequined blouse. She had a round, youthful face, a toffee-toned complexion, and her hair was a mass of multicolored braids, in pink, green, and black, woven into an elaborate headpiece.

"'Cause only two kinds'a people come in here," she continued. "You don't look like the first kind, and the other kind is 'lost.'"

A laugh at my side made me jump a second time, and I wondered if I'd make it through the day without having a heart attack.

"He's with me, Janelle," Ro said, having retaken his more human form.

The woman's eyes widened, and she set a hand on her hip and jutted it to the side theatrically. She had long nails painted with swirling shades of orange, white, and pink.

"Well, fuck me sideways in a tree," she said. "If it isn't everyone's favorite feline fugitive. What the hell you doin' here, Ro?"

Ro inspected his own sharp, black nails and sniffed. "Bringing you a treat, obviously. This is Oscar Vile's kid."

The woman's eyes widened as they turned back on me. "Oscar's... but..."

"It's true. Allow me to introduce Ellie Harris, one true heir to the Ivy Throne."

"Um... hello," I said, somewhat at a loss.

She stared at me a moment longer, then turned her head and screamed over her shoulder. "Kyrie!!! Come on out here an' look at this!!!"

From the shadows at the far end of the store, a thin person with espresso-dark skin emerged. With closely shaved hair and flowing robes of black silk, I couldn't determine a gender. The voice that spoke was feminine, but low and smooth, and the face that turned towards mine was masklike and expressionless.

"You don't need to shout, Jana. What is it?"

Janelle turned back to me and pointed. "Ro says this is the next Ivy. Is it true?"

The person stepped closer, studying me with eyes that were entirely black—not just the iris, but the part that should be white, too—and they seemed to sparkle with a galaxy of stars.

A pair of thin hands reached for my face, and I stepped back reflexively.

"Kyrie's a fate-seer. She won't hurt you," Ro said, helping me out with the pronoun dilemma.

I held still and let myself be inspected. Kyrie took my face between her hands and leaned close, gazing into my eyes with the twin voids of her own.

Darkness filled my vision, drawing me in, and the walls of my mind fell away before a terrifying immensity. From the single point I occupied in space and time, to the whole of an edgeless universe, one of innumerable multitudes, far more than a human mind could comprehend.

Then Kyrie released me, and finding myself abruptly back in the limits of my body, I reeled with sudden vertigo. Ro steadied me with a strong arm until I had my balance again.

"Well?" Janelle prompted impatiently. "Is he?"

"Their fate is unclear," Kyrie said, rubbing her temples.

"Their fate? Is there more than one of him?" Janelle asked.

"Their nature is as air: mutable and changing; neither masculine nor feminine, but a shifting mix of both." Kyrie fixed me with her sparkling black eyes again. "How shall we address you?"

I flushed, remembering my own uncertainty of a moment before. "Anything's fine. He, they, she—whatever works."

Kyrie nodded. "You are at a radial point along the axis of your fate—a place of elemental uncertainty. Even a small thing—a single choice—could alter the direction of your path."

"'Kay, that's neat. But is he the Ivy or not?" Janelle pressed.

Kyrie shook her head. "If he survives... possibly. The threads of his fate are tangled with the ends of the last Ivy's, anyway."

"Wait... what?" I blinked, my attention having snagged on the 'if he survives,' part.

She tilted her head a little to the side and looked at me. "Radial points are inherently dangerous. So many outcomes, so many factors; enough paths are short ones that few who encounter such uncertainty live long thereafter."

Unexpectedly, a reassuring hand settled on my lower back.

"Which is why we're here," Ro said. "He needs a teacher. He's clueless."

"Oh, hell no." Janelle shook her head, a frown on her full, fuchsia-colored lips. "I got enough trouble with all the damned strays I take in without adding this to the mix. You need an athame, or a smudge-stick, or a custom-sized priapic wand, and I'm your gal; otherwise, you can get lost."

"You owe me, Janelle," Ro said, a low, dangerous note in his voice that I hadn't heard before.

Her frown deepened. "Why you care, anyway? Thought you'd be dancing on the old man's grave—or taking a cat crap on it, at the least—not babysitting his spawn."

"Because Ellie is my witch," Ro said flatly. "For now."

Janelle's eyes widened, and she glanced at Kyrie. The other woman nodded.

"It is so."

"How long you been bound?" Janelle asked.

"About sixteen hours," Ro said, "which is—coincidentally—also how long Ellie's known he's a witch. So, you understand why we're here."

Janelle stared at him, and then at me, and then sighed unhappily. "Fuck me sideways. Fine. But this is it, Ro—you callin' in that favor, you understand?"

Ro nodded slowly. "So be it."

"So be it," Janelle repeated gravely, and then turned to me. "All right, then, listen up, kid. You want me to teach you, you do what I say. If I say 'stop,' you stop. If I say 'go,' you go. If I say 'jump,' you...?"

"Jump?" I guessed.

She nodded. "Good. Now, come on upstairs, and tell me everything."