Despite everything that had happened, when I returned to the demon realm (much to Jack's dismay), everything and everyone seemed to be the same. Lessons picked up where they had left off, I was harassed a whopping two times by the same demon—Vickson, I remembered they were named—and prodded mostly just for being human. It was a nice change from all the other reasons people had picked on me in the past, but it got old very quickly. I knew training with Nyx wouldn't get me an outstanding grade in the more scientific, number-oriented classes; magic was more of a long-term solution, something I could carry in my back pocket until there came a right time to use it.

I stood in the room she'd picked out for me, her having been under the impression that I was staying here, ready to say goodbye for spring break. Not that there was much I could say goodbye to; the place was more like a solitary confinement cell with an easily unlatched door than anything. It was quiet, colorless, and desolate, just like everything else here. I was starting to see, just a little bit, how this place could be considered Hell with a capital H.

"Well...so long, I guess."

Nothing.

Wait, did I expect the room to talk back to me, or something? This really is solitary confinement. And I've probably spent a grand total of five minutes in here.

"You okay there?"

Jack's voice woke me up with a jolt, and I turned to see him leaning against the doorway, amused. He'd grown a bit more used to me coming here, which I thought he would never get over. He always seemed so concerned that I'd be turned into a mindless slave, or that Nyx would mistreat me, or worse. I can't say it wasn't nice to see him happy for a change.

"Yeah, I just...this room is torturing me. Psychologically. I think it's too gray."

He had to hold back a snort, eventually nodding towards something in the corner. "How 'bout that table over there? It's got some color in it yet."

"Eh. Still too dull. I'm going to have an aneurysm if I don't have neons thrown in my face, stat."

Jack raised an eyebrow and lightly shook his mask, which was hanging from a belt loop on his left. It wasn't exactly neon, but I would take it. I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead like a weak-willed Victorian dame.

"I'm saved."

"Glad to be of service. So I take it you're ready to go?" He hesitated a bit before asking as I walked briskly from the room, shutting the door behind me. I hadn't meant it to be that harsh of a gesture, I was just getting sick of looking at all that gray. I shrugged my messenger bag back onto my shoulder with a pensive glance at the walls surrounding us.

"I think so. Maybe say bye to Nyx first, she's kind of the only person I know here. It'd be a shame if she got all paranoid when I don't show up for another week..." I faltered at the look on Jack's face, wondering why it was hitting me like a brick wall. Nothing in particular had changed about it; I just knew that she was still a sore subject for him. He furrowed his brow.

"She treating you right?"

"I—yeah, why wouldn't she be?"

His eyelids narrowed and he nodded thoughtfully. "Good." The tone shifted faster than I could blink as he started picking at a dry tar droplet on his mask, gaze fixed on the floor. "You sure you don't want me to come with you? To your parents' place, just to make sure you're safe? Nobody has to see me, you won't even have to worry about how I get there—"

"I'm sure. Last time you decided to...'tag along,' you lost control and somebody died. I know it was because of your boss," I said, holding up a hand before he could protest, "but it still happened. I can take care of myself. Got my secret weapon at the ready." I threw a mysterious grin his way, causing him to cross his arms with half a smirk.

"And what would that be?"

"A Nerf Super-Soaker."

He laughed and shook his head as we made our way out of the cavern-like hall. I couldn't tell if it was magic that I could actually see in here after only a couple days, or if my eyes had just miraculously grown used to the dark. Jack gave me an unsure look, fiddling with the zipper of his hoodie. "Do you actually have one of those...?"

"If my parents still haven't sold them since I moved out, probably."

"Aw, little Sawyer's all grown up," he teased, ruffling up the front of my hair. I gasped and elbowed him off me, hitting a sore spot between his rib and underneath the arm. He grimaced and held off on his nonsense to rub the spot.

"God! Okay, little Sawyer's really grown up." He cocked his head in my direction with another one of those unsure looks he had in his arsenal. "Where'd you learn all that self-defense junk you pulled on me, anyway? Y'know, the..." He knocked lightly on his head for lack of better words. "...first time?"

"Uh, the one just now was kind of a lucky guess, actually." I shrugged and stopped as we reached the end of the hall. "I don't know. I took classes, got okay at it. Had a bunch of blunt objects in the room to beat you senseless with, so that helped." I looked at him curiously. "Why? You planning to take me down some other time?"

"Of course. Because I'm very much in the mood to fight you, here and now, as you're about to leave for home." Jack gave me an unsympathetic pat on the back like he was sending me off, though I could hear a trace of longing in his voice. Definitely not for fighting, but something else. I decided against asking about it.

"You know you can stop by my house if you want to. When I'm gone. Raid the kitchen, read some books, I don't know. What do you like to do besides kill, again?"

After a moment, he shook his head with a frown, and I took that to mean nothing good. I raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously. You...you don't have any hobbies?"

"I used to! You know, before I got roped up in all this demon business. I—uh, I played video games? Hung out with my roommate? A bit of a douche, but he was fun to be around."

I tapped my chin in mock thought. "Hm. So, Jack's hobbies: fuck around playing video games and talk to Gil, or whatever his name was."

"Greg. Shouldn't you be going right about now? People are...ahem." He feigned clearing his throat to subtly nod behind me. "Looking."

I resisted the urge to whirl around and tell whoever was "looking" to mind their own business, instead biting the inside of my cheek and nodding. "I probably should, shouldn't I."

"Yep."

"So I will."

"Of course."

"I mean, it's just a week, I—you should be fine."

"Yeah."

I gave a little awkward throat clear of my own before turning to the portal-like exit hall, skinned wooden pillars seeming to bend outward at my approach. Apparently, even the place itself had a prejudice against humans.

"Um...bye, I guess," I muttered, hoping Jack would hear. I didn't get a response as I hurriedly walked out, avoiding any eye contact with whichever things had eyes here.

—

I trudged downstairs at 10:00, half-blind with one hand on the wall to ground myself. Nobody was waiting for me there, as usual, but it felt just a tiny bit lonelier this time. I was supposed to be seeing my parents almost every day of the break; this was their house. I thought about it over cold cereal, then remembered that they probably still had their day jobs to go to. The thought made me shudder as I realized its painful reality. I'm going to have to work, all the time, even during breaks for the rest of my foreseeable future.

The back door creaked open, and I almost pulled something craning my neck to see who it was. No need; I heard the loud shuffling of a track jacket being hung up and my dad's keys being laid down on a table nearby. He scoffed as he walked into the kitchen, barely acknowledging my being there and making a beeline for the fridge.

"Y'know what just happened, Sawyer?" Without waiting for a response, he grabbed a banana and turned around on his heels, jabbing a finger at the table like he was laying somebody off. "Teenage kid, maybe even in his twenties, walked into the shop about an hour ago. He saw me checking on a tough case, somebody's front wheel had kinda popped off and the metal in front was sealed together—well, you know what he says first? He said..."

Most of what followed was drowned out by my own grogginess; I knew the general idea of what he was saying, anyway. He went on and on about the little entitled prick, saying how he'd never been touched by the sun and was talking to him like he owned the place, the classic Mateo Rafael work day experience.

"...anyways, it's a little funny, because he seems to realize his mistake, but that's not the point of what I'm doing. I walk over to him, I kinda flick my tag in his face, and I say, 'I'm not a regular worker because I'm the manager.' Dude doesn't even lose his rhythm, steps back and adjusts his glasses and says without skipping a beat, 'hm. I didn't know somebody like you could be manager.'"

At this point, he'd started laughing, shaking his head and holding himself up by his elbows on the table. "Maldito...cerebro de mierda, eso es que tiene él," he muttered under his breath. His gaze snapped to me and softened almost immediately. "Sorry, kid. I should probably lay off those kinds of words, shouldn't I?"

I shook my head, eyes downcast as if he'd just brought dishonor to the whole family. "Too late, dad, you've fallen from grace. You're a sailor now, roughened by the seas, only going where the wind takes you..."

"Ha, ha. So, uh—well, how's your morning been?"

"I just got up." I stood from my seat and walked over to the coffee brewer, ignoring my dad's eyebrow raise that said he was about to make a jab at me.

"Oh, school's taken a toll on you, hasn't it? Appreciate this 'getting up late' business while it lasts, soon you'll be back on the front lines," he said, bordering on singsong. I rolled my eyes. He knew I could always wake up this late at the university.

"D'you know where Mom is? She said she had something to talk to me about, it's been eating at me for days," I said dryly. Dad hummed a short tune as he munched on his mediocre breakfast. I wondered how early he'd risen—or how late he'd stayed up—to have gotten home from work around this time.

"I'm sure it's nothing serious. Your mom, sometimes she likes to make a big deal out of things. I think she just needs excitement in her life." He shot me a panicked look. "Don't tell her I said that," he half-whispered. I waved my fingers in the air as if performing magic.

"It's already forgotten."

"Thanks."

He walked out of the room without another word, and I was left alone again to aimlessly roam the house.

Two more days passed before I got answers. I was passing by my mother's room on Saturday when she perked up in her seat, standing up and waving me over.

"Oh, Sawyer! Come here, would you? We need to talk."

Despite my knowing about this—for several days, actually—my heart jumped at that sentence. The damned thing does that to everybody, it fills you with dread. I swallowed my usual "I know" and went in, not so sure of what to do as she crossed her arms and looked at me calculatingly.

"Is everything okay upstate? At school?"

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Why wouldn't it be? Are...are you worried about my grades, or something? Mom, I'm pretty sure this has been my best year, with all the—"

"It isn't that. It's about your Tía Freyja."

My stomach dropped at that name. Time seemed to slow down; I shut my mouth and nodded, trying to get rid of an annoying bubble in my throat as she looked at me with a sickening amount of sympathy.

"It's been hard, I know. But I need to ask...do you know anything about what happened that night? Anything you haven't already told? Did you happen to see..." she faltered and pursed her lips, like she was trying to find a way to sugarcoat this even more. "Well, did you happen to see its face?" At my lack of a response, she hugged her arms tighter, urgency growing in her voice. "Sawyer, the case is still open. They haven't found that thing that killed her, they don't even know whether it was a human that did it or not—Sawyer. Look at me."

I met her eye again, frustration and anxiety bubbling in my stomach. "Why aren't the police here asking me these things? You could've told me they needed another account."

"I didn't want you to worry anymore than you had to, dayong. The police haven't asked anything else of us, not since you left in January. I want to know for myself." She sighed and held my face with both hands. "To tell the truth, they called about a week ago. There have been more deaths like Freyja's near where you've been living. Near the university, actually. Claw marks, disembowelment, I..."

Her voice broke slightly and she shook her head, as if to communicate, I don't know what else to say here. Or maybe to get rid of the images burned into her mind.

"...I really shouldn't be describing it to you. But do you know something? Have you heard about any of this?"

After a short moment where I thought I would explode on the spot, I gently pushed her hands away from my face.

"Nanay, you know that if I heard anything, I'd tell you."

I instantly wanted to take those words one by one and shove them back into my mouth, they sounded so stupid. It wasn't the lie that bothered me, though I knew I would regret it later; I also knew that she didn't believe me one bit. She didn't say anymore on the subject, just stared at me for a while, all disappointed, then pulled me into a hug.

"Mahal kita, Sawyer. I hope you know that."

"I do, Mom." That part wasn't a lie.

"Please stay safe."

"I will."

That wasn't a lie either, or at least, it partially wasn't. I was definitely going to try, but I couldn't make any promises. Simply knowing Jack, or the demons, or even Nyx was enough to land me in danger at some point.

I took the 9:00 AM train back to campus the next day, already feeling lousy about whatever was to come.

—

"It may seem backwards to you, based on what you've heard...out there," Nyx said with a flippant wave of the hand as she organized a hefty stack of paperwork on what could only be described as a floating desk. No legs suspended it; it was more or less just a board that had been gifted flight. "But we are humans in an unfamiliar realm—well, a bit more unfamiliar to you, but my point still stands. Here, one should be nothing if not useful."

She said it with such pep and cheer that I almost wasn't taking in what she was saying. I thought after several weeks that I would've grown used to it, but hearing that tone mixed with her strange, twisted-up ideology still managed to throw me for a loop. Before anything more could be said on the matter, she turned back to me and folded her hands, something shiny locking her fingers together like glue. It was almost glowing.

"So! You've been practicing that mending spell I taught you?"

I nodded with sealed lips, though in reality I'd just unscrewed the leg of a chair in my room and managed to bring the two back together one hour before coming here. I was lucky the spell hadn't flaked on me, or I'd have nothing to show for my lackluster "practice." At least I remembered how to do it at all. Nyx tilted her head, like she knew I wasn't telling the whole truth but didn't want to confront me about it. Nyx had proven herself to be very non-confrontational since our lessons began.

She drew her hands apart, and with them, that same glue-like substance that had bound them before. It looked like a thin sheet of purple glitter glue was being spread out and sagging to the floor. It was very in line with her style; that sort of girly-girl of a witch who didn't mind mingling death and sparkles in her work. But she frowned at the glittery bubble that had been created between her fingers, raising an eyebrow and muttering to herself, "Well, that didn't work."

"I think it looks cool," I piped up.

She threw me an appreciative glance. "It does, doesn't it? It was supposed to be a special adhesive that only works on occult beings. Binds wounds, holds them together while they heal, sort of like a bandaid. But it's supposed to be completely ineffective on humans. Barely sticks together when it's on you, even if you tried..."

I gave in to a tiny smirk. "Maybe you're half-demon."

We both fell silent. After a moment, she looked to me, unsure and with a thin trace of insult woven into her features. I immediately shrank into myself.

"I...sorry, was that offensive? It was just a—"

"Oh! Oh, you were joking. Highest be damned, Sawyer, you scared me for a moment there!" Nyx scoffed and wrung her hands to rid them of the magical glitter glue, eventually resorting to peeling it off with a look of mild disgust on her face. "Um, what were we on about again...?"

"Mending spell."

"Right! So, I think we ought to give that just one more try before moving on to something more advanced. Think you can do that?"

"Of course." I dropped to my knees and touched the floor with my shoulders hunched. "You gonna get out that mysterious green powder I tried with last time?" I asked, lips pursed to fight back an oncoming smile. Nyx knelt down beside me with an intricately carved wooden bowl, her hands now clean.

"I think we'll go with sand this time. A tiny bit harder than the fluorescent powder, as it blends into the ground more." She placed the bowl on the ground, it having been, indeed, filled with sand. I hesitantly grabbed about half of a fistful and started sprinkling it on the ground in a circle, like salt to repel an unholy being. I looked up at Nyx and took one more doubtful glance at the circle.

"Uh, so, what are we mending here?"

Without hesitation, she reached back, grabbed a pencil off her desk, and snapped it in half with relative ease. I raised my eyebrows at the action, while she held out the pieces expectantly.

"What? It's just a pencil. Go on."

Thought you were more of the "a pencil is never just a pencil" type, but okay.

I set down the poor wooden shards beside the circle of sand and muttered, "Copulare hanc—pencil," making an oval inside with my fingers as best I could and separating them just as quickly, breaking the circle's outline and causing the pieces of pencil on the ground to shake. The way these spells worked was almost like computer programming; input a command, say what or who it should affect, and watch the magic happen. I thought to myself, amused at their excessive use of Latin, Yes. Join Hank. I began to half-wonder and half-worry that two poor guys named Hank out there might have fused together from different sides of the globe thanks to my thoughts. I banished the idea from my mind when I saw the broken ends of the pencil gravitate towards each other, shaking and eventually melding back together with an amusing shoop.

"Ah! Very good." Nyx gave me an excited little round of applause before standing up, taking the bowl of sand with her. "You may take your hands off the ground now."

I dusted myself off and sat back down on my little chair, awaiting her next instructions.

We continued like that for an hour or so, me biting my tongue before something insensitive was said more times than I could count. Apparently, it was a grave dishonor for humans and demons to mix. At any capacity. I wondered if that was a good chunk of a reason as to why so many people here hated Jack; if they didn't know the whole story (which of course they didn't), they could only assume he was created from some sort of magical mishap, or cross-breeding, or whatever weird business went on here. I felt unjustified guilt and shame crawl up my spine the more I thought about it, so I decided to simply stop thinking about it. Because that's so easy, right?

Nyx was still talking, seemingly unaware of my zoning out and remaining so as I zoned back in with a snap. She had been explaining every step of a spell like the one I'd performed before, why there was a tedious formula and why every little detail was needed. The mending spell had been one of the most basic of them, the blankest of blank slates. Some spells, like those you would perform solely on a living organism, were bound to be much more complicated and much more dangerous to get wrong.

"...then there comes the shape within that binding circle, which dictates the type and intent of the spell. You've been using your fingers to form it so far, which is good in a pinch, but for other spells is near impossible to—"

She froze up without another word, her gaze locked on a random corner of the ceiling, though god knows how far up it actually went from here. Her eyes glazed over, and she nodded with about half the confidence she possessed before. I wondered if she was hearing something—or someone—that I couldn't. Before I could say anything, or try and snap her out of it, she broke from the trance and clapped with an awkwardly apologetic expression.

"Well! Excuse me for that, Sawyer, I guess we're taking a small break for now. I've got some work to do, it shouldn't take too long. Feel free to roam for the next, ah, 15 minutes or so."

I raised an eyebrow, still glued to my seat. "What kind of work, if you don't mind me asking...?"

"Oh, nothing big! The Highest would just like me to continue working on a...small project of his. One should be nothing if not useful," she repeated hollowly, seeming to sink down in her chair the tiniest bit. I nodded after a moment's hesitation and got up, knowing it would feel rude to just leave but unsure of what more I could do.

Outside the hall where Nyx's office was, a small, ramp-like object almost akin to a bench sat along the wall. It looked sad. Lonely, even. I furrowed my eyebrows at the sight, wondering why it struck me like that. I hesitated for a moment, grazing its surface with my fingers to make sure it wasn't an illusion. Not happening a second time. It was real wood. I sat down cautiously, holding my head and backtracking my own thoughts with unsteady breaths.

Magic.

Useful.

The "Highest."

Jack.

Freyja...

I glared at the floor as stupid thoughts came rushing to me all at once. What my mother had told me yesterday shouldn't have irked me that much; yeah, Jack needed to eat sometimes. And whichever neighborhood rested on the edge of campus was the most convenient place for him. So what? It's not like it was all his fault my aunt died. It's not like one day he'd fuck up and kill somebody else I knew, it's not like he was some unfeeling monster. I could trust him.

But what if—

No. I could trust him. There was nothing more to it. He was my friend, a close friend, probably the only one he's had in years. He wouldn't just throw that away.

What if he loses control again?

I paused and then shook my head, eyes shut. No. That's not going to happen, his boss has already tried screwing us over and failed. That "may we meet again" bullshit...that's all it was. Bullshit. A bluff.

"Oh, hey, you got a break?"

I opened my eyes, relieved by the break from my frantic and disturbing train of thought. Jack certainly could've looked better; my smile faltered as I looked him up and down, wondering what had happened while I was gone. Mainly, how he'd acquired the crescent moon-shaped burn on his left cheek. He stared at me for a moment, oblivious, before realizing what I was looking at with a silent "oh."

"Uh...yeah. That. Let's just say I probably shouldn't get into as many fights as I do when I'm mad—"

"Ridiculous," I said with a shake of my head. "It's like I'm in high school again. How many different ways can you get yourself hurt this year?"

"How many times are you going to call me ridiculous this year?" He huffed and made to sit next to me, eventually deciding against it. "I remember those things, you know."

I stood up to either give him a piece of my mind or comfort him somehow, when I caught something from out of the corner of my eye and was diverted. Tiny droplets of black ink were edging tentatively toward us, gaining a new form and shape every time I glanced at them. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't ignore them. Jack noticed my wavering attention and arched an eyebrow, his gaze following mine. He folded his arms and groaned as soon as he caught sight of the things.

"Great. It's them."

I realized that everybody who had previously been in the giant clearing with us was gone. They'd vacated the area without making a sound, as if alerting these little drops of their presence would be fatal.

One at the front started squirming in its spot, eventually breaking off the floor and taking the form of what looked to be a ball of chocolate-brown fuzz. It flapped towards us, its "friends" following, with wings like a fly's and sprouting animal-like skulls where their heads should have been. It would've been cute if I didn't recognize the body parts they'd clearly ripped off of something else; pigeon legs stretched out from their bodies and threatened to land on my arm, which I quickly jerked out of their reach. Strange as it was, I could only describe them as fairy-like, given the confusing amalgamations before me. My conclusion started making less and less sense to me as I noticed the sheer size of these things—some of them were like guinea pigs, for Christ's sake.

"Ah...to roam these halls again, free as a bird," the leading creature mused. It sounded like some sort of elvish trickster. It turned to its fellow fuzzballs expectantly. "I feel so young again. Don't you?"

"I do."

"I do!"

"I do."

"Here it goes," Jack said under his breath, and he froze in his spot, a look of tired resentment carved in stone on his face. The wannabe-griffins all fell silent, turning their gaze towards him in perfect unison. I felt a shiver travel up my spine at the movement.

"Why, hello, Jack-a-boo," squeaked the leader with a tilt of its head—well, skull. "Boss and I would like to speak with you."

"Me too," said the one next to it, fluttering up to perch itself on his nose.

"Me too!"

"Me too!"

"Me too—"

"Shut up! God..." Jack squeezed his eyelids shut and cut off the growing chorus with a wave of his hand. "Stop splitting up for things like this! This whole act, it's so annoying, you're not being cute."

"The idea isn't to be cute, dear old son," the first fairy-like creature chirped, tone never wavering. Each of the others chimed in again, one by one.

"The idea is to drive you mad."

"To split you in half."

"To start you slashing!"

"Maybe scare away that human pet of yours..."

I batted one away as it started flying a little too close to my face, reaching my limit along with Jack. "Hey, I'm right here!"

The things all laughed in unison, an awful sound somewhere between booming thunder and a swarm of locusts.

"Just a little joke, you see," one said.

"But you really ought to come along with me."

"The Highest is waiting, impatiently!"

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "You're the Highest, why do you always...ugh, fine." He turned back to me and raised his eyebrows in a casual but apologetic way. "Keep training, I guess. With..." He trailed off, and before I could get too worried, made a horrible fake gagging noise and raised a hand to his throat. I stifled a laugh.

"Yeah, okay. You can't even say her name—"

"Jack."

We both flinched at the loud, embittered voice that rang throughout the room, him significantly less than me. The first fairy, demon, whatever it was flew upwards until it was face-to-face with him, saying in a low, threatening drawl: "Now."

I guess all that really was an act.

"At least you stopped that stupid rhyme thing you had going," Jack mumbled, adjusting his hood with one irritated, jerky movement and walking away without another goodbye. I folded my arms, wondering with the slightest trace of fear what his boss could possibly want with him now. Everything was going fine; maybe he just wanted to berate him some more for associating himself with me?

I took a quick glance around. There was nobody else here, not as far as I could see. I still had a couple more minutes to kill before Nyx would start looking for me.

I waited until Jack turned a corner, then followed him down the hall.