Outside of Summer Hilld waited the woods. Its leaves and branches sang a song as gentle as the town itself. The soothing whispers of the wind breezed through an ecosystem that, slowly, but surely, prepared for dawn. Birds became quiter in their songs while the sunlight patches on the forest floor shrank and shrank.

And outside the woods waited a gravel path. Shields indicated the path back to civilization, but neither Darcy, nor Marissa, nor the man in the purple robe wanted to return to it yet. Instead, the practitioners sat on a subaked bench in the middle of the hiking trail.

The bench felt neither old nor hard. Even in the afternoon, the rays it absorbed made the wood as comfortable as a sofa.

The fortysomething man was the last to sit down. His tired bags looked even larger when viewed from a close distance.

He was fairly chubby for what seemed like a professional battle wizard. With his spectacles and his receding, brown hairline, he wouldn't have looked out of place in a classroom had one clad him in an argyle sweater.

"My colleagues and I were on a patrol in Sleepy Hollow when Mage Leaf called. Count yourself lucky that your town is so close," he said. "My name's Andrew Wiggs. I lead the northeast division of the Hunters." He revealed an apple from his robe's pocket. "That apple's from the Netherlands, take it. You need the energy."

Marissa gave the apple back. "I'd prefer something local."

"More for me," he said and took a bite. "It's organic!"

Marissa squinted as Darcy inspected her hair. Talking to strangers had always been difficult, although the fact that one of them was the sister of someone that seemed trustworthy made it somewhat easier.

On the other hand, if those people were the "secret occult society" her father mentioned, they had her mother to answer for. That alone earned them a thousand minus points.

"So," Wiggs asked. "Please, give me a full summary of what happened with no omissions."

She told him about her encounter with the hellhound and man with the scarf. She left out details regarding Siris, but otherwise, there were no ommissions.

Wiggs let out a throaty belly laugh. "You'd make for a decent Hunter. Assuming you didn't exaggerate how you beat that hellhound."

She nodded. Not out of agreement, but to keep him talking.

"How 'bout we Initiate you on Monday?" he said. "It's my duty to report unregistered practitioners to the Covenant anyway."

Her heartbeat thrummed as she broke eye contact. "What's part of this 'Initiation'?"

"You meet our Council," Wiggs said, "and you swear by our rules. Normally, you'd get your familiar, but it appears the Worldsoul already blessed you with one!" He leaned back. "Just like me, back then. I was also a late bloomer."

"Late bloomer?"

"Most practitioners get Initiated at the age of sixteen," Darcy said.

"Those that just enrolled at the Cunning Folk Academy are gonna have a head start of two years over you," Wiggs said. "If you want to catch up, you should enroll now. The semester just started and it's a great institution." He shook his head emphatically. "But maybe I'm just biased because I lecture there."

Of course, he did. If Marissa met this guy in a bar or on the street, she'd have never believed that he'd be a professional monster hunter. But a teacher? That fit the way he liked the sound of his own voice.

"Do I have to go to this Initiation?" Marissa asked.

"Well, being a hedge witch isn't like being a Covenant member," Wiggs said. "You won't enjoy our education and the Hunters won't give your town the kind of priority protection homes of our members get."

Scissors were hanging loosely from Darcy's hands as though she had taken them out to do something, but forgot what. "You know that I'm not licensed yet."

Wiggs turned to his fellow Covenant member. "You swore by our Third Law."

"So what? I haven't sworn my Healer's Oath yet."

"Even an unlicensed healers may do their work if there is a senior Hunter present and if there is a state of emergency," Wiggs explained like she was one of his students. "This is such an emergency. A wound by a barghest does not heal. Unless you heal it now, she will carry that wound for the rest of her life."

"What can she do with my hair?" Marissa asked.

Darcy rummaged in her bag. "Do you know how an enchantment works?"

Marissa shook her head. Hopefully, she didn't embarrass herself by being ignorant of common knowledge. Other than that it probably worked on people or objects, she truly had no idea what an enchantment did.

Darcy took out a small, portable doll's wardrobe. From it, she took out a figurine wearing a brown wig. Once she gave it a grey sweater, it already bore a passing resemblance to Marissa.

"Wait, you're gonna do Voodoo?" Marissa asked.

"It's called a poppet," Darcy said. "and it has nothing to do with the Haitian Voodoo religion. Practitioners already used these in Medieval Europe for healing and communication. And torture, unfortunately."

"But everything you do to that doll happens to me, too, right?" Marissa asked. She imagined magic to be fun. Glowing runes and fireballs instead of horror movie stuff.

Darcy brushed the hair of her doll with a small comb. "Do you feel anything?"

Marissa shook her head.

"Of course not. I need a part of your soul."

"My soul?" she asked, hoping it wasn't a stupid question. "Isn't my soul immaterial?"

"I'm not talking about your mind. Your soul is your essence. Your hands, your blood, your hair, your True Name, your favorite clothes, anything that's part of your identity. I can only form a sympathetic link if I have a part of it."

"Okay," Marissa said. "Before I allow you to do any magic on me, I'd like to know who you guys are and what you want."

"Who we are?" Wiggs asked pensively. His old, wary eyes drifted to the woods before him. "Look at those woods. Mage Leaf, you are more knowledgeable on such matters than I am. Are there still wild wolves in America?"

"Here in the northeast, you are more likely to run into a werewolf than into an actual wolf," Darcy said.

"Well, it doesn't matter," Wiggs said. "Just imagine wolves, okay? For thousands of years, wolves used to exist in these forests. What I see myself as is a shepherd. I stand between the wolves and everyone else."

A shepherd. Marissa noted that he comparedher Dad, her former classmates, and the people at her college to sheep, whether willingly or unwillingly. She wanted to point it out to him, but in a way that sounded polite. "For the uninitiated maybe, why not inform the people if you want to protect them?" she asked.

"Well, it's not like the Veil was our choice." He wiped his face from the apple-pieces in his beard. "Did you ever hear about dark matter? It makes up a quarter of our universe and yet scientists only found out about it ninety years ago. There's theories that it barely interacts with normal matter at all. That's us under the Veil. The Watches used to hide everything, no matter if it was our conversations or our actions, under a glamour."

"Okay," Marissa said. "Again, for the uninitiated like me, why does the barghest show up in English myth, then? Our professor knew about its weaknesses."

"Notice how I used the past tense when talking about the Veil?" he asked like the teacher he claimed to be. "It was stable earlier, but now, it's Swiss cheese and people have cellphones. I'm sure you've seen the videos."

"Our professor thinks they're fake. A werewolf video he showed was done by a movie company."

Wiggs laughed and this time, it wasn't his belly laugh. More like the laugh of someone who had heard a good joke. "Of course it was! That's because we commissioned it. Drowns out the real videos."

For most of this conversation, Wiggs had been like those annoying in-laws she had to deal with each time her Dad found a new girlfriend to get over his lost wife. Always talking, always asking questions.

Now, however, he made her angry.

Sure, he did not think of 99% of the planet's population as being ignorant. He only lied to them and denied them information they needed to be safe.

Marissa was told to cut back her anger in such situations though, especially before powerful people, so she tried to ask him in a non-accusatory manner. "Why though? Wouldn't people be safer if they knew?"

"Not really," Wiggs said. "If everyone knew about us, that would do terrible, terrible things to the planet's ley line fields in a way too complex for me to explain here on a bench in the middle of nowhere."

Marissa crossed her arms. "Let me guess, it's easier in one of your lecture halls?"

"We are not trying to hurt you," Darcy said. "You can't believe how much I owe you for having saved my brother's life."

"How much would your little Hogwarts cost me, financially speaking?" Marissa said, bringing another argument. "Not sure if I'm aware, but I'm going to college already and I've got enough debts."

"Then, you have even more of a reason to join," Wiggs said. "When the need for a unified practitioner society arose, one of the first things we did was make sure everyone gets a good basic magical education."

Free higher education? That sounded like more fantastical than any of the wind spells or any of the Voodoo tricks they demonstrated so far.

Since this sounded too good to be true, she remained skeptical. "Are you, like, expecting me to quit my normal life?" Marissa asked. "How's your Veil gonna like it if some American citizen suddenly drops off tax records?"

"Well, you can live among mundanes and still attend our CFA," he said. "Our astral projections make this thing called 'distance education' child's play. But if you want to live with us, don't worry about tax records. Let's just say we have connections in the right places."

"Connections?"

"Debts and favors, kid. We help people against monsters and people allow us to do our thing."

Marissa slouched against the bench. Stupid arm. Maybe she should let Darcy look at the wound.

"Something's telling me she isn't convinced," Darcy said. "She won't trust us."

"'Trust' is a scary word," Marissa said. "Just look at rhyming words. 'Must', 'rust', 'disgust'."

"'Just'," Darcy added. "If you need time to think, I can look at your wound first. Or do you need to know more about us?"

Marissa's arm still ached like hell. "You can take the scissor."

Darcy had added washable red paint over the doll so that her sleeve looked like it had been scratched by a barghest. Once that was done, she gave it a tag with Marissa's name on it.

Marissa closed her eyes. She couldn't tell what drove her to accept this. A barghest's wound was unhealable from what they said and, apparently, only changing her essence could change it back.

She felt Darcy's fingers comb through her brown curls - she needed a good shampoo someday - and only re-opened her eyes once she felt that she had lost a strand.

A barn owl came soaring from the woods. She had never seen one of those long-winged, pale-feather fiends in the wild before, even though their range extended through the Americas. Maybe she wasn't outdoorsy enough.

It settled on Darcy's lap before she could wonder why it left the woods during the day.

Darcy stroked the owl as it regarded the piece of hair through its wise, yellowish eyes, quiet as the night. She touched her bracelet and put energy through her owl familiar onto the doll.

Parallel to this, she reached into her bag for useful first aid kids.

Marissa's arm felt how she poured disinfectant over the doll's wound. She felt as she pressed a blanket over its arm. Power spilled into her cut, cleaned the blood, and made her feel the pain of alcohol touching sore skin.

Marissa's wound closed and her sweater looked clean.

Unfortunately, doctors could kill with the same tools they use for healing. "Thanks," Marissa said. "I hope I don't sound paranoid, but what's your range?"

"Town-wide for tracking," Darcy said. "Roughly line-of-sight for healing."

"I'd still like to have my hair back."

"Of course. It's a right guaranteed by the Healer's Oath."

Marissa didn't know what the Oath entailed. She hoped it was designed by people whose understanding of medical ethics wasn't behind that of Ancient Greece.

The power left her body as she got the hair back and the sympathetic link broke. She still had to practice this new sense Siris promised her. She didn't see the magic yet, but her current perception went well beyond feeling.

"If you ever change your mind," Darcy said, "you can meet me at the Waystone Tavern. I'll be there on Monday at seven."

"So late?" Marissa asked.

Wiggs yawned. "That's late for you? I wish I didn't have to start shifts so early."

Marissa began to understand why he had those puffy eyes: Those people operatred at night. It was when normal people slept and presumably when monsters were most active.

"I can show you the way to our Unseen Tower from there where you will be Initiated if you want to," Darcy said.

Marissa rose from her bench. "Thanks for the offer," Marissa said, "but I need more time to think. I'll decide until Monday." She winked the two. "Have a nice weekend."

They winked her back and said "have a nice weekend" in unison.

She walked away.

Shadows of cedars and oaks stretched farther and farther over the hiking trail the closer the Sun moved to the horizon. Nevertheless, it was still possible to see the shields that pointed back at the town.

Marissa had to walk until another intersection before she saw hikers other than herself. Did they use spell shenanigans to repel potential eavesdroppers from their conversation? Possible.

"What do you think, Siris?" Marissa said.

Siris jumped to keep up with his master on the mud trail. "Organized wizarding societies are something I'm too old for. In my time, our 'societies' consisted of grumpy old wizards and their spunky apprentices."

"When you talked about bloodlines and bonds of destiny, you mentioned I might have a practitioner in my family," she said and showed her necklace. "It was Mom's. Dad said she was in a 'secret occult society' and that they made her disappear. What could be a reason?"

"I need more details. What exactly happened?"

"Like I know. I couldn't speak in full sentences when it happened."

Siris snorted. He evidently had no idea. Maybe there was no way around joining these people to learn the truth.

A shield that read "Welcome to Summer Hill" greeted them as the young witch and her cat entered a town of where sunlight dispelled the darkness before the night began and the shadows ruled. Joining these people could sate her curiosity. But, truth to be told, she didn't expect straight answers.

This Cunning Folk Academy sounded interesting. Granted, being two years behind her peers magically didn't sound like ideal starting conditions and those monsters denied her time to catch up. If those other practitioners practiced with their familiars, so should she. She went through all the trouble rescuing the tomcat. He better be worth the money. He didn't know jack about wizarding societies, but he knew his way around magic. She took the bus back home, heading to her first lesson from Professor Siris.