The burgundy wallpaper and dim chandelier were a far cry from the sunny scene outside.

Sheera gazed up at the winding mahogany staircase a few feet ahead, hand-carved and carpeted in a decadent baroque fashion.

Arjun dropped the small black bag he'd been clutching onto an antique side table in a somewhat careless fashion.

"Shouldn't you be more careful with that?" she said.

He avoided her stare. "It was only a decoy."

Sheera nodding slowly, as further pieces of the Kindreds' security protocol fell into place; why exactly it all had to happen was however still largely a mystery.

To her surprise Arjun offered a helping hand. "Let me take your bag to your room."

She found herself touched by his chivalry. "Thank you."

Without a word he started jogging up the stairs.

"Wait!" she called out. He turned back. "I was thinking...the whole thing on the plane, maybe we got off on the wrong foot." He had a quizzical look on his face. "Anyway..." she went on, "I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone here, for the training and...well...who knows whatever else." Her fluttering lashes made her intentions crystal clear, almost as clear as his nearly instantaneous smirk.

"I can assure that 'whatever else' will not transpire in this life time," he said dryly. He followed up the crushing rejection by bounding up the stairs two at a time.

She stood frozen in place, almost too shocked to process her shattered ego.

"Don't take it too personally," said a man's nearby voice. "You're not his type."

The Australian man she'd met that first night emerged from the salon, and now that they were out of the dimly lit bar she could see he had a friendly face. He offered his hand. "I'm Luke Stone." His Australian accent rolling over the 'o' in a pleasing way. "Nice to meet you more officially."

She shook his hand, and as she compared this interaction to Arjun's final words her ego finally took the full hit.. "Your colleague is very rude."

"Like I said, you're not his type."

"Well excuuuse me," she muttered. To her surprise, Luke started to laugh. "What?" she said scowling. "Are my lacking qualities so amusing?"

"The only quality you're lacking is that you're not Brad Pitt. Or Ryan Gosling. Or Idris Elba. Or any guy, actually."

The realization finally set in. "So it's not me, it's him..." she nodded slowly, "...and the fact that I'm also not a him." She smiled. "Cool."

The grandfather clock outside the cloakroom chimed for eleven a.m., and with it Luke Stone's friendly demeanor stiffened. "Follow me to the study," he said. "Madam Quillfern needs to fill you in."

***

It seemed as if all the world's books and curious cultural artifacts were housed inside the cozy study on the second floor, where domed windows teased a view of a tree-lined street while brightening the deep-hued décor.

Eve Quilfern sat at a sprawling oak desk, the surface partially covered in a disarray of scrolls. A shimmering emerald scarf was draped over her crisp white blouse, reflecting particles of sunlight as her eyes took in a nervous Sheera.

She sat across from Madam Quillfern in a gilded armchair, her posture a little too rigid as she focused on her fidgeting fingers.

"Was your journey satisfactory?" Madam Quillfern inquired.

Sheera lifted her gaze from her fingers and managed a smile. "Everything was fine; so...what's the plan for today? And I guess...for the world?"

Madam Quillfern's expression hardened. "Show me your phone."

Sheera seemed confused. "You told me not to bring it."

"Trick question!" Madam Quillfern laughed heartily now, making Sheera all the more uncomfortable. "Now what's your most burning question? And a little more specific than before, please."

Sheera glanced and the scrolls for some help but quickly realized they were etched in ancient hieroglyphs. She sighed. "Who is the actual man that's planning on destroying the world? And how are we supposed to stop him?" Ever since that night at the bar, the mention of these Shadowers led by the man with the apocalyptic plan had been floating in her mind like a storm cloud.

Madam Quillfern let out a long sigh. "This man...the son of the man who stole the most dangerous spells from the book...this man is Gabriel Asher." She turned her gaze on the antique globe positioned the corner of her desk. "And we need to stop him for good."

"What happened last time?" said Sheera. "In London," she added, remembering a strand of a detail from the night she'd first heard of this invisible threat.

Madam Quillfern rose from her desk and started pacing the room. "It began when strange things started happening in London; victims reporting odd occurrences, memory loss....we assembled and made it there as quickly as we could. He wasn't hard to find, with everything I've learned about him pointing to unabashed narcissism," she scoffed, "and there he was one night...brazenly breaking into the Museum of Natural History, eager to hoard some Ancient Egyptian artifacts for his collection." She shook her head disapprovingly. "When we confronted him it was the first time our two sides ever shared a room."

"And you fought?"

Her expression darkened. "I'm not sure if it lasted long enough to call it a true fight. They lost some of theirs, but we certainly lost more of ours." She sighed. "He could have ended us there, but he seemed to get some sick satisfaction out of knowing there were people trying to stop him. So he mortally injured one last Kindred for a laugh...and then fled."

Sheera shuddered. "What a monster."

Madam Quillfern made her way to the nearest window, her stare fixated on nothing in particular. "If I had gotten a little closer I might have stopped him, but I'd memorized all the spells and was the only one who knew how to train new recruits." Her eyes began to glisten. "And so others put themselves in danger to protect me."

"I'm sure you honor their memory well," Sheera whispered.

Madam Quillfern turned around slowly with a strange expression but it only lasted for a second. "And that's what happened on that very dark day."

Sheera took a moment to process this event that could've never been featured in the news. After some reverence she furrowed her brow. "How long ago was that dark day?"

It was a normal question that anyone would ask, but the strange and almost uncomfortable expression on Madam Quillfern's face reappeared. "Long enough ago that we've been focused on rebuilding ever since," she said curtly, before her clapping her hands in a motivating way. "The only difference this time is that I'm making sure everyone reaches their peak abilities and is able to teach others. Shared power is our only chance at facing the risk head-on."

"What's Gabriel Asher planning to do here in Paris?" Sheera glanced out the nearest window and felt a sudden chill.

Madam Quillfern took brisk strides to the far end of the study, pushing aside a sliding blackboard that Sheera had only now just noticed. Behind it was a large hanging atlas several pages thick, and, impossibly....tiny little spots all over the continents were glowing.

Sheera gasped. "What...but how..." She headed straight to the map without thinking and traced her fingers around the dots. "What is this?"

"It's all the souls on earth who haven't lost their light," she explained, gesturing to the various countries and their tiny glowing dots.

Sheera smiled. "It looks like the whole world is glowing."

Madam Quillfern expression remained serious. "At first glance it might seem that way, but when you look a little closer..." she flipped the world view over to reveal a second map of the Europe,"...that's when you start to see the gaps." The Europe view had more of a sparse glow than the global snapshot. Madam Quillfern flipped the map again, now revealing only France. The glow was even less intense. "And...here we are." She turned it one last time to a map of Paris, sporadically lit except for an almost blinding glow on the edge of Canal Saint-Martin.

Sheera gasped. "That's us!"

Madam Quillfern winked. "We're a bright bunch."

"But wait..." Sheera seemed worried all of a sudden. "If we can see ourselves as the brightest dots, can't Gabriel see us and track us too?"

"Gabriel can't see our Kindred glow any more than we can see the dark shadows on the map. He finds his dark shadows to recruit his own, and we find all our bright spots to recruit ours." She squeezed Sheera's shoulders. "In donut shops and beyond..."

As Sheera stared at the radiant yellow glow just north of the Seine River, she was slowly starting to feel like she belonged. She made a move to flip the atlas on her own. "May I?" Madam Quillfern nodded and Sheera flipped back to the first page. "Can he see this? All the souls that still have light around the world?"

She nodded. "Bringing the atlas to life was one of the earlier spells in the book that he would've learned before running off with the last few pages, so yes he can certainly see it." She gestured to a tiny percentage tally on the bottom right corner of the page. "Which means he can also track this."

Sheera squinted to read the number. "Fifteen percent..." She frowned. "Only fifteen percent of the souls in the universe have light?"

"A number that's been decreasing almost every week for the last few months." For the first time Madam Quillfern seemed seriously worried. "With all the research I've been doing of recently discovered Ancient Egyptian texts, I've come to learn that when that number falls below ten percent...Gabriel Asher will have the power to conjure the darkest spell in the book."

Sheera swallowed hard, her eyes never leaving the glowing number fifteen. "And...what's darkest spell?"

"I've never seen it myself, " she admitted. "All I have is the notes my father made after the pages had been stolen. His summary as incomplete, but the result of the spell according to him...is the collective enslavement of the human race."

***

The collective enslavement of the human race.

The collective enslavement of the HUMAN RACE?!

The words rung loudly in Sheera's brain as she unpacked her belongings in the room she would now call home. There were two single beds and a window overlooking a lush courtyard. The other bed belonged to Orisa, a Kindred in her early twenties whose family hailed from Nigeria. She'd grown up in a small town outside Toulouse in Southern France, and as Madam Quillfern had explained, she was a worldly creature with a generous heart but a few sharp edges. Something about that terrified Sheera, but not as much the fact that the world was on the brink of the collective enslavement of the HUMAN RACE. The worst part was Madam Quillfern had ended their meeting right then, suggesting Sheera settle in and get some rest to avoid getting too overwhelmed.

"Too late for that," she said sighing.

"Too late for what?"

Sheera turned to find Orisa standing in the doorway, statuesque and imposing in black slacks and a flowered sleeveless blouse.

Sheera extended her hand. "I'm you're new roommate, Sheera."

Orisa ignored her hand, instead leaning in for the double-peck greeting that was customary in France. "Enchanté."

Orisa seemed incredibly polite and yet somehow cold; Sheera marveled at this fascinating paradox, as she watched Orisa settle into bed with a notebook. She opened it and started taking notes.

"What are you writing?"

"I am recording the minutes from my meeting today which I will then report to Madam Quillfern at her first convenience."

"How was the meeting?" said Sheera, excited for anything that might distract her from collective enslavement of the human race.

Orisa smirked. "The meeting of which you know nothing about? Concerning the world you only stepped into..." she checked her gold-linked bracelet watch, "three hours ago?"

Sheera should've been embarrassed but she only sat up straighter. "You're right, I'm new here. But I'm eager to learn everything I can and as fast as I can!"

Orisa lowered her notebook, skeptical but no longer impatient. "Very well then...I was at a meeting at a very important hotel. Full of very important people of amongst whom I needed to fit in." She gestured to her blouse and the watch. "I pretended to have a social tea with a colleague, while in reality learning all I could about the space, the exits, the people, and the general inner-workings of the ballroom."

Sheera's eyes brightened. "A Parisian ballroom? Is there a party happening?"

"There is," she said with a hint of a smile. "A party at which we are certainly not invited. And that is all I can tell you at this time." She continued with her notes before looking up from the pages. "It is difficult for me to summarize the meeting's details when you are staring."

"Oh!" Sheera turned away, shifting her focus back to unpacking. "Sorry!"

Sheera pulled out her shirts and folded them neatly, imagining what Orisa's scrawling pen could be revealing word by word.

"There will come a time when you've learned and seen everything," added Orisa, "maybe more than you ever wanted to." Sheera turned sharply with a look of concern. "And since that time will come before you know it, take today to realize that you've only just arrived in a unfamiliar country in an unfamiliar continent in the strangest circumstance, and that for now it's perfectly fine to watch, absorb, and maybe even...relax." Orisa smiled fully for the first time. "Do you agree?"

Sheera sighed, relieved to have made it past Orisa's sharp edges. "That sounds like a plan."

As Sheera finished unpacking, her feeling of lightness gave way to the returning unease. If there would come a time when Sheera would know and see more than she ever wanted to, she wondered what that would look like, and worried how it would change her...

***

As the bright day in Paris gave way to the pinkish dusk, the Kindreds gathered in the massive dining room, a space that had clearly been renovated to accommodate the growing numbers. There must've been at least fifty people of varying ages at the table, which at once felt like a lot and very little. Were there really only fifty people on earth whose souls burned bright enough to take on the evil Gabriel and his Shadowers? As jarring as it seemed, no one at the table appeared the slightest bit worried about the tall task that lay ahead.

Why weren't they worried?

Perhaps it had to do with the communal breaking of bread, fresh French bread to be exact, with classic baguettes called "pain tradition" stacked near Sheera's edge of the table. She inhaled the aroma and understood everyone's ease; what was there to be stressed about when such simple pleasures existed? The feeling of comfort was further strengthened by the Nigerian stew Orisa had made, the steam rising towards a crystal chandelier that lit the whole room in a yellow glow.

The rest of the table offered an assortment of roasted vegetables, purées, glistening meats, roasted chickens, and a couple of tartares to get things going. Sheera had only eaten like this through her eyes when devouring page after page of cookbooks. As everything she'd read had now suddenly come to life, it seemed like the perfect time to take Orisa's advice and enjoy this first day of ignorant bliss.

Madam Quillfern clapped her hands and gained the entire the room's attention. She stood at the head of the table holding an ornate crystal glass of champagne. Everyone else had an identical glass and with a raise of the arm they followed her cue.

"Let's first welcome our newest recruit, whose curious confusion will be absorbed with kind hearts, because as we remember, we were all once there too." She winked at Sheera, while forty-eight others received her with warm smiles. "Now there are dark days behind us and dark days ahead. But what we will always have is our shared connection to the universe, our love and gratitude for life, and our memories of being here together on nights like this."

"Here here!" cried out Arjun, with more passion and intensity on his face than Sheera had ever seen.

Madam Quillfern nodded in his direction. "Here here and santé!"

As everyone clinked their glasses to their health, Sheera joined in and savoured her first sip of French champagne, hoping the dark days that awaited them all would be delayed just a little bit longer...