"You pack light," Lizzie noted, eyeing Landon's singular bag.

"You're one to talk." 

Lizzie glanced down at her own lonely bag. Yeah, but that's different. Why? Because I disappeared and so did all my stuff.

But she couldn't say that, so she just sighed. "You really don't have anyone else to stay with?"

"Nope." Landon shook his head. "Foster kid. You don't have any family?"

"Ah." Lizzie flinched at the question. "Basically an orphan."

"My parents both abandoned me when I was a baby -"

Lizzie held up a finger, cutting him off. "We're not having a heart-to-heart about our parents being MIA."

Landon dutifully snapped his mouth shut. "No heart-to-hearts. Got it."

As slowly as she dragged out the silent process of unpacking her one bag, it took Lizzie no time to finish and then she was staring down the rest of the empty day. It was daunting, not having something to do. Not having a plan.

She tried to busy herself with straightening up the few things her father had laying around. In one drawer, she pulled out an aspirin bottle. She frowned at the expiration date from a decade ago, but when she unscrewed it, there weren't pills inside. There were two wedding rings. Lizzie quickly shoved the bottle back into the far corner of the drawer. It wasn't the most interesting thing in there anyways.

As she shuffled more things around, something metal clinked against the edge. Curious, she reached a hand deep into the drawer. Her eyes widened as she pulled out the mess of metal.

"What is that?" Landon asked nosily, appearing over her shoulder.

Lizzie couldn't speak. There was no way it was sitting here the whole time, just tossed in some junk drawer. 

The ascendant.

She finally found the words. "I'm - Well, there's this type of witch - no, of course you'd know because Josie - not that it's related -" Lizzie sighed and pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. "I'm a siphoner," she finally got out. "And I can show you what this -" She held up the ascendant, "- does, but I'll need to draw magic from you."

Landon furrowed his eyebrows. "You can't siphon me. I'm not a phoenix anymore. I'm just an ordinary human."

"Oh, you're still far from ordinary, Landon Kirby." Lizzie smiled for a minute before she set her hands on his shoulders. Closing her eyes, she focused on searching for the magic somewhere inside of him. She was right. Deep inside, there was something to draw from.

She got to work setting up the space while Landon watched, trying to wrap his head around the new information.

A siphoner. He thought Josie and her dead coven were the only witches who could be siphoners - that's what she had always said anyways. And why hadn't anyone at the school talked about it? Info like that should've been a big topic for at least a day, but Landon hadn't overheard anything about it.

Maybe he should be more focused on the fact that he didn't know he still had magic inside of him instead of not knowing what Lizzie was. After everything he went through when he thought he was human … to have something supernatural all this time ... it was a lot.

And it was even more a lot when it was being overshadowed by Lizzie's unexplained glee surrounding the chunk of rusted metal she'd found. She could barely contain her excitement, but she wasn't offering any explanation either.

The only thing she said to him was when she stuck out her hands for him to take. "Do you trust me?"

Landon licked his lips as his eyes darted between her outstretched hands and her face. "Do I even know you?"

"No," Lizzie said without hesitation, expectant hands never wavering in their silent request.

For some unexplainable reason, Landon found himself taking them. They sat across from each other, and he followed her lead in closing his eyes.

"Just stick with me," Lizzie murmured before she started the spell. Landon could feel the familiar sensation of astral projection - he'd done this with Hope enough times to know what it was like.

He didn't ask where they were going. Despite his reservations, he knew what he had avoided saying. He knew what the unexplainable reason he was going along with this was.

He completely trusted her.