"So-"

Rayburn Auttsley let his shaggy crop of rusted hair tumble in front of his eyes. He sat on a bench next to Peneloper, who had positioned herself as far away from him as possible. This separation between them had not gotten lost on the Auttsley patriarch, though he scratched at the stubble shading his chin and acted aloof. Peneloper rubbed her sweaty palms against one another with such veracity the skin might sluice off. "How's your mom? Little Carma?"

Peneloper's lips pursed. "She's thirteen now," she said, rebuking the 'little' of his previous question.

He'd remembered Carmichelle as a girl, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, annoying but loving. Always raising her hands in the air and demanding hugs, a little chubby, squirming thing dirt-spackled who loved coercing laughter through some of her sillier dance routines. But that wasn't Carmichelle now and he would have known that had he not-she gulped.

"Ah," Rayburn craned his head back. "So, she's all angsty and self-obsessed?"

"Her against the world," Peneloper remarked. She remembered the hug from earlier. "Though she hasn't lost her warmth. It's there when she allows it to be."

Rayburn chuckled, and then turned and eyed his eldest. "And what of you? What's seventeen-year-old Peneloper like?"

Peneloper squeezed her hands. "Apparently, she comes from a lineage of mages." She eyed him, then catching his gaze, turned away, whipping some of her hair into a frenzied tornado in front of her face. "Or is it sorcerers? Wizards? Witches? What do you call yourselves?"

He sighed. "Depends on the idiot you ask. In the know refers to us with magic. And while real witches exist, along with sorcerers, dark skirmishers, and light-bearers, some of us are harder to categorize. Most with the ability to wield magic call themselves crows."

"Ah," Peneloper said. "Bird lingo. Yes, it seems very popular among your kind."

"Your kind," Rayburn corrected. She nodded. "And yeah, it's pretty niche, got a nice ring to it. If you're a fan of alliteration, being a crow and having color has a decent mouthfeel."

"I'm a crow," Peneloper tapped her feet against the hardwood floor.

To have their feigned moment of privacy, the Council had given them access to a dingy janitor's closest, barely the size of a bathroom. Her gaze roamed over the homemade shelves of plywood and duct tape which wielded such necessities as buckets, gloves, brand new mop heads, lemon-scented Lysol and bleach wipes, and sacks of that sawdust they used to throw over vomit.

Peneloper never understand sawdust as a viable combatant to throw up. It neither concealed the smell nor cleaned up the mess. If anything, it just combined with the regurgitated slop to form an acrid paste that singed the nose hairs of all who smelled it, but maybe that was its function; to give off a warning stench and say, "He who expels here shall smell it until his death and beyond." Or, maybe not.

"They'll probably call you an owl." Her father's words, as they'd often done when she was little and daydreaming, dragged her back to reality. Though reality now was far weirder than anything she'd conjured up in her mind before.

Rayburn grimaced. "That's what they call me due to our last name."

Peneloper leaned back, the wood hissing underneath her. "Is that what they called Grandma Mildrea?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught him smirking. "They may have, but only behind her back. You might not remember much about her, but she was fearsome. Killed that cyclops and could drink a dozen Oxmen under the table at the Song." He sighed, his gaze distant. "Kelpner wasn't lying when he'd said she was one of the best crows to have ever cawed."

Peneloper snorted. Her father sat up straighter, tugged on his sweater. "Sorry. You live among those in the know for too long, and you forget how to be normal."

"It's okay," she said. "I've come to accept that most things concerning magic happen to be absurd."

Absurd they were, and if asked, Peneloper could count the ways. From the dead not dying to a Steve Jobs' level of presentation to present the newest iteration of the Council, to her grandmother, Mildrea Auttsley, having an inter-office romance with the original Fourth, some broad-shouldered stiff called, Never, the relationship souring, the fallout so bad it literally broke the world, talking birds, bird rhetoric, ghosts and werewolves, her story coming to life - the comprehensive list was exhausting to think about. She wrinkled her brow.

"I know it seems like a lot," her dad turned to face her, "but, I've been given a directive - to prepare you for the coming battle."

She snorted. "Then hand me my battle-ax and chainmail, and I'll doth be off to slay—"

"I'm to give you back your memories."

Air pressed between Peneloper's teeth, mimicking the hiss of the bench as she shifted her weight. "And how would you know how to do that?"

"Because," a pause, a breath, "I'm the one that sealed them away." He ruffled his hair. "Let me explain."

She nodded, though she had a niggling a thousand explanations wouldn't be enough to sate her questions. But, she was never one to stop someone from trying.

"Nell, when you were little, you exhibited an affinity for magic I never thought possible. Mom," meaning Grandma Mildrea here, "she knew, though. Figured you would take the best from her and me and combine it into something wonderful." He snorted and leaned over, elbows on his thighs. "Purple. Mom's red and my blue. Her fierceness and loyalty, my calm demeanor. You really are a combination of us both." He turned, smiled, and Peneloper felt her heart clench.

She wanted to stay mad at him - he'd abandoned the family, made them suffer for years - but it was also impossible for her to not want to embrace him, to hurl herself on him and burrow into his warmth, take in deep his scent of chocolate and peanut butter, have his whiskers tickle her cheeks and hear him call her repeatedly by that nickname she'd long adored.

She stiffened, shoved down the urge, and tried to turn into steel, something that with enough training in the magical arts, she was sure she'd be able to accomplish literally. Her father turned his gaze to the mop bucket propped in the corner, murky brown water sloshing against its sides.

Peneloper thought she'd spied a tentacle rise from the water and slink over the reservoir, but did such creatures live in mop buckets? Given everything thus far, why not?

"When the microwaves started talking to you, Mom convinced me to have your Finding." Her eyebrows raised, and at this, her father rushed to clarify, "A Finding is a day when a truth is uncovered about someone or something in the know. A name, their color of magic. You had the ceremony. Nothing special."

"No cauldrons, pointy hats, or naked semi-circles of writhing bodies amassed under a full moon?"

He shook his head. "Nothing quite so theatrical. A simple ceremony held in an abandoned field. All the Council presided over it, as is tradition."

Ah, 'as is tradition.' The phrase that haunted a hundred noble families and real-life princes and princesses. This dress must be worn, as is tradition. Bathing in rose petals and milk, as is tradition. Marrying a cousin to keep the bloodline pure, as is tradition. Such a restrictive phrase used to excuse the silliest of notions.

"Your grandmother and Mr. Pale attended."

Understanding sizzled in her gaze. "So that's why Anderson told me Mr. Pale and I were prior acquaintances."

Rayburn nodded. "Once we were all there, we pricked your finger, got a drop of your blood, and saw your magic - pure and undiluted. Perfect drops of purple, innocent and honest, smelling of lavender." He clenched his hands. "I met your mother in a flower field." The sullen, forlorn look in her father's eyes caught her off guard.

She tried to lighten the mood and offered up a chuckle. "How'd you manage to keep me from spilling the magical beans to mom?"

Her father relaxed, flashed a wry smile. "I bought your silence. A double-scoop mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone to be exact."

"And was it worth the price?"

He turned, stared her down, solemn, serious. Her heart seized. "You're worth any price."

Bubbles rose to the surface of the murky water in the mop basin. This time, Peneloper saw it - tentacles breaching the surface, their tapered ends popping the bubbles. Her throat constricted, her father's gaze too much, too incendiary, threatening to burn down the walls she had erected. She watched the mop bucket monster, gaze riveted on it, and it alone.

"Midas doesn't like it when people stare."

"And Midas is?"

"The Sectopus in the bucket. This building's custodian."

"He lives in the very filth he cleans up?"

"To know filth, and better understand how to combat filth, one should experience filth. And that's why ole Middy is the best. Shines every surface until you can see your reflection, which is no easy feat with drywall and concrete cinderblock. Better than his fickle cousin Other Midas. He's got a touch that turns anything to gold, and he's handsy. Total waste of a genie's last wish."

Peneloper hmmed. Like a college student deep in the throes of pondering all of life's existential crises or a badly played kazoo. Maybe her hmm was similar to one of Crispen's hums, when he walked down the streets of Potter Oaks, Phil Collins blasting from his headphones.

A diligent cleaning octo, no, sectopus scumming it up in a bucket of, well, scum. It should be weird. It should be impossible. But, that was all a part of magic's rebellious side. Should nots turned into real life. This was real life, her real-life, right now. And she'd have to accept it, one sectopus tentacle at a time.

"The Luric boy's turned into something fierce."

Peneloper had to choke back a gag. Her father had never been one to fling admiration on someone he would deem a threat. And a young man in close proximity to his eldest daughter? Huge threat. She nodded. "Yes, he's quite something. Always on time, exactly where he is needed." She grimaced. "A little annoying, but he buys my forgiveness with M &M peanuts. And," she looked down at her interlaced fingers, "he was there for me when you--" She gulped. "Surely, I don't deserve him."

"Oh," her father smiled, "I'm certain you do."

Peneloper shook her head. How fatherly. How outwardly protective of him and Peneloper, more annoyed at herself than anything else, couldn't decide if she loved it, or hated it.

She snickered. "Maybe, one day," she tilted her head, "Until then, I'll keep dragging him on some preposterous adventure, and he'll come along with minimal protest because he's way too obliging. Every bit as a young man ought to be."

"So," her dad fiddled with an empty candy wrapper, rolling it between his fingers, "You love him?"

"I'd be lying if I said otherwise," she said slowly. "I've had countless imaginary friends and none of them ever fever-dreamed of desserts."

She smiled as she recalled Chant's barging into her room all snarls and snot. Then her memories went back further, to the evening after the cemetery, when Chant had stayed at her side, curled up beside her running his fingers through her hair as she wept. Peneloper had clung to his warmth as though it were a lifeline cast out to her to keep her above water. She chuckled. "He reminds me it's okay to cry whenever I forget that it is and stays until I'm done." She gritted her teeth. "He's so bright sometimes, I wonder how it is I haven't burned yet." Her gaze drifted toward the ground. "Maybe that's part of my magic. I'm made of fire retardant fluff." Her dad's laugh filled her ears. Her voice took on a melancholic air as she added, "You would have liked getting to know him."

"I can still get to know him. I'm not going anywhere."

"How can you sat that when you're not planning on coming home," she said curtly. "Isn't that right? You have to stay dead to Carma and Mom and continue council business."

He closed his mouth. Midas popped a bulbous head out of the water, its beak clicking as beady black eyes stared over the basin rim. "It won't," her father began. "It won't be forever. I'll get to retire and then—"

"Then Carma might be in college or traveling around the world for some fashion job or married. Mom could-" Move on, she wanted to finish. But the look in her dad's eye, that same dead-to-the-world gaze she'd seen on so many of her classmate's faces after having been subjected to a Mr. Howell lecture, forced her words back down. "Sorry."

"No." He waved his hand. "You're right. But an Auttsley has to roost on the-" Peneloper cut him a cross look. He shook his head, "has to sit on the Council. It can't be changed. Families inherit magical aptitude as well as curses." Midas garbled something, sloshing brown water over the sides of his basin. Rayburn snorted. "He feels bad for us."

"That thing submerged in frothy filth pities us?"

More gurgles, a hefting of tentacle. "Sectopus and yes. He was there at the beginning. As an intern, but he saw the whole thing go down." The sectopus ducked its head back underwater. "That breakup was ugly business."

"And it really caused the world to fracture?" Peneloper asked. "Reason and Reflection were once one? And the Refracted didn't exist?"

"So, they say." Rayburn breathed out, as though he were exhaling invisible smoke. The action conjured an image of Principal Gale to mind, white-haired and regal, the uncontested queen of the high school, hunkered over her window, sneaking inhale after inhale. At the same time, Miss Grandly eavesdropped from the other side of the office door and-

Something Peneloper never thought would happen, happened. She got a pang, then a twang. It bloomed in her stomach, rose upward - indigestion or gas, she thought at first, perhaps caused by one too many helpings of Mrs. Luric's pudding - but it ballooned as it grew, softly suffocating. Peneloper tried to burp or belch, but she, unlike the whole of Potter Oaks Varsity Chess Club, could not conjure such things on demand. The feeling hit her heart like it'd been chucked against a brick wall. Tears pricked her eyes, one running down her cheek. Her breath quickened.

"Nell." Her father reached across the divide between them, hand wavering above her shoulder, heavy with doubt and uncertainty. He gnawed his lower lip as withdrew his hand, but he remained concerned and managed to say, "What's wrong?"

"I think," Peneloper sniffed and with the back of her hand wiped away the rogue tear. "I think I'm homesick."

He leaned in. "It's been a long day."

Peneloper chuckled, which, in her current state, sounded like wet hiccups. "Yeah, it has."

The Auttsley patriarch, having done a miserable job at curating his long-awaited reunion with Peneloper, and not wanting to destroy any goodwill he may have scrounged up, and being a good natured if clumsy man, outright refused to add to her pain. And though it might not help the current situation, he couldn't muster up the courage to tell her that things just got a lot worse.

A scream sliced through his mind. He winced. Midas's head broke through the scummy suds of his bucket home, beak parted in agony, confirming what Rayburn feared. Every thread in magic's tapestry had heard it, had had it reverberate in the fiber of their being - magic's agony.

Gideon Darquish had landed in Potter Oaks.