CW:

We heard a scream come from somewhere near the entrance of Willowwisp Co-op, a small community of supernatural beings in an unused nuclear bunker built during the Cold War that had eventually had a strip mall constructed on top of it.

I began running there as quickly as I could, which admittedly wasn't that fast as I was exhausted from the past few days of insanity.

A few days ago I had discovered that the supernatural existed, then got shoved face first into the aftermath of the assassination of Jenny Greenteeth, a Winter Court ambassador on the way to sign a cease fire agreement between the sidhe of the Unseelie and Seelie Courts.

Then I learned I was half-sidhe, the person I'd called my mother was completely unrelated to me, and my biological mother was Spring Court's ambassador to the Unseelie, Countess Glaistig the Green, Lady of Storms.

She had given me a grimoire for my twenty-fifth birthday that had belonged to an Irish goddess called The Morrigan, better known by the alias Morganna le Fay. In what turned out to be one of the dumbest decisions I’ve made I’d left the book at home with Dad and it was stolen by Eiry, the daughter of Jenny Greenteeth, who with the necromancer Gravetender tried to kill Ashe, Ventusa, and me.

As if that wasn't enough I'd realized I was pansexual after confronting some deeply repressed feelings for my best friend, then she came out as trans which lead to me figuring out I'm trans not even thirty minutes prior to hearing the scream.

Needless to say, the week I had planned to spend in the quiet comfort of my father's and my apartment was going a little differently than I had imagined.

I was running mostly on coffee and adrenaline at that point, despite having slept a fairly decent amount, the sheer amount of madness I'd gone through was starting to wear thin on my mind and body.

No matter how much I wanted to enter hibernation I forced myself to keep moving as I had to help clear the name of my best friend turned girlfriend, Keira Johnston.

With me and Keira were Leon Goldman, an old friend of mine who turned out to be the warlock of the powerful demon Furcas, Vincent Jung, an acquaintance I mostly knew from various parties I'd attended, and lastly Ashe Greenteeth, a Winter sidhe and the estranged son of the assassinated ambassador.

We arrived at a trapdoor that led into Marshall’s Used Books, the mundane front that concealed the entrance of the Willowwisp Co-op. 

Daniel Stewart, an authentic cowboy mage from the Wild West, and Cynthia, who I'd only met in passing, were conversing in the foyer along with a couple worried looking people I didn't recognize.

"The Order is here, Daniel! They know Mark is here and they mean business! What in the world are we doing risking everything for one kid?" Cynthia shouted hysterically.

"You voted in favor of giving those two asylum, Cynth," a large woman calmly reminded her. 

"I know! But I didn't expect them to actually-" Cynthia stopped mid-sentence when she noticed us.

"What's going on?" Keira asked Daniel.

"The Order's outside and threatening to attack if we don't surrender!" Cynthia cried.

"What?" Keira, Ashe, Leon, and Vincent exclaimed in unison.

"Somehow they know you're here, Mark. They showed up earlier to make what I thought were empty threats trying to get at Mark-" Daniel admitted with his text-to-speech program on his phone.. 

"Her name is Keira," I corrected automatically. 

"Sorry, Keira. Didn't mean nothing by it."

"It's alright," Keira accepted, "but why the fuck didn't you tell anyone about the Order's people?"

"I didn't think they'd actually go to war with us just to get to you and I didn't want to start a fuss about something we couldn't do anything about, but they just triggered the emergency lockdown ward with an explosion when Cynthia was about to leave," Daniel explained.

"You still should've fucking told us!" Ashe snapped, "we could have been preparing our defense!"

"I hate to break it to you, but if they break through my wards there's not much we could do to stop them," Daniel said.

"It's not your decision to make on whether or not to tell others about this, regardless of if we could fight them!" Ashe retorted. 

"I realize that, but what would be the point? So everyone would panic and fret about something we can't do anything about?"

"Dead of Winter!" Ashe swore.

"Daniel has a point, Furcas left soon after I gave him Marshall’s message so that only leaves the six of us and Ventusa to defend, " Leon pointed out.

"Where is that bitch, anyway?" I wondered.

"She's brooding around here somewhere, after our fight with Eiry and Gravetender she went all quiet, not even a single dig at my heritage," Ashe responded. 

"Can we count on her to fight if it comes to it?"

"I think Glaistig put a geas on Ventusa to protect her." Ashe pointed to me.

"She what? Isn't Ventusa her bodyguard?" Keira exclaimed.

"Yeah, that's what I thought, but something more is going on there," Ashe agreed.

"You should refrain from gossip, it is rather uncouth" said a voice from right behind me.

"Gah, what the hell!" I shrieked and spun around to see Ventusa, staring daggers at Ashe."Goddamnit, can you stop sneaking up on me?"

"Yes, I can," she said, giving me a quick glance.

"You won't though," I grimaced. 

"It is for your own good, you must learn to sense potential threats that are hidden from your human senses or you will be ill-equipped to deal with hostile illusionists," she asserted. 

"Fine, whatever," I groaned. I felt uncomfortable ordering Ventusa around, plus it was unlikely to win me any favors from her, something which I would probably need before the end of all this.

"We should leave, little one. It is no longer safe here," Ventusa said to me.

"Unfortunately, that's not an option," Daniel frowned.

"And why is that?" she grimaced. 

"To make the strongest possible base layer of the shielding layer of wards you have to prevent any and all matter from crossing the barrier, if you allow matter to exit the shielded area the outer facing shell is weakened as a side effect," Daniel explained matter-of-factly.

"Umm, could you explain that for the non-mages here?" Vincent asked.

"Nothing can enter and nothing can exit... nothing with mass anyway," Keira clarified.

"Until they break that layer and get into the heavy hitting counterattack wards we're stuck in here. Not that we would be able to get past them even if we could leave. We just have to hope it will delay them long enough for Marshall and William to return." Daniel continued.

"There's only seven of them, right? Surely there's a chance we could fend them off," I hoped.

"We could probably take the others, but Agrippa is leading the attack and he's one of the most dangerous mages alive, so no one here is even close to a threat to him,'' Daniel answered. 

"Well fuck," I sighed.

"What do we do?" Vincent asked. 

"We wait and hope Marshall returns soon," Daniel frowned.

The room went silent for a moment, then Cynthia excused herself and the other residents filed out with her.

"What I don't get is how they sussed her out so quickly, my wards should've blocked any attempts at scrying," Daniel wondered.

"Maybe they found out through non-magical means," I suggested.

"Marshall and William were in the storefront when you arrived, so unless the Order had an agent that was able to hide from Marshall at the time you two came here I'm not sure how they'd be certain enough that she's here to lay siege on us," Daniel stated.

"Perhaps someone outside the Order was monitoring the entrance," Ashe suggested, "If they had a non-magical human surveil us with a telescope or something it would be a lot more difficult to notice."

"But even if that was the case, Marshall would have likely noticed since we do check for that kind of thing," Vincent pointed out, "I patrol the area every night so I would've found them if they were around at night."

"But you were out of commission the last two nights," Ashe countered.

I had nearly forgotten Vincent's condition when I had first arrived here. He had looked like he was mauled by a bear, but I could hardly tell he had been injured at all, barely two days later.

"What if that's why Vincent was attacked?" I suggested, "if he wasn't able to patrol, then it would have been far easier to watch us without getting found out."

"He makes a good point," Daniel granted.

"My partner is a she," Keira interjected. 

"I'm a girl and use she/her," I provided.

 "Ain't you kids heard of updating people on pronouns at the start of a conversation? I don't fancy misgendering y'all."

"Sorry, I only realized it a bit ago and haven't got a hang of this stuff yet."

"No matter, just don't want to be made a jackass about it," Daniel said.

"Anyway, Doctor William filled in those nights Vincent was out of commission," Keira pointed out.

"He was, but his talents aren't exactly in defensive and scrying magics so unless he decided to use his Third Eye, which he understandably loathes doing, he'd be relying on his mundane senses.

"It would be insane to use it that long even if he didn't mind using it," Keira added.

"Oh, is that because seeing the true form of powerful entities can hurt your brain?" I guessed, thinking of the mage who had seen Glaistig with his Third Eye. 

"That's too good for a guess." Keira said, raising an eyebrow. 

"I, uhh, well…" I sighed.

I had wanted to keep the fact I'd helped Daniel keep the fact that the Order were here a secret, but I was left with little choice but to come clean.

"Glaistig saved me from a cop that was trying to arrest me, but was actually killing me by handcuffing me and after she carried me here one of the mages outside saw us with his Third Eye while we were sneaking past them."

"Serves them right for trying to peer on your essence like that," Ventusa smirked.

"Why didn't you tell us the Order was here?" Ashe groaned.

"We've got bigger fish to fry, you can fill us in on the details later," Keira interjected before I could answer. "How long till they break through?"

"If they're planning on surviving the wards we have some time, even with Aggripa leading them we should have about twelve hours or so, dawn at the latest," Daniel provided. 

"How long until Marshall and William return?"

"No idea, I think Marshall was going to try asking Belial and Curson for help and those are two damn busy people so it could take a while."

"Holy shit, those are some big names in Hell," Keira gasped.

"Two of the seven generals that lead the rebellion against Satan. Furcas was one along with Baphomet, Lucy, Azmodas, and Abraxas." Leon said to me, probably sensing how lost I was on this.

"Azmodas and Abraxas are dead and Baphomet has been missing for ages." Keria added.

"Weren't they going to try and find Lucy though?" I asked.

"Furcas said Lucy was busy dealing with refugees from Heaven, so I really doubt she'll be much help," Leon said.

"What's the plan then?" I asked after a moment.

"If they break through, then we'll have no choice but to fight despite the odds of winning," Daniel scowled.

"Even if we manage to win the fight there will probably be casualties on both sides, then the Order will use their losses as political ammunition for justifying ramping up the attack," Keira sighed.

"Fuck. Can't we get a damn break?" I groaned.

"Apparently not," Leon grimaced. 

"What do we do in the meantime?" I asked.

"Eat, rest, and whatever else you need to do before shit hits the fan," Daniel answered.

"Sounds good, I could go for some food, I haven't had much of anything since the meeting earlier," I asked.

"Wait, you haven't eaten since this morning!?"

"I had a large sugar with coffee a couple hours ago, plus the absinthe, but other than that I haven't eaten or drank," I confirmed. 

"How the fuck are you still moving? You've been in at least one fight, probably more, and gotten drunk?"

"Two fights and running from a cop," I informed. 

"Dead of Winter! With that amount of activity and magic a novice like you shouldn't be able to crawl by yourself, let alone walk around," Ashe stared at me in wonder.

"Blatant disregard for my well-being?" I guessed sheepishly.

"Christ, girl. Come on let's get some food in ya and you can bring us up to speed," Keira sighed.

"Sounds good, I'm getting pretty hungry myself," Vincent concurred.

The five of us left Daniel and Ventusa in the foyer and went down a couple hallways I hadn't been down previously. They were decorated with various bits and bobs, some from different cultures I recognized and many that I didn't. 

Most notably there was a painting of an incredibly beautiful woman in a crimson robe hung next to a metal sigil of a seven pointed star encased in a circle above a pedestal with a statue of a goat-headed figure sitting with their legs crossed and one arm raised.

"Oh by the way, I can teach you a thing or two about illusions if you want," Keira offered.

"Are sidhe and mages magic not so different you can't teach me anything?" I asked curiously.

"Kinda, kinda not, it's complicated. Mages make a conduit with the Leylines with a magic circle. When sidhe use magic they are the conduit," she explained, 

"Dad's a mage so maybe I could be a mage as well as a sidhe."

"Even so, I'm not sure what would happen if you actually tried to channel magic through a circle, it's fairly rare scions can use multiple types of magic."

"Huh, well, it's worth a shot," I asserted.

"Not until we get some food in you." Keira denied.

"Alright, mom." I rolled my eyes and after a giggle from Keira, the conversation died down.

We came upon a large dining room that inexplicably already had five meals prepared for us on one of the tables. 

When we got closer I saw one bowl with exactly what I was craving at that moment, a malai kofta that smelled incredible.

"How?" I asked, baffled at the food.

"Would you believe it's magic?" Leon smirked.

"Haha, yeah probably," Ashe giggled at Leon's joke, then explained, "Cynthia has a knack for knowing when to start preparing food, even before it's requested."

I shrugged, not questioning a gift horse in the mouth. We sat down and dug into the delicious food while I filled in my friends about the events of the day, the fight with Eiry and Gravetender, the one on one with Gravetender, fleeing from the murderous cop, and Glaistig saving me.

There were two things I left out of my retelling, the presence of my father, the parts of my conversation with Glaistig that didn't have to do with clearing Keira's name.

My conscience yelled at me not to hide things from these people and that they could be trusted, but after all that had happened the past couple days I just couldn't bring myself to trust anyone completely at that moment. 

"Prove that the Baba Yaga is mistaken about the identity of the culprit. Are you sure those were her exact words?" Ashe asked after I had finished.

"One hundred percent positive," I confirmed.

"If that's what she said then our next course of action should probably be finding out more about Baba Yaga," Leon suggested.

"I know some stuff about her, but it's mostly rumors. She's pretty reclusive most of the time. If the signing of the cease fire wasn't wildly important I'm sure she'd still be in whatever Russian forest she haunts," Ashe provided. 

"So I assume she's not too involved with politics," I guessed.

"Not really, she seems more interested in keeping humans out of her neck of the woods than any Unseelie Court business," he confirmed.

"Anything else?" Leon pressed.

"She's supposed to be rather fickle about how she treats intruders. More often than not she's said to be rather cruel, but supposedly she occasionally helps those in need."

"So she may or may not murder us on the spot if we attempt to approach her," I frowned.

"Yeah, basically. I wonder if she even knows who truly killed Mother or not," Ashe frowned in thought.

"Unlikely, since she thinks it was Keira who did it, but we're short on other leads," I said, taking a bite out of an eye-wateringly amazing dumpling.

"True, true," Ashe nodded with a sigh.

"So what can we do to learn more about her?" I asked.

"I think we're going to have to go to the Otherworld," Ashe grimaced.