The Glowing Ember was not a bar, but a bookstore/coffeeshop, located in the city. It was also the premier hangout place for the magical community in the great metropolitan area. I hoped that in addition to introducing Thomas to everybody, we could ask around a bit and see if anyone might have any other ideas. By the time we got there it was later afternoon, just as the evening rush was starting. We walked in and I greeted Emily, the proprietor, behind the counter, and introduced her to Thomas. Emily was a retired classics professor who had never lost her teacherly mein, and even though her hair had gone grey, her eyes were still bright and she was as sharp as ever. She also knew her sources and references, and was great if you needed help with any sort of ancient texts or spells.

"She started this place as something to keep her busy," I explained to Thomas as we walked away, "but word got around, and well..."

We were surrounded by towering shelves of books, and the air itself was heady with the scent of old pages (alongside coffee, of course). I wanted to wait a bit until a few more folks trickled in, so we we meandered through the stacks a bit. I of course made a beeline for the European section. I browsed through the new arrivals section, looking for anything that caught my eye. Owen Davies had another book out, albeit an introductory work-how he could keep writing while also being the Court Magician and Wizard to the Crown, I had no idea. A book on Welsh ghosts that looked like a good read but wasn't particularly relevant to my work. A book on river and sea folklore, which could come in handy. A book on the folklore of various crafts, which I already had a copy of. Honestly, I really didn't need more books, but since when had that stopped me.

I looked up from my reverie and realized with a slight shock that Thomas was browsing the shelf next to me. "Hey, I thought you lot only needed one book?" I asked, half jokingly.

Thankfully, he took it in stride. "Well, most of the time, but there are a few others I use occasionally. The Bible, of course, and every one in while the Sixth and Seventh Keys of Solomon."

I gave him a hard look. "Wait, you're not an Esoteric, are you?" I asked, my voice sharp.

He laughed. "Haha, no, I'm not a grimoire thumper, you can relax. I use them as a reference, that's all. "

"Whew, thanks, otherwise this relationship was going to get complicated. I can't stand Esoterics and Hermeticists. They think they're better than us, with their expensive degrees and big fancy spell-books and elaborate rituals, but their success rate isn't any better than ours." I realized I was ranting a bit, and took a breath.

"Heh, touched a nerve, did I? Well, regardless, I wouldn't mind learning more about what you do."

Relieved by his graceful change of subject, I replied "yeah, thanks. Oh, Hutton is good author, Stations of the Sun is my go-to for calendar ritual magic."

"Oh yeah?" Thomas asked as he leafed through the book. He flipped to the end pages and glanced at the author photo. "Man, those are some serious eyebrows."

"I saw him lecture once, and they're even more impressive in person."

The mood somewhat restored, I glanced over at the coffee bar and saw it was starting to fill up. I grabbed Thomas and we sauntered over, though not before I strongly considered picking up a copy of New World Witchery. Working with Thomas made me realize I was woefully unlearned when it came to his type of magic, and that simply wouldn't do.

As we walked through the doorway to the coffee bar section, I waved to my friend Daniella, who greeted me with a friendly "Heeeyy!" which was instantly taken up by the rest of the group. What can I say, us magical folk know how to make you feel welcome.

"Hey guys!" I called to the assembled group. "This is Thomas Whitely. He's the new county liaison. Thought I'd introduce him to everybody. A chorus of muddled greetings followed. Thomas and I went up to the bar, ordered our drinks, and I started taking him around to meet people. Next to us was a tall man in a button down shirt with a green embroidered skullcap. "Thomas, this is Ali, he's our expert on Islamic magic, " I said. Thomas and Ali shook hands. "Pleased to meet you. I'd love to stay and chat, but I've actually got to run after I finish this cup. I just got back from Michigan, some kid got possessed by a Jinn at a Muslim summer camp, and now the DNC wants me to create astrological tables for all their prospective candidates."

"The election isn't for another year, isn't it?" Thomas asked.

"Yeah, tell me about," Ali said with an exasperated sigh.

"Ah, well good luck," I said, slightly disappointed I wouldn't be able to pick his brain. Guess I'll have message him later or something. We continued on.

Next was a willowy brunette with high cheekbones and sparkling eyes, dressed in a colorful peasant-style dress. "This is my friend Daniella; she also does European magic, though she mostly focuses on Slavic stuff." She eagerly shook Thomas's hand, and then gave me a hug. "Kat, it's been too long! We should get together soon!" she said. "Yeah, definitely, I'll let you know when I've got some downtime. I've actually got a big case right now, I want to talk to you about it later," I said. "Of course!"she smiled.

From there we moved on to my friend Lana, who specialized in Jewish and Yiddish magic and Kabbalah. "Lana once helped me get rid of a particularly troublesome Dibbuk," I said, and Thomas looked suitably impressed.

Our drinks were ready, so Thomas and I settled down at the bar. To spare him (and myself, really) a few more introductions, I pointed some of the other customers out to him. "The tall redhead sitting in the corner with her laptop is Dr. Heather Markisdottir; she's our local seiðkonur, specializes in Norse and Germanic magic. She's a devout Odinist, too, says she actually met the All-Father one foggy evening in Stockholm."

"Dang, really?" Thomas said. "Closest I've gotten to a deity is that one time I got grifted by a guy I'm pretty sure was Wisakedjak."

"I know, right? Best I can do is when St. Blaise appeared to me in a dream and told me how to heal this one guy's gastric reflux."

I scanned the room. "The older Hispanic woman is Elena, she's a curandero, one of the best in the business. I often refer clients to her. The lady she's talking to is Mary Running Deer, she's a Medicine Woman and shaman, the real deal. "

"Oh, I did some work on Cherokee Medicine in school, might be interesting to talk to her," said Thomas.

Once I had run out people to introduce or point out, we started working the room. It was a slow, agonizing process-I was never particularly good at this sort of networking, and Thomas didn't seem to be doing much better. But, eventually, we finished making the round and met up back at the bar.

"Anything?" I asked him. "Nah," he said. "Most people either had no idea or just gave the same things we had already come up with. I made a point of asking Mary if there were any Native traditions about that particularly patch of woods-she said no, they were perfectly normal, and whatever was going on was, and I quote 'some white nonsense.'"

"Well, she's probably not wrong, I said."

"What about you?" he asked.

"About the same. Might be a particularly kind of revenant, takes the shape of a giant maggot that poisons people, but again it's someone who's recently dead. Daniella suggested a faerie blight, but she'd only ever heard of them striking cattle or crops. Dr. Markisdottir said it might be a Night Raven, but from what I understand you have to see the creature for it to make you ill. And since it's a giant skeletal raven, someone would have reported it by now. It also eats children, and we haven't had any gone missing. "

"Well, back to the drawing board. Still, thanks for taking me out," Thomas said.

"No problem. We should head back, though, big day tomorrow."

****

I got up early to make sure I was fully equipped for our expedition. Rowan wood cross with red string-check. Hag stone-check. Holy water-check. Saints' medal-check. St. John's Wort-check. Black handled steel knife-check. The last one was as much in case as Thomas tried anything as for the Fae. He seemed like a nice guy, but you never know...Over it all, I wore my long, weather-beaten leather coat. A thrift store find, I'd covered the inside with sigils and charms, everything from prayers in Latin and Greek to Icelandic stave runes. Sewn into the lining were saints medallions and metal Solomonic seals. To top it all off, I'd poured holy water from the Chalice Well of Glastonbury over it. It was about as close to supernatural armor as I could get.

Thomas pulled up to the office around 10:30 AM in a battered light pick-up with the county seal on it. I hopped in.
"Sorry, took me a bit to get permission to take the truck." he said. "It's fine," I replied. "Otherwise we'd have to pile on to my scooter. Pretty sure this is more comfortable."

We started off, Thomas driving and me giving directions. The Hearthstone development was about 20 or 30 minutes away, on the outskirts of town. After a few minutes of awkward silence, Thomas started making small talk.

"So, what got you into magic?" he asked, the classic icebreaker amongst all magical folk. "Was it a family thing?"

"Sort of? We're supposedly descended from the Wizard Earl of Ulster, but it was really never a family business, just something we dabbled in. I'm the first to actually make an occupation out of it. My sister found it so unreliable and frustrating she went into the hard sciences instead. I was interested it pretty early on, though. In high school mom enrolled me in classes at the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, which I assure is not as fancy as it sounds."

"So, you wanted to be a Cunning Woman from the get-go?", he asked.

"No," I laughed. "I, uh, actually wanted to go into Esoteric magic."

"Hah! I knew it!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. So sue me, I wanted to use giant gilt books and chant in weird languages and summon demons and all that. But, one, I wasn't good enough at math, and two, I couldn't afford any of those schools. So here I am."

"What about you?" I asked. "Family tradition?"

"Nah, not really. Closest we had to that was a friend's uncle who was also a Braucher. One day we were out playing in the woods and I fell out of a tree, busted up my nose. Blood everywhere. I go back to the house, Uncle Rick is there. He puts a hand on my forehead, whispers some verses from the Bible or something, and instantly the bleeding stops, pain goes away, I'm completely fine. Blew my mind. From then on I had to learn how to do that. Got my degree, did some field work with a Conjurer-Woman in West Virginia, and here I am."

We reached the subdivision. After a few turns, our path was blocked by yellow caution tape. This was it. Thomas parked the truck and grabbed a copy of the initial report we'd been given. We'd have to scout on foot from here.

The suburb was eerily quiet and apparently deserted. Whoever hadn't become ill must have bugged out-I couldn't say I blamed them. Thomas and I poured over the map, looking for patterns. While the houses of the victims seem to be mostly selected at random, they were generally clustered in the western edge of the neighborhood, closest to the forest.

As we wandered about, the neighborhood seemed to grow even more sinister. Cloud cover had moved in, dimming the sun. Knowing my luck, it would start raining.

"Look," said Thomas, pointing at a house to our right, nearest the edge of the woods. "Hex marks." Sure enough, there was a crudely painted seven pointed star on the front door.  "And over there," he said, pointing to another house across the way with a hastily applied coat of Haint Blue paint on the ceiling of its porch. As I started examining the other houses, I saw crosses, evil eyes, and nazars on doors and over porches. I'd be money that at least a few of my witch bottles were buried around here too.

"They knew something was here," I said. "They were afraid."

"And they had at least enough time to try to protect themselves," said Thomas. "Not that it did any good, from the looks of it."

"What on earth is immune to all that? Are we sure this isn't something completely natural? A gas leak? Radon? Maybe some disease brought in by an animal? Actually, were there any weird animal interactions or anything? Anything that could have spread something?"

Thomas leafed through the report. "...couple of pets are unaccounted for. And some chucklehead who fancied himself an urban farmer had a chicken coop. Nothing out of the ordinary otherwise."

"Let's at least take a look at the chicken coop, maybe there'll be something there."

After some meandering around the neighborhood because we misread the map, we eventually stumbled on the coop. It was a nice piece of work, clearly bought from some high-end farm co-op. I poked my head inside. Immediately I noticed the smell, or lack thereof. No bawking or other distressed cries met me. After a quick examination, I concluded it was empty, and had been for some time. The only sign of its former inhabitants were some feathers and eggshells. "Looks like nobody's home," I said.

"Did the chickens get evacuated too?" asked Thomas. "Or escape? Maybe a predator?"

I riffled through the bedding, making sure I didn't miss anything. After some prodding, I found something distinctly leathery. I pulled it out of the straw. It was a snake skin, perhaps recently shed.

"Well, there's your answer," I said. I slipped the skin into my jacket pocket. It was a useful spell ingredient, and waste not, want not.

"Yeah, looks like," replied Thomas. "I don't see anything else here. Guess we'll check the woods next?"