Seds after entering the sunroom Heather spotted all of the glittering kyanite c the pnts like a decorative soil topper. “My word. You really are a witbsp; This is your sg room.” She spun on her heels. “Where is your little cauldron and boiling mess?”

  “I don’t have one, Heather. Neancers have one. I have … well a crystal ball.” Tatum poi a gss ball sitting atop of a pnter as a decoration for a hanging fern. “Have a seat, Heather.” Walking over to grab the small smooth gss ball, Tatum came bad ha to Heather before sitting down. “Yonhat to talk to her.”

  A warm sensation spurred iher’s hand and her palm glowed white. “I haven’t cast a spell since I left.” She sighed and looked out of the windows and saw the runes she needed in the clouds to use the ball in her hand. “That was eerie, that was a bunch of warnings about unig with the…dead.”

  “It drive you crazy, but you should be safe enough, you don’t have their borapped between worlds.” Tatum looked down into her own palm as it softly glowed. “I was the first person Denise woke up, and it was fore.” g her fists, Tatum looked up and saw a set of hateful diamond eyes from the crystal ball. “Fuck.”

  Recalling how she had bee aware of the magical world, Heather reached over and patted Tatum’s hand just before the little outburst. “I didn’t mean to upset you, I just never liked the darker side of magic like Denise did.” Heather looked down into the ball when she saw the color drain from Tatum’s face. “Um…Care to expin?” Heather asked, uain that she really wahe answer.

  “Heather, you should leave now. Take the ball with you if you want. I get it back ter.” Tatum stood up and grabbed as much kyanite as she could and stuffed it in her pockets. “On the flip side of getting your new farm, You’ve nded right in the ter of hell.”

  Mirr the elder mage, Heather grabbed as much kyanite as she could, including shoving it in her daughter's diaper bag. “Tell me what the hell is going on, now Tatum!” Heather held Carrie protectively. “I left to get away from this exact garbage!” With fshbacks of her fateful night with Vivienne suddenly glowing perfectly in her mind, Heather walked to Tatum and grabbed her friend by the colr. “She tried to erase my mind back then, and it didn’t take. The drive-by awakened me.” She shook Tatum, “She tried to hide the world from me just like you are.”

  “Shadewraiths. They are shadewraiths and you o get out of here.” Tatum pushed Heather away from her. “I don’t have the energy to fight you and them.” Tatum poio the crystal ball. “You have the luck of a goddess, Heather. You wao know about Denise and you were shown what you o know.” Tatum headed for her front door. “Your ‘Loved One’ helped bring these damhings from another world where they had been trapped with all of her reckless magic that night.” Tatum waited for Heather to catch up. “Now they are destroying everything. These things are why the city is burning, and the worst one is probably on the way here.” She paused and opehe door. “Fuck.”

  Burying her hands in her face, Heather rubbed her eyes until the stress seemed to dissipate. “I picked a hell of a day to answer your summons, Tatum.” Heather looked up and saw her little car at the end of the sidewalk. “I am going tret this, I assure you. Tell me everything you before they get here.”

  With the short amount of time avaible to her, Tatum expined her various experiences with the shadewraiths as a whole and provided her small successes with her magi jun with the horrid creatures. “I ot stress enough that there is nothing redeeming about them.” Tatum sighed and looked over her small group of students with a little pity. “They aren’t ready for this…Hell I am not ready for this.” Feeling an impending doom starting to swell within her chest, Tatum turo her friend. “Heather, there is a good ce we will not survive this.” Visions of the gleeful silver teeth of the shadewraiths bined with their lifeless diamond eyes sent a very heavy chill up and down Tatum’s spine. “While I am happy you made the joke about the cauldron, there is part of me that wished I was blissfully unaware they were ing.”

  “It’s not really that bad is it? I mean in the few minutes you were expining them to me, it sounds like not every avenue has been explored and you ward them off?” Heather mentioned as a of a pn began to form. “There are times where I wished you’d seen our infiltrators.” A warm thought of Derek pnting his doting lips on her forehead made Heather flutter her eyes a goosebumps across her arms. “Derek was a natural, moon and stars…I loved that man.”

  Clearihroat, Tatum shook her friend out of the memory. “I hate to wreck a ghostly moment with you and Derek, but if you stay there in that moment we will die standing here on the porch.” A quick fre of her white magic palm, Tatum absorbed the kyanite she’d been holding. “What’s the pher?”

  “I will need your stro ward, I will supplement it with my own.” Heather kissed her infant on the head. “Carrie will be my anchor.” A devilish grin crossed Heather’s face. “I am going in. Let’s see how they react to the darkrealm.”

  Grabbiher’s wrist, Tatum dragged her friend bato the house and down into her basement. If the office was all business and disanized for Tatum Bckwell - Esquire, then the basement was the plete opposite. Gohe volumes of w texts, plush chairs and any modern veniences. Repced by mystical tris of all shapes and sizes, the walls were lined with Tatum’s own artwork. Paintings that dispyed her in various pces testing and using magie even battling a small dragon. Identical to her lost friend, Tatum had a few shelves lined with graphiovels, with dates that went back to the te fifties. Dead ter of the room held a rocky and natural table with crudely blown gss, filled with every color of the rainbow represented within the vials. Tatum pulled Heather to the st feature within the room, a throne.

  “I don’t have time to expin all of this Heather, but I am sure you know what it is.” Tatum kissed her friend on the cheeks and poio a gss vial that seemingly had nothing in it. “If things go badly, use that. Drink it.” Tatum winked as she started weaving a spell in her head that she imagined as a steel egg that was covered in snow.