I walked out of the House of Libations sober and uncharmed by a nymph.

Honestly, that’s more than I can say for about two-thirds of the patronage, so I decided to take it as a win for my willpower.

The night air hit cooler than I expected. Real. Untouched by bass, incense, or carefully curated ecstasy.

I was still entertaining a very stupid idea.

Entertaining stupid ideas comes as naturally to me as breathing.

That’s not to say I make a professional habit of being stupid. I’d be dead if I did.

It’s more that, in my experience, the line between stupid and brilliant is usually drawn after the fact. Same idea, same execution—one version works and gets called genius, the other blows up in your face and gets labeled idiocy.

So until proven otherwise, I default most of my ideas to “stupid.”

It keeps the ego in check.

And occasionally keeps me alive.

It was getting late in the Goblin Market.

Not that it mattered.

Time in Market Space was more of a suggestion than a rule, and even when it aligned with the mortal clock, the place didn’t slow down. If anything, it thrived in the late hours. Nocturnal habits were baked into goblins, faeries, trolls, giants, and half the other things that drifted in from Otherworld.

And humans?

Humans are astonishingly adaptable when it comes to not sleeping at reasonable hours—especially when temptation, profit, or poor judgment are involved.

In my case, it was going to be poor judgment.

And the quiet little knot of paranoia that had settled in the back of my skull.

Because I had just tipped off a man who bound four elementals to his will like they were well-trained dogs. A man in a white suit that probably cost more than some people’s rent. A man wearing enough gold—rings, amulet, all of it humming faintly with layered enchantment—to pay for my body weight in coffee.

The expensive kind.

The kind that gets imported in velvet bags and, at some point in its production cycle, is processed by a civet’s digestive tract.

Yes. That kind.

Speaking of coffee, I was suddenly craving a warm, caffeinated beverage with borderline medicinal intensity.

And food.

I needed to be sharp. Clear. Scrape the fog off my thoughts and line them up in something resembling strategy. Nadali wasn’t some back-alley conjurer slinging discount hexes and parlor tricks.

No.

He was playing with structure. Binding. Classical forces. Old-school protections worn like jewelry and backed by confidence.

That meant I needed a clear head.

And preferably something with sugar and caffeine working together like a tactical alliance.

Because when you go up against someone who thinks in layers, you don’t rush.

You process.

Then you move.

I don’t normally spend this freely in the Goblin Market. I prefer independents. Same reason I eat at mom-and-pop diners instead of corporate fast-food temples to sodium and despair.

But I needed coffee.

And as they say, any port in a storm.

I split the difference and chose a smaller storefront tucked between a charm-mender and a stall selling bottled thunderstorms. Not everyone in the Market was malicious. Not even everyone was inhuman. Plenty of merchants paid their dues for the added security and were perfectly content operating inside the framework the Market Goblins laid down. Stability has its appeal—even in a place built on secrets.

The sign above the café door read:

Winterberry’s — Established 1897

That tugged at memory.

I’d seen Winterberry’s during my time in England. I wouldn’t call them a chain exactly, but they were a fixture in certain corners of the magical community. Reliable. Polished. The kind of place where witches held quiet meetings over tea and nobody pretended the scones weren’t enchanted.

I was fairly certain this was the only Winterberry’s in North America. Then again, the eastern seaboard had older roots—deeper covens, older pacts, families who’d been practicing since before Canada was even an argument. The further west you go, the looser things get. More improvisation. Fewer inherited grimoires. More duct tape and innovation.

Toronto sat somewhere in the middle.

Which meant Winterberry’s presence here was either comfortingly traditional.

Or strategically placed.

I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Winterberry’s doorbell chimed as I stepped inside, and it felt like walking into the mirror-opposite of the House of Libations.

Quiet instead of pulsing.

Porcelain instead of neon.

Low murmured conversation instead of bass that tried to rearrange your organs.

The place carried that old-world coffeehouse charm—dark wood, polished brass, shelves lined with tins labeled in careful script. The clientele were mostly normal enough folk. Suits loosened at the collar. Cardigans. Students pretending to study while absolutely eavesdropping. They sat at small private tables, sipping tea or coffee with the deliberate calm of people who valued their sanity.

I was familiar with the menu.

Wendy—my sweet, feral little British chaos bean—swore by their tea and scones. Claimed it was the only place outside of home that understood how to steep something properly. The sandwiches weren’t bad either. Respectable. Balanced.

The real reason Winterberry’s held status in the magical community, though, was kitchen witchery.

Subtle. Refined. Disciplined.

The teas and coffees were often infused with carefully coaxed elemental herbalism—nothing dramatic. No glowing cups or levitating sugar cubes. Just precision blending. A rosemary-blackcurrant steep that sharpened focus. Chamomile touched with air-aspect to calm anxiety without dulling the mind. Peppermint with a trace of fire to warm without agitation.

Consumable magic done properly.

Their sandwiches and scones? Those were just old-fashioned good.

Which, if you ask me, is its own form of alchemy.

I stepped up to the counter and a young dark-haired woman with subtly pointed ears and a name tag that read Winifred appeared like she’d been summoned by caffeine itself.

Her smile was aggressively optimistic. The kind of optimism that felt structurally reinforced.

“How can I help you?” she asked, and her voice was sunshine wrapped in sugar.

Half-elf, I guessed. The ears gave it away, but there was something else too—an alertness behind the eyes. Not predatory. Just bright. Half-human magical folk weren’t common, not in this century, but they weren’t unheard of either. I had nothing against anyone.

Though I might make a philosophical exception for how chipper she was at seven in the evening while working customer service.

“Yeah,” I said, leaning on the counter. “One beef dip sandwich. And a large ginseng, rhodiola, peppermint–infused coffee. Shot of espresso. Extra cream. Extra honey.”

She nodded enthusiastically, ponytail bouncing like it had its own agenda.

“One beef dip,” she repeated brightly, “and a large cup of wake-me-up juice!”

I blinked.

“…That is both accurate and deeply concerning,” I muttered.

Her grin widened. “We prefer approachable terminology.”

“Of course you do,” I said. “No one wants to order ‘controlled stimulant slurry.’”

She laughed—clear and warm—and rang it in.

“Take a seat,” she said. “We’ll call your name.”

I hesitated.

“In full?” I asked.

She glanced at the receipt, then back at me with the kind of mischievous innocence that suggested she absolutely would.

“Mr. Blackwell,” she said sweetly.

I sighed.

This was going to cost me more dignity than gold.

I took a seat and studied the menu board.

Winterberry’s was more or less what I remembered from the UK, just with a few Canadian mutations. More sandwiches. More combo options. More aggressive carbohydrate enthusiasm.

Not unreasonable. We North Americans have an almost religious devotion to placing things between bread, slathering them in condiments, and declaring it cuisine. Burgers. Sandwiches. Wraps. Subs. All proud members of the same extended family: Delicious Objects Lovingly Embraced by Carbohydrates.

And I adore every last one of them.

When my order was called, I stepped up, collected my tray, and slid a few coins across the counter.

“Keep the change,” I told Winifred.

She beamed like I’d just funded her education. It was mildly exhausting.

I considered taking it to go, but no. I needed to sit. To think. And as long as I stayed inside Market Space proper, Nadali—no matter how annoyed—wasn’t going to risk anything overt. Neutral ground was neutral for a reason.

I settled into a corner table and unwrapped the sandwich. Popped the lid on the dip. Dunked properly—none of that timid edge-dipping nonsense. Full commitment.

The first bite hit like revelation.

Hot beef. Toasted bread. Salt, fat, and structure.

It reminded me that food—even without spellcraft—is magical in its own right. Especially when it’s good. Especially when someone else made it.

I don’t know who wrote the laws of the universe, but one of them is this:

Everything tastes better when you didn’t have to do the work to make it.

I took a careful sip of the coffee and immediately felt vindicated in my decision to order extra honey and cream.

It was good.

But no one drinks enchanted coffee for taste.

The herbs were assertive—borderline confrontational. Ginseng’s sharp insistence, rhodiola’s bitter backbone, peppermint slicing through it all like it had something to prove. The flavors didn’t blend so much as negotiate. It leaned closer to medicine than comfort.

But that first swallow?

That did the trick.

The subtle magic moved through me like a beautiful woman with a dangerous smile—soft at first, almost affectionate—before snapping my thoughts into alignment with a brisk, unapologetic slap.

Wake up.

My vision sharpened at the edges. The lingering fuzz in my skull evaporated. Threads of thought that had been drifting apart snapped into clean, organized lines.

It wasn’t jittery.

It was deliberate.

Like someone had just turned the lights on in a room I hadn’t realized was dim.

I ate. I drank. I let the stimulant herbal assault finish reorganizing my brain.

With the fog burned off, I reassessed.

Nadali had four bound elementals. Balanced. Stable. Responsive.

That alone said discipline.

The Abracadabra triangle at his throat wasn’t decorative. That charm has roots in late antiquity—Greco-Egyptian, then widely adopted across Arabic and later European grimoires. The descending-letter formula was classic apotropaic magic. Illness warding. Spirit warding. Curse deflection. Old. Tested. Reliable.

The style of his jewelry—gold, angular calligraphy, triangular motifs—suggested Middle Eastern influence. Possibly North African. Possibly Levantine. Possibly something filtered through Ottoman traditions.

Which narrowed things down… not at all.

Magical traditions have been bleeding into each other for centuries. The Picatrix alone—translated into Latin in the medieval period—pumped Arabic astrological magic straight into European occult bloodstream. Add Renaissance grimoires, colonial trade routes, diaspora communities, post-war occult revivals, and modern eclectic practice, and you end up with what we have now:

A magical world that is aggressively cross-pollinated.

I couldn’t place his accent with certainty, and his surname was generic enough to resist easy categorization. Nadali could be inherited lineage. Adopted lineage. Chosen identity. Or deliberate obfuscation.

And assuming he was culturally locked into one regional tradition would be sloppy.

I should know.

My own practice is eclectic by necessity. A little hermetic structure, a little folk pragmatism, a little modern improvisation. Purists would wrinkle their noses at it.

So if I was willing to borrow across systems, I had to assume he was too.

Conclusion:

Accent? Weak lead. Jewelry style? Suggestive but inconclusive. Protection charm? Old-school and smart. Elemental binding?

Elemental binding.

That was the part that stuck.

I could bind an elemental. Most properly trained spellcasters can. It’s foundational work—conjuration, containment, negotiation if possible, coercion if necessary. Elementals. Spirits. Lesser undead. All variations on the same core principle: establish authority, assert will, define terms.

One at a time, though.

I could bind one comfortably, provided I knew part of its true designation and had leverage—power, structure, or at least a well-constructed circle. If I wanted service beyond a quick task, I’d need a proper offer. Energy. A conduit. A release clause. Something.

Four?

Simultaneously?

That was different.

Elementals are, in some ways, easier than demons or fey. They don’t bargain the same way. They don’t seduce you with clever wording. They don’t want souls or favors or stories.

But that simplicity is deceptive.

You don’t negotiate with elements.

You overpower them.

You impose will against will.

They don’t care about humanity. They don’t care about cities, politics, bakeries, or your moral alignment. They are alien intelligences—spirits native to elemental-dominant strata of the Astral. Alternate earths where balance failed. Realities where one force won.

Imagine a world that is mostly fire. Not metaphorically. Literally.

That’s a fire elemental’s homeland.

Now imagine dragging something born in that environment into your dimension and telling it to wear a suit.

It doesn’t want your approval.

It wants release.

I took another dunk and bite of my sandwich, chewing slowly.

Four at once meant specialization.

Conjuration. Binding. Sustained control.

The rings.

That detail slid neatly into place.

Middle Eastern magical traditions have a long, documented history of binding entities—demons, jinn, spirits—into objects. Rings. Lamps. Bottles. Sealed vessels. The trope isn’t fiction. It’s precedent. It appears across grimoires, folklore, and formal occult systems.

Portable containment.

If each ring housed a binding matrix, it would explain everything:

Why the elementals manifested cleanly. Why they remained stable. Why they didn’t drift or destabilize the room. Why he didn’t appear visibly strained.

He wasn’t maintaining four bindings in real time.

He was wearing them.

I’d bet my lucky trilby each elemental was anchored to a separate ring.

Clean. Efficient. Elegant.

The alternative was worse.

Either he was an archmagi capable of sustaining multiple active bindings through raw willpower alone—

—or he wasn’t the source at all.

If someone else empowered the bindings, then Nadali was a field operator.

Which meant there was a deeper player.

I didn’t love either option.

Even King Solomon—arguably one of the most mythically potent conjurers in recorded magical history—relied on rings, seals, vessels, and formalized binding methods. Power channeled through structure.

Raw dominance without containment?

That burns you out.

So no.

Nadali wasn’t just some eccentric dabbler with good tailoring.

And he probably wasn’t stronger than Solomon.

Which meant he was smart.

And structured.

And prepared.

That was, in its own way, more dangerous than brute force.

I took a slow sip of my coffee and tilted my head, letting the heat settle behind my eyes.

If Nadali was that competent—and he was—then he didn’t need Bailey’s baked goods.

Not for power.

Not for leverage.

And he clearly had the money to purchase whatever magic he required through legitimate channels. Winterberry’s alone could provide subtle consumables that would put most hedge operations to shame.

So why the smash-and-grab?

Why the threat?

Why Bailey?

It didn’t read like the Market. Luka might be mercenary, but he wasn’t stupid. Neither were the Goblins collectively. Centralized commerce thrives on stability. Even the shadier factions had better uses for their time than terrorizing small independents in a way that invited scrutiny.

Kori’s words drifted back to me.

Chaos.

Pressure.

Stagnation.

Maenads are not random revelers, no matter what Roman writers tried to sell. They’re priestesses of Dionysus—ecstatic, yes—but also initiates into layered, often secretive magical traditions. And they are, whether they admit it or not, sensitive to shifts in pattern.

Dionysian cults have always been attuned to pressure points in society.

Stagnation breeds tyranny. Control breeds fracture. Order pushed too hard shatters.

Kori hadn’t defended Nadali.

She hadn’t endorsed him either.

She’d implied something else.

That what he was doing wasn’t about theft.

It was about movement.

Disruption.

Manufactured instability.

Which meant Bailey wasn’t the target.

She was a variable.

A catalyst.

Four heavy-weight summons sent to smash a window, steal enchanted consumables, and threaten a kitchen witch friend of mine.

That wasn’t resource acquisition.

That was signaling.

The question wasn’t why a powerful, wealthy wizard needed pastries.

The question was:

Who benefits when independent magical businesses feel unsafe?

And what happens when enough of them start looking for protection?

I took another sip of coffee, slower this time.

And let that thought settle.

My fingers drummed lightly against the table as I chewed that over.

Four elementals in suits. Seemings tailored to look like mob enforcers. Working for a man in a white suit who carried himself like he owned the room before he even entered it.

Mob enforcers.

I blinked once.

What if I was analyzing Nadali strictly as a wizard when I should’ve been looking at him like a mobster?

Shift the lens.

Strip the ritual robes off the problem.

What does a criminal gain from a random act of theft and intimidation?

You hit a small business. You make a spectacle. You demonstrate that their wards—mundane and magical—are meaningless.

You don’t take everything.

You take enough.

And you leave fear behind.

Not because you need what they sell.

Because you want them to understand that they are vulnerable.

And once vulnerability sets in, you offer a solution.

Protection.

Insurance.

A fee.

My drumming slowed.

If you want to create a market for protection, first you manufacture insecurity.

Smash a window. Steal product. Threaten the owner.

Make it clear the next visit could be worse.

Suddenly, independent operators start reconsidering their independence.

Suddenly, the Goblin Market’s protection fees look more attractive.

Or.

Someone else’s protection does.

The angle opened doors fast.

This wasn’t about baked goods.

This was about leverage.

And Nadali didn’t look like a man who acted without an endgame.

It was a goddamn protection racket.

That was the only model that fit cleanly—unless Bailey had secretly been cultivating arch-enemies in circles she didn’t even move in, which was about as likely as her running an underground necromantic cabal out of her pastry case.

The realization settled heavy in my gut.

Protection rackets are simple.

First, you demonstrate vulnerability.

Then you sell safety.

Smash a window. Steal product. Leave a message.

The next visit isn’t theft.

It’s an offer.

Magic is a fundamental current in the multiverse. To be able to touch it—shape it, redirect it, impose will on it—is a gift that comes with weight whether people admit it or not.

And using that gift to run rackets?

To lean on kitchen witches and small independents?

It was obscene.

Plenty of people have used magic for petty, selfish, malicious ends. History is crowded with them. I don’t like any of them, but at least most of those conflicts are abstract. Political. Ideological. Distant.

This wasn’t distant.

This was Bailey.

This was a woman who infused rosemary into croissants and catmint into squares because it made people feel better about their day.

My irritation shifted into something hotter.

And that familiar, deeply unhelpful heroic impulse started waking up.

The image of solving the problem by kicking Nadali in the teeth presented itself in vivid, satisfying detail.

It was stupid.

It was reactive.

It would accomplish nothing except getting me flattened by four animate natural disasters.

But the impulse was there.

Which meant I needed to cool down before I did something cinematic and terminal.

Because if this really was a protection racket, then the answer wasn’t violence.

It was proof.

And leverage.

That said… if the opportunity to slug Nadali in his perfectly composed face presented itself?

I’m not evolved enough to pretend I wouldn’t consider it.

Not because it would solve anything.

It wouldn’t.

Elementals don’t evaporate because their employer has a bloody lip. Protection rackets don’t collapse because you land one satisfying punch.

But there’s something profoundly human about wanting to rearrange the features of a man who thinks he can weaponize fear and call it business strategy.

I exhaled slowly and took another sip of coffee instead.

Violence is cathartic.

Leverage is effective.

And as much as my knuckles appreciated the fantasy, my brain knew which one actually wins wars.

Still.

I made a quiet note that if the universe ever offered me a clean, consequence-light shot at his smug little smile?

I would be tempted.

Very tempted.

Who am I kidding?

I know me.

If the universe lines it up just right—clean shot, minimal witnesses, no immediate elemental retaliation—I am absolutely going to knock him down and maybe give him a small, educational kick while he’s reconsidering his life choices.

I’m a good man.

I am not a saint.

There’s a difference.

Saints turn the other cheek.

I tend to assess wind direction, check for cameras, and then consider corrective percussive maintenance.

That said, indulging that impulse too early would be catastrophic. Nadali isn’t the kind of man who operates without contingencies. You don’t bind four classical elementals and walk around in enchanted gold unless you assume someone, somewhere, will eventually try to punch you.

Which means if I do get to punch him, it needs to be because the board has already tilted in my favor.

Not because my temper got there first.

I decided, with that realization settling in, that it was time to work on the “stupid” idea I’d been nursing earlier.

Which, if I was being honest, wasn’t sounding particularly stupid anymore.

Now was as good a place and time as any.

I reached into my coat pocket and retrieved two absolutely vital tools in both my mundane and magical work.

A pen.

And a notebook.

No glowing runes. No dramatic chanting. Just paper and ink.

I uncapped the pen and took a slow breath, staring at the crisp, unlined white page. Clean space. Untouched potential. There’s something about blank paper that feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.

I gave the pen a small twirl—because if you’re about to do something potentially reckless, a little showmanship is mandatory—and began to draw.

Slowly.

Carefully.

First came the circle.

Not sketched. Not approximated. Placed. A steady push of will bled into the ink as I moved, feeding the line with just enough energy to make it more than graphite and cellulose.

A circle is boundary.

Containment.

Claim.

Inside it, I inscribed a square—anchoring structure within boundary. Stability inside potential.

Then the triangles. Measured. Intentional. Angles placed with purpose.

The pattern built itself in layers as I fed it incremental power. Not enough to flare. Just enough to wake.

I paused over the central geometry.

Pentagram?

Hexagram?

Tiny detail. Massive implications.

Pentagrams are excellent for authority over spirits and imposition of will. Clean, forceful, hierarchical.

Hexagrams, though…

Hexagrams balance.

Interlocking forces. Above and below. Containment without escalation.

Given that I was potentially dealing with four classical elementals and a conjurer who liked structure?

Hex felt appropriate.

I committed.

Line by line, I formed the interlocking triangles inside the square, inside the circle. Geometry stacking like arguments in a debate.

In magic, minutiae matters. A slight variance in angle. A line drawn too quickly. A break in symmetry. That’s the difference between a ward and a welcome mat.

It’s why my father insisted art be part of my training.

Exact circles without a straightedge.

Parallel lines without a ruler.

Calligraphy until my fingers cramped.

Fine wrist and finger control for hand-casting when tools weren’t available.

Magic isn’t just power.

It’s precision.

And if this “stupid” idea was going to work, it was going to work because the lines were right.

I paused, then added the final layer to the first glyph—an alchemical sigil for Water. Fluid curvature intersecting the geometry, tuned not to summon, but to resonate. Not dominance. Recognition.

One done.

I started again.

Earth. Fire. Air.

Each one drawn in slow, deliberate succession. Four separate glyphs. Four separate slips of paper. Each circle clean. Each hexagram precise. Each elemental marker aligned and fed with just enough power to hum without screaming.

I didn’t rush it.

You rush ink, it bleeds.

You rush magic, it bites.

When I was finished, I tore them neatly from the notebook one by one and let them dry for a moment on the table. They looked harmless. Hand-drawn diagrams on plain paper.

They were not harmless.

I gathered them and slid each carefully into my jacket pocket, positioned for easy reach.

Water over left inner lining. Fire right. Earth breast pocket. Air tucked near the lightning rod.

Symmetry matters, matters to magic and matters to me.

I leaned back for a moment and rubbed my eyes.

Winterberry’s had thinned out. The low murmur of conversation had dwindled to a few late-night regulars and the faint clink of porcelain. I’d been there longer than I realized.

Good thing they stayed open late.

I left a few silver coins beneath my plate for whoever cleared the table, stood, and rolled one shoulder to shake out the faint ache that comes from locking too much of your own energy into prepared work.

Not drained.

Just lighter.

Four glyphs. Four elementals.

If my read was right, those rings weren’t just jewelry—they were anchors. And anchors can be tugged.

I adjusted my coat, felt the reassuring weight of paper and metal against me, and turned toward the door.

“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” I muttered under my breath.

And stepped back into the Market.

I didn’t linger in the Market.

Didn’t need to.

My idiot plan hinged on not being in Market Space.

And it made considerably more sense now that I’d stopped looking at Nadali purely as a wizard and started looking at him as a wizard mobster.

A mobster with taste.

A mobster who cared about optics.

A mobster who wanted to maintain the image of a legitimate magus operating within acceptable bounds of civilized magical society.

Which meant he couldn’t afford to look reactive.

He couldn’t afford to look threatened.

And he absolutely couldn’t afford to let some mid-tier Toronto wizard walk into his booth, poke holes in his story, and stroll away uncorrected.

I’d made it clear I was onto him.

That meant the “make an example” phase was now statistically plausible.

Break a few bones.

Issue a refined but unmistakable threat.

Escalate the intimidation.

Possibly attempt to kill me, depending on how invested he was in the long game versus short-term reputation management.

Mob logic is simple: if you don’t punish interference, you invite more of it.

Which meant the smart play, from his perspective, was to remind me that poking his business had consequences.

I assumed the worst-case scenario.

Because paranoia isn’t a malfunction in wizards.

It’s a survival trait.

We don’t live long by assuming our enemies are reasonable.

We live long by assuming they’re not.

I left the Market and crossed the parking lot toward the Wizard-Mobile, senses stretched just shy of obvious paranoia.

If Nadali was impatient—or the type who believed in striking while the iron was hot—then the window for action was between here and home.

Once I was inside my house?

Different equation.

Wards layered into the brickwork. Threshold traps keyed to intent, not just intrusion. A few surprises tucked into corners that only I fully understood.

And then there was the Genius Loci.

The spirit of the place itself.

My house wasn’t just property. It was inhabited. The resident ghosts had opinions. A handful of minor magical creatures had negotiated long-term tenancy in exchange for certain… mutual understandings.

You don’t just blitz a space like that.

Even if Nadali assumed I was a middling practitioner—competent but unremarkable—he wasn’t going to risk throwing raw force at a defended threshold without reconnaissance.

He wasn’t stupid.

Arrogant, maybe.

Hungry-ego, definitely.

But not reckless.

Which meant if he was going to test me, it would happen before I reached that door.

I unlocked the van and slid inside, letting the door shut with a solid, mundane thud.

No crackle of elemental displacement.

No sudden temperature shift.

No smell of ozone or damp stone.

Yet.

I started the engine and let my gaze drift once around the parking lot, slow and casual.

If I were him, this is where I’d make the statement.

And if I was right about the protection racket?

Statements matter.

I was halfway to the van door when I heard it.

Heavy footfalls.

Deep breathing.

I turned with a smirk already forming, fully expecting one of Nadali’s suited disasters to step out of the shadows.

The smirk died mid-birth.

There were four of them, sure.

But elementals they were not.

No subtle soil spill. No ambient heat. No wrongness in the air.

Just men.

Solid. Sweaty. Armed.

Brass knuckles catching the lot’s dim light. A knife that had seen more bad decisions than sharpening stones. A tire iron resting casual in one thick hand. And a two-by-four that had aspirations of becoming a dental rearrangement tool.

I felt the weight in my jacket pockets.

Four carefully prepared glyphs.

Four elemental countermeasures.

Four exquisitely useless slips of paper against human stupidity.

I exhaled slowly.

“Fuck my life,” I muttered.