I zipped up my backpack, the grimoire tucked safely inside, and focused my magic so I could see the Threads. It was fairly easy to bring them up or tuck them away at this point. They were always there, but to focus on them was to basically bring them into the foreground of my vision.

It had been a while since I'd seen Callie, but I was confident I could find her. A person's energy could change over time to a degree, but everyone had immutable parts to their energy signatures. If I focused, I should be able to find her. I should be able to ask the Threads to take me to her.
I closed my eyes and focused as hard as I could, trying to fill my mind with nothing but thoughts of my friend. The more I concentrated on her energy, the easier the Threads could lock onto what I wanted.

Callie, who had been my best friend. Callie, who had cried with me as a young sprinter went into an ambulance on a stretcher. Callie, who laughed with me over silly internet memes, who wanted to be a doctor, who loved Chinese takeout and video games and romance books—

There.

I found her. She was a glowing dot in the distance, but I found her, and when I looked down, I was holding the end of a bright orange thread in my closed fist. This would take me to her, but... it felt strange. It felt off. Callie's essence was still there, but the overall impression wasn't the same as what I remembered.

Callie was here, but something was wrong.

I couldn't see specifics, but her Threads were laced with anxiety and tragedy, and the more I tried to look into specifics, the more my head hurt. It would be better to go and look for her myself.

For a moment, I debated if I wanted to use the invisibility pendant. It would certainly allow me to slip through the building unnoticed, but it might not be the best idea. I was invisible when I wore it, but not incorporeal, and there were a lot of people here. Someone could very easily run into me, and a random invisible person was certainly enough to make that someone sound the alarm.

Also, if I found Callie, appearing out of thin air might not be the best introduction.

I exited the office without putting on the pendant, in the end, adopting a slow pace as I wandered the hallway towards the stairs. My purple hair was recognizable, but as far as anyone knew, I was Calen's girlfriend. I was supposed to be here. If anyone stopped me, I could simply say that Calen told me I could look around, and I really wasn't sure how the place was laid out or where I could go.

No one stopped me, though. No one even batted an eye as I walked up the stairs, following the Thread in my hand until it became level with the fourth floor. No one seemed to care as I wandered down the hallways, and in fact, I only passed one person on the staircase. I didn't pass anyone at all along the fourth floor hallway.

And then the Thread stopped, clearly running smack into doorway 437.

This was it.

The door was locked, but that wouldn't be a problem. It was an old hotel, and the locks were analog, not electronic. Luckily, Calen and his team hadn't changed that when they moved in. I still had my attention on the Threads, so it wouldn't be hard to pop the door open. Checking to make sure no one was looking, I took the Thread in my hand and wrapped it three times around the handle.

"Aperta," I whispered.

The lock clicked open.

Technically, I didn't need the power of the Threads to do that, but I was more familiar with channeling their energy than any other brand of elemental energy that might force the lock open. Plus, it was faster.

No one ever really bothered to teach me elemental magic after I didn't show an aptitude as a kid, but hey, now wasn't the time to reflect on that. I could talk to Ray about it later.

I wanted to get to Callie before anyone could stop me, so I didn't bother to knock, and I just hoped she wasn't doing anything particularly private. I turned the handle, yanked the door open, and slipped inside. Then, before anything else happened, I turned around and locked it behind me.

When I turned around, the sight that met me was better than I feared.

A tall woman with sandy blonde hair sat at a basic particle board desk, mouth agape and eyes wide. She looked tired and a little befuddled, but she was clean and uninjured. In fact, she looked healthy. Stressed, but healthy. The rest of the room seemed like it was in good condition, too, with a bed, dresser, and even a TV with a small stack of movies underneath.

She might be in trouble still, yes, but at least her life wasn't in danger.

"Callie!" I gasped, slumping against the closed door in relief. The Threads were reliable, but there was always a chance something could have gone wrong, leaving me in a room with a random person.

"S—Sunday?" she stuttered, blinking. "Holy fucking shit, is that actually you?"

I nodded wordlessly, staying against the door like I was stuck there. It felt surreal to actually see her again after all this time.

Callie rose from her chair and walked over to hug me, bending down to put her arms around me. She was almost six feet tall, so hugs were always an acrobatic act for us, but there was a time when I thought I might never feel one of her hugs again.

I wanted to cry, but instead I just hugged her back for a long moment.

"Here, here, sit down," she said when she pulled away. "So much shit has happened that I don't even know where to start."

I couldn't say I knew where to start, either, but I had some serious questions that needed serious answers.

Callie perched on the edge of her bed and patted the spot beside her for me to sit. It felt like being in an apartment during college again, where our only private space might be a bedroom. We had sleepovers and built pillow forts like we were kids, and for a second everything didn't seem quite so bad.

Then I took a breath, and reality slapped back at me very, very quickly.

"You... do know you're in the headquarters of the Virginia Witches' Collective, right?" I asked carefully. "And that only witches are living in this building?" I just wanted to check. I needed to be very, very sure before I asked what I really wanted to ask.

Calling nodded. She didn't seem nervous about it, either. She knew witches existed, thanks to me, but...

"So... you're also..." I trailed off.

"A witch, yeah," Callie said, nodding, but she grimaced while she said it.

Damn.

"How did you find out? When did you find out?" I asked hesitantly.

It probably wasn't polite to pry, but she was a friend, and late bloomers were rare among witches. Of course, it wasn't unheard of, but it could be a serious shock when magic came on later in life.

Typically, if your magic didn't appear by the time you were eighteen, you weren't going to have any magic. Callie's parents didn't have any magic, and she wasn't adopted as far as I knew, which meant there had to be a latent gene somewhere in her bloodline for it.

It was a strange case, but not unheard of. Sometimes magic skipped generations. Sometimes it exploded out of witch bloodlines that had been dormant for centuries. When it happened, it was often hard on the witch involved,

"I blew up a building," she said numbly. "About two years ago."

Holy shit.

(Note to self: no talking about magic exploding anymore.)

"Was... Was anyone... ?" I couldn't bring myself to say it.

Callie nodded, looking like she might cry or scream or vomit. "Most people made it out. Not everyone, though."

I took a long, slow breath, forcing myself to remain calm. I had it rough as a child when my witch powers first appeared, but I couldn't imagine finding out you had witch heritage as an adult only for a tragedy to occur.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," I said.

"I... want to," she said slowly. "Someday. I don't think I can do it now, though. Not here. Not with... these people." She shuddered, and suddenly it felt like red alarm lights were going off in my brain.

"These people?" I prodded. "What did they do? Are they why you haven't contacted me in two years?"

"They take your phone when you join up," she explained. "I didn't... I didn't really have a choice at the time, so I went along with it. They said I'd be safe. They said they'd build me a whole new life."

"Why didn't you call me first?" I asked.

"I'm sorry," Callie said, tears welling in her eyes. "I just— I didn't know what to do after the explosion, and I thought they were going to arrest me, and I didn't want to drag you into this, too!"

I reached out and hugged her on pure instinct, and I felt her shaking in my arms as I did. Her breathing hitched, and I knew she was crying. That was probably good in a way. She needed to let everything out.

"Don't be sorry," I murmured. "You did the best you could, and I should have looked for you sooner. I'm such a dumbass that I didn't think to use the Threads to try and find you until about three days ago. I just assumed you wanted to walk away. You know, after..."

I trailed off. Neither of us needed to relive that.

"No!" Callie insisted, shaking her head as she pulled away from the hug so she could look at me. "We were always in it together."

"We still are," I said, giving her hands a squeeze.

"Give me your phone," she said, beckoning. I handed it to her, and Callie typed for a minute before putting it back in my palm. "That's my number. You'll probably want to use a burner phone just in case they decide to screen my messages, though."

"They screen your messages?" I hissed.

Callie nodded. "Every now and then, yeah. It's supposedly a random thing, but they eventually work their way through everyone and start over again."

"How many people are stuck here against their will?" I whispered.

"Too many," Callie said, shuddering. "We're doing our best to try to warn people, but they keep us as silent as they can when new arrivals are around. At least, the few of us who still have any will to fight left... or haven't been brainwashed."

I paused, taking a deep breath. It was probably better to just bite the bullet and ask what was on my mind, but I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

"Callie..." I said softly. "Did you get taken in by a witch cult?"

Callie swallowed hard.

"Yeah," she said. "I think so."

"Do you know what they want?" I asked.

"I have a general idea," she said, sighing. "I don't know if I can tell you, though. The tattoo won't let me say anything to anyone outside the Collective."

"Tattoo?" My nose wrinkled as I scanned over her body, looking for a design, but I didn't see it until she extended her left arm towards me. The design was decently small, a circle of maybe two inches by two inches, but the placement on the inside of her wrist made it look larger than it was.

It was certainly a sigil. Otherwise, I couldn't tell much. I'd been able to guess at the sigil on Calen's office drawer because there were enough context clues. This? Clueless.

There was no text, so I couldn't tell what the spell wording was, but it was certainly magical in nature. I could feel it in my bones, almost like a low vibration.

"What the fuck is that?" I muttered, moving closer to squint at the design.

"It tracks me," she said. "Anywhere I go, someone else with the tattoo can find my location. Or Calen, if he wants."

"Did he put this on you?" I asked, looking up to meet her eyes.

"He did," Callie said, nodding. "He said it was part of the price for his help."

"Help with... the explosion?" I asked carefully.

"It was bad," she whispered, looking away. "So many people got hurt, or some died, and after I got out there was an investigation. I was so afraid they were going to trace it back to me at the time... but now I'm pretty sure they couldn't have proven anything." She sighed, biting her lip briefly.

I put my hand on her back, gently rubbing circles like I used to when she was stressed. Callie relaxed a little, but not for too long. She scrubbed at her eyes as tears continued to streak down her cheeks, but she kept talking.

"One of the witches from the higher tiers found me, said there was someone who could help make sure that no one came after me," Callie explained. "I was just... I was just so scared that I went along with it."

"And then they brought you to Calen," I said. It was a guess, but apparently a correct one.

"Yeah. And now I'm stuck," she rasped.

"Come with me tonight," I said. "We'll get you out of here! I know a safe house, and—"

"I can't." Callie shook her head, holding up her left arm again. "It won't let me leave the building. A higher-up has to do something to it first."

Well, then, maybe I could figure out what that was.

I reached for my backpack and pulled out the absolutely massive grimoire from inside, immediately starting to flip through pages. Something had to be in here about this. Magical tattoos were uncommon, and the process of creating the ink was an exact science. If it wasn't in here, then it came from someone else's grimoire.

"What's that?" Callie asked, watching as I searched.

"It's Calen's grimoire," I said. "I stole it from his office."

"Wha— how did you get into his office?" she hissed. "Those are the highest security wards in the whole place."

"Long story short, I'm his soul mate," I said absently, flipping the cover open. "I was dating him for a minute, but I think we're definitely breaking up now."

"Oh," Callie squeaked. "So uh... we have a lot to catch up on, huh?"

"We do, but let's see if we can get you out of here first," I said, rapidly flipping pages. "I need to be gone as soon as possible. Basically, as soon as he figures out I took this, I'm done for."

I pulled out my phone to scan pages as I flipped, but I only made it through about ten of them before I decided it was taking too much time. I needed to see if there was any information on the tattoo, and then I needed to leave. Scanning could and would happen later, though it would need to happen fast. If Calen had any good sense, he wouldn't have just warded the office and the drawer. He'd have a tracking sigil on the book similar to the one on Callie's arm.

Scan and destroy. That was the goal.

I frantically flipped through pages until I finally found an illustration of the tattoo. There were several pages of information on the process, the components, and how to tweak the permissions, but none of it was particularly helpful. Someone else with the tattoo, using a designated code word, or the caster themselves had to be the one to alter the permissions, and I was neither.

Had Calen done all these tattoos himself? His Witch's Mark was in the place where the tattoo would be, so I could only assume that he was the caster.

Finally, I came across one small paragraph at the end that described the removal process. My heart was pounding in my chest, spurred on by a very small flicker of hope. Maybe it was possible to get the tattoo off Callie and take her with me tonight.

That hope was almost immediately dashed to pieces, though.

"Dangerous to remove," I said, followed by a streak of curses under my breath.

Of course, of course that bastard would design something that could be put on easily, but not removed easily. From the very vague skim over the text, I could gather that it went on almost like a temporary tattoo, but then the design somehow sank into the skin and became permanent.

"Does it say how, though?" Callie asked, peering over my shoulder.

"There's a paragraph here, yeah, but it says it has to be done within seventy-two hours of application," I said, scanning over the text. "And some of these ingredients for the removal are damn hard to get."

"Let me copy it down," Callie said, standing. She moved to her desk to fish for a notebook and a pen, and then came back to scribble the notes from the grimoire in her own book. "I know it's a long shot, but it might be worth trying. I'm not doing anything else in the meantime, anyways.

"I'm going to show this to a friend of mine," I said, tucking the grimoire back in my backpack. "He might know what to do. I don't really have any experience with magical tattoos, but... Well, he kinda knows everything."

And if Dante didn't know, there was a good chance that Ray would. Between the two of them, they had to have some knowledge that could help Callie.

For now, though, I needed to get out of here. I wanted to stay longer and catch up, but at this point I was a ticking time bomb. The grimoire especially was a ticking time bomb. I needed to make my scans at a place where Calen couldn't get to me right away, preferably not the fourth floor of a building he owned that was full of people loyal to him, and then I needed to eviscerate this book.

I texted Calen that I was getting tired and wanted to head to bed, just like I would have under normal circumstances. He almost immediately responded, asking if I could come over tomorrow. Apparently the meeting was driving him insane, and he was very ready to go to bed.

I wasn't sure if that was an innuendo or if he was actually tired, though.

I told him it might be a couple of days before I could come over, as I felt like I was getting sick. That might buy me a little time, too. I didn't know how often he used his grimoire, so it could very well be a couple of days before he checked the drawer.

Still, it was best to work fast.

After telling Callie goodnight and promising that I would see what I could do about that tattoo, not only for her but for the others trapped here under shitty contracts, I put on my invisibility pendant. Callie opened the door so I could get out, and then she walked down the hall, got some water from the little machine at the end of the corridor, and went back to her room. It was a beautiful cover for my escape down the hallway and out of the building.

I kept the pendant on all the way to where I'd hidden the motorcycle, and then I rode slowly through the darkness, driving without the headlights until I was well out of town. I kept looking behind me, kept checking the Threads around me, but there was no one following.

And, if anyone happened to see a motorcycle driving out of town with no headlights on and no visible rider, I hoped they would either write it off as a dream or a drunken delusion.