Needless to say, I didn't exactly come back to a joyous reception.

I rode the motorcycle right up into the garage attached to the safe house, and the noise alone was enough to wake up everyone who was asleep. Considering they didn't know I'd even left, the first thing Ray did was run down to the garage and try to stop me from leaving... only to realize I was coming back, not going out.

Mom gave me the tongue-lashing of the decade when I got back inside and dumped the backpack onto a chair, but at least it didn't last long. Ray, surprisingly, didn't complain.

"I did worse as a younger man," he said with a shrug and a wince, "and you're back safely. I'd like to hold my judgement until I hear the rest of the story."

It was about three in the morning, so I hoped the story wouldn't take too long. I wanted to sleep as much as they probably wanted to get back to their sleep.

Dante came out from the bedroom, too, but he was just silently grumpy. I could read the look on his face well enough to guess what he was thinking. He certainly wasn't happy that I'd gone out, but he'd always said that it was my life and my choice. I liked that about Dante. He never tried to force me into anything, even if he didn't agree with what I wanted.

"Please tell me the trip was worth whatever trouble you got into," Dante said.

"Yes," I said, already opening the backpack. "I've got the names and contact information for everyone in the Collectives, not just in Virginia, either. There was a binder with every witch in the United States who's involved in this bullshit."

Dante's eyes went wide.

"I really, really hoped you weren't going to try something like this," he said with a sigh. "I'm impressed, though."

"Impressed is putting it lightly." Ray said, letting out a low whistle. "We've been trying to get in there for ages— you're a rock star!"

He smiled brightly and held up his hand for a high five, which I gladly returned. Mom didn't seem entirely pleased by my decisions, but I could tell she was holding back a smile. That wasn't even all I had to tell them, either.

"And—" I said, fishing in my bag, "I got this, too."

"What... is...?" Dante asked, squinting at the gigantic book.

"Calen's grimoire," I explained. "We need to make copies, and then we need to burn it. I'm almost finished making scans of it on my phone, but not yet."

"Good plan," Mom agreed.

"Burn it?" Dante asked. "Why burn it? Can't we use it as is?"

"No witch worth their salt will keep a grimoire without a tracking device on it. We've likely got no more than the night before he figures out it's missing," Mom said. "Could be less."

"Not likely," I said. "He's stuck in some mind-numbing upper echelon meeting, and

"And the magic won't... I don't know, he can't digitally trace the scans?" Dante waved his arms as he talked, like it might help him figure out how to phrase his quesrion.

"He asks good questions," another voice said. I turned towards the living area and realized something I hadn't noticed before: there was someone sitting in one of the high-backed armchairs.

An older woman with short, curling, snow white hair stared over at us, her beaded glasses chain glinting in the lamp light, knitting needles in her hand and a ball of yarn in her lap.

"... Why is Grandma here?" I asked, stopping mid-step.

"We thought it might be best if all of us relocated for a little bit," Mom said with a shrug. "Just in case."

"I mean, good plan," I said slowly, "but... uh..." I cut my eyes towards the far bedroom, the one Ray was staying in.

"Everyone here will be on their best behavior. Trust me," Mom said, and though she was smiling, her tone was absolutely steely. No one argued with Mom when she used that tone, not even Grandma.

Frankly, I wasn't ready to address it yet.

"Dante," I said, wanting to change the topic as quickly as possible. "Have you ever seen anything like this?" I flipped open the grimoire to the page with Callie's tattoo. Dante came a little closer, standing behind me and looking at the book over my shoulder.

"Not specifically, no, but I've seen tattoos that use this ink before. They're incredibly dangerous," he said, brow furrowing.

"Calen's using these to control people he's coerced into his weird witch cult," I said. "The sigil itself is annoying, but the ink is what concerns me. It says it can't be removed after seventy-two hours, and I really don't get why."

"I'm sorry— cult?" Ray interjected. "Where did I miss the transition between sketchy operations and cult?"

"I may have forgotten to mention that I found a friend while I was there," I said, turning to Mom. "Callie."

Mom gasped. "What's she doing there? She isn't a witch—"

"I'll explain more later. Right now, I need to know how to get this tattoo—" I said, pointing at the page once more, "—off her arm."

Dante bent over the book, scanning the pages. He flipped back and forth a couple of times until he finally pointed to one paragraph, leaning in a little closer. I couldn't read Calen's shitty, chicken scratch writing from far away, but I could see that it was the recipe for the ink itself. I'd looked at all the other parts of the spell, but I'd only skimmed the ink recipe. Some of the ingredients, like the ones in the reversal spell, were incredibly difficult to obtain. In fact, a few of them were things I'd never even heard of, and I wondered for a moment if they might be ingredients from Sylvan lands.

"Fuck," Dante swore, finally looking up. "This is a living ink tattoo."

"What... does that mean?" I asked, looking to Ray and Mom. They both shrugged, but Grandma perked up.

"Those haven't been used since I was a girl," she said, tilting her head. "It's an old Sylvan recipe that they used to brand witches as criminals. It kept them from crossing the Veil."

"Grandma—" I began, expecting it to be a biased myth.

"No, she's right," Dante said. "It happened to some Sylvans as well, but exile is rare for Sylvan criminals. Part of the reason they developed the ink is because it can't be removed and the conditions can be altered at any time, but the ultimate effects were... inhumane," he said, shuddering.

"Like what?" I hissed. What the fuck had they put on Callie's arm? What trouble was

"A tattoo like that puts roots into your body the longer its in your skin. The magic grows into you, and if given long enough, it'll turn the bearer into a puppet," he said, humming. "How long has she had it and where is it on her body?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "Maybe a couple of years, max."

Dante sucked in a breath through his teeth.

"To get that out after that long, you'd have to carve out a chunk of her arm, and they did it right over the veins, too." He shook his head, lips pressed in a thin line. "Worst case scenario, the whole hand would have to go."

"Fucking hell," I swore, squeezing my eyes shut.

"The good news is that two years with that on your arm isn't enough to turn anyone into a puppet. She'd have to have it for a good century or more for it to take hold to that extent," he offered.

"Well, that's good, at least. There's not any other way to get it off her?" I asked, wincing.

Dante shook his head sadly.

"If we had a Sylvan healer on hand, we could do it. It would be painful, but she'd live and get to keep her arm.," he said. "It would be difficult to coordinate, though. We'd have to get her past the wards and out to where someone could heal her, do the cutting, and then do the healing before anyone knew she was gone."

"Could you do it?" I turned to look up at him, surprised to find him closer than I realized.

"I could," he said, nodding once. "If we can get her out of the building."

"I'll work on it," I said, already putting together plans in my head. Granted, half of them most certainly wouldn't work, but I might as well go through all the bad ones before I worried about any of the good ones.

I had to get her out of there. There was no way on earth that I would leave my best friend in a place like that, especially knowing she could, at some point in her life, be turned into a magical puppet.

There had to be a way, and I would find it.