“I’m not going to throw it at you. I said some people weaponize them. I don’t because I’m not interested in hurting people.”

She raised her hand to her pursed lips and blew on the ball. It floated in a straight line, never wavering, until it reached the tree. It melted into the dry, dead bark like warm wax. Zed watched as the branches overhead sprouted tiny green buds that would eventually become leaves. He stood, his eyes following the healthy flush of life that seemed to be traveling through the surface of the tree like a blush. His head whipped toward her, an expression of wonder lighting his face.

“It was dead.”

She shrugged. “It was sleeping. It just needed a little boost to fight off the moss.”

Zed reverently ran his fingers over the healing bark. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Well, there’s really no real-world name for my discipline. I just sort of pieced together techniques from bits here and there, including stuff I read on comic book forums. I’m really more of a half-assed superhero than a witch. And I’m not the only one, but I’m one of the best.”

“It’s just so hard to believe.”

“The guy who can turn into a bear has a hard time believing I can manipulate air and light?”

“Point taken. So how do you use this for the League?”

“Well, Dr. Ramsay informs me that the rift is de-stabilizing. That it’s leaking energy and causing some issues? She said there was some super-secret rift-related appendix to her book that I would have to sign about ten non-disclosure agreements to read,” she said.

“It’s one of the universe’s little jokes. The very thing that drew shapeshifters and fae to the Bayou in the first place, the thing that made us feel that this place was a safe haven. We feel anxious if we get too far away from it . . . which is kind of screwing us over. The very thing we need is causing us all kind of headaches,” Zed said.

“In my experience, the universe can be a real asshole like that.”

Zed chuckled. “The League has some sort of ‘advanced math’ guy tracking the patterns to make sense of it, but yeah, we started noticing little differences about thirty years ago. Babies with magie gifts being born into families where every single family member was human. And trust me, we’re sure nobody was bouncing on the wrong side of the sheets. We’re getting shifters and fae breeds we’d never seen before. You ever heard of an aswang?”

“I’m not really as familiar with shapeshifters as I probably should be, considering that I work for them . . . ”

“Well, it’s just as scary as it sounds. Imagine a toddler running around town, turning into a tiny bat-monster-ghoul thing in the cereal aisle, when his mom won’t get him Fudge Marshmallow Sugar Pops.”