Ivy was watching me when I opened my eyes. I gave her a mirthless smile and turned away. Slowly my second sight diminished to nothing, overwhelmed by my usual vision. “Locked down tight,” I said as her aura seemed to vanish. “Don’t try to cross it. It’ll hurt.”

She nodded, her placid face solemn. “You’re—witchier,” she said slowly.

I smiled, pleased. Why not let the vamp see the witch had teeth, too? Taking the smallest copper mixing bowl, about the size of my cupped hands, I set it over the lit campfire-in-a-can that Ivy had bought for me earlier. I had used the stove for crafting my lesser spells, but again, a working gas line would have left an opening in the circle. “Water …” I murmured, filling my graduated cylinder with spring water and squinting to make sure I read it properly. The vat sizzled as I added it, and I raised the bowl up from the flame. “Mouse, mouse, mouse,” I mused, trying not to show how nervous I was. This was the hardest spell I had tried outside of class.

Ivy slipped from the counter, and I stiffened. The hair on the back of my neck rose as she came to stand behind my shoulder but still out of the circle. I stopped what I was doing and gave her a look. Her smile went sheepish and she moved to the table.

“I didn’t know you tapped into the ever-after,” she said, settling before her monitor.

I looked up from the recipe. “As an earth witch, I don’t very often. But this spell will physically change me, not just give the illusion I’m a mouse. If something gets in the pot by accident, I might not be able to break it, or end up only halfway changed … or something.”

She made a noncommittal noise, and I set the mouse hair into a sieve to pour milk over. There is an entire branch of witchcraft that uses ley lines instead of potions, and I had spent two semesters cleaning up after one of my professor’s labs so I wouldn’t have to take more than the basic course. I had told everyone it was because I didn’t have a familiar yet—which was a safety requirement—but the truth of it was, I simply didn’t like them. I’d lost a good friend when he decided to major in ley lines and drifted into a bad crowd. Not to mention my dad’s death had been linked to them. And it didn’t help that the ley lines were gateways to the ever-after.

It’s claimed the ever-after used to be a paradise where the elves had dwelt, popping into our reality long enough to steal human children. But when demons took over and trashed the place, the elves were forced to bide here for good. Of course, that was even before Grimm was writing his fairy tales. It’s all there in the older, more savage stories/histories. Almost every one of them ends with, “And they lived happy in the ever-after.” Well … that’s the way it’s supposed to go. Grimm lost the “in the” part somewhere. That some witches use ley lines probably accounted for the longstanding misinterpretation that witches aligned themselves with demons. I shudder to think how many lives that mistake had ended.