Vale steps out of her supervisor's car, taking slow breaths as she looks at the building in front of her. It's, on the surface, an out of business coffee shop with shuttered windows and dust so thick that it caused sneezing fits from the parking lot.

  The front door probably weighs less than the padlock securing it, Vale figures, as she watches Willow take it in her hand and force a key into it. Willow brings Vale inside, though, revealing a stripped-down store with only an abstract tile floor and dark brown walls hinting at its former purpose. A dozen people inside are at computers, on the phone, comparing photos, and looking through old spellbooks...

  At least, they were, until all heads turn to Vale.

  She hesitantly raises a hand in greeting.

  Every single person in the building slowly reaches out of sight, or openly reveals one of the migraine-inducing remotes.

  Vale raises her other hand up alongside the first, sweating heavily. She doesn't know what two simultaneous activations of her implant would do, but she isn't willing to find out.

  One man, though, steps forward. He's tan-skinned with salt and pepper hair, and a seemingly permanent expression that merges disinterest and irritation into a lazy frown. "Hello, Sergeant Valley. I'm Special Agent Manuel Garza, and I'm heading this little coalition." He shakes Willow's hand, before his attention falls on Vale. "You don't look like the person your name suggests you to be."

  "...just call me Vale, sir."

  "Mhmm. Krastev explained the situation. You want that legally changed?"

  Vale's eyes widen. "Well, yes sir, but-"

  "Fisher!"

  A voice from the back replies 'on it'.

  "Done. Pick a name. Now that I've done you a favor, you're not going to fuck with me. That's how you occultists work, right?" His thumb casually rubs circles around the panic button in his off hand.

  So much is happening at once, and when mixed with the threat of the button, Vale is getting overwhelmed fast. She tells herself to stay calm, stay focused. "I- W-well, sir, I-"

  "Answer clearly and concisely," he states.

  She squeezes her hands together behind her back. Direct, compliant honesty. That's what worked for her in Magimax. "I will do whatever you ask, but occultists aren't supernaturally or socially bound by favors, sir. It's more of rule within certain groups that I'm not a member of."

  "Uh-huh. In that case, Sergeant Valley, what do you suggest we do with the creep?"

  Willow side-eyes her charge. "She's valuable, and she isn't here to cause trouble. I think it's in everyone's best interest to not antagonize her, and to keep her on our side."

  Garza pauses, but his expression doesn't waver in the slightest. "Fine. Vale, pick a name. You have fifteen seconds, or we're going with Jane."

  Garza starts to count down, as Vale's mind goes white. She spent so long thinking about what she'd have liked to be named in prison, but now, she's drawing a blank.

  "Five, four, three, two-"

  "Laurel!" Vale forces out, turning deeply red at how loud she just was.

  "Fisher, get it changed. Laurel Vale, go assist Nathan. He's the one with the photos. Willow, stay here for a moment. I'd like to have a little chat."

  With a grateful smile flashed to Willow, Vale turns to find Nathan. Fortunately for her, he identifies himself by sneering in disgust, and looks back to a pile of printed photos he's working on. Vale tenderly pulls up a chair to sit next to him, but he wordlessly points to the opposite side of the table. She does as he directs, and silently waits for instruction.

  After a few seconds, he flips around a pair of photos, letting Vale look them over. "I'm a magician. Thing is, I'm not sick in the head, so I can't figure these out. Tell me what's going on with these."

  She looks them over for a few seconds. The first one is carved into hard dirt, the other one drawn on a piece of paper. "One on the left is a necromancy spell for summoning and binding spirits. It's actually a complex, hybridized circle and seal rather than pure necromancy, but-"

  "The other one?" he interrupts.

  "It... well, it isn't actually magic. It's just a doodle, or something."

  "Don't screw with me, corpsefucker. It was found at the site of a ritual killing."

  "I'm not lying. You can tell it isn't anything just by looking at it. It's too inexact to be a spell, it's too complex to be a sigil, it looks nothing like a seal, it doesn't follow incantation cadence patterns, and-"

  "I get it. Already protecting your friends, right? Last chance."

  "I'm- I'm being honest, it isn't-"

  "Wrong answer. It's a known ritual seal, and a very common one. Nice try."

  She looks it over again and again. It's nothing, it's just a circle with some squiggles in it, just someone's joke or bored scrawling. "It bears a passing resemblance to certain kinds of sigils, but-"

  He presses the button. Vale collapses into the ground, curling into the fetal position as she tries to cover her ears from a noise that's coming from inside her. Everything is pain and noise. Vale can't even hear what Nathan is shouting.

  When the screeching stops and the pain relents just enough for Vale to get to her hands and knees, she feels the intense urge to vomit. She knows better than to fight it, especially since she doesn't know where the nearest toilet is anymore.

  Willow, though, takes her hand and pulls her up. "Bathroom's this way. Just hold it in for fifteen seconds."

  Vale struggles against the pain and nausea, stumbling down to the toilet and puking while Willow holds her hair back. After a few minutes, she falls backwards and leans against the divider, catching her breath on the tiled floor. "Shit... shit... Willow, I didn't... It wasn't... please, don't let them put me back. Please, Willow..."

  Vale feels Willow's hand gently holding her shoulder for a moment, before helping her to her feet and guiding her to the sink. Vale rinses her mouth out with the sink water as much as she can, but the taste of bile is hard to shake. With reticence, she creeps around the bathroom door and to the main room with Willow. To Vale, it feels like she's once again being pushed back through those iron doors. She makes a decision. If she's going to be sent back to Magimax, there's another option instead. She's under the effects of the California MBR Director's geas, and by breaking that vow, she'll die. It's an easy vow to break, too.

  She holds her hand above her eyes to block out some of the overhead light as it spears into her eyes. The migraine is still present, even if the worst is over, but Vale struggles through it to speak. "I'm at your disposal..." she mumbles, squinting so as not to puke again.

  Garza stands next to the still-seated Nathan. "Nathan, would you like to tell Vale, or should I?"

  He clears his throat. "I handed you the wrong picture."

  She nods, and it feels like her brain is being slapped against her skull with each motion. "Okay..."

  Nathan sneers once again. "Now get back to it. Lot more pictures to look through, creep."

  "I-" Vale is cut off by suppressing a gag, gasping after as she tries to breath in a way that doesn't feel like dragging sandpaper down her inner ears.. "I'll... I'll try."

  "What the fuck do you mean, try? Need I remind you that you're here at our discretion?"

  She watches through a single cracked open eyelid as Garza snatches Nathan's panic button away, and puts it in his pocket as he points to the door. "Vale, go home for the day. Nathan, you're out. Permanently. As for the rest of my team, I'll assume you've all figured out that it's an emergency measure, and not a fucking shock collar. Our little diabolist here is our best chance at interpreting what the hell all this esoteric nonsense is, so try not to melt her fucking brain."

  Vale stumbles out of the room, and covers her ears and eyes once she's in Willow's car again. Nothing she can do but ride this out...

  The following day has Vale chewing on her lip, already terrified as walks through the door. Her worries are somewhat lessened by being immediately flagged down by a man at a computer in the far corner of the room. If someone needs her, then she has value, right? Vale scurries over, and stands straight with her eyes forward so as not to unnerve the agent.

  He tugs at the sleeve of her dress, which she interprets to mean sitting. She does so, intentionally looking away from his screen so as not to appear as though she's snooping.

  The man sighs. "Okay, I'll be explicit with it. I'm Baker. I'm currently trying to track the exact number of occultist groups in Virginia. I need your help."

  "I... thought we were in Utah."

  He glares at Vale, but his eyes soften slightly when he sees her flinch. With a stifled yawn, he gestures at the door. "We're working nation-wide. We're based here since Utah is more or less free of occult groups. The Mormons ironically give us a layer of separation, since their doctrine forbids it, and they're eager to report anything they find."

  "Oh."

  "Mhmm. Now here's my problem." Baker opens a PDF showing seven pictures of strange symbols: ones Vale can tell are far from the clean geometry of spell circles or the fluid logic of sigils. That only leaves a few options, but she knows what to look for.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Baker continues. "We found these across Virginia. We want to know what magic these correspond-"

  "There's nine, functionally speaking," Vale interrupts, before covering her mouth and preparing for the worst. She only continues after a nod from Baker. "That one," she says, pointing to a picture of a metal disk with a cleanly carved five-pointed star and a sleeping sun in the center, "is a cursemark, specifically for a sleep curse. It can also be cast through a mirror to invert the effect and make it an insomnia curse." She points to another symbol, vastly different that the cursemark, instead being a circle of written incantations and filled with hand-drawn images of bones, the sun, and the moon. "That necromancy divination seal can be used as a temporary reanimation seal as well, if you place a corpse on top of it."

  "...huh."

  She continues, starting to faintly smile, bouncing her knee. "Three of these are fairly basic curses, and all come from the same grimoire, so you can assume that they're all from one group. Two of the curses had the same caster, too, evidenced by the fact the whoever it is was really lazy with the sharp angles. Oh, these other two on the left are halves of a single sacrificial blood spell that instills the life of one creature into another... kind of shoddy work, though, so I imagine they don't have access to anyone with a proper understanding of what they're doing and are working off of memory or a poorly transcribed grimoire. I'd be concerned about the necromancy seal, though. It's well-made, and it's at least partly independently developed, judging by the use of a phrase in the incantation ring I've never seen. Whoever made it is an actual occultist, not some moron with a grimoire. The last one isn't anything illegal, only natural magic. Just a semi-modern druidic protection ritual using the Brazilian style, nothing dangerous."

  Baker leans away from Vale with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. "...what?"

  "Natural magic, you know, working with nature."

  "No, I mean... how the hell do you know all this? I get you're an occultist, but... god damn."

  Vale looks away for a moment. When she was learning everything, it was never for ill intentions. She's never really thought of herself as an occultist, per se, simply a scholar whose studies included the occult. In trying to find a single, harmonious understanding of magic, she went further than the world around her would permit.

  She decides not to phrase it as such, at least, not in full. It would unsettle people to learn just how little remorse she truly felt. Her study of the occult had helped a lot of people, in the end. "I was- I am a scholar of magic. I learned of spells, sigils, natural magic, alchemical principles, everything I could. I wanted more perspectives, though, and my ego led to my study of the occult. Over time, I veered past simply learning of what's public knowledge and went into fully into illegal research where I tracked down and studies grimoires. Once I knew how it worked, though... I started actually using what I learned, to see it for myself."

  "You're what, forty?"

  "Thirty-four. I know, how arrogant could I get, right? I was twenty-three or twenty-four and figured I knew all I had to of high magic, and went diving into the other end of the spectrum."

  Baker nods a few times. "You must have done some pretty bad shit to end up in prison."

  Vale stays silent. She doesn't have a way to answer that without making it sound like she's mitigating her crimes, so she looks away. She's normalized what she was doing so much that it's lost the reflexive revulsion to the occult that she should have. She knows how to enthrall a spirit and trap it inside a corpse as a mindless slave. Even if she never did, that's a repugnant thing to have spent weeks learning about...

  Even if it was just knowledge.

  When Vale gets up from sitting next to Baker, she's next directed to a small table with two people wearing headphones, both plugged into the same device.

  Vale cautiously steps over, not sure what to do with her hands. When one of the two people sees Vale, she taps the other person's shoulder, and both take off their headphones.

  "Occultist," the woman spits. She's on the older side, maybe in her sixties, and clearly hates that Vale is here.

  The other person is a slouching twenty-something in a hoodie, who takes a long puff from a vape pen before saying a quick "Vale."

  Vale looks between them, and sits down across from them. "What can I do?"

  The slouching man offers her the headphones. "We have a recording, but the voice is so faint we're only getting scraps. I'm Xavier, this is Ophelia."

  "I told you not to tell her my name!" Ophelia snaps, and sharply appraises Vale. "I'm a magic researcher and he's my student, but what we're hearing doesn't make sense. It sounds like they're recycling part of a verbalized spell over and over, like a ritual chant. Thing is, there's another voice on top of it that's muddying it. Impossible to tell them apart. Listen for yourself. Maybe you'll recognize your friends."

  Vale ignores the jab, far too used to insults and demeaning words to care. She slips on the headphones, and listens for a bit.

  It's probably at night, since she hears very loud crickets... then the chanting starts. It's very faint, but seems to be an introductory phrase? Then another voice comes in, and it speaks in time with the chant, but it's too faint and too distorted to tell.

  Vale takes off her headphones, and looks away. There is a way to do this, but... shit. She's caught between helping, and keeping up appearances.

  "One moment. Willow?"

  Willow perks up from a corner of the room, tucking away her phone and taking a seat next to Vale. "What's up?"

  "Uhh... Okay, first... Ophelia, Xavier, please don't push the panic buttons."

  "Great start," Xavier quips, but he's not even holding it. Ophelia, though, is holding hers with both hands.

  "Sorry. I've studied some technology magic, and I do know a spell that can isolate the voices. If there's no tech magician here, I could... well, I could cast it."

  Vale awkwardly forces a smile. Ophelia looks like she saw a ghost, while Xavier only shrugs.

  Willow gets up. "Hey, Garza, got a moment?"

  He joins the growing group in the corner, eyes on Vale. "What?" he asks.

  "Do we have a technology magician we can reach out to?"

  "If we did, would I have these two listening to a fucking mp3?"

  "Figured." Willow points to Vale with a thumb. "Well, my parolee here can get what you're looking for."

  Garza's faint irritation slowly morphs into very obvious frustration. "Are you saying we should use black magic to help decipher a recording?"

  "No, god no. Vale knows a normal technology spell that works here. She's trained in spells, sigils, the old magic, all that."

  Garza looks over at Ophelia and Xavier. "Can either of you at least decipher what a technology spells is doing?"

  Xavier nods. "Mhmm."

  "Okay. I'm going to watch too, of course. Just in case Vale tries something stupid and needs a bullet."

  Vale shudders as Xavier gets up and retrieves a few things from a supply closet: a pen, a pencil, a square piece of stiff paper, a ruler, a protractor, and a drafting compass.

  Once she sits back down, Vale hesitantly takes up the compass, and looks up at Garza's looming form. "This could take some time..."

  "I've got plenty," he replies, eyes locked onto her hands.

  With a nod, Vale takes the pen and compass, and starts drawing the major circle. Her palms are sweating, her fingers stiff...

  Willow rests a hand on Vale's shoulder, gently squeezing it.

  With that, Vale truly begins working. She effortlessly complete the circle, and takes the pencil as she starts taking measurements with the ruler and placing small dots within the circle.

  She progresses efficiently, getting through more and more of the dozens of geometric figures she has to shape, along with balancing the inherent logic of mana distribution. Technology magic is tough, because the spell has to be tuned to the specific method of use. Digital recordings are the hardest, but that's to be expected in the current year...

  "Stop," Ophelia demands, looking closer at the spell.

  Vale instantly drops the pencil. "Yes, ma'am?"

  "What the hell are you drawing there?"

  "An isotoxal nine-pointed star... It gets around the-"

  Ophelia lightly slaps her hands to the table, speaking in disbelief. "I have been crafting spells for forty years, and I have never seen someone use one."

  "So, bullet?" Garza asks, not quite joking.

  Olivia shakes her head, and leans back again. "No, but it's piqued my interest. What's wrong with using three triangles? Regular polygons are a lot easier to draw and do the same thing."

  "I haven't cast a spell in over two years, so I want to make this with as few intersecting segments as possible. More room for error. Same approach I take in making formalized sigils."

  "Mmm. To be clear, you're a very experienced magician, tech magician, sigil maker, and necromancer?"

  "...among other things," Vale admits, trying not to look up.

  Garza takes an interest now, and leans in, only a foot away from Vale. "Tell us everything you have some proficiency with, then."

  Vale nods, but doesn't stop her work. Drawing spell circles is calming to her: it's all clean, straightforward calculations. "Let's see," she says, half paying attention. "There's spells, tech magic, three major branches of natural magic, alchemy, ritual creation, object enchantment, a little lithomancy, sigil crafting, and formalized sigil crafting. I'm best with spell circles and object enchantment seals, everything else is relatively shallow, admittedly. That's the legal stuff. Then there's the occult stuff. It doesn't fit into neat categories as well as high magic, but I have a broad understanding there, too. In general, it's anything related to necromancy, enthrallment, curses, hexes, blood magic, summoning and binding... oh, and I know a few forms of casting, too. I can do a few verbal hexes, ritual curses, object cursing... you get it."

  The entire room is deathly silent as Vale finishes the spell circle. "Okay, all set. I'll need two more audio storage devices, please."

  No one moves. Vale looks up, having largely zoned out until now. The faces of horror on everyone stare back, and she quickly drops her head back down. "I... I'm not planning on doing any occult magic, though..."

  Garza sets the two empty audio players down, and folds his arms. "Don't do anything I won't like."

  "Yes, sir." Vale arranges the audio player with the recording into the center of the circle, and the empty ones on either side. With that, she casts the spell. Two swirling blue-green streaks of dim light emit from the device in the center, and pour into the two on the sides, following a pulsing trail of densely packed spellcraft from the circle beneath.

  With that, Vale nods, and plays the now separated sounds one at a time.

  One audio player plays the chanting. The other one plays an incantation. Even with the spell, it's still faint and distorted. Vale can barely get every third word, but it's enough to get the gist. It's something immediately recognizable to her, from a copy of a grimoire she burned after reading.

  "There's good news and two pieces of bad news. The good news is that they're doing the spell wrong. The bad news is that they aren't far off, and the incantation is for... there's no easy way to say this. It's from an incredibly dangerous grimoire known as the Cyprianus, and is for summoning... well, the word 'demon' has had a cultural shift, so I think 'devil' is a better term here."

  Willow looks into the rearview mirror. Vale has been silent, looking out the window with unmoving eyes. It's hard to know what's affecting her, since there's so much that could justifiably be the culprit.

  Still, she has to try something. This is so much worse than the crying was... Vale is probably used to devils and demons or whatever, so it's probably the other thing.

  "Want me to punch Garza for threatening you?"

  "Huh..? I... no, I get it."

  "No. It's bullshit. You're not a prisoner anymore. You shouldn't be subjected to that kind of treatment. You won't, going forward. As your supervisor, it's my job to keep an eye on you. This was my failure as much as it was Garza's. I'm sorry."

  Vale glances up at the mirror, then back out the window. "You're forgiven. Getting threatened like that doesn't bother me anymore. Par for the course, really... what's bothering me is how willing I was to let him kill me, in that instant. It barely even registered with me, just 'oh I might die, but at least I'm doing it out of prison.' I don't know. I've been thinking about my own death since I got out, so maybe I'm just accustomed to the idea."

  "You're not going to die."

  "I'm not stupid, Willow. I know I'm going to be either executed or sent right back to Magimax once I've outlived my usefulness. They don't just let people with what's functionally a life sentence go free."

  Willow pulls into the apartment complex's parking lot, and turns around to look Vale in the eyes. "Do you trust me?"

  Vale matches the eye contact, despite the obvious discomfort behind it. "I don't trust anyone anymore, don't take it personally."

  With a sigh, Willow reaches into her work bag, and withdraws a manilla envelope. "I was going to surprise you with this once I had everything, but I want you to know I was breathing down Fisher's neck today to actually get this done. I know how fast MBR's turnaround on this can be since they change their names all the time, and I wasn't going to let Fisher make excuses."

  Vale skeptically takes it, and checks the contents. A legal name change document for Laurel Vale, marked with an MBR letterhead. A temporary ID card with the name Laurel Vale and an 'F' next to 'Sex', the new one set to mail out in the coming weeks once approved by the state. The paperwork for amending her birth certificate, even, though not yet filled out.

  Willow steps out of the car, and opens the door for Vale. "I know you'll never trust me or anyone at Counter-Magic after everything they put you through. That's justified, and I won't fault you for it. I hope you recognize I'm on your side, though. You saved my life, remember. I'll never forget that. I'm here for you, Laurel."

  Vale steps out, and looks up at the vast sky. "Thank you for this. Genuinely. I... I didn't think they would actually do it."

  "I made sure they kept their word. I hate broken promises."