I rushed out of the office, keeping my eyes downcast so as to not see anything more than what I already saw.

  Just like before, all the lights were off. From the office, to the hallways, and finally the parking lot. Even the elevator light was flickering on the way down. Luckily, the hummer was waiting for me and I got in.

  The driver’s side was still blocked off.

  He began to drive.

  “Soooo,” I said, in an attempt to make conversation, “If I wanted to scoot over a seat, do I need my passport? Or just my Real ID?”

  Radio silence.

  Which was fine with me. Chatter would only add on to the events of today, and I could feel the gears in my head creaking under the weight. There was a lot.

  Tired. So tired.

  I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke, the hummer was sitting idle. Four thousand lumens of highbeam illuminated the sign which read ‘Brooklyn Mobile Home Park’.

  …Trailer park? Since when was there a trailer park in Brooklyn?

  I didn’t even know there were trailer parks in New York.

  I guess it made sense. Brooklyn was similar to Manhattan, where even walking one block over gave you front row seats to what wealth disparity looks like in the twenty-first century.

  My own imagery of Brooklyn is not too different. The new wave of college-educated yuppies invading the old souls of Brooklyn, many of whom would rather hear the occasional gunshots at night rather than see rent increases –it’s just like everywhere else in New York.

  “Wait, is this the right place?” I asked, not expecting an answer. I doubled checked with the address on the business card.

  It was here.

  The hummer moved again, driving into the trailer park as if it was waiting for my confirmation. We drove deeper in, high beams lighting the way and avoiding the tall silhouettes of RVs all around us. I rubbed the tiredness out of my eyes, taking a closer look through the chain-link fences. Fat globules of cotton-candy snow were still falling, though the wind had died down.

  The whole experience woke me up more than it should have. I lived in an RV, back when my mom was alive.

  Huh, I forgot about that.

  We stopped in front of one of the larger mobile homes in the entire place; an actual motor coach the size of a school bus. The number matched the one on the business card.

  Piles of snow transformed the mobile home into an alpine peak. Bits of gray peeked out wherever the headlights shone. Unlike the other RVs, which were parked in pairs of twos and threes, this one occupied a pretty big patch of land all by its lonesome.

  Something about it was setting me on edge. I can’t put an exact finger on it, but I was picking up a sort of quiet humming –a vibration?– coming from its general area. Not only that, I kept finding myself looking away from it without meaning to, and reminding myself that it was indeed what I came for.

  “I’m gonna go now.” I quickly gathered my things. “Um. Thanks for the ride.”

  Still, no answer.

  I sucked in a breath, steeling myself for the inevitable freeze and the mental weight of going through with what was akin to insanity. Yeah, I believed that everything that happened was real. My Third Eye made sure of that. Either that, or I needed to get some tinfoil hats.

  For all I knew this could all be a hallucination. High on drugs… or my real-self was banging his head on a cushioned wall.

  I shoved those thoughts aside, and trudged across the foot-deep of snow to the mobile home,

  Crossing the space between the hummer and the RV was torture. But inside?

  It was warm, which wasn’t what I had expected. Dare I say it? Cozy. Lived-in. Homey.

  There were candles burning in fancy little glass cups, illuminating just enough of the space for me to walk without bumping into things.

  Windows lined the walls, and pushed up against the wall below it was a wooden desk. Wooden floors, a small coffee table, and a leather recliner couch for one –it was straight out of a magazine for ‘cozy getaways’.

  I walked in, studying the place further. Out of curiosity, I traced a finger on one of the shelves. No dust. Spotless clean.

  Past the pseudo living room was an alcove kitchen. A working stove –a real one, not one of those snooty induction ones– a fridge stocked with water bottles, bread, coldcuts, and fruits. There was also a box of cup noodles. Boxes and boxes of them.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  There was more. A bedroom, a loft bed with clothing racks underneath, and an actual bathroom.

  It was loads better than my apartment. In any other circumstances, I would have been leaping for joy.

  Instead, I walked over to the bookshelf I had been purposefully avoiding. I was hungry, but that could wait.

  The bookshelves couldn't.

  Collections of Fairfolk

  Musok: Bestiary

  Musok: Shamanism

  Witch of Endor

  Prerequisites: Standard

  Shamanism: Spirits

  Shamanism: Great Ghosts

  Shamanism: Demonic Spirits

  Shamanism: Mythical Beasts

  Shamanism: gods

  “Holy shit.” I swore.

  Shamanism? Gods? Ghosts? What the fuck?

  I gently picked up the Witch of Endor and ran my head over the leather binding. Smooth and rough at the same time. I frowned. Bits of the cover kept prickling my hand.

  There was a protrusion there. I pulled it, revealing a silky black strand of–

  I dropped the fucking book as goosebumps erupted over my arm.

  Hair. Human Hair.

  The goosebump spread from my neck to my cheek.

  “Jesus.” I cursed.

  The RV felt very empty.

  And I felt very alone.

  Unlike before, it felt dark now. The candles weren’t enough anymore.

  My heart began to race and I quickly walked over to the kitchen. The air felt so cold and I kept resisting the urge to turn around. Or look outside the window. Or any mirrors. Too many fucking horror movies began like that and after everything that happened, my decision-making skills were a wreck.

  There were more candles in the cabinets, dozens of them. The panic-ridden part of my mind screamed at me to light all of them, to make this place as bright as Long Beach on the 4th of July. I wasn’t so stupid as to actually listen, but I did light a good number of them until the room felt safe again.

  I went back to browsing.

  Death: Ghosts, Haunts, Wites

  Death: Necromancy

  Death: Wake

  Necromancy Tales

  Skinwalkers and the Like across Cultures

  Fables: Parallelism between East and West

  Totemism

  My heartbeat was getting louder and louder.

  Arcanum: Condicio sine qua non

  Arcanum: Instrumentum

  Courts of the Fae

  Genesis: Adam, Lilith, Eve

  Genesis: Cain, Abel, Seth

  Nephilim

  Demons & Devils

  Infernal Names

  Infernal Contracts

  Sleep, Dreams, Denizens of the Ethereal Lands

  History of Society

  Prerequisites: Staffs and Trinkets

  A dozen more.

  Shelves full of dozens of these kind of books.

  Half of the books weren’t even in English. Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Latin… and other illegible writing that I had no idea of identifying. If I had to guess? Dead tongues.

  And this was my parent’s safehouse.

  If Practitioners thrived on knowledge, I could only guess at how much more my parents had. How much more the Baeks and the Valentines had. How many books had been written about this whole world hidden under the surface of the modern world, that could fill multiple libraries and then some.

  And I was a part of it.

  So I showered. A steaming hot shower that nearly blistered my skin, washing away all the stickiness from the incident at the cafeteria. Then I changed into spare clothes I found in the bedroom: gray hoodie and black sweatpants. Then I fixed myself up a sandwich, mixing bologna, salami, and turkey; with plenty of mustard and mayo.

  I walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out all the books I might need, putting them on a heap on the coffee table next to my sandwich. Then I sat down on the floor next to it, and opened Prerequisites: Standard.

  I got to work.