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Do not do anything dangerous. Do not come looking for me. I mean that. I have every confidence in both of you, which is precisely why I need you to stay put and look after things here. Send my love to Buffalo.

With great affection and moderate embarrassment, A.

Zani folded the letter and set it on the bar beside the box.

“She didn’t know,” Maida said quietly, “that my dad stayed behind to find her. She assumed he came back here with Will and Zani.”

“No,” Arthur said. “She didn’t know.”

Maida looked worriedly at Arthur, and he put his hand over hers on the bar and left it there as he spoke.

“Your father is not the kind of man who leaves someone he loves behind. And he’s still quite a formidable man, in any era,” Arthur said. “Wherever Amrita is now, Buffalo can’t be far behind.”

Will was still holding the ancient glass bottle. He turned it slowly and held it between his thumbs and index fingers, not examining it so much as listening to it. He stood very still, the way he sometimes did when opening a portal. The fingers not holding the bottle twitched and plucked at the air, like he was pinging the strings of an instrument.

“This is something I can work with,” he beamed. “There’s a strong temporal thread on this. Excellent resonance. Do you hear it?” They all shook their heads to indicate that they could not hear a thing, which did not deter Will in the slightest. “Well, it’s clear as a bell to me,” he said. He looked at Zani. “Part of that is probably because it’s Samhain. We need to get going right away. Like right now.”

“I know, I know!” Zani said, excitedly.

They turned to the door, but before they left, Zani paused and laid a hand on Maida’s arm. “I found something in the Archives, Maida. I didn’t want to get your hopes up. But it was a poem. A very, very old poem that seemed a bit… weird. It was about a bull and a boat.” She let that sit for a moment. “We think maybe it was Buffalo.”

Maida pressed her lips together and bowed her head, processing this. Finally she looked up to meet her friend’s eye. “Go,” she said, “go and find them.”

“Go,” Dan repeated. “Before I ask you all to stay and have another drink.”

Will gripped his shoulder once on the way past. Zani kissed his cheek. Arthur shook his hand with both of his. Maida gave him a hug.

And then all four of them departed, headed their separate ways, out into the Samhain morning. The door swung shut behind them.

Dan was alone again.

He stood in the middle of his tavern and listened to the quiet settling back in around him.

He thought about the director’s letter.

I did not know when I would have another chance to be in the same place as him.

Arthur’s hand over Maida’s. Will, who was already following the thread to the past with Zani right beside him. Six people in pairs, orbiting the person they loved, while he was just floating through life alone.

His eyes went to the shelf. To the book.

He had no idea if Tempest would come tonight. He wanted her to, more than he’d wanted anything in a long time. Possibly more than he’d wanted the tavern, which felt awkward to admit to himself. He wanted to apologize for Bloomington. He wanted to ask her about Fortune, about the bookstore, and about her notes in the margins that he had practically memorized by now.

He was going to have to give her book back. It was the right thing to do. He knew this. But he also wanted to leave it on the shelf where he could see it, where it acted as proof that he wasn’t alone. Somewhere out there was a person who’d fit herself perfectly into his empty spaces.

He wanted her to come, so badly. He wanted her to stay, even more.

A WITCH AND HER DAEMON

The owl sees clearly in the darkest night,

what others miss, she finds.

She carries wisdom, prophecy, and sight

for those with seeking minds.

A familiar knows what her witch cannot,