Yeounui, translated as the Fox-sister.

  A korean folklore about a fox that takes the shape of a girl, worming itself into the hearts of an elderly couple who had always been holding out for a daughter. Every night, it covers its arms in sesame oil and plucks out the liver of cattle through their anuses.

  Small children then the adults. Then the brothers. Lastly, the parents.

  Nearby villages become a chain of ghost towns. A chilling tale of what happens if monsters are left unchecked.

  Only the eldest son survived because he had moved to a different village. When he returns, he’s able to exorcise the Yeounui.

  His wife hands him three gourds. Yellow, red, and blue. Each with the power of thorn, fire, and water.

  I threw the coin into the circle hoping it would summon Yeounui.

  Before the lights went off, I saw thorns.

  Thick vines sprouted to life, gnarled branches as thick as my arm and veritable stakes meant to stab not prick. The bramble extended out of the circle, passing by me and barricading the half-open door behind me. Made of crackling miasma –black and yellow– the plant construct hummed with undeniable presence.

  The lights went off and my world became hues of blue and outlines of night. But I could still see.

  “The norigae.” Assad hadn’t moved.

  “You–”

  “It’s allowing you to see in the dark.” He mused, arching a thick eyebrow. “I thought I’d do you the favor of helping you use it to your advantage.”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps I wish to change my bet.” Assad’s ruby ring reflected light though there was no light. He nodded towards the door wedged shut by the thorns. “Though I won’t be getting in their way.”

  “Why?” I hissed, stronger than before.

  Assad gave no indication that my question, nor the tone with which I poised them, bothered him. “Because–”

  “Yeah, debts and obligations.” I shut him out, realizing that it didn’t matter why at the moment. The point was getting out of here.

  “Burn it.” A woman’s voice called out from behind the door and I jumped in place.

  “It’s charmed.” A man this time, with words accented between European and Middle Eastern.

  “Then send your Familiar first.”

  There was a second’s delay in the response. “Thought he couldn’t use magic yet.”

  “Are you scared?” She said incredulously. “He probably made a pact with a devil or demon. But this was his trump card.”

  Assad shook his head next to me. “Practitioners these days, so lacking in imagination. Ah, there it comes.”

  Three ghastly figures came gliding through a section of the walls about fifty feet down.

  The familiar was constructed of a man, a woman, and a little girl in a spotted white dress –presumably a family and all long dead.

  Burn scars tainted their white-blue ghost skin and half of the girl’s face was captured in midst of it being sloughed off. The man’s face was covered in flames with only the eye sockets visible. The mom was the worst: hands, legs, face –everything had melted into some floating goop that was wrapped protectively around her daughter.

  “What the fuck.” I swore.

  “Ah, one of the Wickermen.” Assad said dryly. “Are you sure you do not wish to accept my offer?”

  I thought about it for maybe zero-point-two seconds. “Debt?”

  “Obligation only.” He shook his head.

  “You set me up. You owe me. You broke your oath to my mother.”

  “I did nothing of the sort. If anything, it can be argued that your mother was the one who set you up, Jain Shin Hallow.” He studied his nails, unconcerned. “It may be best if I make my leave. If I remain, they will call in obligations for aid in some way. I should have a conversation with my Nucai about her loose-lipped ways.”

  Then he was gone.

  Leaving me alone with the siamese brady bunch.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The little girl pointed at me. 'Burn.'

  My vision blurred with sudden heat as smoke poured into my lungs. I gasped, choking in fistfuls of fresh air only to find more smoke with every inhale. Tears began to pour out my eyes, hot air stinging the sensitive exposed flesh.

  I fell to my knees immediately.

  'Burn.' The man whispered.

  Heat rose from the asphalt around me, superheating the air and warping everything in sight. Fiery winds swirled, rising and rising.

  Panic froze all but the instinct of trying to breathe. My hands stumbled around the floor, my hoodie pouch, my pants –anything.

  The mom’s mouth opened impossibly wide, a tongue made of fire snaking out around her neck. 'Burn.' She hissed.

  I tore off the second coin from the Yeounui’s norigae and chucked it at the familiar.

  No circle. No chant. Just desperation.

  The coin passed through the dad’s body and evaporated somewhere between his neck and belly. He looked down, the daughter and mom turning to look at their translucent family member.

  All three opened their mouths in agony as it began to rain.

  In the story, the gourd had summoned an ocean. With the coin, I had expected a little less but still along the same scale as the bramble of thorns. But without a circle or a chant, the trinket created nothing more than a sprinkler’s worth of water.

  It was enough. Ice cold rain pelted the ghost and every impact was a sputter, a hiss of steam and pain.

  The heat was gone. I could breathe again. I could see again. The air wasn’t warped from the false sensation of being caught in a fire –which was what the ghost familiar had done. Nothing had been real, just the vicarious experience of being trapped in a fire.

  But the rain wasn’t going to keep it busy for long. The shower was dwindling to a trickle and only seconds had passed.

  I turned and ran towards the staircase, the one Abigail had pointed out. It was a stupid choice. After all, she got me here in the first place. But she had also been the one to warn me. Not only that, I had a feeling there had not been a lot of choice for her in this matter at all.

  I climbed the stairs two at a time, no real strategy in mind. This must have been a factory at one point, not a lot of warehouses had ceilings low enough to dedicate space to a whole other floor. Which meant that there had to be an office space.

  In the old days, when CEOs wore uniforms and OSHA helmets, they didn’t sit in a comfy office chair on top of their skyscrapers. They were working men, with an idea, and real money riding on their endeavors. Factories had dedicated offices, so that stakeholders could keep an eye on how things were going.

  I fell over the top stair, skinning my hands and ripping the knees from my sweats. I ignored the stinging pain and rushed into the hallways. I wasted no time, trying every single doorknob and praying that one of them was unlocked.

  In the end, frustration won out over caution. I found a doorknob that rattled the most and hammered it down with the handle of my gravity knife.

  It worked. The doorknob fell away and I was in.

  I closed the door and stuck my shoe against the bottom as a doorstop. My scared lizard-brain wrestled with the human part, trying to convince me to continue running and that jumping out the window was a viable option. The snow would break my fall. I could limp away. Anything to get away from that horrible ghost.

  But I tuned it out, crouched down and brought out a piece of chalk from my backpack.

  The knowledge of my mom’s familiar ritual was still fresh.

  I began to draw.

  Thirteen triangles with the bases laid on top of each other, creating a circle on the inside with thirteen tips pointing outside. Then another circle intersecting all the tips on the outside.

  “Where is he?” She sounded closer than before. They were inside now. “Upstairs?”

  “Wait.” The man grunted, likely stepping over the giant thorns in the doorway. “Look.”

  I kept drawing, trying to concentrate on the twelve chinese characters that had to go inside the triangles.

  Ja, rat. Chuk, cow. In, tiger. Myo, rabbit.

  “What is that? Water?” Her footsteps clicked against the floor; she was wearing heels. “How?”

  “Could be traps.”

  “He was inducted into the practice yesterday.” Worry entered her voice. “What traps?”

  Jin, dragon. Sa, snake. Oh, horse.

  “He could have summoned something. Devils, like you said.”

  “Maybe the fae lawyer helped him.”

  “No, trap for us.” The man hissed.

  Mi, sheep. Shin, monkey. Yu, rooster. Sul, dog.

  “I can look. I can avoid the traps too.” The third voice of a teenager. By sheer virtue of things always going sideways, I assumed it to be the woman’s familiar. They were both Practitioners.

  Hae, pig.

  “Go, scout the area.” She ordered.

  “Can I cut him?”

  “Yes.”

  Instinct told me that this wasn’t normal. My third eye kept spinning, trying to look at the circle in different angles. It looked wrong. My mom had modified the ritual circle somehow, and this Familiar was one of the danger factors everyone kept referring to when talking about my parents.

  The deeper I found myself in this situation, the more I didn’t know who she was.

  Then again, did I ever know who she had been?

  “Can I kill him?”

  “Yes. But bring the body.”

  I cut my thumb on my mom’s gravity knife and pressed the blood against the circle.

  The circle pulsed with life and I felt power drain out of me. Common sense told me using my blood to power these circles wasn’t sustainable. That I’d be bled dry before seeing Santa stuck on the chimney.

  But this circle didn’t need ingredients precisely for that reason. I was the ingredient.

  Assad was a fool, even if he knew how the circle worked, he wouldn’t be able to use it.

  Inky blobs rose up in a fountainous display of liquid state, solidifying into two different shapes.

  A black cat, and a black koi carp, both decorated with gold.

  The cat turned its golden orbs on me. It wore a green bojagi wrapped around the torso. “Oh, this should be good.”