A hand landed on her shoulder, startling her and breaking her train of thought. Working on instinct, she ducked out of range and reached out to grab her wand, only to register the shop instructor's amused gaze.

"Don't do that!" Machaela huffed, dispelling the magic before the wand could land in her hand.

He chuckled. "It's fun, though."

"Yeah," Machaela muttered. "It'll be fun until I attack you."

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

Shaking his head, he reached past her for one of the tools. "Whatcha workin' on?"

She picked up her current project, a model helicopter, and handed it to him.

"I made a few pieces on the lathe for the rotors, but most of this one is pipe cleaners and rubber bands." She chuckled, "even with all these tools, the old models work best."

Holding the tiny helicopter in his palm, he raised an eyebrow at her. "The old models?"

She shrugged. "I've been making these for years. Why do you think I wandered in here in the first place? An entire room filled with tools and items to tinker with. I came for the tools and stayed for the company."

Machaela had wandered into the shop shortly after she and Jesse had started attending BAG last August, drawn by the sound of metalworking. She had originally come for the tools, but it didn't take long for a friendship to blossom between her and the shop supervisor, Jeff. Now, she saw him as a father figure.

She had struggled at first, battling with guilt at the notion she was replacing Iskandar (with ten years since last seeing her family, "Dad" was more a memory of longing than any real connection). Jesse had found her on the roof one day shortly after she had realized the depth of their friendship, staring into space as she battled whether she could see Jeff as a father, and whether that would be betraying Iskandar's memory. Jesse had helped her realize that not only would it not be betraying Iskandar, but he'd probably find comfort in her having someone she could turn to. "Besides," he'd told her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, "we always called him Grandpa, anyway."

She had laughed at that, laughed at how messed up their lives were and how she'd been struggling all this time with guilt at replacing a man she called Grandpa with a man she thought of as a father. From that point forward, even though she hadn't admitted it to Jeff yet, he was her dad.

"Stayed for the company, didja?" he chuckled at her.

She pulled a face in reply. "'Course," she said with a teasing lilt as she forced a stoic look. "Didn't you know? I'm great friends with Kaboom."

That startled a full laugh out of Jeff. Kaboom was Machaela's nickname for the electronics teacher that thought he owned the place. She'd long ago forgotten his real name, calling him Kaboom because that's what students' grades did when they took his class. Neither of them could stand the guy, hence Jeff's surprised laugh when she claimed friendship with the menace.

"Yeah, like I'm gonna believe that!" he finally replied, still laughing. She broke her stoic expression and grinned as well, but he changed the subject before she could think of a reply. "So is this thing done?" he asked.

"Almost. Here." She held out a hand, silently asking for her mini chopper back. He handed it over, and she added one more rubber band to the rotors and tweaked the angle of the tail.

"Now it's done. Watch this."

Twirling the rotors with her finger to give it a head start, she walked to the middle of the shop to a large patch of open floor space. Checking to make sure no one else was around, she tossed the helicopter a few feet into the air, where the rotors caught the air and it hovered.

With the way she had changed the angle of the tail and how she had fashioned the rotors, all it could do on its own for now was hover for several minutes. She decided to have some fun with it, though.

With a quick glance at Jeff to make sure he was watching the helicopter and not her, she muttered a quick spell under her breath. With a flick of her hand, her mini helicopter hovered its way to Jeff, whose face was priceless, then flitted around the room.

Making the helicopter fly through various sections of the shop, Machaela entertained herself with Jeff's reaction: pure speechless shock that a rubber band and pipe cleaner helicopter could do all that. She hadn't shown off one of her helicopters before.

"Man, Nate would love that," he told her as he watched the chopper. Nate and Missy were his pre-teen children. "How'd you do that?" he asked when the mini chopper finally lost momentum.

Machaela chuckled. "I've told you that before." She wiggled her fingers at him. "It's magic!"

He waved her off. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. When are you gonna give me a real answer?"

Machaela just laughed. When you realize I've never given you a fake one, she answered silently.

Knowing she wasn't going to answer his question, Jeff grabbed the tool he was looking for and moved to the large lathe, while Machaela changed projects and walked to the mill in the corner. Watching Jeff from the corner of her eye, she made sure he removed the chuck key before he turned on the machine.

Every lathe had a chuck, where the piece to be turned down was placed, and the key is what opened and closed the chuck jaws. The key stuck out at a right angle to the chuck and worked rather like a screwdriver. The primary safety rule of the lathe was to never leave the key in the chuck, because if someone turned on the lathe with the key still in it, the thrown key could kill anyone in its path. After a thrown key had barely missed someone the week after she started coming to the shop, Machaela had started habitually checking the chuck keys, whether she or someone else were the one working the lathe. She would have no problem yelling at anyone—even Jeff—if she saw them reach for the ON switch before removing the key.

Jeff had been doing this a lot longer than she had, however, and it was habit for him as well to remove the chuck key. With the chuck key safely out of the lathe, Machaela turned to her own project, and they settled into an easy silence while they worked.

Some time later—Machaela never could keep track of time while in the shop—footsteps snapped her out of her focus. Looking up from the piece of aluminum she was squaring, she waved to another student as he walked to the smaller lathe behind Jeff.

Keeping an ear open in case the new student needed help, Machaela turned back to her own project. She didn't work on it long, though. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as instinct sounded the warning.

She whirled around, expecting some kind of monster attack, only to see nothing amiss. Jeff was still at the larger lathe, and the new student—Connor, she thought his name was—was readying his project on the smaller lathe.

Habitually, she watched Connor as he finished readying his project and turned to grab something behind him—leaving the key in the chuck. Machaela turned off the mill and started walking quickly toward him. She wouldn't yell, yet, though she probably should. He hadn't reached for the ON switch.

She was three steps away when he turned around and, without even glancing at the chuck, reached down to flip on the machine.

"NO!"

She was too late; the lathe was on, and Connor wouldn't be able to react fast enough to turn it off.

Adrenaline spiked, and time slowed down, but the lathe sped up, turning away from Connor. The key would fly toward Jeff, who hadn't reacted to her yell yet.

Allowing instinct to take over, magic flowed.

"Shfonkh." Redirect.

The glyph glowed briefly in the air before flying at the speeding chuck key, sending it off course just before it would have hit Jeff squarely in the back. As it was, it grazed his shoulder before impaling itself handle-deep in the quarter-inch-thick steel backstop of the larger lathe.

Machaela shook herself out of the memory. She couldn't lose these demons, especially with how close she was to the school. Passing BAG had probably been what prompted the memory, which had been so real she grinned at "hearing" Jeff's voice again. He had moved to Brooklyn right before she started at BAG, and he never really lost the rural Tennessee accent. Having lived in Egypt or New York most of her life, she found his accent amusing.

Forcing herself to jog a little faster, she maintained most of her focus on tracking the demons that had gotten away from Brooklyn House as a small part of her thoughts finished the memory.

Time had sped back up as soon as the key impaled the back of the lathe, but she had frozen, overcome with the what ifs. Connor had turned off the lathe as soon as she had screamed, which meant silence reigned as she stared.

Jeff finally reacted, clutching at his arm as he hit the emergency stop on the lathe, and that was what hit the play button on Machaela. All her first aid training kicked in, and figuring out how badly he was hurt overrode her shock. Even then, it had taken days before she had been able to hear the incident mentioned without having to leave the room, and she still flinched when the topic came up months later. She knew Jeff had noticed something up, as she had caught him studying the trajectory that evening. The key had hit nearly two feet away from where physics said it should have. He hadn't said anything aloud, but the calculating look he had sent her said it all. He knew she had done something that day; he just didn't know what or how.

She turned a street corner and headed back away from the school as she allowed herself to wonder what Jeff was doing at that moment. Two and a half years after graduation, they still kept in regular contact, though she hadn't been able to introduce her siblings yet. Even having met her dad and the rest of her family the previous year, she still considered Jeff her father, or one of her fathers. After all, DNA would show her no more Lee's daughter than it would Jeff's. All that mattered was connection.

She huffed in frustration as the trail doubled back on itself, then cut through a shady alley—the kind of Brooklyn alley she probably shouldn't be walking through alone. They'd finally finished freshman year of college and were spending a week in Brooklyn before going to camp. One of the trainees' spells had backfired, and her brother and sister had opted to track the much larger group that broke away toward Queens, while she got the half-dozen that went deeper into Brooklyn. She hurried through the alley before any of the shadows along the edges could decide to materialize, then turned south again, following the trail. She was getting close.

Two more turns and another sketchy alley later, she started hearing a scuffle. With her staff in one hand and the other poised to grab her wand, she picked up her pace, sprinting around the final corner to finally catch up to the demons.

She expected half a dozen mutant Swiss Army hybrids meandering in a general direction in an attempt to find a meaner monster to team up with. What she found was half a dozen demons and three other demons she recognized from Greek myth tag-teaming a mortal man. They probably couldn't hurt the guy—the same way celestial bronze couldn't hurt a mortal—but it had to be freaking him out. Who knows what he was seeing through the Mist. She just hoped he saw them as something to be feared; otherwise, he would probably call the police as soon as she attacked.

She planned a moment before jumping in. The Egyptian demons she could take out without any problem, but none of her spells would work on the Greek demons. She would have to use her sword, which would also mean she probably couldn't battle both at the same time. She decided to take out the Egyptians ones all at once and hope the spell didn't hamper her reflexes for killing the other three.

The easiest way to do that would be to use Divine Words, so she switched her staff to her left hand and called up her sword. When she killed the Egyptian demons, the Greek ones would turn on her in a moment, hopefully giving the mortal a chance to run.

Taking a deep breath, she lunged into range.

"Jro soe." Conquer six.

The glyph glowed in the air before dispelling all six demons as she thrust her staff back into the Duat and attacked the Greek demons.

She had no idea what the demons were called, and honestly only recognized them as Greek because they definitely weren't Egyptian. They were about two feet tall, fast, strong, and downright ugly. Bes would have been jealous, she thought with a grin.

She killed one just as she realized the other two had split. Ugly #1 remained focused on her, while Ugly #2 had decided to go back to harassing the mortal.

She delivered a hard kick to the one focusing on her, pushing it back and giving her a change to lunge between Ugly #2 and the mortal, who had frozen, staring at her.

"Dude, run! They don't want you. They want me, and they'll use you to trap me!"

Using a complex series of parries and slashes, she moved Ugly #2 back, giving herself more room to maneuver and giving the man an open path down the street and away from the fight. When she glanced back a minute later, he had disappeared, and she breathed a sigh of relief. This would go much easier without having to protect an innocent.

Though it was still two on one, without confined to keeping between the monsters and an innocent, Machaela made quick work of the monsters. Ugly #1 tried to sneak up behind her and received a pommel to the face. A few minutes later, Ugly #2 lunged, trying to sneak under her guard but impaling itself on her sword and dissolving into dust instead.

She remained alert a moment, adrenaline still humming as she made sure the monsters were truly gone. When no more enemies appeared, she let herself relax, putting her sword away and resting her hands on her knees as she caught her breath.

Then a hand rested on her shoulder.

Hello, my readers! Welcome to my newest little story. Hope you enjoyed the first of three chapters, and don't forget to review! :D