Logan Bennett had learned to hide her hands. When feelings hit hard, her fingers turned to smoke, and smoke could pass through a locked door or betray her before she ever reached the veil. That veil was the whole reason she stayed. Somewhere past it, in the underworld, waited the one memory that would tell her why she carried this curse at all. But that morning she was not chasing memories. She was chasing sleep she wouldn't get. She had run errands for her aunt since before dawn, and her arms ached. Aunt Ronnie called from the back of the shop, where cursed vials bubbled on iron shelves. She was Logan's aunt, a small woman with black and gray hair pinned in a knot, and she never once looked up from her cauldron. "I need a wyvern tooth, girl. Fresh, not the powdered rot they sell at market. My potion won't set without it." Logan leaned against the counter to steady herself. "You want me to pull a tooth from a wyvern." "I want you to come back with one." Ronnie waved a wooden spoon like it settled the matter. Shallen sat behind the counter with a book open in her lap. She was the elf who ran the register, white hair spilling over golden earrings, red eyes fixed on her page. She did not look up either, but she smiled. "Wyverns nest in the cliffs past the old road. Try not to die. I hate breaking in new help." Logan almost laughed. Then the exhaustion cracked something loose in her chest. Fear rose fast, hot, unwanted. Her right hand went cold. She watched in horror as her fingers thinned and grayed, sinking straight through the wooden counter as if it were fog. Shallen's book snapped shut. The elf stared at Logan's hand, half-vanished into the counter. The red eyes did not widen with fear. They narrowed with recognition. "So," Shallen said quietly. "That's what you are." Logan yanked her hand back. It was solid again, but too late. Her secret sat in the open air between them. Ronnie appeared in the doorway, spoon dripping. She had seen. Her mouth pressed thin. "Sit down," she told Logan. "You're too tired to hold your own skin together." "I can get the tooth," Logan said. "Not like this. You'll phase through the cliff and fall." Ronnie set down the spoon. She looked at Shallen, then back at Logan, deciding something. "She knows now. There's no unknowing it." Shallen rose from her stool. She crossed to Logan and took her cold hand in both of hers, feeling the fingers go firm again. "I've read about the veil," the elf said. "About people who pass through it. I didn't think one would walk into my shop." Logan's throat tightened. "You know how to reach it?" "I know where to start." Shallen's grip stayed. "But first you learn to stop leaking through walls. Or the veil will be the last thing you touch."

By evening Logan sat at her aunt's worktable, hands solid but shaking. Ronnie stirred a shallow pot and frowned into it. "This one steadies your smoke," she said. "Drink it, and you'll hold your shape long enough to learn. But it won't set. I'm missing the last thing it needs." Logan leaned closer. "What's missing?" "A scale from a young wyvern. Fresh-shed, not scraped off a corpse." Ronnie tapped the spoon on the pot's rim. "I don't keep those. Nobody does. They shed once, then guard the nest." She looked at Logan hard. "Until I have one, there are no lessons. You stay a leaking thing that falls through floors." So Logan climbed the cliffs alone at dawn. She found the nest tucked in a hollow between wind-scoured rocks. Tangled branches and dry grass wove a bowl the width of a cart. Scattered across the floor lay shed scales, dark as burnt wood. One caught the light near the edge. She crept forward. Her fingers closed on a scale the size of her palm. A hiss came from the rocks above. The charcoal wyvern dropped into the nest. Young, sleek, no bigger than a hound, but its claws raked the stone as it landed. Its orange eye fixed on the scale in her hand. It bared its teeth and lunged. Logan stumbled back. Her heel hit the nest's rim and she fell. Fear surged the way it always did, hot and fast. Her whole arm went cold and gray. The wyvern's jaws snapped shut where her wrist had been and passed through empty smoke. The creature shrieked, confused. It circled, snapping at air. Logan lay half-solid, the scale somehow still gripped in her smoke-fingers. For once the curse had saved her. She forced herself to breathe. Slow. She thought of her aunt's steady hands, of the pot waiting on the fire. The panic loosened. Her arm firmed back to skin and bone, the scale pressed against her palm. She rolled clear of the nest and ran. Ronnie took the scale without a word. She dropped it into the pot. The liquid hissed and turned silver. "There," she said. "It's set." She poured a cup and pushed it across the table. "Drink." Logan drank. The shaking in her hands stopped. She held her fingers up and willed them cold. They stayed solid. She willed harder. The gray crept in, then retreated when she let go. For the first time, the smoke answered her. Ronnie watched, arms folded. "Now you can begin. But Shallen sent word while you were gone." Her mouth pressed thin. "The potion steadies you. It doesn't teach you. And she says the veil won't wait for a slow student. Something's stirring near it. She wants you at the shop tomorrow, ready to work." Logan set down the empty cup. Her hands were her own again. Tomorrow the real lessons started, and the veil was closer than she wanted it to be.