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No need to learn or perform any complicated spells!

All the power of prepared spells at your fingertips

Monthly and annual plans available

I blink and reread it, and yup, it still says spells. Is this some kind of joke?

I look down another aisle. This one looks pretty normal, just phone accessories like covers in multiple colors, but—I glance back at the glass thing in my hand, which is definitely not a phone, and measure it up to the accessories, which are obviously made for it. Not phone accessories, then.

Runebook.

The shelves are still cherry red, the lights are still fluorescent bright with that otherworldly Targetness, like it’s located outside the space-time continuum, but everything seems to hum with a different kind of energy.

Maybe I’m hallucinating; I’ve been in this mall too long breathing in the pure oxygen they pump into the hallways to keep shoppers bright and alert to spend more money, and maybe I’m just, like, imagining all these weird labels and stuff.

A boy scratching his arms and scowling approaches an employee wearing red. “I need to get rid of this curse.”

“Aisle twenty-four,” the employee replies in a bored tone.

I try not to stare; yes, the employee is wearing red, but the style is somehow completely different.

They’re wearing a fancy red trench coat, and the boy looks like he just stepped off the set of Newsies .

He’s even got a—Jenn and her Jane Austen–loving ways would kill me if I got this wrong—a cravat?

That’s not the weirdest thing. He said curse , right? Not like bugbites or anything?

I go back to the main aisle. Shoppers go about their day with little red baskets filled with stuff. It’s almost normal except that everyone’s clothes seem to be tailored and somehow look both historical and impeccably chic and modern at the same time.

What just happened?

I walk slowly, trying to take in all the people.

Everyone looks so polished. A girl my age, wearing a lovely…

gown-type thing, open in the front to show sleek fitted pants, pulls out a pocket-sized glass runebook thing as I pass her.

She swipes a pattern onto the surface—multiple patterns. One of them is a weird squiggle that—

Wait a minute.

I pull the crumpled napkin out of my wallet with what I thought was Kat’s number scribbled on it. Unfolding it, I look again at the smudged things that I had a difficult time figuring out. Are these some sort of code? These symbols?

“Hey, Mom. Do you want any eggs? Uh-huh… uh-huh… okay, I’ll check if they have any more Pick-Me-Ups, but I hate the way the ones at Target taste… The mages don’t make them right… Yeah, I know, Sammy’s is more expensive, but it’s so worth it…”

Sammy’s? Like Kat’s coffeeshop?

I walk faster, increasing my stride as fast as I can without breaking into a run and drawing attention to myself. I get a few strange looks, and I’m very aware that I’m wearing a Hello Kitty T-shirt and ripped jeans and must look very out of place.

“I don’t think I’m in Target anymore,” I mutter to myself, and laugh a bit hysterically. It still looks like Target. It feels exactly like a Target, but—

A number of magazine racks and newspapers declare colorful headlines like “How to Protect Yourself from Mana Overflow” and “How to Prepare Your Children for Magical Assessment” and…

Over by the wall, I see two employees putting giant rolls of toilet paper onto the shelves, but they’re… levitating.

I gasp and stop short, and someone bumps into me from behind, and a glass thing clatters to the floor. It doesn’t break, but the shining symbols stop glowing.

“Watch where you’re going! You totally killed my call.” It’s the girl from earlier, and she scowls at me, picking up her not-phone. “I can’t believe this. I have little enough mana as is, and now I’m out for the week! Do you know how expensive it is to buy new spells for this version?”

“I, uh—sorry,” I say, stepping back and holding up my hands.

“You better be!” She casts one more sharp glare at me before huffing and stalking down the aisle.

“Brenda?”

I whirl around, and there’s Kat, holding a reusable shopping bag and a receipt, her mouth set in a little frown.

She looks great, wearing wide-leg black trousers with suspenders and another crop top under a short— I can only describe it as a capelet.

It’s a cool outfit, one Jenn would describe as quirky but definitely not something people wear every day.

I look around the aisle: Everywhere people are dressed in a steampunk Regency aesthetic, and it’s jarring, but it looks so good .

Kat especially.

“Oh, hi, um—” I attempt to both wave and reach out for a handshake, which at the last second dawns on me as utterly uncool, like I’m at a business networking event.

Why, Brenda? I lose my balance as I attempt to be casual, running my hand through my hair instead and falling backward against the shelf, toppling right into the glass things.

I fumble and catch one before it hits the floor. “So, uh, hey. How are you doing?”

“Good,” Kat says, eyeing me critically as she stuffs the receipt back in the bag and shoulders it. “Are you having a good weekend?”

“It’s all right, just homework so far and now I’m here.” I was looking forward to our date , I don’t say, but it’s on the tip of my tongue. I don’t want to confront her about it, though, and make this suddenly awkward. She probably was planning never to show and now it’s weird, seeing me again.

“Work, huh?” Kat raises an eyebrow. “I guess all that talk about making time to hang out never happened at all.”

Wait. What? My mouth falls open. She was the one who didn’t show!

Apparently I must have said this aloud because both Kat’s eyebrows shoot up, and she gives me a cold look. “I was at the coffeeshop all afternoon; you never showed up. I guess your work was much more important.”

“Hey, I skipped important study time to come hang out with you!” I put my hands on my hips and draw myself up to my full height, which is barely two inches taller than Kat. She looks just as cute as she did the other day, maybe even cuter, if it’s possible.

“Well, you definitely didn’t come to the shop—”

A spark of hot indignation flashes through me. “I did . And, it was weird—it looked totally different, like you were redecorating or something. Did you guys order a bunch of new coffee machines and stuff?”

“No… Dad hasn’t updated the store for, like, ten years…” Kat sighs. “Look, you don’t have to make up a story about going to a different coffeeshop, you could have just said you didn’t want to come or changed your mind, you had my namekey—”

“Your what ? Look, my handwriting is pretty bad, but what you gave me was probably not a number at all; it wasn’t enough digits, and I had to figure out what those squiggles were meant to be, and you never texted me back…”

“Oh, is your runebook broken? Is that why you’re getting a new one? That model is trash, you know.” Kat jerks her head at the thing in my hand.

“This?” I wave the piece of glass at her, feeling the hefty weight of it. “I am so confused, one minute I’m in Target and the next—”

“This is Target.”

“I know, but it’s not the right Target! There are shelves filled with things like these talking about spells and—” I’m very close to freaking out.

No, I am freaking out.

I take a deep breath and clutch my lucky d20 in my bag, tracing the numbers with my fingers. It’s not as familiar as my TARDIS key chain for calming me down, but it does the trick. I can feel my heartbeat start to slow back to normal.

Kat tilts her head. “You had a runebook at the shop. You were writing your scholarship thingy on it.”

“You mean my laptop?” I set the runebook back on the shelf, shaking my head. An aisle away, the rolls of toilet paper are still floating as two employees in red gesture at them in what could be ASL, but they’re not using any signs I’ve ever seen.

Kat gives me an incredulous look. “You’re acting like you’ve never seen magic before.”

I squeak. “Of course I’ve n—”

A voice rumbles overhead in a clipped managerial tone.

“A mana oversurge has been detected coming down Main Street. It will pass through the mall in less than a minute. Make sure any active spellkeys are deactivated, otherwise unpredictable events may occur. Target is not responsible for any loss or damage to personal items—”

“ WHAT —” I start.

Then I feel it. It’s like a thick wave of water is rushing past me, and with the swift current I can feel the coolness of wind and water and a million growing things, the whisper of something I cannot name but recognize innately, inside me, in my blood, like every cell in my body is suddenly singing, clamoring for more, for life—

And then it’s over, and I can feel my own blood rushing through my head, my heart pounding as rapidly as if I’ve just finished a race. I feel a little dizzy and off-balance, like I’m dehydrated, but I can’t be. I’ve been drinking water dutifully all day.

“Are you okay?” Kat asks, her voice softening. “You really—you haven’t experienced a mana surge before?”

“What was that?” I gasp. The world comes back into focus, and people around me are going back to shopping like this happens all the time.

Kat stares at me, like she’s seeing me for the first time—maybe I’m imagining it, but she seems to be radiating energy, the air around her glimmering, pulsing like a suggestion of water around a mirage.

“Mana overflow,” Kat says slowly. “The leading issue of the twenty-first century? You know, the energy that flows through all of us, the source of magic itself.”

I shake my head, a hysterical giggle bursting out of me, confusion and excitement and emotion all bumbling together, and I don’t know how to feel.