Page 25

The man I spotted earlier in the clothing racks disappears from view. I stride forward, trying to catch the spellcaster, but I don’t see him, just rows and rows of the newest summer petticoats—

Petticoats?

Behind the clothing aisles, there’s the usual racks over by the grocery area: Pick-Me-Ups in corked glass vials, cooling spells for your icebox, quick heating spells for food preparation.

An amplified voice announces, “It is now safe to activate any spellkeys. The Home Goods section is closed. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

I turn around, but Brenda isn’t there, or behind the glass door. She’s just… gone. “What in the—”

She was just talking to me a second ago. She was right behind me.

“Brenda?” I push through the doors and look outside again, but she isn’t there.

The parking lot is filled with everyday cars and a few standard carriages.

Horses at the tie rail wait patiently for their owners to return.

They snuffle at each other, one drinking water from the complimentary trough.

On the street corner, a trolley comes to a stop as people exit and head toward the plaza.

So I’m back home.

I go back through the Target doors, and back again, but nothing happens.

So how does this work?

I pull out my runebook. There’s a message from Dad that he’s on his way home, and the notification of how much mana my last two spells used. I’ve got just enough charge left for another diagnostic spell.

I pull up the matrix and modify it to detect magic within a five-foot radius. That should be limited enough to figure out what’s going on with this portal. I speak the release command and then wait for the spell to take.

Ability-modifying spells are weird because you can’t always tell when they’re working—they layer on top of your own actions and experience. I tilt my head, looking sideways for traces of magic.

I don’t need the actual movement, but the physical motion helps me to think of it like activating an electric switch.

There we go.

The slight shimmer of magic that’s always there at the edges of my vision now bursts into a kaleidoscope of swirling, gauzy color—streaks of opaque blues and greens and pinks and every possible color, threadlike remnants trailing behind from spells cast in this area.

When I cast this in Brenda’s world, I almost thought the spell didn’t take, until I saw the faint glow inside Target. The contrast to the wild colorful streams I see now is vividly apparent.

I waft through spell traces, sorting them out from the massive wave of white-hot pure mana left from the surge.

I’m very careful not to touch the mana stream directly; it lingers near me, tendrils sneaking out, twining itself around my fingers.

I can’t help it and breathe some of it in; a jolt of energy rushes through me, and for a moment I feel invincible, like I can do anything.

I brush it away, thinking of Mom’s stern warning about why we always route spells through our runebooks or focus objects when we cast. I know the feeling; once you get a taste of that power, you’ll want more.

But remember: You can’t do anything with it if you’re dead.

And you will die if you try to access it before you’re ready.

I hold my breath and sort through the rest of the recent spells in this spot. There’s nothing recent, just a levitation spell a few hours ago and some older namekey calls. There’s no bright, telltale burst of a spell just recently cast, or even the steady glow of an ongoing spell used for a portal.

I end the diagnostic spell and look at the lot full of carriages.

I think about the shining, strange metal contraptions I’d seen when we stepped out on the other side of Target, and that huge box with blinking lights and color and—people moving inside, like a frozen spellcall, playing on a loop.

I’d never seen anything like that before.

Wait.

I have seen something like that before. Mom’s story box. That moving picture moved just like that.

There are rumors, of course, of a strange and powerful sort of magic, completely different from our own, but these kinds of artifacts were extremely rare, and no one quite knew how one could get them.

So these items are from Brenda’s world? How did they get here, then?

Lost in my thoughts, I don’t notice the man until he’s got my elbow in a viselike grip.

“You,” he snarls. “What did you see? How long were you there?”

“Let go of me, you creep!” I wrench my arm back, but his fingers only tighten, digging into my skin. “What the hell are you talking about!”

He looks like any other factory mage, all long white coat and dusty trousers held up by sad suspenders, three years’ fashion past. I recognize his face from the brief glimpse I got in the other Target—he was the one casting the spell over there.

“The other side. You were there. I saw you come back. Right through that door before the portal closed. Tell me what you saw.” He’s throwing his voice deeper, lower, like he’s trying to scare me, but his cravat is sloppy and untied and there are ink blotches on his hands like he’s a grad student or an aspiring writer.

I stomp on his foot, taking advantage of his sudden yowl of pain and surprise to twist my arm free of his grasp. I dash away, my heart racing with every step.

“No, you don’t!” he roars after me.

I glance back to see him pull out a runebook and begin swiping furiously on it. From the first few movements I recognize it’s a short-range spell and then I see him draw the rune for memory and my blood runs cold.

The man grins at me triumphantly as he finishes the spell and laughs. “Patrol the finicky new portal, they said, it’ll be boring, they said, it’ll take forever for you to make your way up in the Order… Ha! This will show them.”

I’m suddenly thankful I never got rid of my quick-cast spells from when I used to get into fights all the time.

Keeping my back to him, I quickly draw the one rune I saved for the shield spell—it’s supposed to ward off any unfriendly forces, and I think I programmed it specifically for punches or physical attacks, but it’s better than nothing.

The spell takes hold, a bubble of air hardening around me just as the man’s memory spells hits.

The bright orange burst of energy ripples across my shield, and I freeze, exhaling hard.

He can’t see my shield. I still remember everything that just happened, so my shield spell must have worked.

I take a deep breath and then pretend to look around me quizzically for a moment, and then keep walking.

I can feel the man’s gaze on my back, and then another spell hits my shield, one that pulses with a dark blue light as its energy dissipates.

I don’t recognize this one, but it gives me the chills.

I walk, keeping a calm pace even though my heart is pounding.

These portals aren’t just a secret—they’re a protected secret. This man and his organization are the key to solving this mystery—and to seeing Brenda again.

I’m out of mana, and I shouldn’t cast more magic right now, but I have to know more. I draw up the matrix for a tracking spell and close my eyes for a moment to steady myself. I won’t be able to disguise the movement, so I’ll have to cast something else right after.

I turn around, holding out my runebook and swipe the release gestures, one after another. The tracking spell surges forward and I feel the searching energy curl around the man, my heart racing faster as the spell takes, and then the world blurs as I teleport back home.

The energy cost hits me suddenly, a wave of fatigue intense enough that I barely make it to the couch before I collapse.

Two major spells on no charge is going to take it out of me for a bit.

On my runebook, I pull up a map of Los Angeles to check my tracking spell.

A pulsing glow is moving slowly toward the Westside. That guy must have gotten on a trolley.

“All right, where are you going, and what exactly is the Order?” I mutter.