Page 31

The moon is rising by the time I get to UCLA.

The transportation hub was packed because there’s always free transport lines programmed to various trolley stops all over LA on council meeting nights to encourage civic participation.

Theoretically it’s so people don’t have the excuse of trolley traffic or their horse was sick or they didn’t have enough charge to teleport, but what ends up happening is most people do extra travel on council meeting days, hopping from one hub to city hall and then to their destination.

By the time it was my turn to get to the portal, my tracking spell had expired. I can’t be sure if the guy is still there. But at least I can check out where he was hanging out all day and what he was working on.

I walk out into the night with the throng of people on the sloped pathway right outside the Ackerman transport hub.

The iconic arched hallway made of red brick is open to the night sky, and campus beckons me forward.

Every time I’ve been here before, either to visit my mom or on a school tour, it’s been full of life with students on their way to class and organizations touting their various causes, the very picture of college campuses on every brochure.

But UCLA at night is a different beast. The usual cheerful brick facades that boast academic fervor, the rolling green grass filled with enthusiastic college students relaxing and mingling—all of it melts away to a strange, echoing emptiness.

The main campus is not quite deserted; students bustle along Bruin Walk and trudge up the Hill to their dorms in the distance, raucous music plays from somewhere, and bright lights illuminate the distant field filled with idleball players busy at practice.

The pine trees shroud the campus in darkness, and up on the north side of campus it’s a different world, a secretive one. With classes over, the scattered lights in the buildings cast everything in a dim, nervous glow. Outside of the library, students shuffle like shadows.

I duck into an alcove next to the entrance of the Department of Magical Arts and cast my invisibility spell.

It feels like a fine, cold mist as it envelops me in a shroud of true invisibility.

It doesn’t just bend light around me like a simple notice-me-not spell, it removes me from view entirely.

I catch my breath, grateful I carbed up at dinner.

The last coordinates I recorded yield an empty hallway at the end of the building.

On a hunch I head upstairs. Directly above, I find myself on a balcony overlooking the campus: swaying trees and brick buildings on a low, sloping rise, and in the distance the glowing lights of the athletic field.

The view is familiar, even at night. Mom and I used to eat lunch here when I’d come to work with her, and her old office is down the hall.

That Order that guy was involved with… did Mom know anything about it? Were her colleagues involved?

My stomach starts to churn with nausea and I take a deep breath to steady myself, wondering if I should stay here and observe or go inside.

I barely reach the door when three other people teleport onto the balcony, gasping for breath, cursing as they bump into one another.

One of them, a young woman with sleek black hair, quickly composes herself as she dusts herself off.

The older man next to her doubles over, grasping his knees for support.

“Ugh. I hate the way teleport spells feel. Couldn’t Rebecca have footed the energy cost?”

“I think she likes seeing us all out of sorts when we arrive. Some sort of power trip.” A middle-aged woman with frizzy hair takes a long swig from a water bottle, and then her eyes fall on me.

I don’t breathe for one brief, terrified moment until she says, “What do you think, Bill?”

The greasy man who accosted me is standing behind me, beckoning them toward the open door. “Hurry up, the moon is almost at its zenith and the Crossings will be open. We’ve predicted a window of nine point one seconds tonight, enough for a brief delivery of items.”

“Why are you here early?” the frizzy-haired woman scoffs.

“Johnson asked me to calculate the exact portal location,” Bill says, puffing his chest out. “I bet she hasn’t trusted you yet with important Order tasks, Amrita.”

The stylish woman rolls her eyes. “You know that she came up with that just to keep you busy, right? We have a spell that can do that.”

I follow the Order members inside the building and then into a small classroom.

There’s still remnants from the previous class taught by a professor Rebecca Johnson; on the board is smudged Huy Trung Thanh Theorems on Economics of Mana and various notes have been hastily erased to make room for complex calculations and tracking runes.

I study the runes, trying to get a sense of it—it’s not a spell, just various equations with everything from the lunar cycle to locations of ley lines and mana surges, all coming back to calculating a convergence of—

Coordinates. Dates. Times.

This is a schedule .

I recognize the coordinates of the coffeeshop and then, as my heart pounds in realization, quickly calculate with my runebook a few of the others. There. That’s Target, and the time I walked into Brenda’s world.

I gasp.

Amrita’s eyes flick over to me. “You say something, Harkness?”

The older man shakes his head. “You think the next Crossings window will be long enough for one of us to spend time over there?” He draws a rune and opens up an otherspace pocket, pulling out boxes and vials with swift efficiency.

I take advantage of the noise to use my runebook to copy over the schedule, the notes, and every bit of useful information I can glean from the classroom.

Bill snorts as he packs the items into a large canvas bag. “Not likely. You know that’s only for higher level—”

The door opens again, and a frazzled-looking woman bustles inside.

She’s got a scattered air about her, with bright, alert eyes.

Her gray hair is curling wildly, escaping the loose bun gathered on top of her head.

Her long overcoat is rumpled and a coffee stain is streaked down the front of her blouse, but her expression is all seriousness despite her disheveled appearance.

“Professor Johnson, I was hoping we could request more funding for—”

“Afterward could we talk about my dissertation—”

Amrita and Bill are definitely graduate students, so the Order could be an academic thing, although I don’t have a read on the other two—Harkness with the entitled air and the woman who complained about teleporting to this meeting tonight.

I shudder, thinking about how Bill immediately tried to wipe my memory with no hesitation.

These people might be academics, but they’re not afraid to use force to get what they want or to protect their secrets.

I quietly edge my way to the corner of the room now that I’ve got everything so I can focus on observing. I need to be careful about sound since I don’t have anything to mask it.

Professor Johnson brushes off her students’ requests before giving everyone instructions.

Amrita is already taking careful notes and the other three are gathering and packing items into that massive bag.

I can’t risk getting closer to see everything, but I can recognize some basic boxed spells: teleportation, levitation, and even a few vials of mood enhancers.

“I’m ready,” Bill huffs. The bag clinks and clatters as he drags it back toward the classroom door.

Amrita taps her runebook impatiently and flings the door open. “It’s time!”

The members of the Order crowd around in front of the open doorway, watching the space with interest.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

Johnson waves dramatically at one . A hand appears in the empty space in the doorframe, waving out of thin air from the hallway.

There’s no pop of air displacement for teleportation, no motes of dust wafting or the shimmer of a portal, or even the telltale haziness that comes from linking two pieces of space for a temporary door.

“We have visual! We have visual!” Harkness shouts, his excitement barely contained.

The hand retracts, disappears, then reappears with a blue plastic bag with a yellow banner with giant block letters reading IKEA .

“Quickly!” Johnson snaps.

Amrita and Harkness grab the bag and heave it out of the doorway as Bill struggles forward with the heavy bag of premade spells.

Sweat drips from his brow as he pushes it toward the doorframe.

It looks strange, disappearing into thin air, and I see the hand come through again, pulling it with effort until it’s gone entirely.

All the members of the Order exhale a collective sigh of relief.

“Great work, everyone,” Johnson says. “Amrita, start inventory.”

I step lightly toward her, eager to see what they got in this elaborate exchange. I wonder if the Order members on Brenda’s side are also academics, although I think Harkness must run some sort of apothecary, given the way his hands are stained from herb tinctures.

“I know you think I don’t know about your hustle at the high schools with the anchors, Bill—”

“How much money are you making off those kids?”

Amrita’s runebook jingles, and she glances at the others before picking it up. It looks familiar, the set of symbols in the namekey, but I can’t remember where I’ve seen it before.

She almost bumps into me as she takes a few steps back. “Yes, we just finished our meeting. Johnson is on target for the quota as usual. You can expect an official report from her this week. Yes. Uh-huh.”

Hm. I thought Johnson was the head of this organization, but it looks like she’s reporting to someone else in the Order. How deep does this go?

“Yes, of course I heard. You don’t think the Chosen One would actually go through with it, do you?”

What? What does this smuggling ring have to do with me or the prophecy?

The person on the other line says something that makes Amrita frown. “I mean, our whole operation hinges on the Ritual—”

A loud guitar solo riffs through the air, right out of my pocket.

“What in the—Johnson, is this a training exercise?!”

I quickly silence the call, but it’s too late. Everyone turns toward Amrita, whose eyes narrow in suspicion. She hangs up her call and stalks toward my corner. “It came from over there—we have a spy.”

I draw the quick release rune for the only spell left in my cache that’s tied to another mana source and pray that the coffeeshop’s storage was recently charged.

Pineapples start popping into the room, duplicating madly, and in the pandemonium I run as fast as I can out of the building and into the night.