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Brenda nods immediately. “Just tell me what you need.”

Erica grins. “Hell yeah, real magic. I tried a levitating spell earlier at lunch out of those new books you brought, and I could swear I saw my water bottle move!”

Any other time I’d be fascinated and want to ask questions, but there are lives at stake right now . Brenda is right. We’re the only ones who can do something about it.

I don’t have the resources of my world, I don’t have the luxury of calling the authorities and letting someone else handle it. I have what I know, and I have Brenda and her friends, and we can do this.

I flick through my runebook, pulling up a standard shrinking spell for a living organism.

It requires one cornerstone to be another living being of a particular size.

People use it to shrink their pets or horses to bring them on streetcars sometimes to travel—it uses a lot of power, but with the amount of raw mana in the air, and if Brenda, Jenn, and Erica are okay with being anchors as well—I think we could pull it off.

My fingers fly, writing a new spell matrix for what we’re about to do.

I ask Erica a few questions about Fancy before plugging in the variables, as well as standard cornerstone variables for Erica and Jenn.

I still have Brenda’s temporary namekey saved in my runebook, which makes me smile amid the rapid-fire work I’m doing.

“Okay, I have a spell matrix in my runebook I’m modifying, but we need a much bigger space to work with.”

“You probably don’t wanna be doing so much magic in front of any witnesses anyway,” Jenn says, jerking her head at everyone watching from their cars.

“With what you said about wyverns, the Order people are probably on their way. Something like this…” I shudder, wondering how they’d try to hide it.

I know I wrote them off as a bunch of academic tryhards, nothing to be scared of, but what Brenda said about how multiple people saw the wyverns, the nervousness in how her friends talked about it, makes me question what the people on this side are capable of.

For that amount of information to disappear like that—they must be powerful indeed.

“That guy who cast that memory spell at me—it’s highly illegal to cast anything like that without the subject’s explicit consent. If the Order is willing to do magic like that, they’re not the kind of people we want to mess with.”

Erica nods in agreement. “Mass scale memory modification, removal of evidence—at what cost are they going to try to keep things secret?”

I take a deep breath, untying and retying my hair. We’re way out of our depth. Maybe we should leave the dragon to this Order.

I glance at the terrified people in front of us and it’s immediately clear to me. The danger is here and now, and I can help.

I open the car door and step out. Three sets of determined eyes meet mine.

“All right, we’re going to lure the dragon over to us—Erica, can you get the car ready to head off the freeway? We’ll need an open area to cast the spell.”

Erica nods. “I’ll drive on the shoulder—it looks clear enough, and I’ll squeeze past that hatchback if I have to. A few scratches won’t be a big deal.”

Jenn has her phone open. “There’s a big park a few blocks from here. We can make it. What do we need for a lure?”

The dragon flaps its wings, flying up and circling lazily, and then dives again, going for a woman wearing a large golden pendant, hiding behind a car. The pendant glimmers against her neck, and I have an idea. We just have to work fast.

“Do you have anything shiny?” I ask.

We peruse the contents of Erica’s minivan—it’s a hodgepodge of card board boxes, a bag of grocery bags, random sports stuff, and a huge black case covered in colorful stickers.

“My sax…” Erica says. “I mean, technically it’s the school’s sax.” She opens the case and lifts out the instrument. It glitters golden in the sun.

I nod in approval. “Perfect. I don’t think the dragon will do anything to it—they’re very particular about their treasure.”

Brenda looks at me. “So what do we need to do?”

“We need to get the dragon to see it and come after us,” I say.

Erica opens a window at the top of the car. “You could hold it up through the sunroof,” she says.

Jenn glances at the dragon spitting fire. “The sax isn’t necessarily shinier than the cars. How will we know this will work?”

“The cars don’t look like treasure—there are so many of them, it doesn’t matter that they’re shiny. The dragon also doesn’t know what they are, and it doesn’t know what this is either, but—”

“It’s the only one of its kind out here,” Brenda says, her eyes widening in understanding. “Got it. We just have to pass a Charisma check. Dragons are smart, right?”

“Terrifyingly so.”

“So it’ll understand me if I talk to it?”

“Theoretically,” I think. “It really depends. I think this might be the same one that people wrote about communicating with the Chumash and Gabrielino. I don’t know if she’ll speak English, if she’s the same one.

” I barely remember the story as part of California’s history we learned in the fifth grade and wish I’d paid attention to how those tribes convinced the dragon to go back to sleep.

The dragon is circling the woman with the huge golden pendant at her neck, swooping closer.

“I got this,” Brenda says. She takes the saxophone and heads toward the overturned car, carrying it above her head as she slowly approaches.

My throat goes dry. Brenda strides forward, her eyes shining.

I’m struck by the same awe I felt when she first told me about her friends’ encounter with a dragon.

She radiates power and confidence as she moves forward, weaving between the parked cars, drawing the attention of people who are sitting shocked in their vehicles.

The sun is starting to dip behind the mountains, casting rays of light down on the freeway, and Brenda isn’t quite glowing, but she emanates energy, with the way the light catches her hair, her determined expression, and the way she holds the saxophone aloft, turning it so it catches the afternoon light like a multifaceted jewel.

“Hey,” Brenda calls out, turning the saxophone slowly.

“This one’s bigger. Shinier, too. Don’t you want this for your hoard?

You don’t want that ratty necklace. It doesn’t even sparkle.

Look at this.” She lifts the saxophone even higher, where it gleams bright and golden.

It looks otherworldly, even among this freeway cluttered with shiny objects, and I can see the dragon narrow its eyes in curiosity.

The dragon cocks its head at Brenda, and backpedals into the air, flapping higher. The woman is too startled to move until Brenda jerks her head at her and mouths, Go!

The dragon flaps its wings, drifting lower toward Brenda.

The other woman gets up and runs, and the people cowering take advantage of the distraction to do so as well.

“Start the car,” I say, hopping back in. “Run, Brenda, come on!”

I look back to see Brenda racing toward us and the open minivan door, the dragon flapping its wings and following her, eyes never leaving the gleaming saxophone.

The car rumbles to life, and Brenda hops in and hands the saxophone to Jenn, who lifts it above the open sunroof as Brenda slams the door shut. “Go!” she calls out.

Erica pushes us onto the edge of the freeway, crunching onto gravel. The minivan scrapes against the sides of other cars as she drives us off the exit and onto the residential streets below.

I concentrate on finishing the spell matrix.

This is more important than a few laughs for a prank, more important than anything I’ve ever cast. This is a living being that might be older than time itself, and I focus on writing the spell, making sure each rune is perfect, even though this spell is missing so much.

I know what we’re doing has never been done before, but I also know—I also know I can do this.

This is what magic is about.

The raw mana in the air—I can see the power glistening with untapped potential. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before, but there are threads of it all over Brenda’s universe, mana flowing and pulsing with energy, coming from—somewhere, everywhere.

It’s not quite the same as a mana surge, it’s like—it’s like this power has never known any conduit, and it’s hungry, the forces of life itself twisting and turning and looking for something, anything.

I can feel the mana wrapping around me, like the universe knows what I’m about to do, what I’m going to ask of it, and my heart pulses with excitement.

“Kat! We’re here—”

The car has stopped. I look up from my runebook at Brenda, her eyes full of trust. Erica and Jenn are already out of the car and in the park, Jenn carrying the saxophone now, holding it nervously as the dragon circles above her.

Erica is taking pictures with her phone, looking back at me with trepidation.

Fancy peeps out of the backpack on her back, her fuzzy little face looking curiously out the porthole.

“What now?” Erica asks.

Beyond the stretch of parched grass, a swing set lies empty in the afternoon heat.

Above us, the dragon is circling, and anyone might think it could have forgotten, but I know from all the legends about dragons that she’s fixated on the saxophone now, and determined to have it. She’s waiting now. Toying with us.

“String—do you have string?” I ask. We should have cotton that’s been soaked in moonlight, spelled with intention and goodwill, but everything about this spell is make-do.

“There are bungee cords in the trunk,” Erica says.

I find the colorful cords—they’re stretchy and made of a strange material, with hooks on the ends. There’s enough to make a basic diagram. I lay them out, making anchor points between myself, Erica, Jenn, and Brenda.

“Will the cat stay if we put her in the center?”