Page 48

Fancy meows again, blinking bemusedly as if becoming as large as a midsize sedan is only mildly curious. She flops over with a heavy thump next to us, her tail swishing playfully.

“I always knew she was a beautiful lady, but look at how decadent her fur is,” Erica says, stroking Fancy’s belly in awe.

Kat thumbs through her runebook, rereading her spell. “I don’t understand what happened. Fancy was just supposed to be the anchor for the size, it wasn’t supposed to work in reverse…”

“The potion she drank!” I remember suddenly. “You said it wouldn’t do anything unless another spell was involved…”

Fancy headbutts me, and I fall backward a few steps from the force of her big face pushing me back. I give her scratches under her jaw, just the way she likes it, and she seems content, as if she has barely noticed the change at all.

Kat’s eyes widen in understanding. “Show me that photo you had again.”

I bring up the shot of the broken vial on my phone. “You said it was a prep potion?”

Kat peers at it and rereads it, and scowls.

“This looks like a preset… I couldn’t read it before, but given what happened, it’s likely a magnifier.

People use them to copy effects of one part of a spell without rewriting the whole thing.

Useful for replicating effects quickly.” She sighs, staring up at the huge cat.

“The preset must have used the blueprint of the other living being to duplicate the same effect for Fancy.”

Fancy starts grooming Erica, who laughs as her tongue frizzes up her hair.

Jenn groans, placing her hands on her hips. “What are we going to do? Can we switch her back?”

“Not without enlarging the dragon again, or another creature,” Kat says.

Erica clambers onto Fancy’s back, gripping her huge collar and laughing. “Please don’t switch her back, this is amazing. Fancy, who’s an epic mount? Who’s a good girl? Is it you?”

Fancy twitches, slightly confused, but she takes a tentative step forward, adjusting to her new weight.

The dragon stares up at the cat, and then at us, flicking its long forked tongue at us experimentally as it curls around the saxophone. “Hi,” I say to the dragon.

The dragon seems to give me a pleased, contented smile, as if to say, Mine , as it winds its tail around the edge of the instrument.

I remember feeling connected to Kat, Jenn, and Erica in the spell, all of us held together by the same intention.

I’d never felt that way before—the way the magic gripped me and ran through my body, an electric current of possibility that felt channeled, controlled, unlike the stream of unbridled energy when I cast that Lightning Bolt.

And then there was the dragon’s voice in my head, the sheer enormity of it, the sense of her entire being and thoughts and wants and hopes and dreams flooding my own. I don’t feel her anymore in my head, but there’s a warm sense of connection still.

I reach out a hand tentatively. I’ve always wanted a pet; I begged Má for a dog forever since I was a kid, but she was always going on about who would take care of it, and our small place was too crowded anyway.

The dragon sniffs at me curiously but seems much happier now overall.

“You’re so pretty, Ana.” I’d heard the dragon’s name in my head during the spell, but I wasn’t going to try to pronounce the language older than the stars.

Kat gasps. “Did you just abbreviate an ancient—”

Ana makes a low trilling sound, almost like a cat purring, if a cat was also a reptile capable of breathing fire, a low rattling sound of contentment.

I reach forward and tentatively place my hand on her head, and Ana tilts her head into my palm. Her head is warm to the touch, her hard scales a faint texture against my skin. I pet her more confidently as she curls into a little ball, settled on top of the saxophone.

Erica beams from atop Fancy, rubbing her head against the cat’s fur. “That was amazing! We just did magic and saved the day! How cool is that?”

Jenn grins, and I giggle as she whoops and hugs me. I reach for Kat, and we all bounce together excitedly. “I can’t believe we pulled it off,” I say.

Kat gives me a slow, confident smile. “I knew we could. I don’t know why, but it felt really good. Natural.”

Jenn nods. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Like the magic wanted to do it. It felt alive.”

Kat looks around, her eyes catching on something we can’t see.

I follow her gaze, thinking about what she said about mana in our world—and then out of the corner of my eye, I see it—a faint shimmer.

Like dust particles almost wafting in the sunlight, barely perceptible unless you were looking for it.

“I wonder…,” Kat says thoughtfully. “I thought at first your world didn’t have magic, but there is mana here. It’s just all going somewhere else.”

I nod. It’s definitely a mystery, but I don’t think we should figure it out right here. “So what do we do now?” I ask. “If Ana is going to stay this size, should she go back with you, or…”

“Obviously, first we need to hide,” Jenn says, glancing at the edges of the park. It’s getting dark now, and that’s probably the only thing that has prevented us from getting noticed so far. “Would Fancy fit in the car if we took out the seats?”

I ignore Jenn as she mutters to herself, as Ana has now abandoned the saxophone to climb onto my arm.

It’s clear Jenn’s the only one capable of using her brain right now—I’m too enchanted by the dragon, Kat is lost in her runebook, probably trying to figure out the effects of the spell, and Erica is enjoying her new Totoro-sized cat.

Ana sniffs at me and a long forked tongue flicks out as she tastes the air.

She curls up behind my neck and settles on my shoulders like a living scarf, and I’m delighted.

Even though I asked if she should go back to Kat’s world, there’s an instinctual part of me that said mine .

Or maybe that was a voice in my head that I heard, a long melodious voice like chimes that felt like the stars.

“What do dragons need? What do they eat?”

“Um, lots of things,” Kat says. “Most of them are omnivores. I’m sure we can find her something.”

“How about cat food?” Erica asks. “I mean, I don’t think the cat food I have is good enough anymore.”

Fancy waddles over to a large tree and noses curiously at the leaves.

Jenn waves her arms at us. “Guys, we need to get out of here; if those Order guys are looking for what happened to the dragon, we don’t wanna be around when they start blasting memory spells everywhere. I don’t think they’re going to think well of Fancy now.”

“Fancy, do you know the way home?” Erica asks, tugging on her collar. “Yip yip!”

Fancy yawns.

“It was worth a try,” Erica says.

“I don’t think she could carry all four of us,” Jenn says, shaking her head.

“In any case, we’ll need to get the van back to your house, Erica.

I can drive it; we’re not going to fit everyone in the car.

I think it’s dark enough if we don’t go on any brightly lit streets that people will just think she’s another car or something. ”

“The house!” Erica gasps. “Fancy, you’re not gonna fit in any of your beds anymore.” She slides off the cat and pats her belly.

Fancy meows, like that’s the least of her concerns.

“I think she would fit in your garage,” I say. I raise my arm and bring it gently to the saxophone case. “Do dragons like enclosed spaces?”

“Oh yeah, for sure,” Kat says. “But be careful—”

“Hey,” I say calmly to Ana. “How about you and your treasure go to a safe spot, okay?”

The dragon noses at my wrist curiously, but she seems to understand the assignment and watches me pick the saxophone up and place it inside the case. Once it’s set in the foam cushions, Ana gracefully hops in, curling up in the empty space around the sax.

I snap the case shut and pick it up carefully, grinning at everyone. “There we go. Travel dragon.”

The sun has set, and the smog filtering around LA is settling into a deep, dissonant purple all around us. Luckily no one else has noticed us in the park, and we’re behind a bunch of playground equipment and a thick set of oaks, but as soon as we get moving, it’s going to be highly noticeable.

“Can you do some sort of invisibility spell?” Jenn asks.

Kat tilts her head, considering. “Probably not yet. Give it an hour, and given how much mana is around here…” She grins at all of us. “What do you say to learning a few more spells?”

Riding on top of a massive cat was never an item I’d even considered in the top experiences I wanted to have in my life (page 37 of the Plan, organized by country and genre of activity), but here I am, Fancy warm and solid underneath me, her fur tickling the undersides of my knees as she follows the minivan through dark, quiet streets.

“This is too cool,” Ryan whispers behind me.

We’d stopped by to pick up the boys since none of us had the energy to cast another spell, and Erica also wanted to show off Fancy. It feels good, our entire D&D party gathered here on the quest to get Fancy back to Erica’s without notice.

We’re traveling slowly under a low-energy notice-me-not spell that Kat was able to cast on all of us with Ryan and Adib as anchors.

Apparently, anyone who thought they saw something strange would immediately refocus their thoughts on whatever the most pressing problem in their lives was.

The spell left Kat almost completely drained, so she’s sitting in the back of the van to rest.

Fancy’s paws are the size of barrels, but she’s still the graceful cat we know.

She pauses to sniff something on the side of the road until Erica gently chides her and moves her forward.

Jenn is playing a jingle on the speakers of the minivan, and we hitched the end of the harness to the mini-van’s bumper, imitating how Erica used to walk her.

We’re lucky that the harness and leash magnified in size as well.