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“Sounds great.” He glances at the clock. “I promised Jordan I’d go close up since they wanted to take off early. Do you need money for the trolley? Snacks while you’re out?”

“I’m good, Dad.”

Brenda wipes her hands on a towel. “Thank you for dinner, everything was so delicious.”

“My pleasure,” Dad says. “Do you do hugs?” At her nod, he wraps her in a big embrace, squeezing her tight. “Come back anytime. I haven’t seen Kat smile this much in years.”

Brenda catches my eye as she beams, hugging him back.

Dad hugs me and kisses my forehead before he heads out.

“Your dad is so nice,” Brenda whispers.

“He’s a huge nerd,” I say. “Thanks for coming tonight.”

“Yeah, you say that now; wait until you meet my family.” Brenda laughs.

“I can’t wait.” I lean over to kiss her, and she melts into my arms.

We hold each other for a long moment, and I hear the clock chime. It’s eight o’clock. We should get going so we have time together before Brenda has to go home.

“I wanted to ask you,” I start, nerves jumping into my throat. “I know tonight is our date night, and I’m so happy we got to spend time with my dad, but also there’s something important I want to do. And I want to ask if you can help instead of going to the exhibit.”

Brenda looks up at me, her warm brown eyes soft with understanding. “Of course.”

I exhale, relieved and grateful. “Come on.”

“What are we doing exactly?” Brenda asks, following me upstairs.

“Time travel.”

As I expected, Brenda is full of questions. None of them are about why I need to go, or if there’s another way—she implicitly understands this is about Mom, the Ritual, everything.

“Is there anything I need to know, like don’t touch anything, be careful of butterflies ?” Brenda asks, watching as I unpack the supplies I got from Uncle Chau’s.

“You can’t affect time,” I explain. “All time travel is just looking through a memory. It will happen in an instant, in our time—we’ll experience an hour in her memory, but physically we will be right where we cast the spell. Time will pick up right after.”

“Too cool,” Brenda says, impressed.

“It’s mostly done by historians or academics since the focus ingredients needed are very rare. Sometimes people save up to look back at special moments, but it’s such a huge expense. And the further back you go, the more power you’ll need.”

I carefully place the small glass vial with the phoenix feather into my pocket and zip it up carefully. “Mom had these ingredients charged in every lunar eclipse for the last fifteen years.”

Brenda whistles. “That’s intense. Not just any spell you can buy at Target.”

“Every time travel spell has to be customized depending on what kind of focus objects you have and where and when you’re going. The more imbued with emotion the object and the more connected they are to the memory keeper, the stronger the memory will be.”

Brenda squints at me. “So I can’t just be like, oh I want to watch the eruption of Pompeii, unless I have something that survived it?”

“Even if you had all the focus objects and you had an artifact from there, it might not be enough. Every anchor point makes it more accurate.” I wave the singular intact notebook page and the cheongsam as I pack them.

“Like a journal entry with the date of the event, an outfit worn by the memory keeper”—and I tap myself on the nose—“and a direct descendant.”

Brenda raises her eyebrows. “We’re going to go back and see Jìngyi Woo’s memory? The one who pioneered the first Ritual that stops Los Angeles from, like, falling into the sea and stuff?”

“We don’t have enough phoenix feathers to go back that far, but that’s what my mom did.

We can go back and see her memory, and it’ll be super crisp with how much power we do have.

” I nod at the rest of the carefully wrapped glass jars in their crate.

“We can’t teleport with these,” I say. “Can you help me carry them?”

Brenda empties out the contents of her bag onto the floor, and she examines each jar with interest before packing it carefully. “So, in this memory spell, are we going to see your mom?” she asks quietly.

“Yeah. We’re walking through her memory, and we’ll see not just her but everything she experienced.

” I focus on finishing packing our bags with Mom’s research and her written matrix, and try not to think about it too hard.

I want to see her again so badly, but I can’t imagine how much it will hurt getting to have this moment just to lose her all over again.

We need to do it, though.

I smile sadly at Brenda. “I don’t know what it’ll be like, seeing Mom again. I’m glad you’ll be there, in case I miss anything. I think Mom wrote this part for two because she wanted to prove what she saw to a colleague. I was going to do this alone, but I’m glad I’ll be with you.”

Brenda squeezes my hands, and then presses her forehead to mine. “Thanks for trusting me with this. I know it’s important,” she says softly.

“Thank you for coming with me.” I double-check the contents of our bags. Everything is set. “You ready?”

“Yes! Let’s time travel!” Brenda announces, laughing at herself. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”