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The humid night air wafts past us in the open streetcar as we trundle toward downtown and talk. Kat’s impressed that I managed a Shield spell, and disturbed about my narrow escape from a memory wipe.

“Why do you think the CEO at first just wanted you to have the scholarship, knowing about the two worlds?” Kat wonders.

“I think the Order must have a policy about who you can use as an asset,” I say.

“I mean, not all of those employees were mages. The ones from my world had to be introduced to magic and agree to keep it quiet. I think her plan to slowly introduce magic to my world made sense, to avoid power getting into the wrong hands and another world war, but…”

Kat squeezes my hand.

“I knew too much about the Ritual,” I say quietly. “And I figured out something. Maybe the reason why you have to keep doing it over and over again isn’t just because Los Angeles is on a fault or whatever, but maybe the Order doesn’t want the Ritual completed properly at all.”

“Because stopping the mana surges means stopping the portals, and then they lose their entire operation.” Kat narrows her eyes, and I can feel her whole body tense next to me. “So if there was a prophecy, and the Chosen One volunteered to participate, they would absolutely want to sabotage that.”

A group of party-goers climb onto the trolley, singing rowdily to one another, so it’s too noisy to talk until we get to El Pueblo.

The warm evening breeze flutters through hanging lanterns and colorful signs, and a live band performs in the center square.

It feels so much like home, this heart of Los Angeles beating in tune to the El Pueblo I know, the historic cobblestone street surrounded by shops, museums, and restaurants.

Even the Chinese American Museum looks the same.

I want to spend hours here, reading and learning about our histories, see what about our worlds are the same and what else is different.

“Do we have time to check out the new exhibit?” I ask Kat.

“Yes, but we have to hide soon,” Kat says.

I’m almost certain this is the same collaboration with the California African American Museum on the Civil Rights Movement and how our communities organized together in solidarity.

I want to see what else in the museum is the same, and I show Kat my favorite part, the re-creation of an herb shop with wall-to-ceiling drawers all carefully labeled.

My messenger bag is heavy, reminding me of our mission tonight.

It’s a bit thrilling, breaking the rules to sneak in and cast this spell.

I giggle as I follow Kat behind a huge freestanding mural in front of a wall; I thought there’d be more subterfuge, or at least some sort of disguise spell, but with the small staff of the museum and the late hour, no one even comes near our hiding place.

Once all the cleaning staff leave and the lights are off, Kat beckons me upstairs. “Mom’s notes said she figured the easternmost room would be most accurate to the location.”

We spread the spell diagram on the floor and arrange the ingredients and the cheongsam on their respective runes.

I hold my breath as Kat carefully tips the phoenix feather out of its small vial into my hand.

It’s warm, fluttering quietly as if touched by a breeze, pulsing with energy.

I place the feather in the central anchor mark, and it glows faintly, waiting.

“Do we need to say anything?” I ask.

Kat shakes her head. “No, unlike spells where the primary catalyst is a spoken incantation, this one is all in the body, in the heart. You take your intention and offer it to the universe, and the framework is there to guide it back to your ancestors. Stand here.” She hands me a glass bottle; the contents are a stormy, swirling gray, shimmering with intent.

“Think about my mom and what she discovered. That’s the energy we need to bring to get us to the right memory.

I’ll be concentrating on that at the same time. ”

I bite my lip. “What if I mess it up?”

“I trust you,” Kat says softly. “I know you won’t. Even if your most basic intention is ‘I want to help,’ that will be enough.”

“Okay,” I exhale nervously. “I would trust you to do the same, too, you know.”

I wish I could hug her, but with the anchors in place—the spell has technically already started and leaving the diagram now would be dangerous, especially with a spell of this magnitude.

“Ready?” Kat opens her bottle. “Drink all of it on three, okay?”

I uncork mine and nod.

“One. Two. Three.”

I tip my bottle back. The potion is thick and viscous, sharp with the pungency of bitter herbs, and coats my throat with an uncomfortable awareness. With every swallow I feel the resting energy around me awaken, stirring with power, and the spell diagram starts to glow.

I swallow the last mouthful as Kat does, the anticipation rumbling like thunder in my ears, and I can feel that sense of power rushing all around us, rising to meet the question we’re asking.

The phoenix feather bursts into flame, and everything gleams impossibly bright for what seems like an eternity and also a split second.

All the displays are gone. The placards and the curated artifacts about Chinese immigration and settlement in Los Angeles, the rotating gallery of art have disappeared—there’s only the adobe walls of a dark, dingy hallway.

“This is so cool,” I whisper, looking out the window.

We’re still in El Pueblo, or as it was back in 1909.

The streets are crowded with people and carriages and horses; no spell-drawn carriages yet, and no street trolleys.

The buildings around us are a combination of bright red brick or warm adobe around a central circle filled with carts and people selling produce and other wares.

The beautiful gazebo where all the El Pueblo festivals and events are held won’t be built for many years; there’s only dirt and dust and donkeys braying at each other.

I turn back to the room; now that my eyes have adjusted I can see there are two figures other than Kat here. Kat is frozen, staring at her mother.

Victoria Woo’s soft features are narrowed in focus as she scribbles furiously in a notebook, taking everything in. Kat reaches for her, but her arms pass right through her mother, her eyes welling up with tears.

I take Kat’s hand instead, guiding her toward me. Everything in the memory feels like walking through water, but Kat is warm and solid. We’re both here, anchored to the present.

“Your mom is beautiful,” I say. “You both have the same energy, how you figure out a problem and want to do what’s right.”

“I’m glad you’re here.” Kat sighs. “I would have just watched her the whole time…” She trails off, lost in memory.

In front of Kat’s mom is a tall woman in the green peony-patterned cheongsam we’d placed on the diagram. This must be Jìngyi. She turns around, and I gasp.

“She looks so much like you,” I say.

“Yeah, I know,” Kat says with a small smile, eyes only on her mom.

“No, look,” I say, gesturing toward her ancestor.

Kat’s features are magnified in Jìngyi—her chin, her eyebrows, the same wide nose and calculating expression.

“Did I go back too far? No, I was focusing on the right date. But I didn’t specify a time, so…

I’m probably too early.” Kat’s mom groans.

“If I missed the first Ritual by a few hours, that’ll set me back weeks .

I have one more phoenix feather, but…” Both Woos tilt their heads the same way when they’re trying to solve a problem. It’s very cute.

Jìngyi smooths her skirts, looking around her for something.

I back up to the doorway, trying to get a good view of the room.

“If Mom was trying to watch the first Ritual, why did she come here?” Kat asks. “The first Ritual and every one since is held at the Central Library, almost two miles away…”

I pull out my own bullet journal from my bag, grateful I slipped it back in with the spell anchors just in case. I start taking my own notes vigorously, on everything I see, what Kat’s saying, what her mom is saying.

Jìngyi walks right through me. I exhale in shock, but I only feel a slight warmth as she rushes down the hallway, clutching her skirts, her boots clacking against the polished wooden floors. “Clara!” Jìngyi calls out, her voice desperate and seeking.

Kat gasps in surprise. “This must be the day she confronted Clarabelle Marin.”

“Evil bogeyman mage, right.” I nod with interest. I’d read the entire book about her, but it’s one thing to read about a world-breaking spell and another thing to witness it firsthand. Or secondhand.

The world around us is losing color, the details of the hallway seeming to fade away toward a murky blackness.

“Come on,” Kat says. “We have to stick with my mom, otherwise we won’t be able to see anything.”

We follow them down the hallway and up a flight of stairs. It feels much darker with the wooden hewn walls instead of bright electric museum lights shining on colorful walls. Moving in a memory is hard, like trying to walk underwater, but it gets easier as I climb, Kat right next to me.

“Clara!” Jìngyi’s voice calls out, her voice full of fear.

Strange, shouldn’t she be angry upon learning what Clarabelle Marin was up to? I know they were colleagues, they’d worked together, developing many of the magetech technologies used today in Kat’s world. The betrayal must have been wrenching.

Jìngyi grabs a double set of doors and flings them open. “Clara,” she says quietly, her voice trembling barely above a whisper. She seems frozen, unable to move as she stares into the room.

“What is happening? Is it the Ritual?” I ask, approaching the doors.

“Not yet—it doesn’t happen here, anyway. Mom cast the spell just as we did, probably focusing on the date of the first Ritual, but she must have been thinking of something else, like a question that this memory is supposed to answer.”

Kat’s mom enters the doorway, her mouth falling open in shock. She gathers herself quickly, writing in her notebook so rapidly I almost want to pull Kat back so she doesn’t get elbowed.

What was the question? And why did it send her back a few hours before the first Ritual, if that was what she wanted to see?

I walk through the door, nervous and terrified.

The room is both makeshift workshop and living space, and if I could smell here, I bet it would stink.

Flies buzz around rotten fruit on a table and a full chamber pot, tangled sheets and clothes clutter the corners, and stubs of melted candles litter the room.

Chalk is dusted over all the walls, like the mage was trying to solve a problem over and over again.

It feels like the space of a genius at work whose life is falling apart.

What little furniture is in the room has all been pushed to the corners to clear a working space in the center, for huge pieces of paper scrawled with various spell diagrams. Parchment and drawings are everywhere, notes scribbled, everything in chaos and fluttering with the energy flowing through the room.

In the center of all the cramped chaos is Clarabelle Marin.

She looks young, her round face set with determination as she finishes a runestroke in an elaborate chalk diagram on a piece of paper.

Even with bags under her eyes and her face drawn like she hasn’t slept for several days, she has the look of a pretty Regency romance heroine—soft curling brown hair, big doe eyes, a small cupid-bow mouth.

The books portray her as this controlling hawk of a woman, radiating coldness and power, but she barely looks older than me.

I remember vaguely that she was in her midtwenties, but I’d been picturing someone much older.

“That’s the bogeyman? She looks like a hot librarian,” I blurt out.

Kat raises her eyebrow at me.

I shrug. “Come on, you don’t think she’s hot? I mean, I would have said Jìngyi was hot, too, but she’s your ancestor and that would be weird.” There’s something about her soft face that feels familiar, too, like I’ve seen her somewhere else.

Kat snorts. “Come on, we’ve only got a limited amount of time.” She starts examining the spell diagram.

“No replays in memories, I guess?”

“Not unless you wanna spend another fifteen years charging those focus objects or waiting for another phoenix to rise.” Kat almost runs into her mom as they both circle the room, reading everything they can.

“Do you understand what all of this is?”

Kat shakes her head. “The runes Clarabelle’s using are precursor runes; no one uses these anymore. If I had months to study and translate this matrix, I could probably figure out…” She trails off, lost in thought.

“What are you doing here?” Clarabelle gasps.

“Clara,” Jìngyi says again, her voice soft and tender as she draws the other woman into an embrace. “My Clara, I’ve been looking for you for weeks,” she says, sighing. “I can’t believe you’ve been hiding in this squalor, working on this in secret.”

Suddenly it hits me. The black-and-white photo in Kat’s house. Jìngyi and her partner, whom history forgot. “They love each other,” I breathe, heavy with realization.

The entire room shudders.

We all brace ourselves—me, Kat, and her mom—but we don’t feel the impact of the earthquake. The contents of the room shake, and a few books and candles topple over.

Clarabelle groans as she reaches to right the candles. “No, no, it can’t be starting already!”

Kat’s mouth falls open with comprehension. “The disaster everyone thought the Ritual was stopping, the Great Earthquake of 1909—”

“It was already in progress,” she and her mom say at the same time.

“So Clarabelle wasn’t the disaster,” I say. “She was trying to stop it.”