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“I’m sorry, how is this supposed to help?” I stand in the middle of the idleball field, staring at Hannah. She’d listened to me sympathetically about the breakup and then dragged me out of the cafeteria to the field.

“Trust me,” Hannah says, tossing the invisible ball in the air. She swerves and kicks.

It’s instinct, feeling for the energy of the coming ball, predicting its course and—

The ball bonks me on the head. “Hey!”

“Oh, who hasn’t played for years ?” Hannah laughs.

On the sidelines, girls familiar and unfamiliar rush onto the field and we start a pickup game. My team loses spectacularly, but it’s fun, and I hate to admit to Hannah, but she was right. I do feel better after that.

After school, I’m invited along to get boba with the team, and it feels natural to just hang out as the girls fill the shop, laughing and talking over homework and board games and snacks.

“Are you sure that’s what she was saying, though?” Hannah asks, leaning close to me.

I sigh, taking another sip of my lychee milk tea. “She literally said I should do the Ritual.”

“She said we —she wanted to do it, too.”

“Which is even more stupid; I wouldn’t let you volunteer to be a cornerstone, either!” I shake my head.

“You know,” Hannah says slowly. “You push people away when you’re hurt.”

“I—”

Hannah gives me a small smile. “I know you, you know. You’re my oldest friend, and you really—you really try to blame yourself for everything. It’s not your fault, what happened to your mom. It’s not your fault there are these natural disasters. You can’t control these things.”

I tap my straw, thinking about it. It feels too close to home, but I know she’s right. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know how to be a friend anymore, and I felt like I would have disappointed you back then. I—I really messed up.”

“You’re not alone, Kat,” Hannah says, squeezing my hand. “I wish you hadn’t thought that you were.”

“Thank you,” I say softly.

“Hey, Kat!” Tanya, our goalie, slips into the booth. “Do you still suck at Speed?”

I pretend to be offended and let myself be goaded into the card game.

I drink my tea, my ears pricking when people mention the week’s mana surges and how spells aren’t working at all or reacting with overpowered effects even afterward.

None of it is predictable or preventable, no matter what people have been doing.

“Apparently Mayfield Industries is putting out a modifier you can add to their spells to stabilize them during these surges,” says Angela.

“Does it work?” I ask with interest.

Tanya nods. “My dad installed them in our icebox and everything has been fine.”

Another one of Shannon’s brilliant inventions, likely.

She hasn’t returned my call, just sent a brief message that she was still out of town and sends me lots of love.

I’m a bit annoyed, given everything that’s been going on, and I have so many questions about what I learned about her ancestor and his factories.

It’s hard; even though I have a plan for the first time in my life, I can barely muster the energy to do anything with how often my thoughts come back to Brenda.

The radio crackles with a news report. “The Los Angeles Mages’ Council confirms the Stabilization Ritual will commence as planned with the total number of required cornerstone volunteers on Friday, May 22. With regard to the recent events, refugees can report to city hall for—”

The barista changes the station back to jaunty pop music. The gossip turns to prom and summer plans, a palpable sense of relief flooding the room.

Hannah pats my arm comfortingly. She doesn’t say anything, but I appreciate the gesture all the same. The council found another cornerstone, and they’re going to stop asking me.

I don’t have to worry about it for now.

Until the effects of the Ritual fade, and the mana surges come back…

But this is exactly what I need. Time. Time to figure out what Mom did to change the Ritual, make it work the way it was intended to.

She would have found it hysterically funny that I ditched school all week to do what is essentially more homework.

By Friday, all of her research from her office is in my bedroom.

I dive back into her research with new eyes, now that I’ve seen Clarabelle’s framework and felt the intentions that Jìngyi poured into it when she changed it.

I study the matrix of the current Ritual with several runic dictionaries open so I can understand it in full.

At first I’d translated one rune to mean the earth itself, perhaps returning energy to the earth or redirecting it so another earthquake doesn’t happen.

But now, I realize it doesn’t just mean earth—it could mean a world—as in another world.

So Mayfield knew.

He must have created the Order to keep his secret, because no one has referenced another world for a hundred years. The spell diagram itself is full of obfuscations so someone reading it wouldn’t even see the references to a secondary world.

I keep reading, using this new translation to analyze what I’d been getting wrong the whole time.

There’s plenty about redirecting mana flow and stabilization.

But it doesn’t make sense. I’d thought the idea of the Ritual would be to channel any extra mana from our world out in order to relieve the pressure from the surges.

But the mana is mostly redirected through the cornerstones and back… back here.

“That’s why it doesn’t work,” I say. “The mana surges keep coming back because it’s all here . All the energy of two worlds, in one.”

I think about Mom’s last question. Who benefits from having all that power in one place?

Who needed all that power to create prepackaged spells?

Shannon has to know what her ancestor did, right?

I swallow hard, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s been family for so long. Maybe she doesn’t know about his past, and her inventions do help people; if she knew, she would have stopped it…

I pull up the security logs in Mom’s office to the date of the last Ritual.

Access: Victoria Woo

Access: Shannon Mayfield

I didn’t notice before because I was looking for a stranger’s name, but the confirmation feels like a deadweight in my chest.

Still… that just proves that Shannon was the messenger that it was time for the Ritual.

Mom’s look of betrayal—she was obviously thinking about who she thought was the culprit.

Or maybe she was thinking about Richard Mayfield, and processing that her best friend’s family was involved in such a horrific thing and she’d need to tell Shannon immediately.

I exhale, somewhat satisfied by this explanation.

I create a blank spell diagram in my runebook, ready to start from scratch to write a brand-new Ritual. I’ve never programmed a spell like this. I’m actually kind of excited about it.

My runebook chimes with a call from Hannah.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Okay, I know you’re all sad because you and your girlfriend broke up, but instead of being sad at home alone, you should come to prom tonight.”

“An overrated excuse for people to get dressed up and party.”

Hannah laughs. “Maybe, but it doesn’t have to be! Look, Jamie rented a luxury carriage, and the horses are ridiculous. They’re all wearing matching plumes. Tell me you don’t want to see that.”

I actually kind of do. I can imagine Hannah’s incredibly coordinated girlfriend planning their evening to every last detail.

“Wouldn’t I be a third wheel?”

“Nope. Tanya, Reese, and Angela are in the carriage, too.”

Research can wait for one night. “Okay.”

“Great,” Hannah says. “And look, if you’re still thinking about Brenda, it’s not too late to call her or just show up at her house with flowers and stuff and say you’re sorry. You know, Big Gesture!”

I’d thought about that at length, even imagining conversations and what I’d say, but unfortunately I can’t just call her or go over to her place.

There is one portal tonight, though. “Hey, where’s prom again?”

“Downtown Sheraton.”

Right. I remember thinking it would have been perfect if I wanted to invite her.

Maybe we can still do this. I imagine Brenda listening to my heartfelt apology, and we talk through this, and we’re okay.

“Okay, I’m going to come. And I’ll invite Brenda.”

Hannah shrieks in excitement. “We’ll pick you up at six!”

That’s only twenty minutes. I put on my dress and try to do my hair in rapid time.

In my rush to find my curler I trip over a pile of stuff that isn’t usually on the floor.

I wince, shaking my foot. I realize with a new pang of hurt that it’s Brenda’s stuff when she emptied out her bag for the spell: a thick notebook studded with colorful pieces of paper, numbered dice, a clutter of pencil and pens.

A hair brush. Elastic ties. A water bottle. Some brochures and pamphlets.

It’s all so clearly Brenda, all her schoolwork and hobbies and thoughtfulness in one pile, and seeing her things in my room just makes me miss her.

I pick up the bright green brochure. Fields Forward Industries. Oh, the soap factory that uses magic. I flip through it, trying to discern any clues that would link it to the Order. The name of it is familiar, but I can’t recall why.

On the back of the brochure I realize exactly why with a sinking sensation. Grinning cheerily at me, wearing the structured clothes of Brenda’s world, is my own godmother, Shannon Mayfield.

I didn’t want it to be true, but it is.

The image of my mother’s stricken face is fresh in my mind, the shock evident as her friend approached her, the knowledge that had been growing in my mind that I hadn’t been ready to accept.

Brenda hadn’t mentioned the CEO’s name, and the novelty of a magical factory in Brenda’s world was significant enough on its own, but I was so focused on the time travel that it didn’t occur to me to dig deeper.

There’s no question of Shannon knowing what Richard did or his intention. Her entire empire is built on spelltech, and she has everything to gain from keeping everything the way it is.

I crumple the brochure in my hands. I think about the years spent looking up to her, her bright comforting smile.

The last thing Shannon said to me was supporting my decision not to participate in the Ritual. I thought she was supporting me , but she just wanted the Chosen One not to disrupt her scheme.

I feel sick.

“Hey, Kat,” Dad announces, his footsteps booming up the stairs. “You know, I support you taking time for yourself after your breakup and all, and I know it’s been stressful with the worlds colliding and stuff, but please tell me if you’re ditching school—”

“Dad,” I say, looking up at him. “I know who killed Mom, and why.”