Dara found the first week of school…

Nice.

Nancy, when she heard that Dara wasn’t from around the town, insisted on showing off all the local eateries, and neat places, including a skatepark.

Dara resolved to never engage in such a suicidal activity, even if Nancy rhapsodized over how she’d met her first boyfriend in high school here.

Nancy had met Jack a few times, but they didn’t have classes together, and he was working on something with his club.

“You should go see him!” Nancy said. “I mean, then you can come with me on a double date!”

Dara stared. “You said you didn’t have a boyfriend right now.” You spent half of yesterday talking about it.

“So, I’d have to get a boyfriend so we could do a double date!”

Dara looked across the table to where Thomas and Jane were sitting.

“Is this…”

“Completely normal for Nancy,” Thomas said.

“I’m not that bad!” Nancy protested.

“Yes, yes you are,” three voices responded in unison.

Dara shook her head, sipping some unsweetened tea. Nancy was… energetic. All the time.

“I’m not dating Jack.” She shook her head. “He’s working on his own classes, and he just showed me around the campus.”

“But you know what classes he has!” Nancy said. “So you can go an ask him out.” She paused. “Or I could find someone—“

“I’ll go see him!” Dara said. The image of the kind of person Nancy might find for Dara… She had an image of a male version of Nancy, pulling her along to doom at the skatepark.

No. She would—

“Hey, look, it’s the armored guy!” Thomas said.

Dara glanced up and frowned at the image on the TV. The recording was blurred, and not at all as good as what you could get from a scryer.

But there are millions of those cameras in this town alone, and scryers are costly to make. She stared as a man came flying through, striking the wall and falling down, and then…

The figure was armored, bearing a golden sword in one hand. It pointed the sword at the man, striding forward, then paused. Moments later, it turned and jumped over the wall, vanishing as a police car appeared in the video.

“The assailant claimed that the victim, Mr. Mike Wright, was involved in harming the city. Upon investigation, police have determined that Mr. Wright was selling stolen goods out of Mike’s Pawn and Loan.” He is currently under arrest. His assailant, now known as the “Golden Knight,” remains at large. Police caution individuals that the Golden Knight should be considered armed and extremely dangerous and to not approach him under any circumstances.”

“Did you see?” Jane asked. “That wall was what, ten feet tall? How does someone do that?”

“We had a killer robot blow up the parking lot right before a magical girl kicked its ass,” Thomas said. “Is this really that weird?”

Jane paused, an onion ring halfway to her mouth, then nodded. “Point.”

“Well I’d take magical knight over cult,” Nancy said. “Tom decided to join one, and Mom’s freaking out.”

“Cult?” Thomas asked. “Like what?”

“A crystal cult?” Jane asked. “Those can be very bad for you.”

‘No. It’s one of these meditate on the light, and you can achieve your dreams. So he’s doing this meditation stuff every night, and Mom’s worried that he’s gonna move out to a desert commune.”

“Tom?” Jane raised her eyebrow. “The boy who melts in 75 degrees?”

“What type of meditation?” Dara asked.

“You know, focus on the light, stuff like that. It’s some church down in LA.” Nancy shrugged. “And Tom thinks it’s helping him. He even got a copper medallion. It’s creeping Mom out.”

“Is it helping?” Dara asked.

“Well, he won the last two races, but you know, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“He’s not that bad,” Jane agreed. “Good runner.”

Well it’s not like they have mages, Dara thought. In any case, everyone had little lucky charms and such, so it was probably just the emotional boost, like Marith’s lucky quill that she swore was the thing that helped her do well on all of her tests.

“Right, I—“Suddenly Dara’s phone made a rude noise.

“Um, it never did that…” Dara pulled it out, stared at it, then almost dropped it. There was… she blinked at Millie’s icon.

“Um, hello?”

“Kid, didn’t you understand how to pick up your phone?”

“I…oh. I turned the sound off in class. I mean, I didn’t—“

“Yeah, great, that’s why you didn’t notice your app. God, you’re not even here for a year, and you’re turning into a California teen.”

Dara blushed and looked at the phone, swiping up and activating Mike’s app.

An app with blazing red icons on it.

“What…” Dara looked up at the other three, all of them looking at her. She smiled. “Um, Millie has a problem with some of the glasswork I did.”

“You do glasswork—that’s—“ Thomas put his hand over Nancy’s mouth. “Go and talk.”

“Thanks.” Dara got up and headed out of the cafeteria, finding an isolated corner. “A headless horseman? Why didn’t I hear about this?”

“Nobody said anything until today, but someone called the cops, and now a bunch of other people said they’d seen it.”

Dara stared at the information. “Let me guess, you have legends about a headless horseman.”

“Yep. And the three people all say he chased them across the Colorado Street Bridge—at night.”

“And the legend?”

“All happens at night.”

Dara looked up at the sky. The sun was just starting to descend, and they had a few hours. “Why is this important?”

“Because it’s on the news, and there will be people on the bridge looking for the spooky ghost.”

Dara felt the first signs of a headache. Nobody back home would be stupid enough to hang around an unchained spirit or elemental. At least it’s not a golem. Reading the story that Millie had sent her made it plain—the observers claimed the headless horseman had “dissolved,” and a golem couldn’t do that. That was the trade-off for their greater durability. “Millie, it might not show up then!”

“Why?”

“Does the story have an entire crowd watching it?”

“Ah… oh. Oh, shit.”

“Yes. I mean, I don’t know, it depends on a lot of factors…” Factor’s that I can’t talk about because that’s in advanced spirit-crafting, which I won’t take until next year! “But it could just… not show up until most of the people leave.”

“Great, so we’ve got a potential crazy killer ghost that the cops won’t believe in, until someone ends up dead.” Millie sounded annoyed. “So how do we get it?”

Dara sighed. “We need to wait, Millie. Wait until the bridge is… more or less empty, and then I can try to work a summoning.”

“And then?”

“Deal with it. It’s almost certainly a transient spirit or haunt-elemental.”

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“Haunt-what?”

Dara glanced around at the busy campus and made certain nobody could hear her. “Remember when I said that elementals just appear and then vanish, and don’t have any… continuity of existence, like spirits and humans?”

“Sort of…”

“A haunt-elemental is something in the middle. It appears, repeats a certain action, but doesn’t remember or grow. It’s usually due to powerful emotions or a spike in the mana.”

“Like ghost hitchhikers?”

“What?”

“Oh sure, we got the stories. You know, pick up a girl, take her for a ride, she vanishes, and then you find out that some girl got killed on the road, but her spirit keeps trying to get home…”

“Ur… sort of. I mean, it could be a haunt-elemental, or maybe a spir—“ Dara shook her head. “Regardless, it’s going to keep being a problem until we deal with it, and if it won’t show up…”

“Fine. We’ll go tonight.”

But I have classes tomorrow! Dara took a deep breath. They had to handle it. “Right. I’ll need to fix up some foci when I get home. How are we for glasswork?”

“We’re fine. We should be able to pay off this month’s rent and a little more, a week before it’s due.”

“Right,” Dara nodded. “I’ll cut it early and be back soon.”

“Sorry.”

“I can’t exactly risk someone’s life,’ Dara said. “Besides, hopefully, the spikes will start to decline in intensity. I’ll be back.” She sighed, and looked at the student union, people moving in and out of the cafeteria. “Soon.” Dara broke the connection and, shaking her head, went back in to bid farewell to her classmates.

----------------------------------------

Once she was back home, creating the foci didn’t take that long. They were low on ink, so Dara would have to make more, but…

It should be enough for tonight.

She took special care with one focus, the gleaming lines flaring and then fading as she fixed teh sorcery within it.

“Never seen one that big,” Millie said, gesturing at the 11 x 17 paper Dara had used. “Gonna nuke the city?”

“No.” Dara shook her head. “This is a minor sleepy working.”

“You’re gonna put everyone out. Remember what I said about freeways and sleep spells…”

“It’s not a sleep spell, it’s a sleepy working,” Dara replied. “I don’t want people to go to sleep—not there. But I do want them to feel sleepy.”

“And go home, since a bed’s more comfortable than waiting to see a no-show ghost. Sneaky, kid. I’m rubbing off on you.”

“I… thank you?” Dara said. “Let’s go. If we show up just before it appears, people might get suspicious.”

“Yeah. Oh, your fog spell?”

“Working.”

“Right, working. This is on a bridge, so don’t use it, okay? I don’t want someone to panic and drive off the bridge.”

“Ah, right…” I hadn’t thought of that.

“And I have a thermos of soup, and an icebox with sandwich makings in it.” Millie grinned. “After all, it’d suck if the ghostie showed up right when we went to get some munchies.”

Dara nodded. “Yes. It would.”

“Right, so let’s get going.”

----------------------------------------

The sun was going down when Dara and Millie got to the Northern end of the bridge. The sidewalk was packed with people, a couple of street artists, and some annoyed police who were trying to keep people off the bridge.

Dara stared in disbelief. I didn’t expect this many people and… “Millie?”

“Yeah?”

“There aren’t any sidewalks on the bridge.”

“There used to be, but they put the fences up.”

“Why?”

Millie pointed to the signs talking about something called a suicide hotline. “It became a favored destination for people who wanted to go splat.”

“Splat, what is…oh.” Dara looked down into the abyss under the bridge. “Right.”

“So, now we have fences.”

“I—“ Dara fell silent as a man came past, peddling some kind of food. Millie walked over to him and came back with two sticks of some kind of bread.

“You ever have a churro?”

“No?”

“They’re good. Try one.”

Dara took the breadstick in her hand and sniffed it, before taking an experimental bite. Then she blinked.

“This is… this is good!” Dara said, taking another bite of the warm bread. The taste of the dust on it was… sweet but different. “What is the spice?”

“Cinnamon sugar, don’t you have any?”

“Nothing like this,” Dara said. “I thought everything you had was just terribly sweet, but this is… the right balance.”

“Hah, you’ve taken your first step to the darkside.”

Dara rolled her eyes. “You showed me those movies, and I don’t think the jedi had…. Churros?”

“Yap.”

Dara nodded. “Spanish, correct?”

“Got it in one. You learning it?”

“Thinking about it,” Dara said, washing the churro down with some water. “Language is important. It’s our… tool.”

“Tool?”

“For how we interact with the world. Everything else, magic, material tools, society—it depends on language. And every language interacts with the world a little differently. That’s why so many mages learn as many languages as they can.”

“Huh,” Millie said. “Learn Spanish, throw fireballs. That’d really up the bilingual program’s popularity.”

“Millie!” Dara said. “That’s not what I meant!”

“I’m just kidding. So, it’s getting dark. Think our friend is going to appear soon?”

Dara looked around at the still-crowded street. “No. Too many people and the mood isn’t right. We’ll wait.”

“Right.”

The sun sank towards the horizon, and a little chill breeze rose, coming off of the mountains. Dara looked to where the fiery orb was setting, the light turning the scattered clouds scarlet.

Some people left, most of them those with small children.

Good. And what possessed you to bring a child here? Dara shook her head. She knew. Nobody here really believed in spirits, even now, even with the news stories. Spirits were what you saw on TV, or at a movie.

Not something that was both real and dangerous.

But as the sky turned dark, Dara looked around. There were still people here. The vendors had left, most of the families had left, but the remaining crowd…

Too many. Not just because the spirit probably wouldn’t show, but if it did, the people might find themselves in danger.

Dara had looked at the information Millie had given her, and if the spirit was patterning itself after the Headless Horseman, it would be dangerous.

She pulled the focus out of her pocket and unfolded the paper onto the grass. There were a few cars coming down the bridge, more on the freeway, but this wouldn’t hurt them.

After all, it wasn’t a sleep working.

It was a sleepy working.

She touched the sigils, looking around to make certain nobody was watching.

On the other hand, they might think it was some kind of LED display. Dara had magic, but the tools of this world never ceased to amaze her.

She called the power resting within the sigils, and they started to softly glow as Dara took control of the working, defining its range. A sleep working would have been far too hard to extend over the bridge and the surrounding region, at least for her.

But not a sleepy working.

The cars zipping back and forth were in and out of the zone before their drivers and passengers had a chance to be impacted.

Even here, nothing happened immediately.

But soon, there were yawns, and a few people mentioned that they had to go to work the next day. Lawn blankets were folded up, and parked cars drove off.

A few die-hards were still sticking around, though, some knocking back energy drinks.

Dammit, just go home and sleep already. Dara and Millie weren’t sleepy, but everyone else…

Even the lone police car’s occupant was leaning back in the seat.

“Dara?”

“I know,” Dara said. “But I can’t just force them to leave.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. Take a look.”

Dara glanced up. The center of the bridge was being enshrouded in fog, the streetlights dimming as the billowing gray mass grew around them.

Dara stared at it, then glanced at everyone else. “It’s coming.”

“Now?”

“I guess it doesn’t like crowds, but it can still handle more than one person.”

“Great.”

And then there was a hollow laugh from the cloud bank, and the few remaining observers were no longer sleepy at all as a great horse, its eyes blazing green, came trotting out, a vast cloaked figure riding it.

One without a head, and who was holding a burning pumpkin in one hand.

“Okay. There’s the spirit,” Millie said. People were shouting around them. “Go get your disguise on.”

“I can do it here.” Dara stepped back behind a tree, everyone else focusing on the horseman. She called her disguise, the cloak and clothing whipping out of her backpack, her hair fading to brown. Another laugh echoed through the air as the horse cantered forward.

The police officer was out of his car, urgently talking to someone as Dara stepped out from the tree.

“So, just scare people, or is it dangerous?” Millie asked.

And then the horse reared back as the horseman threw the pumpkin at the police car. The officer dove to the side as the pumpkin smashed through the windshield, setting the car on fire, greenish flames greedily licking at the metal frame and tires. Another pumpkin appeared in the spirit’s hand as it laughed again.

“Dangerous,” Dara replied. “Definitely dangerous.”

And then there was no more time for talk.