Orton closed the door behind them, shoving a trash bag full of laundry to one side to make room. "Here. There's a chair under these somewhere."

Julie wrinkled her nose and took a half-step back involuntarily. "Seriously? You live here?"

Orton shrugged. "There are reasons. For one thing, the smaller your living space, the easier it is to ward. The laundry is just me being lazy, though."

Wary, Julie crouched by the door. "Can't you magic your laundry clean, or something?"

"I do, sometimes," replied Orton. "I put dirty laundry in the bags, then swap it out for clean laundry magically later. But not exactly the smartest use of stored power." He wrestled a few of the bags around and eventually managed to produce a rickety wooden folding chair, which he unfolded and set next to his bed. "Here. I usually just sit on the bed."

"You realize this is, like, mega creepy, right? Taking me back to your shady trash den and showing me your bed?" Julie cautiously moved over to the chair and poked at it, as though ensuring its physicality, before sitting down. "I'm still half-convinced this is going to be some kind of gross sex thing."

"Has anybody ever told you you're kind of hung up on sex?" Orton sat on the bed and folded his legs up into a lotus position, enjoying the way his heavy boots jutted up with pleasing solidity. "No offense, but it sounds like we have more important things to talk about."

Julie paused, seeming to shrink back a little. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess we do."

"So." Orton folded his hands together and leaned forward a little, flexing and stretching his hips to avoid cutting off the blood flow to his legs. "Tell me what happened, from the beginning."

The young girl took a deep breath, then let it out. "Um. Well, after you showed me all that stuff at Curbside, I followed you, like you probably know. After the uh... thing with the zombies... "

"Revenants," Orton supplied helpfully.

"Whatever! Dead guys that bit you and you passed out!" Julie fumed. "I dragged you outside -- you're heavy, by the way -- and called an ambulance. After they had you stabilized, I called my dad to let him know where I was." Her gaze dropped to the floor. "That part didn't work out so well."

Orton sighed. "Let me guess. He didn't know who you were?"

Julie nodded. "It was like you said. He'd never heard of me. Never had a daughter." She looked up. "Maybe I'm just hoping, but... can you fix it? Can you make him remember me?"

Orton shook his head sadly. "Here's the thing, Julie... well, Enna, now, I guess. It's not that he doesn't remember you; it's that you were never born in this universe. And back in the universe you came from, there's a different you, a you that didn't follow me to that warehouse. And you can't travel back to that universe, because you're already there."

"And we can't, like... switch places?" Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

Orton's mouth quirked down at the corners. "I'm sorry. But even if you could, you would switch memories too. Because the thing that makes you you and not her is what you remember."

She closed her eyes and sighed. "Enna, huh. It... does feel like it's my name. Even though 'Julie' does, too." Her eyes opened, staring back into his. "Is this how it is for you? Being two people like that?"

Orton scratched his chin, reflecting. "Sometimes. But I haven't really been 'Dennis Wilkerson' for something like a hundred years in my own memory, so... it's more like an old nickname than a real identity or anything." He let his hands drop back and sighed. "So, what do you want to do now?"

Enna glanced around the room, looking very small and fragile. "I don't know. What did I do last time?"

"You got very, very drunk, and you cried a lot and tried to kiss me." Orton remembered it entirely too well.

"Did... did you kiss me back?" She peeked shyly up at him through her hair.

What a bunch of bullshit, thought Orton tiredly. "No. I was trying to be a good mentor."

Enna sniffed. "Orton, no offense, but what do you think I need more right now? A good mentor, or a little validation?"

Orton blinked, then paused. "Uh... before I answer, exactly how long would you hold a grudge if I rejected you romantically at a vulnerable time like that?"

Enna pondered, looking up at the ceiling. "Oh, a long time. I might even try to kill you over it." She grinned at him nastily.

Sighing, Orton gave up. "There's a liquor store down the block. Just try not to bite me."

"No promises," replied Enna, standing up and stretching. "If you taste good, all bets are off."

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"So," sighed Enna, snuggling up to him on the smashed remains of his cot which had proven thoroughly incapable of bearing their combined weights, "now that you've seduced me, professor, am I going to get an A in magic?"

Orton snorted. "Easy there, Hermione." He squirmed around, trying to get comfortable with all the broken pieces of the cot jabbing him through the material they were laying on. "But if your skill the last time I knew you was any indication, yes. You were a great student and a powerful sorceress."

"Who's Hermione?" asked Enna, blinking.

Orton twitched guiltily, remembering what year it was. Damn, the books haven't even come out yet. "Uh, it's from a movie. You'll know in about five years."

"Jesus, that's right, you're kind of from the future." She shifted around to look up at him. "What happens in the next twenty years? Are there aliens and flying cars?"

"Nope. A black guy gets elected president, though." He sifted through his memory, trying to recall the good bits. There weren't many. "The internet becomes a pretty big thing."

"What, like that AOL thing?"

"Heh. Yeah, but it gets fancy. Video calls, wi-fi, smartphones." Orton missed being able to Google things already.

She snuggled back up to him. "What else?"

"Mmm. Electric cars, but they're mostly a fad. Hipsters, memes, microbrews. We send some robots to Mars, but no people." He shifted again, smelling her hair against his better judgment. He was getting drowsy. "Gay people can get married. Um. Social media." He yawned. "Taking off your shoes on airplanes."

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

She giggled. "Okay, now I know you're making stuff up. Why would you have to take off your shoes on an airplane?"

Fucking Hell. September 11 is still four years away. Orton grimaced. "It's not a fun reason."

The mood turned somber, and they stopped talking for a while. Eventually, Enna began to shake a little, silently, and Orton held her as she cried. Neither of them were under any illusions; this was a situation of necessity. It wasn't sexy, and it wasn't romantic. It was survival.

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Hours later, as Orton slept, Enna awoke and crept out of the mess of canvas, blankets, and broken plastic struts. Sleepily, she pulled on a shirt and jeans, crept out the door into the hallway, and staggered her way to the bathroom. The interior of the tenement building was freezing cold, even though Spring had technically started. She really wished she'd put on socks or something.

She used the restroom, discovered the toilet was broken and wouldn't flush, and wrinkled her nose in disgust. Christ, what am I doing, she thought. I shouldn't be here.

She crept back to Orton's apartment, slipped inside, and looked around, thinking hard. She could just leave, right now, and find some other way to deal with this. She didn't owe Orton anything.

But... he didn't owe me anything, either. And he did save me, back there. She wavered, afraid of getting attached. Might be too late for that, she thought grimly.

In the end, she decided, it would be dumb to leave. Orton was probably her best chance at learning how to survive in this situation, and she really didn't have anybody else.

But that didn't mean she had to be stupid, either.

Carefully, doing her best to remain quiet, she started rooting around in Orton's things. Most of them were depressingly normal: clothes, snacks, books, and the like. He had a lot of weird books, which she supposed made sense for a wizard; big, gothic-looking things with engraved covers. There were also a lot of plants and chemicals, which she guessed were either drugs or alchemy supplies; after a moment of reflection, she decided these were both the same thing, and kept searching. There was also a big stash of money -- probably a few thousand dollars. Why does he live in this dump if he's so rich?

Finally, she found something that looked promising; a large pendant on a chain of what looked to be tarnished silver, with a big crystal inside a golden circle. The interior of the circle was filled with intricate filigree, forming lots of weird swirls and loops; looking at it made her eyes hurt a little. She squinted, trying to see the details; it was almost like it was one of those optical illusion puzzles, with the lines of the filigree forming a three-dimensional shape...

"I'd appreciate it if you'd be careful with that." Orton's voice made her jump guiltily, and she spun around, blushing. "If you break it, I get sent back to somewhere very uncomfortable."

"Jesus, and you just leave it lying around in a pile of your underwear?" Enna was aghast. "What if we'd, y'know... rolled on it? During, I mean?"

Orton struggled to his feet, wrapping a blanket around his waist. "I'm mostly joking. It's warded from most things; you could smash it with an enchanted hammer if you really tried, but for lack of a better word, it's 'lucky'. Can't be accidentally lost or damaged, and it's very hard to steal." He reached over and took the pendant from her hand, dangling it in front of his eyes. His sight beyond sight, still barely more than intuition, could nevertheless sense his last moment in the previous timeline, infinitesimally small and frozen inside the crystal. Somewhere, deep inside, he was still falling, with three bullet holes in him, towards a fatal impact. And still further within, his previous regressions: watching his heart beat its last after Gentry pulled it out of his chest. Trapped in a sealed coffin underground, choking on stale air. Watching the moon crash down on the eastern seaboard. None of them were good memories, but he was here, and that meant he had at least one more chance. And maybe that was all he would need.

"Do you have to carry it with you?" Enna whispered. "To keep it safe, I mean?"

"No. It's Entangled with me, so it'll turn up whenever I look for it. In about five years, I'll be strong enough to use it again if I need to; in seven, I'll be able to turn it into a thoughtform and use it even if it's not with me." Orton slipped the chain over his head, letting the pendant drop down onto his chest. "But wearing it does make me feel better, sometimes." He started to gather up the pieces of the broken cot. "You want a shower? There's a gym I can break us into pretty close by."

Enna raised an eyebrow. "Why do you have to break in? In fact, why do you live in this crap apartment? You can obviously get money easily."

Orton sighed, bundling the remnants of the cot into another trash bag. "Because I'm an unperson, remember? No driver's license, no social security number. So the only places I can stay are places that take cash and don't ask too many questions. And even that won't last forever."

"What, they'll kick you out eventually, or something?"

"Something like that." Orton was too tired to explain Fade right now. "Let's just say that the more magic you do, the less you get to live like a regular person."

"What, so I'm gonna end up some kinda hobo sorceress, or something?" Enna was not enthused by such a prospect.

"Heh. You know what, screw it. Come with me." Orton pulled on a shirt and donned his oversized coat, then tossed Enna's coat to her. "This'll be way better than a gym shower."

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"Ho-lee crap." Enna was stunned. "You can do this, and you live in that shithole?!"

Orton kicked off his boots, putting his feet up on the sumptuous white suede of the couch. "That's as good a place as any to start." He cracked open one of the bottles of vodka from the minibar and began pouring it into the bottle of orange juice he had opened a few moments ago. "There are a lot of words for it from many mystical traditions -- tohu, qi, mana -- but the easiest way to think of it is just 'magic power'. In a nutshell, it's the weight of stored entropy you have to shove the universe around -- or to shove yourself through different universes, depending on how you look at it." He swirled the contents of the bottle around and took a sip, wincing.

Enna took the bottle from him and took a sip of her own. "Blah! Ugh, that's nasty." She took another sip and handed it back, glancing towards the hotel's bathroom; the tub was only a quarter full, and seemed to be taking forever. "So how do you get more magic power? Kill monsters for XP?"

"Heh. I know you're joking, but that is one way to do it, though I don't recommend it. Meditating, drinking certain magical solutions, doing various kinds of rites, there are lots of ways to store up magic power." He took another swig of the makeshift screwdriver. "But mostly, you accumulate it just by existing. Over time, as stuff happens to you, you store up the, uh..." He searched for a word that might make sense to a seventeen-year-old girl. "The weirdness, I guess you could say. The stochastic differential between yourself and the normal world. The more you absorb, the more power you gain, and you can use that power to do lots of things besides casting spells. Perform rites, advance your essence, that kind of thing."

Enna tested the water temperature in the tub idly; it was tempting even at barely half-full. "So I'm guessing you can't waste it on enchanting your way into a penthouse suite every night."

"Not even close. Holding the entropy of us trespassing in here at bay is pretty draining at my current level; they'll probably come investigate by tomorrow morning, or maybe even earlier." He drained the last of the vodka and orange juice, sighing. "But as you get stronger, this sort of thing becomes easier; ten years from now, if we're still hanging out, you can do this in any city in the world every night if you want." And all the consequences that come with that, he thought grimly.

The tub was finally full; Enna shed her clothes and got in, apparently not caring that the door was open and that he could see everything. A good sign, he supposed. Trust was going to be pretty important going forward. "So, what's your next move?" she called out, splashing a bit as she poked at the various soaps and shampoos.

"Hmm." Orton leaned back, trying to remember. "The next thing I have to intervene in is five weeks from now; there's a bookstore I have to let burn down."

"Don't you mean, 'stop from being burned down'?" Enna shot back.

"No. I tried that once, in my third pass, and regretted it. I have to go there and stop somebody else from preventing the fire, or else a very bad man gets ahold of a magic book that causes me serious problems in about seven years. That book has to get destroyed." Orton winced, despite himself. He hated destroying knowledge. "But until then, I mostly need to lay low and recover. Rest, meditate, and teach you as much as I can so you can actually cover my back if something horrible tries to eat us."

"What about me?" She was soaping up her hair now, making her head look as though it was adorned with a crown of suds. "What should I be doing?"

Orton sighed. "Surviving." And hopefully not getting me killed.