1997

"Don't hang up, seriously," said the voice on the phone. Juliette Atborough snorted and thumbed the END CALL button.

A knock on the door sounded immediately after, making her jump. She opened it, and the boy outside said "I swear to Christ, Julie, you're the most stubborn person I've ever met," and snatched the cordless phone out of her hand. He turned and threw it into a bush.

"What! What are you doing?" Julie stammered, shocked.

"I'm trying to explain without you interrupting me or doing something annoying like calling the cops," the boy responded irritatedly. "My name is Dennis, and your dad Clay sent me, he works at Vector Divisions and he has a bulldog named Stinky. I need you to let me in so I can tell you what's going on."

Julie, nonplussed, opened the door and let the boy in. He was pale and gangly, with an unruly mop of brown hair and a trenchcoat that was three sizes too big for him thrown over a typical punk ensemble: obscure band t-shirt, baggy jeans, and black Doc Martens. She guessed he was about her age, maybe a year older.

"Before you ask, yes, that was me on the phone, and no, your dad didn't really send me but it was the fastest way to start this conversation." The boy took off his coat, hung it on a coathook, and turned warily to face her. She could tell he was getting ready for an argument, and she was definitely going to give him one.

"What the hell, man? So you just make up some crap so you can get in my house and stop me from calling the police?" She tossed her long coppery hair out of her green eyes and folded her arms indignantly. Juliette Atborough was seventeen and took absolutely no shit from anyone.

"The conversation we're about to have will be pretty long and you're going to have a lot of difficulty believing me, so I wanted to be somewhere warm first." The boy rolled his eyes. "My name is Dennis Wilkerson, but my true name is Orton. I'm a wizard and I'm caught in a time loop."

"You're a what." This wasn't how she had expected the conversation to go.

"You're about to order me to do something to prove I'm a wizard, and when I ask what, you're going to tell me to turn that lamp into a frog, so here you go." He gestured towards the blue-patterned lamp on the end table next to the couch, which dutifully disappeared and was replaced by a frog. Julie stared.

Orton sighed, trying to get through this as quickly as possible. "Magic is real, I'm a wizard, you're a reincarnated sorceress from the year 704, and yes, I will teach you magic. No, I'm not going to try to get into your pants."

Julie was a little offended, but the prospect of learning magic was pretty tempting. She shut her mouth and waited.

Orton let out a breath, relieved. "Good. I'm guessing you believe me enough to let me talk at this point."

"Turning a lamp into a frog is worth five minutes of my time, I guess," sniffed Julie. "Can I go get my phone back now?"

"Oh." Orton reached into a pocket and pulled out a nickel, then did something shifty with his hands. A moment later, they held the cordless phone he had thrown into the bushes. "No need. Magic's useful for stuff like that."

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Julie took the phone back and checked that it still had a charge, just in case. "All right. Let's say I believe you that magic exists, and you can do stuff. That doesn't mean the rest of the crazy stuff you said is true." Orton nodded. "So let's start with something I at least sort of understand. You said something about a time loop? You mean like Ground--"

"Groundhog Day, yes. But the loop is twenty years long instead of a single day." Orton had watched Groundhog Day a lot on his second pass through all this.

"Okay. So, you know everything that's going to happen for the next twenty years?" Julie was already reaching for her wallet. The 7-Eleven sold lottery tickets twenty-four hours a day.

Orton winced. "Not exactly. I've already changed a lot of things, and more things are going to change every time I do something differently. For example, last time I went through this loop, I didn't meet you until a week from now, and I didn't tell you anything about magic for nearly two months. I never told you about the time loop at all."

Julie frowned. "And the loops before that?"

"I didn't know you at all in any of the ones before that." Orton lowered himself into a chair, looking around for something to eat or drink. Being a teenager was the worst. You were always hungry all the time. "This is only my fifth time through. Do you have anything to eat? I'm starving."

Julie shook her head. "Dad usually gets groceries on the weekends. I was going to eat on the way to work."

"I think you can probably call in sick." Orton handed her a fat stack of hundred-dollar bills. "Let's go get burgers."

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In Orange, California, John Walter Valentine was busy summoning the devil.

It was his third time, and the previous two had been pretty fun. He'd almost changed his mind and watched some TV instead -- the cleanup was a lot less onerous -- but at the last minute he'd found the prospect too enticing to dismiss. He scratched out the pentagram, mutilated the corpse (a defrosted chicken from the supermarket) in the appropriate way, and enunciated the blasphemous words clearly. In a cloud of sulfurous smoke, the devil appeared.

"Aw, not you again," said the devil. Valentine was under the deeply mistaken impression that this devil was Satan, which it was not; it was a perfectly ordinary magical beast -- a ruby boglin, to be precise -- who had made the regrettable mistake of giving a wizard a summoning ritual for the sake of convenience in 1236 A.D. and had been unfortunate enough to have said ritual printed in a tome that was available in infomercials for the astonishing price of $59.99 (payable in three easy installments of $19.99). It could already tell that today was not going to go well.

"Satan," said John Walter Valentine in his most imposing tone, which was only a little bit ruined by his voice cracking, "I command you to bestow upon me magical power."

"Kid, I already told you, you've already got magical power," whined the devil. "You're a wizard, remember? Summoning circle. Binding rite. I explained all this last time."

Valentine paused. "Very well," he said, thinking carefully, "then teach me a new spell. And I, ah, further abjure you not to pull any tricks, or teach me a fake spell that will steal my soul or any such thing." This was in fact exactly the correct thing to say to a boglin, who although possessed of no power to steal any souls, definitely loved tricks and clever ways to get their summoners to kill themselves. "And make it something exciting," he added, just in case. He didn't need any boring spells.

The devil scratched itself in thought. "Somethin' exciting, eh. Okay. Here, do this." The devil sketched out some gestures and some magic words. "Jet of fire spell. Impress your friends, burn down the principal's house. Sound cool enough for you?"

John Walter Valentine carefully read the ritual, practiced the gestures a few times, and did his best to memorize the magic words. "Aloh-zorfah. Aloh... zorfah."

"ZorFAH, kid. You gotta enunciate. Syllable stress is important." The devil inched slightly to the left, almost imperceptibly.

"Aloh... zorFAH!" With a burst of power, jets of fire shot out of Valentine's fingertips, missing the devil by mere inches. The devil cursed -- being attacked by the summoner broke the contract, but Valentine had missed -- and the flames splashed against the rear wall, shooting sparks all over the room. "There. You happy now?"

"Yes, Satan. I thank you for your gift. I will summon you again, dark lord." Valentine struck out a section of the glyph, dispelling the summoning, and the boglin vanished back to its home plane. He smiled, contemplating his newfound power.

Behind him, the carpet caught fire.