Orton closed the door to his apartment behind him and began moving all the laundry bags to the space where the cot had been. "We should be out of here in about fifteen minutes. Help me gather up all the alchemy supplies."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Enna stomped her foot indignantly. "Orton, you can't keep putting this off! You need to teach me something I can use to defend myself!"

Orton shook his head, already having anticipated this. "It's not that simple. Even the most basic magic requires weeks of training before you can start practicing, and most of it's going to be boring stuff like physical exercises and reading difficult books. You'll also have to spend several days blasted out of your mind on weird drugs at various points, so it's not the sort of thing you can just jump into." He reached into his bag and pulled out a butterfly knife that had seen better days, flipping it around to show her how to open and close it. "Stick that in your pocket. Anybody tries to grab you again, stab them in the neck. That should stop anything we're likely to run into."

Enna took the knife, looking slightly trepidatious. "Would it have stopped those robot guys?"

"Nope." Orton kept carefully placing books into his bag, mentally ticking off which things were most important to secure first in case they had to leave even faster than anticipated. "But they definitely weren't what I would call 'likely' in any sense of the word." He jammed some crystals and an incense burner into a box, then shoved the box in his bag on top of the books. He winced, looking them over -- there was just no way he'd be able to carry more than five or six of them. He'd have to leave a lot of them behind. With a sigh, he started making a second pile of the books that would be most useful to Enna, and a third pile that he'd have to burn, along with most of his clothes. Everything in here had his astral profile all over it.

Enna, grumbling, started gathering up his alchemy supplies. "I knew some of these were drugs."

"Most things are drugs. The difference is what they do when you ingest them." Orton continued stacking up books for several minutes, then turned his attention to the laundry bags. Expending a tiny shred of power, he shifted the probabilities of their contents, then set one bag aside -- the bag now most likely to contain his favorite clothes. The rest he began stacking by the door, along with the stack of books he wasn't keeping.

Five minutes later, they had everything bundled up; ten minutes later, Orton was setting fire to a dumpster full of laundry, books, and a broken chair. Enna shivered -- Baton Rouge was warmer than many other places this time of year, but it was still much colder than she was used to, especially with no coat. "So, do I get any clothes?"

"First, we need a new place to crash -- preferably something big enough for two people, small enough to be warded, shady enough to be paid for in cash, and normal enough that people won't be suspicious." He took his wad of cash and split it, giving most of it to Enna. "That should cover it. Try to pick someplace near a busy area; the more bystanders there are, the more protection we'll have."

"Huh?" She grabbed the money without hesitation, stuffing it in a pocket. "Why's that?"

"I'll explain once we're settled. For now, we just need to secure a new place to stow our crap." He set down his pack and double armful of books, took the bag of clothes off his shoulder, and dug a scrap of paper and a pencil out of his pocket. He wrote his name and Enna's on it, then circled them. "There. That should reinforce our Entanglement enough that you should be able to find me."

Enna giggled. "It looks like something you'd do for your crush. You sure that circle shouldn't be a heart instead?"

Orton considered, then drew a heart around them. "Better?" Enna giggled again. "You shouldn't have to do anything special to find me; just follow your intuition. Look for places you think I'd be likely to be, and I'll probably turn up."

Enna nodded, looking a little pensive. "Are you sure it's safe?"

"Relax," said Orton, poking at the flames in the dumpster to stoke them further. "Do you know what the odds are of us getting attacked a third time in less than twenty-four hours?"

"No," Enna replied, "do you?"

Orton pulled a scrap of burning paper from the dumpster and let a trickle of his power flow into a divination as he formed the required structures and diagrams in his mind, then peered at the paper. The scrap, chosen at random from a wordy and dense tome about Native American spiritualism, contained many scraps and pieces of other words, but one word was still completely unharmed in the center: "incontrovertible".

"Fuck," said Orton.

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

The doorbell to the little bodega rang loudly, startling Natalie Little out of her reverie and eliciting a quiet brrp? of curiosity from her cat Chester, who was perched daintily on her lap. She stroked him reassuringly as she looked up to see who had entered.

Orton slunk into the shop, feeling strangely guilty. To Natalie, it had been a week since their last encounter; to Orton, it had been nearly fifty years, since he hadn't needed anything from this place in any of his more recent loops. Enna, treading almost on his heels, kept looking around for threats; the results of the divination had made her a little twitchy.

"Oh, hey Dennis," yawned Natalie, dumping Chester off her lap unceremoniously as she stood; the cat miaowed plaintively as he scuttled away to sulk. "How's the job going?"

"Oh, uh, I quit," Orton managed, trying and failing to remember what they had talked about on their last conversation. "Somebody robbed Mr. Armstrong and he started being a dick to everybody, so I bailed." His teenager slang felt rusty and outdated, and he kept having trouble remembering what idioms were in use back in this time. Occasionally he'd make a meme reference and get blank stares.

The store manager winced. "Ah, that's bad. You didn't even give notice?"

"You think I wanted a reference from Mr. Armstrong?" Orton scowled, then held a pretend phone up to his ear. "'Yes, hello, I'm calling to see if you could recommend this Dennis Wilkerson fellow as a dishwasher?' Give me a break, Miss Little."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Denny, I've told you, you can just call me Natalie." Natalie shook a finger at him playfully, then turned to regard Enna. "Who's your friend?"

Orton did his most convincing blush-and-shuffle. "Um, this is Julie. She's, uh, having some trouble with her folks right now, and she could really use a place to crash for a day or two. Would it be okay if she stayed in the lounge for a little while?"

"Of course she can!" Natalie beamed, her black weave bouncing as she nodded vigorously. "Sweetheart, you just go on back. And help yourself to any of the snacks if you're a bit short on cash."

Orton shook his head. "We can pay." He placed a carefully pre-wadded handful of bills on the counter; flashing a stack of crisp twenties just after saying Mr. Armstrong had been robbed might have been suspicious enough for even Natalie to take notice. "Thanks, Miss Little. How's..." -- he racked his memory for any scrap of the name, but failed miserably -- "...your boyfriend?" he finished lamely.

Natalie chuckled. "Paul's fine, honey. You eating? You always look so skinny."

"Just my metabolism, Miss Little. I'll grab a fruit pie, or something." Orton gently but firmly shoved Enna towards the rear door at the back of the shop, carefully selecting a few snacks from the shelves as they walked by. He winced as he glanced at the nutrition label; this stuff was going to grunge up his biomeridians like crazy.

"Orton, what's going on?" Enna hissed as they ducked through the creaky wooden door into a garishly-decorated break room, festooned with eye-searing vinyl couches and beanbag chairs in bright primary colors. "What if we attract some horrible monsters and they attack that nice old lady?"

"First of all, Natalie is all of forty years old. She's barely even middle-aged." Orton could be a little prickly about ageism. "Secondly, she has a shotgun under the counter, so anything she can actually perceive or interact with will be very unlikely to give her any trouble. And thirdly, anything that can find you in here is going to be much more than any of us could handle or deal with, so it's not worth worrying about." Orton collapsed into a beanbag chair, exhausted; he'd had to use every dreg of his remaining power to ward a bus station locker where they'd stashed all their stuff.

Enna looked around, obviously skeptical. "Yes, because the chipped linoleum and powerful tackyness field of this place will obviously protect us. What are we even doing here?"

"This room is downstairs from a church, above a sanctified burial site, and blocked in on three sides by occult shops or otherwise warded locations," yawned Orton. "It's one of the safest places in town, which is why transient kids crash here from time to time. Miss Little's a practitioner herself, although she mostly just does a little voodoo on the side."

"That nice old -- excuse me, middle-aged -- lady is a wizard?" gawped Enna.

Orton snorted. "Not hardly. She has just enough of a tinge of the occult to be interesting in conversation, but not nearly enough entropy to Fade. That is, to cross from a universe where she was born into one where she doesn't exist, like you and I did." He opened his fruit pie, cringing as he thought about what he was about to do to his body, but he was too hungry to be picky.

Enna sighed and opened her own snack -- an eight-piece sleeve of miniature chocolate donuts -- and began to munch morosely. "Somehow, I thought learning magic would be more glamorous."

"Learning magic sucks," mumbled Orton through a mouthful of preservatives and lard-heavy crust. "Using magic is fun. But you have to eat your vegetables before you can eat your dessert." He fished around in a pocket and hauled out another assemblage of quarters. "There's a payphone and a phone book around here somewhere. See if you can find us a new place to stay while I go shop for more alchemy supplies; most of the ones in my apartment were for pretty specific stuff, not for teaching or infusion. I'm also gonna need to bring you a lot of water, because the 'tripping balls on drugs' parts of the training are going to make you very dehydrated." He finished his pie, wadded up the wrapper, and threw it in a high arc towards a nearby trashcan, where it sailed in dead-center with a soft rustle. Look out, pro Garbage-Can Basketball circuit, here I come, he thought sourly. "Oh, and one more thing. Do you know how to roll a coin across your knuckles?"

Enna shook her head. "Orton, I don't know how many times I have to keep telling you this, but girls don't do that sort of thing without a good reason."

"Oh my God, these 1997 gender norms. Killin' me." He produced another quarter and deftly coaxed it from one end of his hand to the other, then back -- his reflexes weren't as good as they would be in five years, but they were still very practiced at this particular routine even now; young Dennis Wilkerson had been practicing legerdemain since he was fourteen. "Do this while you're on the phone, or when you're bored, or pretty much any other time really. It'll build your dexterity and teach you good sleight-of-hand practices."

"Why the hell do I need to learn that?" Enna gaped. "You can't fob me off with fake magic, Orton! Not after the stuff I've seen!" Her hands clenched into fists.

"Jesus, calm down!" Orton did a couple of palming tricks with the quarter, demonstrating his own ability. "I'm not asking you to do anything I didn't have to do! Trust me, okay?"

Enna scowled. "Sounds fishy as hell to me."

Orton sighed. "Listen, the real reason is 'quantum stuff', but the short version is that it takes less magical energy to produce an effect the fewer observers there are. If you use a little prestidigitation when you're casting, your powers will cost a fraction of what a flashy mage's would, and attract less trouble as a bonus. There are some effects you can only do while you're not being observed, and it's never too early to start building good habits for those even though they're very advanced." He shifted uncomfortably, recalling slightly too late exactly how painful this had been last time he'd instructed her; it was going better this time, but not by much.

Enna looked away, irritated. A younger Orton would have tried to solve her problem or better her mood; the current one knew better and simply started organizing a list of required supplies. As he rose to leave, she reached out and grabbed his hand. "Look. Just... be careful, okay?"

Orton nodded. "I will. You need to be careful too, though. Don't leave the lounge, and don't tell Natalie -- I mean, Miss Little -- about anything magical. Just say you've got family troubles and act sad."

"Not much of a stretch there," mumbled Enna. Orton paused, then knelt in front of her.

"Listen," he began, a little unsure of himself, "I'm sorry. I know you didn't actually ask for any of this." He paused, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't be facile; he did not succeed. "It'll be okay," he finished lamely. "We just gotta get a safe place to rest and train."

Enna nodded. "Sure. Right. And after that, everything will be different, right?"

"Um." Orton winced again. "They'll definitely be different in some ways, yeah." He paused as an awkward silence bloomed between them. "But you'll have power, and you'll be helping me to save the world. I know that's not much. But it's something." He squeezed her hand gently, then let her go.

Sighing, he stood up and backed through the door out of the lounge, mentally reviewing his shopping list of herbs and supplies that he would need to locate, but found himself jerking to a halt at the unexpected and deeply unwelcome sight of a large gun barrel pointed directly at his left eye. His right eye, unencumbered by such visual obstructions, reported that the barrel was attached to a massive revolver being held by a stocky thirtysomething blonde man with a thick beard and long hair, wearing an expensive-looking gray overcoat over a black dress shirt with matching slacks. The man's other hand held an identical revolver, which was currently pointed at Natalie's head; the smashed remains of her shotgun were scattered across the counter in front of her.

There was a long, pregnant silence, during which Orton did a lot of calculating trajectories and sweating. Eventually, however, it was broken by the blonde man, who muttered, "Son, I believe you and I have a mini-bar tab to discuss," in a gravelly Texan accent.

"Ah." Orton blinked as clarity arrived. "Mr. Lytton, I presume."