“Do not do what you’re about to do,” he warned quickly. “There is a price!”

She didn’t care.

It was as if the world moved in slow motion.

“That’s adrenaline, it’s not doing that.” He was trying to be the voice of reason. “When someone is dying, they’re dying, you can’t bring them back! Magic doesn't work like that!”

She was doing it.

The man who shot Ungle was still in the garage, running for the far side to jump over the low wall and disappear. She saw a car waiting for him, too.

The man who tried to kill Ungle was going to die.

Luna didn’t know that her eyes glowed, and neither did Donner, but the man who was forced to stop moving, forced to turn, forced to feel the life drain away as his target, already on the ground, regained some color, saw.

The assassin was gaunt, cheeks sunken and eyes bulging, when his body hit the asphalt.

Ungle was still out cold.

The shot called the attention of those inside and emergency services arrived to cart away the injured man with a child. The hitman went unnoticed because of where he fell; in the corner he meant to use to escape his body was hidden behind a vehicle.

“There is a security camera, you know? Check it quickly, before they bring you inside!”

It was cordless.

“Oh.” Now she understood.

“No, not oh. None of this should be happening right now!” It was time for another breakdown. “None of it! There are consequences for using magic, you can’t keep doing whatever you want without consequence.”

“It wasn’t consequence-free. The man died so Ungle could live. That’s the price,” she felt sure of it. “I traded their lives.”

“That’s not how it works,” he said. “You have to give something. You can’t take without giving. I don’t know what you gave, but it was something. Part of your own life, I would guess.”

“That’s fine since I can’t stay dead anyway. I don’t feel sick or anything, so I don’t think you’re right.”

“I am definitely right. There is give and take in the use of magic and skipping steps doesn't work no matter who you are. It doesn’t mean nothing happened, it means you aren’t noticing it.”

“Then it's not that serious for me. You don’t like it but that doesn’t mean it's not true.”

Ant came to pick her up and together they went to the hospital; Georgia was sent to a sympathetic and also shocked neighbor. Luna could see that while Ant put on a brave face, she was far from alright. Her hands were shaking and her gait was unsteady.

The news of the shooting shook her to the core. Losing Arizona to the fire was one thing; in truth, she'd lost her sister long ago. But Reg? He was supposed to live. He wasn’t involved in a dangerous line of work, he had his health issues but they were working on that together, and there was a plan. Retirement. Traveling. They were talking about moving further out of the city for the girls. The commute wouldn't be wonderful, but he was thinking of doing more remote work, and it would be healthier for everyone. She had a whole binder, quickly filling up with budget sheets and meal plans and a few, hidden in the back, papers designed for the planning of social media posts because she was thinking about it. They would never be popular, she was no beauty guru, but she thought they had things to share. They’d been through a lot in their marriage and overcame it all.

How could he be lying in a hospital bed?

Still, he was alive and she couldn’t lose it because Luna was here and she tried to focus on what the doctor said about the whole thing. That it was a miracle he survived the way he did, that all the damage they expected to see wasn’t there, and that as things stood, he would be fine and ready to go home after they ran a few tests. It might be a couple of days, but that was nothing compared to what could have happened.

With that knowledge, and the man himself passed out, she made up her mind to get Luna home and arrange a sitter for the night. The woman a couple of houses down already had Georgia; she’d stayed a few times before and couldn’t everyone use a few extra dollars? An overnight stay and the children would sleep through it all. She’d pack a couple of things for herself and Reg and, hopefully, he’d be home sometime soon.

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Those thoughts were in her mind as she pulled into the driveway.

“Luna, Uncle Reginald is going to be fine, okay? I don’t want you to worry about anything. I’m going to have the babysitter come over with Georgia so I can go stay with your uncle for the night. So, you’ll have to be extra good, okay? You’ll already be asleep when she arrives.”

“Sure, Ant,” she said and Ant went on with her business. Phone calls, pulling out a small luggage carrier. Getting dinner in the oven so it would be ready early.

Luna had plans of her own to make.

“I must have taken that cord from the security camera and used it later at the restaurant.” She’d been given a water bottle and shepherded outside by Ant who couldn’t keep an eye on her on top of everything else. “But I didn’t do that. Yet.”

“For fucks sake-”

“That means time travel!”

It did, but that didn’t mean he had to approve of it. Especially since it was one more thing that should be impossible. Not just for her, but for anyone lacking the proper clearances and government-issued artifacts. Time travel wasn’t a simple process; it involved massive stores of power and was extremely dangerous. Or, it was presumed to be. There was some debate about whether or not the past could be changed in any meaningful way and whether or not a change was real. Thus far, attempts to observe the process had failed and no one knew for sure what happened when time travel was accomplished; he suspected they didn’t know how it worked from the outset and never would. Not that he did either, but he wasn’t stupid enough to attempt it.

Luna was stupid enough and if the bathroom incident was what they thought it was, she would succeed. He knew it would be pointless to try and dissuade her and didn’t waste the energy, yet he couldn’t stop himself from issuing warnings.

“You cannot be seen. You must not be seen by anyone and I have no idea how you're going to do that.”

“Uh, I do. It’s easy.”

They were gone from the backyard and appeared in the parking garage.

“I should get a watch,” she observed. “I need to know what time it is.”

“First of all, I told you of that particular need hours ago. Secondly, you need more than a watch. You need an artifact that will tell you both your originating time and the time you’ve traveled to. They’re kept under strict protection.”

“Well… I don’t feel like doing all that right now. I'll just get two watches eventually.”

Instead of attempting to break into magical government buildings, she went instead to the offices of her uncle. It was closed now, shut down due to earlier events. The locked door didn’t stop her and the clock inside told her it was a few minutes after two.

She hadn't realized it was that late already, then again, they’d had lunch and it did take a while for them to finish at the hospital. She didn’t do much while they were there besides listening to the doctor and Ant talk about what happened, so it didn’t feel like a long time, but it must have been over an hour.

In any case, that didn’t matter much.

“You have to remember what time it is so you can come back to it. Don’t forget!”

“Even if I forget, you’ll remember,” and with that, she returned to the parking garage, squeezed them through a dark passage, and exited to a time when the sun was higher in the sky. It wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be.

“Time travel isn’t simple,” Donner said as she doubled over. Hands on her knees she took several deep breaths.

He wasn’t kidding. She didn’t know where they were when they were moving through time, but it was cold and blacker than her hair. She’d thought it would be like rewinding a VHS tape, which she’d used before because a motel once had a few children’s videos and a player in the room; it was a nice place. She liked that one. Maybe she would go back there someday. If she knew what it looked like, she could go there.

“Plan your vacation later,” Donner instructed. “Do what you came here to do. Get the cord. Breaking the security camera will also keep suspicion off yourself.”

“Why would anyone be suspicious of me?”

“Gosh, Luna, I don’t know,” sarcastic. “Maybe because you killed the assailant? He didn’t exactly die a normal death and as far as I remember you, your uncle, and the dead man were alone in one another's company. While you're at it, check for other cameras. I would be astounded if there weren't more.”

Turned out he was right about that, too. Taking hold of magic and using it to pull out the wires was easy, but finding all the damn cameras took some time. The place was covered with them! That made sense from a security standpoint, but it was making the setup difficult for her.

“This is weird,” she told him. “I’m getting ready for something I already did.” She’d never thought this sort of thing was possible; science fiction wasn’t often on her radar and she didn’t have much frame of reference for it, but she did remember that it was supposed to involve a machine.

“No machines for time travel in Society, but they do require help,” Donner explained. “As I said, they use artifacts. There’s a team dedicated to tracking down ancient objects, especially those from magic-rich environments, and the use of powerful ones is highly regulated. I don’t believe one has ever been used for more than a few hours of travel at a time. Of course, people on both sides of the magical aisle are working to develop and understand the practice. I suspect them to be far from accomplishing that. Regardless, what you’re traveling in is unknown territory. I don’t know what effect this will have on you.”

“Probably none.”

It was too bad she’d not paid attention to the time when she was in the bathroom because it meant she had to guess, which wasn’t comfortable. She chose the buffet parking lot for her landing point and she didn’t know what time it was, but Ungle’s car wasn’t there yet, so she had to jump forward a few times to find it, and then had to hide because both herself and Ungle were getting out.

She loitered, hiding behind cars for a while before positioning herself in the bathroom, much to Donner’s dismay.

“There’s nowhere to hide in here, what are you doing? You can’t fit beneath the sink!”

“I don’t need to hide like that, I can stay in another stall.”

When she’d gone to the bathroom earlier, there was one closed stall out of the five available.

Now she knew it must have been herself.