Hailey and Jessica rode together in the back while Alden drove. If they got pulled over, Jessica could hide them in an instant.

  "Not that we will," Hailey added reassuringly. "You're a good driver."

  "Thanks." Alden pulled them smoothly out onto the highway, with all the confidence of someone who'd been driving for years—not three months.

  "This is your mom's car?"

  "Nah, it's the spare. Getting to use it whenever I want was the incentive for getting my license."

  "You guys have a spare car?"

  "Yeah. I think it was my grandma's. I don't remember exactly."

  "Your grandma had a nice car," Hailey said, glancing around. It wasn't brand new, but it was fairly recent and in great condition. A nice four-door sedan. "You'll be pulling off at the Redmond exit, okay?"

  "Got it." He frowned. "So how'd we find this person, anyway? I thought everyone who knew how to locate magic was gone."

  "Still gone. Cinza and Nikki have been trying to figure out how to cast that one again. I think Jess might be able to do it, since she's got the right affinity, but the original spell vanished with Rachel and Will." Hailey gazed out the window, watching cars flash by on the opposite side. "I'm pretty sure I can fly faster than this."

  "You can't carry us both," Alden pointed out. "Besides, taking the car out will make my parents happy. Win-win."

  "Anyway, we found them the old fashioned way. Facebook posts about someone doing impossible magic tricks out of the blue nearby."

  "That's old fashioned?"

  Hailey laughed. "Old fashioned for me. I got in touch with them through Rupert and got them to cool it for now, and we're heading out to meet them in person."

  "Rupert, king of social media?"

  "No kidding. He's got literally thousands of friends in the area. Something about being a British guy on the west coast…"

  "How did you two meet again?"

  "Seated together at a coffee shop," Hailey deadpanned.

  "Nope, still wrong. Try again."

  "State fair in July. He won me a giant teddy bear."

  "Nice try. The fair was in August."

  She laughed. "Thanks for not telling anyone else about him yet."

  Alden shrugged. "He sounds like a good guy from the way you talk. If you trust him, then it's not my business."

  "Thanks. How's my biggest fan doing?"

  He grinned. "Meg hasn't said a word to me all week that wasn't about magic. She really wants your autograph. Like, so much that it's kind of creepy."

  "I guess I should start practicing it."

  "D'you think famous people practice their autograph?"

  "Sure, why not? It gets put up online just like everything else. It's all part of their image, right?"

  "I think you've spent too much time on it already."

  Hailey smiled. "It's nice to feel like someone out there thinks you're doing something right."

  "You think you aren't?" Alden asked, as they merged off the highway. The trip had taken less time than she'd expected.

  "It's not that. It's more like…" Hailey trailed off, trying to put into words what she was feeling. "It's like, we had a huge fight and we barely made it out alive, then we had to go right into hiding for months and months, cut off all our old friendships, disappear off the face of the earth. I wasn't really crazy social or anything anymore, but I still talked to plenty of people. Cutting out everyone was a big deal for me. I kinda feel like I'm falling behind the entire world. Like I'll just disappear."

  She sighed. "I don't want to sound like I'm fishing for recognition. I don't need people to stand up and call me a hero. It'd just be nice if a few people saw us and thought 'yeah, they did okay.' Something to make it all seem worth it, you know?"

  "Yeah," he agreed. "And that's why you're pushing to get out here again, right?"

  "Exactly. I want this to keep going. I don't want to just fade out and vanish."

  Alden glanced up at the sky, where a news chopper was trailing the highway traffic. "I kinda doubt that's gonna happen."

  Hailey looked up too. "It's going away. Probably just evening traffic stuff."

  "Right." Alden paused, thinking for a few moments. "You're also pushing because you want to see them again, right?"

  Hailey's heart tightened a little. Alden was the only person who knew about her three lost friends, besides Jessica of course. "Yeah. That too."

  Alden pointed at a retail parking lot coming up. "That's the spot, right?"

  "That's the one." Hailey rolled her shoulders and stretched out, like she was about to start a fight. "You ready?"

  "As I'll ever be."

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

  They were due to meet in thirty minutes. The car was hidden two streets away. Alden sat at the corner of the parking lot, far away from the bustle of the store, quietly reading a book on the bench. Hailey stood a few steps behind on the grass, while Jessica kept them both invisible. By all appearances, Alden was totally alone. He was supposed to be calm and normal, but as Hailey looked back, his leg was shaking and the hand holding the book wouldn't stop quivering.

  "You okay?" she asked quietly.

  "I'll be fine," he murmured.

  "We can pull out if we have to."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "No. The guy's already on his way." Alden gritted his teeth, staring at the book intensely though his eyes didn't actually travel across the words. "I can do this."

  "Okay. You say the word and we've got your back." Hailey forced herself to stay still. Jessica noticed her distress and took her hand firmly, squeezing to try and reassure her. It didn't help much, but Hailey appreciated it.

  Alden sat and waited, starting to doze off. Hailey got distracted watching the clouds, thinking about taking a flight around them at some point. It was fiercely cold and wet inside a cloud, but dancing around the intricate landscapes of the thicker blankets of clouds presented an interesting challenge, diving through the shifting formation without touching a single droplet of water.

  "Are you him?" asked a voice suddenly, in a heavily exaggerated dramatic overtone. Alden stood up straight, snapping the book shut on his finger.

  "Jonathan… Hudson, right?" Alden asked, squinting a bit in the sunset.

  "The one and only!" he cried, flourishing a voluminous reflective cape.

  Hailey fought the urge to laugh. Jonathan—who had to be in high school or just out of it—wore a cheap-looking tuxedo t-shirt under the cape, complete with top hat that was clearly out of an amateur magician set. "You wanted a demonstration, did you not? I heard whispers of a secret society, but pardon me, sir, for I had not expected their representative to appear so plainly. Your disguise does you wonders!"

  "Uhh…" Alden started. "Yeah. Can you show me something?"

  "But of course, tis but a trifle for the likes of I!" Jonathan plucked his top hat from his head and twirled it around in his hands, leaving it upside down between them. "Observe!"

  He shut his eyes tight, murmuring under his breath. Hailey quickly amplified it. To her, it sounded like actual gibberish, and not the incomprehensible murmurings of Jessica or Natalie when they were casting a real spell. She started to wonder if he was the real deal and Rupert hadn't been fooled—right up until a candle-sized flame flickered into life in mid-air above the center of the top hat.

  It looked convincing, but she had to be sure. She reached out to the flame with her senses, and sure enough, she could feel the telltale traces of another awakened manipulating the energy in midair to create the reaction from nothing. She sent a flick of wind through Alden's hair, not enough to make it move but more than enough that he'd notice. Jonathan was for real.

  "Suitably impressed?" Jonathan asked confidently, though Hailey could tell he was spending a lot of effort just on the simple candle flame. He was very new to casting spells. She could have snuffed it out more easily than blinking, while he was exerting a lot of energy.

  "Yeah." Alden took a seat on the bench again. "Convincing magic. But you can drop the act, all right?"

  "Act? Would you question my trade, sir?"

  Alden shrugged. Hailey saw his fingers twirl slightly, swinging upward. At the same time, the top hat flew out of Jonathan's outstretched fingers and twenty feet into the sky. The candle flame vanished with a tiny hiss as the hat extinguished it on the way through.

  Jonathan's mouth fell open.

  "Come sit down?" Alden asked, indicating the seat next to him. Jonathan took a few moments, while the hat bounced to the pavement behind him. Finally, eyeing Alden suspiciously, he took the seat next to him. "Welcome to the club, then."

  "You can do it too?" he asked, all pretense vanishing from his voice. With the faux-announcer affectation gone, Hailey thought he actually had a rather pleasant speaking voice. He was much easier to take seriously, at any rate.

  "There's more of us, too." Alden paused. "How much did she explain to you?"

  As expected, there was no need to indicate who 'she' was. Jonathan didn't look surprised. "She said I'd found magic. Real magic. She told me to be careful with it, then she disappeared. Nothing else, really." He looked a bit disappointed. "Does she usually say more than that?"

  Hailey raised an eyebrow. So Beverly had changed her speech a little. The warning was new. Alden nodded. "Grey-eyes never talks to anyone past that. Don't take it personally. It's just who she is."

  "And who are you?"

  "My name's Zack." They'd agreed to start off with a fake name again, just in case, and Alden was used to going by it anyway. "I'm awakened, just like you."

  "Awakened?"

  "Just the word we're using for now."

  "Who's we?" he asked excitedly.

  "A lot of people. Do you have your phone on you?"

  He nodded, pulling out a very nice looking smartphone. Hailey was a touch jealous—but she'd sworn off expensive phones after breaking too many of them flying around. Better to have a reliable phone that wouldn't let her down no matter how many times she crashed than a beautiful brick that couldn't survive one little collision with a treetop.

  "Mind if I use it for a second?"

  Jonathan eyed him suspiciously. "Can I trust you?"

  Alden sighed. "Is there a useful answer to that question?"

  Jonathan didn't seem to follow. Neither did Hailey, for that matter, until she took a minute to think about it.

  "Let's put it this way," Alden went on. "You've got real magic, and I'm the only other person in the world right now who knows. As far as you know, anyway. I've been doing it a lot longer than you too. This is all really new and we're figuring it out as we go, so there's gotta be some trust or we're not getting anywhere." He held out his hand. "Sound good?"

  After a moment's hesitation, Jonathan shook it.

  Alden rolled his eyes. "I meant your phone, but okay."

  "Oh, right. Sorry." He unlocked it and handed it over. Alden opened up a browser and clicked through a few screens Hailey couldn't see. He paused and glanced back up at Jonathan.

  "You're seventeen?"

  "Oh… Yeah, I kinda lied on my profile." Jonathan shrugged. "Easier to get shows if they think you're out of high school."

  He shook his head. "No, we didn't want to bring in anyone underage."

  It's an arbitrary number, Alden, Hailey fumed silently. We already approached him. He's only one year off. Natalie's only thirteen! It'll be fine!

  "What do you mean?" Jonathan asked, sounding nervous. "Why is that important?"

  "Nothing. I'm sorry." Alden handed the phone back. "We'll contact you again sometime."

  "No, hang on. Why do I need to be eighteen? Is this dangerous?"

  "It's—"

  Jonathan gasped theatrically and stood up. Hailey would have assumed it was staged if it had been any other guy. "Is this what happened to that town? Rallsburg?" Alden took a half-second too long to respond, and Jonathan's eyes bulged out. His voice lifted an octave. "Was that place blown up by magic?"

  "Keep your voice down," Alden hissed, glancing around nervously.

  "Holy shit, it was." Jonathan took a step back. "Did you guys do that? Are you trying to destroy the world or something? You killed everyone there!"

  "No!" Alden glanced at where he assumed Hailey was—which was two feet off, but close enough. "Help me, please?"

  Hailey wasn't sure what he wanted exactly, so she did the only thing she could think of. She summoned a gust of wind to push Jonathan back towards them, and quickly sent a wave of magic through her hair and skin to restore her real appearance. At the same time, she gestured to Jessica, miming a wall falling over in front of them. Jessica nodded, making her visible from the front only. She stayed seated on the grass, while Hailey got to her feet.

  If she'd thought Jonathan's eyes couldn't get any wider, she was sorely mistaken. Hailey genuinely thought they might fall out of his skull.

  "Where the fuck did you come from?" he asked, shaking slightly.

  "Rallsburg," Hailey replied.

  Alden sighed. "Check your phone, Jonathan. Go look up the Rallsburg victims. Hailey Winscombe."

  "Hailey Aurora Elizabeth Winscombe," she corrected mildly.

  "Yes, you have a ridiculous name, is now really the time?" Alden asked, irritated.

  "Ridiculous?"

  "Okay, so it's awesome and I'm jealous." He shrugged.

  "Holy shit, it's really you." Jonathan had found the photograph. "You're supposed to be dead. Why aren't you dead?"

  "Some of us survived." Hailey nodded at Alden. "Are you convinced we're not dangerous killers anymore? Because we don't have all day here."

  "I— hang on. So you can do magic too?"

  Hailey rolled her eyes. She murmured a quick spell and sent a gust of wind out to catch his hat. It skidded across the pavement, tapping his feet insistently from the side. "Yup, still can."

  "Hey, you said something. What did you say to do that?"

  Alden glanced at her sidelong. "I've been wondering that too. You and Jessica say stuff when you cast spells."

  Hailey didn't follow. "... Yeah?"

  "The rest of us don't vocalize. We just feel it out with our minds. Rika said it didn't even take gestures if you're really good, but they help you aim and exert yourself more, like swinging your arms helps you keep momentum when running. But none of us actually say stuff."

  She shrugged. "I never really thought about it." She glanced over at Jonathan. "Is this really a good time, though?"

  "Probably not." Alden turned back to Jonathan. "Well, you're in the club now I guess."

  "Wow," he breathed, staring at Haley in awe. "You're amazing."

  Hailey tried not to feel too flattered, but it got to her anyway. It was a feeling she hadn't gotten since she'd been the queen of the party back in Rallsburg. Even Rupert, as kind as he was, couldn't really provide the sort of adoration of the masses she always craved inside. She'd convinced herself—mostly for Jessica's sake—that she was happier living with a small group of close friends, but that was never Hailey Winscombe's destiny. She was meant for the center stage, not the private box in the audience.

  She was born to fly.