ANGIE. TIME TO LEAVE FOR SCHOOL.

“BRB,” Angie said a moment after Evan had left. She hopped off her stool and trotted out of the kitchen. She ran down the stairs to get her stuff. Everything she needed for school, including her makeup, was in her bag, so she snatched it off the table down there and headed back up. Ryan was poking around in his bedroom.

Angie strolled back into the kitchen as Cali said, “—and I guess Drya found Glammer crying in the bathroom, and Rylan told Mikey she’d never been so embarrassed in her whole life.” She was looking at Chris and talking animatedly as she ate.

“Well, we all exaggerate a little from time to time,” Chris replied, nodding sagely and a little helplessly from his position leaning on the end of the counter.

Angie sat back down, taking her makeup out of her bag as she did so, then hanging one strap of the bag over the back of the stool. Her makeup was in a plain copper case, with a minor glyph of life inside a pentacle neatly etched into the metal in gold. She had also drawn out of her bag a thin, twisting wand of Pacific madrone wood, which she now tapped on the makeup case while muttering the command phrase, a sing-song string of Aklo and gibberish.

In the meantime, California said, “I don’t know… I’ve never seen Rylan look that miserable before.” She paused, contemplative. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Rylan look unhappy before, actually. She’s usually stoked about life in general, and who can blame her, being an Osterly and all.”

Without being further touched, the makeup case eased itself open as Angie started eating again, grabbing another piece of toast as she did. Her makeup applying tools were twitching, starting to rise up into the air. They started doing their thing, backing off when she needed to take a bite, but applying mascara, eye liners, lip stuff, and just a touch of blush while she held still but for chewing. She avoided foundation or concealers—she liked her freckles, and she wasn’t troubled by zits at the moment.

Chris blinked and stared at her, expression just a hair from being agape. “Oh wow!” he said, boyish in his excitement, “Ev said something about you being magic last night, but that’s impressive!”

Inexplicably, Angie felt her cheeks flushing, hopefully blending with the blush. “Well,” she replied, “It’s mostly the enchantments on the case. I’m just kind of giving them a nudge. I haven’t yet quite figured out how to get them to be fully self-sustaining and self-powering, so only I can activate it. Better enchanters than I could make one that anyone could use.” She rolled her eyes, and said, “It’s certainly not like I’m a…” She remembered Cali was in the room. “Uh, a Light Bearer, like someone here. I just have little drips and drabs of power and talent. It’s not that impressive.”

“Your power will develop though,” Chris said, as if he were certain. “I mean, you called that owl.”

“You or Evan could have called that owl if you learned how to say the words exactly right and had her name,” Angie replied. You’d think a kid from a Light Bearing family would be better educated about magic. “I have just enough power that I can be a little sloppy in my pronunciation and phrasing and it’ll still go okay. That’s it. Merely calling a spirit is not that hard.”

“That may be true,” Ryan said as he wandered back in wearing shoes, with his bag slung over his shoulder. “But she also seemed awfully pleased to make a deal with you last night, April. I’m also more than half convinced your power will develop more.”

“Because the owl likes me?” Angie asked, throwing a little scorn into her tone.

“Spirits tend to be attracted to potential,” Ryan said. “Remember our odd little magical link. There’s clearly something going on with us all. Evan ran into a Menace-class Beast last night, when really he should have had, like, a one percent chance of encountering a Beast by himself without a Light Bearer to draw one in. Maybe a full one percent. Maybe. And a Menace-class should have been way more unlikely! And stumbling upon a Beast that had just killed someone more unlikely still.”

He shook his head. “That owl was, like, joking around with you, which isn’t really typical behavior for most nature spirits. Calling it a pleasure to be your first summons.”

“Hmmph,” Angie said. It would be… pretty awesome if she turned out to be a full-on sorcerer rather than just an enchanter who could talk to birds and critters… She was already set up to make bank if she could master enchanting, but a sorcerer could do all kinds of things for a living, depending on what forces turned out to be at their command. As long as they weren’t a necromancer, a sorcerer was almost always set for life, if they could gain any sort of control of their talents at all.

Of course, if she really wanted an exciting life, there was the route of the conjuror, making deals with spirits for power—but always at a cost. Deals like the one she’d made the evening before, only long-term, rather than for a single service. Being a sorcerer would definitely be better.

Civilization was practically built on the backs of sorcerers and grand pacts with the spirit world. Feeding the massed populations of the walled cities and towns that mankind had huddled in down the centuries would have been impossible without making deals with spirits and/or the Fair Folk to ensure bountiful harvests. And likely was still, even with modern irrigation and fertilizers.

While most spells were now built out of languages of power, like a computer program out of coding languages, most spells of ancient providence were learnt from or granted by the power of the gods, spirits, and fae of the world. Some theorized that every word in all of the major human languages of power was backed by a deal struck with a spirit or spirits. It would explain why no other major languages of power besides Atlanteic, Naacal, Aklo, and Old Faelish existed.

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As Angie contemplated, she finished eating and her kit finished applying her makeup. Cali had started talking about the emotional toll left behind by Chris’s sister again, while Chris nodded helplessly.

Evan wandered in behind Ryan, also carrying his bag. His eyes promptly glazed over as he tried to follow what Cali was talking about.

“Well Cali,” Angie said, depositing her stuff in the dishwasher and turning it on (one of the boys or Cali had gotten soap into the thing already). “Sounds like the whole social structure of Asphodel middle school has been toppled by the new Light Bearer, but we probably need to get going if we’re going to catch Megan.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘toppled,’ but the foundations sure got shaked. Shook? Sure got shook? Shaken?” Cali responded, seemingly equanimous about mentions of Megan this morning. That was interesting. “See ya this afternoon.”

“We might not be back till close to curfew,” Angie said as she grabbed up her stuff. “Not sure what the plan is, wanted to warn you.”

Cali rolled her eyes. “The time for the turkey was Tuesday[1],” she replied.

[1] Referring to a copper turkey. A colloquialism meaning roughly the same thing as “a day late and a dollar short”: that the care or effort being shown would have meant a lot more had it happened earlier.

“It is Tuesday,” Evan pointed out, as was customary under the circumstances.

“I didn’t come up with the damn saying,” Cali replied with the traditional response. “But don’t worry, no cold cheese sandwiches for you tonight. Later.”

“Ja ne,” Evan replied with a wave as he turned and left the kitchen. Chris rose and followed, shouldering his own bag.

“Come on boys,” Angie said as she shouldered her bag. “Let us away.”

“We were waiting on you,” Ryan said, already following Evan. Which was fair. She followed them all out of the house.

RYAN. TIME TO WALK TO MEGAN’S PLACE.

The early morning sunlight was bright and warm, painting the lane golden, and gleaming in all their hair. Ryan held the door and let Angie walk past him down the steps, and admired the sun in her hair. Her hair was literally the color of ripe strawberries, with a coppery undertone, and Ryan loved it so. It was straight and thick, and had fallen in a dense curtain when they first met. The short haircut had come in middle school, after Megan had gone.

As they filed up the short walk to the street, Chris gave a little throat clearing cough and said, “Hey, you guys mind if I ask a couple of questions?”

When they reached the lane Angie pointed in the right direction to get to Megan’s place, and thus ended up taking the lead. Chris and Ryan flanked her, each of them a half pace behind her, with Evan behind them all, making their group a lopsided sort of quadrilateral. Angie sighed. “I guess.”

“Can’t promise we’ll answer them all yet, but shoot,” Ryan replied.

“Well,” Chris said hesitantly. “Um. I kinda wished we’d talked about your guys’s, you know, situation yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Angie said, “Well. Megan wasn’t eager to bring it up, and I absolutely didn’t want to, so it seemed safer to focus on you to begin with. Ideally, we would have just kept you in the dark about it until we had had a little more time to, you know, work some shit out. But someone threw a temper tantrum and decided to wander around outside after curfew, so we’re all getting to know each other in a more dramatic manner than was really necessary.”

Chris started laughing. Grinning, Ryan glanced over his shoulder in time to see Evan turn a deep shade of red and say, “Shaddup,” without a lot of conviction. He stared at the ground as they walked.

“Okay,” Chris said. “First, can I check if I understand the whole thing correctly? Though Angie, if you still don't want to talk about it, I can wait and ask Ryan later.”

“Should have just sent you the primer I sent Tammy,” Ryan said.

Angie asked. “Chris, just get it over with. Can’t keep you confused.”

“Okay,” Chris said. “Three years ago as you started middle school, a tragic loss resulted in Megan wanting some space from you to get it together. While taking that space, she met Lauren. Katie Konigsmann, who you three have bad blood with—”

“At this point that’s a bit of an understatement,” Evan said dryly.

“Yes, well,” Chris said, flashing Evan a grin over his shoulder. “I can’t imagine why. At any rate, she seems to have lied to Lauren about your relationships with her and with Megan and Beth Mishra, and painted you as villains. This led Lauren, encouraged by Katie—”

“And Brandon,” Ryan said.

“Yes… Brandon Chase-Xavier, everyone’s least favorite guy,” Chris said. “A recent development?”

“Oh, I couldn’t say,” Ryan said. “Depends on the person. Among the bulk of the illuminati[1], quite recent.”

[1] “The Illuminated Ones,” used in Fredonia much like glitterati, to refer to the rich, beautiful, and Light Bearer related.

“We’ve hated him since way back,” Evan supplied. “He was a bully in grade school when Megan wasn’t around.”

“Sure,” Chris said. “So you all got… banished. No one was allowed to acknowledge you in theory, but instead you were the subject of hot gossip. Right so far?”

“Yup!” Ryan replied.

“But none of that gossip ever got to Megan, somehow. Did Lauren know?”

“Nisha Twighs knew nothing,” Ryan replied. “So Lauren probably didn’t either. And yes: somehow, magically, Megan never heard about any of this shit. Maybe literally magically. It’s just mind-boggling.”

“The birds said something about her leaving so we could be three,” Angie said. “Which maybe makes sense? Three is prime, so it’s a more mystically stable number than four is.”

Evan said, “Hmm. Megan said yesterday morning that she thought we were avoiding her, and that she wasn’t avoiding us. Unless you guys managed to lead me around such that I never saw her—”

“Noperino, bood guddy,” Ryan said.

Everyone stopped and looked at him.

“Good buddy,” Ryan tried again. Shit. He should have said it was intentional.

“‘Bood guddy,’” Evan said. “That’s much harder to say than ‘good buddy’ is. Bood? How did you do that, even?” Chris started laughing.

“Shut it,” Ryan said.