Blaze felt like slamming his head into a wall.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," he muttered. He clenched his fists and stormed down the streets, parting the tide of New Yorkers like Moses through the Red Sea.

He had finally been given a chance to prove that he could actually do something right—a job with the Congregation no less—and he had managed to mess it up within an hour. One glance at the girl and boom—the building's windows had blown out, shattering glass all over the pedestrians and prompting an evacuation of everyone who had been inside. All because of him.

Blaze cursed under his breath. His magic had gotten out of control around girls several times before, and the incidents always followed a similar pattern: first there was an outburst of magic followed by a stream of babbling thanks to an unfortunate mix of adrenaline and magic. And then, when both of those were back under control, his mind would empty. The precise details of the incident would fade away, specific memories dissipating like smoke. It was as if his mind was trying to save him from embarrassment. The problem was that he remembered just enough of this incident to know he had spoken to a non-er; he just had no idea what he had actually said. And that could end badly.

Father's going to kill me, he thought with dread, slowing down as he reached his apartment.

It was a normal looking building by New York standards, but the entire brownstone, from foundation to roof, was heavily glamoured, laced with intricate spells meant to fool a typical passerby. If someone happened to park their car by the curb and spend their entire day staring at the building, everything would seem quite normal. They might even glimpse a number of people walking in and out, including a middle-aged Puerto Rican woman with two small children, an elderly woman with a penchant for floral dresses, and a drunkard who only came out late at night.

But only two of the apartment complex's occupants were real, and they were Blaze and his father. The rest were illusions. One of Blaze's weekly chores was ensuring that the human-like illusions were functioning properly, but he did more than simply tinker with their spell diagrams. He also spent time giving them personalities, fleshing out back-stories, and affectionately naming them like a normal person would name their cat. The hobby kept him occupied and had helped him learn to control the magic that ran through his veins.

The same magic that had very clearly gotten out of control and had caused a building to explode.

When Blaze entered the small lobby of his building, a blond secretary smiled at him from behind a desk.

"Hello, Master Blaze," she greeted courteously.

"Hello, Rita." He addressed the illusion out of habit, sidestepping around her to get to the door to his apartment. He touched the keyhole with his forefinger, and announced "Aknah." With a jolt of power, the lock clicked and the door swung open, revealing his home of seventeen years.

"Have a nice day, Master Blaze," Rita said in farewell, her conjured voice gently fading as the door automatically started to close behind him.

But all Blaze could do was grimace as he stepped over the threshold. His father was glaring at him from down the hall, his tall figure creating an imposing silhouette. Nice day? he thought nervously. We'll have to see about that.

"Come in here, Blaze." His father's voice boomed down the hallway, and Blaze winced as he walked his way over to the kitchen miserably, preparing for the inevitable lecture.

Silas Merg was an intimidating presence even to his son. Dressed in a crisp clean suit with a silver watch on his left wrist, he looked like any New York City professional. Blaze just happened to know that his father also was an extremely powerful wizard, one who obviously was not in a good mood.

"So Blaze," Silas said, walking around the island in the middle of their kitchen. "How was surveillance?"

"Surveillance?" Blaze started, countering his father's movements.

His father stopped walking and looked at him. His grey eyes were sharp, but his tongue sharper. "Yes, surveillance. Or were you under the impression that you were not working for the Congregation today, even after all the strings Mr. Ruke pulled so you could get this opportunity?"

"For the most part it went all right—"

"All right?" Silas bellowed, no doubt loud enough to warrant a noise complaint had they had any real neighbors. "If everything went 'all right' then tell me about this!"

He angrily gestured to the TV mounted on the kitchen wall, and with a sizzle it turned on to CNN.

Blaze looked up and involuntarily winced. The news station was showing a shoddy clip filmed on some tourist's video camera. One second he could hear the couple chatting as they walked down the street, remarking on how amazing New York City was and how stunning the Freedom Tower looked, and the next there was a flash of light, a loud bang, and the explosion. As debris started raining down, the cameraman started screaming, and with a flurry of fuzzy black and grey specks, the camera died out.

Blaze turned back to his father who was staring at him darkly.

"They're suspecting terrorists," he said, "because it was right across the street from the goddamn Freedom Tower!"

Blaze winced. "I didn't mean to."

"Didn't mean to what?" Silas bit. "Mess something like this up? Blow up a building in broad daylight? If I had known this was going to happen, I would have never asked Apollo Ruke for the favor. He could have sent his son and—"

"Helio?" Blaze interrupted. "You can't think he'd have done any better!"

Silas glared at his son. "Really? He graduated second in your class, he has ambition," he listed on his fingers, "and his father has connections—connections which I asked him to use for you." His mouth was a thin line. "You may not think much of Helio, but he never would have done anything like this."

"It wasn't my fault!"

"Oh, so the building just decided to blow up on its own accord?"

"I couldn't help it. There was a girl and—"

"That doesn't make this any better," his father growled. "Let me guess: You couldn't control it. Blaze, you're seventeen. I'd expect that excuse from a twelve-year-old, not a Sir Mallard's graduate. Not an adult who needs to figure out what he's doing with his life."

Blaze didn't want to look at his father's face. His own felt hot, like his skin was on fire. "It just gets out of control at times," he tried, keeping his voice as level as possible. "It wasn't like I wanted to blow up the building on purpose."

His father screwed his eyes shut. For a few seconds he just stood there, a tall statue with crinkled eyes and a deep-set frown. But finally he opened them. "Fine," he muttered. "We can deal with this. No one was badly injured, so we don't have to worry about that, and Apollo said that no one on the Congregation's end is interested in pressing any charges. Just tell me that no one saw you and realized that you did it. Tell me that you didn't say anything about wizards or magic or the Congregation or anything."

Blaze shifted uncomfortably. His exact conversation with the girl still escaped him, but he could not admit that to his father.

So he lied.

"No, Father. No one knows anything."

His father stared at his son, surveying the adolescent face before him for a solid minute in silence, and then sighed. "Fine. I'm going to see if I can find out where the Congregation was moved. There was supposed to be a meeting tomorrow discussing the possible integration of magical interfaces in the new Apple products, and half of the guys in my department had presentations ready, but I'm sure that's all cancelled now. So you are staying in your room all night, got it Blaze? And no magic, unless it's to fix Mrs. Johnson; as of late she's been speaking with an Irish accent and I don't want people getting curious."

"Yes, Father. I'll fix her right away."

"Good." Silas headed down the hall, grabbed a key off a hook, and opened the apartment door. "I'll be out late. Have a good night." And with that he stepped out and shut the door behind him.

Blaze collapsed onto a kitchen stool and banged his head on the granite countertop. "Stupid, stupid, stupid..."

If the girl spilled something, he knew he would never be able to recover from it. The Congregation would come after him and accuse him of leaking knowledge to a non-er, and Blaze knew his father would rather disown him than have his son's mistake ruin his reputation.

He stood up, accepting that this was going to be a long night.

A memory spell should do the trick, he thought, walking to his bedroom, and a trace can help me find the girl. And I might need a transportation spell if she doesn't live nearby.

He found his black messenger bag on top of a pile of dirty clothes in his room. Inside was almost everything he would need: a box of chalk, a couple pens, a small notebook, and a few glass jars filled with herbs.

And, in the very bottom recesses of his bag, was his personal spell book. It was a slim volume with a white book jacket, modern typeface, and crisp white pages. Blaze reached for the book, plucked it out of his bag, and unceremoniously tossed it on the floor. It landed as a crumpled heap of pages on top of a hill of black shirts.

Blaze slung the bag over his shoulder and left his room, winding down the hallway until he reached the doors to his father's study. He hesitated only a moment before entering; the study was his father's "personal" space, and most of the time he forbade Blaze from even poking his head inside. But his father wasn't home now, and Blaze knew that if everything went according to plan, Silas would never know that he had been inside.

The office was extremely neat, but the walls defied the perfect state of order; they were lined with shelves crammed with volumes of books. His father worked primarily with computers, so there was a colorful array of programming textbooks on the lower shelves, but there was also an assortment of other texts: collections of the philosophical writings of Plato and Socrates, a few textbooks on advanced physics, chemistry, and biology, and even an entire wall dedicated to classic American novels. Blaze was nearly certain that wall only existed because his mother's favorite book had been The Great Gatsby.

Blaze found his father's spell book almost immediately; it was on the shelf right behind his father's chair. It was bound in a navy blue fabric so dark it was almost black, and had he opened it to the first page, he would have seen the words "The Booke of Advanced Magick" inked in crinkled script on the yellowed parchment.

He plucked the volume off the shelf and slipped it into his bag. His father never knowingly let his son touch the precious volume. The heirloom had been passed down through the generations, handed off on deathbeds, written wills, and the occasional eighteenth birthday. Blaze knew that one day the book would be his, but he couldn't wait that long. His personal spell book was absolute garbage. Besides missing several spells, Blaze had spotted what appeared to be misprints, small mistakes such as an extra character here or a deleted symbol there. After nearly singeing off his eyebrows in his first year of school, he had stayed away from it as much as possible and started sneaking into his father's study to use his.

I'll only need it for a few hours, he reasoned. By the time he comes home, it'll be right where he left it.

He nodded to himself as he left his apartment, though his stomach roiled. He had a feeling it was not going to be that easy.

"Have a nice evening, Master Blaze," Rita said as he passed the illusion in the front atrium.

"You too, Rita." He paused before continuing out the second set of doors. "Could you contact me if my father comes home early? I doubt that'll happen, but just let me know?"

"Of course, Master Blaze."

"Thanks. And please keep this conversation between us?"

"Of course."

"Thanks Rita. You're the best." And it was true. Rita was the best person in his life. He had spelled her that way.