Blaze stood alone on a darkened street of Manhattan, eyeing the blue plywood wall in front of him.

The trace spell had only taken a few moments and had told him that the girl lived in a New Jersey suburb. Even now, he could feel a pull on his gut whenever he took a step towards the west.

The transport spell, however, was a little more problematic. Unlike the trace spell, which he had written on a small piece of paper, a transport spell required a large rune diagram written out on the floor. There was a casting room in his apartment, but Blaze had been worried that his father would come home early and catch him in the act. There were also several public casting places spread throughout New York in buildings that doubled as nail salons and art galleries, but he hadn't trusted those either; even in a city as large as New York, it always felt that every potestas knew each other.

So Blaze had waited until the sun had set and had found a stretch of sidewalk boarded up with plywood walls: Construction site by day, his makeshift casting place by night.

Blaze made sure no one was looking and grabbed the silver padlock that sealed the entrance to the construction site. He scrawled a symbol on the metal with chalk, and then whispered, "Aknah," intending the lock to click open. Instead, with a flash of yellow light, the entire padlock disintegrated between his palms.

He cursed, rubbing the metal filings off his hands. My power is really out of control today, he thought, slipping behind the makeshift door.

Beyond the plywood walls, the façade of the building appeared to be under construction—the facing was torn off and the ground was littered with loose nails, bits of plaster, and sawdust. When Blaze saw a security camera perched on the building's front, he knew he should safely disable it with a proper spell. Instead, he wrote another Aknah. Unlike the bolt, the camera did not disintegrate, though he heard an electric crackle accompanied by the smell of burning plastic.

Blaze took a few minutes to clear the sidewalk of debris, and then he started writing out the intensely detailed rune circle with a piece of white chalk. The fading light made it difficult to see the diagram in his father's book, so when he finally finished writing in all the tiny symbols, he began to triple-check his work. This was his first attempt at casting a transport spell; he wanted to make sure he did it right. By the time he was done, the sky had blackened to the color of ink.

Blaze stepped inside the circular chalk drawing, making sure he didn't smudge any of the ancient symbols with his shoes. Transport spells were dangerous if they weren't done properly. Unbidden, the memory of an article he had read once slipped into his head. It had been about a man who had mixed up two symbols in his rune and had been trapped between the boundaries of time and space for almost 30 years. The thought was not appealing.

But I have to do this, Blaze thought grimly, flipping a page to reach the incantation. He stared at the words for a moment, took a deep breath, and cleared his throat. Then he started reading.

He was always surprised by the way the ancient words rolled off his tongue when he read an incantation; his voice seemed to have more layers, reverberating with a vibrato that did not exist with his normal speaking voice. And then the true magic began. From over his spell book, Blaze watched as the world around him dimmed, the silver nails and blue plywood walls fading away as their color fueled the spell.

A moment later, the chalk runes on the ground began to glow. It was faint at first, almost sickly, and much less intense than Blaze had expected. He emphasized his words, adding more fuel to the fire by letting his power trickle into his voice. A fatigue crept into his skin, the drain of the spell pulling on his energy, but slowly the light intensified until he was surrounded by a flaring aura of white light.

There we go, he thought, flipping the page of the book without breaking his stride. As he read the last page of text, he focused on the New Jersey suburb and on the sanspotestas girl he had bumped into earlier. He visualized her face: the curve of her jaw, the green of her eyes, the length of her pin-straight brown hair. With a soft lilt, the final words rolled off his tongue and hung in the air, vibrating gently as silence descended around him.

Blaze breathed in deeply, waiting.

He felt the air hum, almost in hesitation, and then something grabbed hold of him, forcing him to keel over. Before he could stabilize himself, the world around him was yanked away.

Blaze had traveled by transport rune before, but the rides had never been quite so terrible. This time, his body jerked and shuddered, his limbs seeming to move against his will. His chest felt tight, as if a giant invisible weight was pressing down on his ribs. And images flashed before his stinging eyes, fast and bright, too fleeting to make any sense.

For a moment, Blaze feared that he had done something wrong and that he would be trapped in this spiraling descent to hell for eternity. But quite suddenly, everything ended. The lights vanished and gravity's effect took hold once more, throwing Blaze to the ground.

"Agh!" he cursed as his palm slid against asphalt, drawing blood. He clenched his teeth and tried to ignore the pain. He could deal with it later, once the non-er girl's memory was erased.

He stood up and the world swayed dangerously around him; the spell had taken more out of him than he had thought. But he had arrived at the right destination. The tall buildings and busy streets of Manhattan had been replaced by a dark suburban street corner lined with cute colonials. And the tug on his gut was even stronger now, threatening to drag him towards a house at the end of the street. But before he gave in to the pull, Blaze glanced down at the ground. An ashy rune identical to the one he had made in New York City was imprinted on the asphalt: a shortcut home. He wouldn't even need to use the spell book; whispering "Aknah" would suffice.

Blaze breathed a sigh of relief and started jogging towards the non-er's home.

The house wasn't anything spectacular: small and painted off-white, it gently reflected the moonlight so that it glowed in the lot. The lawn wasn't as perfectly manicured as the neighbors', but the grass looked healthy enough and there were a few straggly plants growing around the mailbox.

Blaze looked up towards the second floor, his gaze directed at one of the windows. He could feel a tug coming from that room—the trace spell letting him know that his target was upstairs. Another Aknah later, he had scaled a tree, leapt onto the roof, unlocked the window, and slipped inside.

The bedroom was dark, the shapeless blobs of furniture reminding him of the nighttime monsters he had believed in as a child. After a moment, his eyes adjusted. There was a desk shoved against one wall, an acoustic guitar propped up against a cluttered dresser, a small side table bearing the dim outline of a cross, and, of course, the bed. However, instead of one figure, there were two nestled under the covers: the brunette from earlier, and an unfamiliar blonde.

Blaze's eyebrow shot up. She's a lesbian? he thought to himself, surprised. He hadn't expected the girl to have a lover in the bed with her. It would make the spell all the more challenging.

Blaze moved to the edge of the bed and opened his father's book to a marked page. Written in cramped cursive was the incantation for the Memory Change Spell—Memoria Mutatio. The ancient words sat there patiently as if waiting to be read.

Blaze looked over at the sleeping brunette, her chest rising and falling evenly, her dark hair obscuring her face. For a second he felt bad for her. It wasn't her fault that he had bumped into her. It wasn't her fault that he had said too much and needed to tamper with her mind.

And yet, he knew it wasn't fair to drag her into a magical world without warning. Blaze had heard stories of non-ers who had found out the truth and couldn't bear the news, men and women who had suffered various stages of disbelief, paranoia, and hysteria before slipping into madness. He couldn't do that to this girl. Not only did it go against his own set of morals, but it was also a violation of the law set in place by the Congregation.

But Blaze was terrified. He had never attempted a spell of this caliber, and the transport spell had already worn him out. What if things went wrong and something happened to her?

Take it easy Blaze. He tried to reassure himself, but his hands were shaking. Just say the spell and it'll all be over. Just clear her memory and then you can go home. Just read.

Blaze glanced down at the words. Taking a deep breath, he began to recite the incantation.