"The problem with magic," said Orton, stuffing a handful of french fries into his mouth, "is that it's both too powerful and not powerful enough."

Julie frowned, sipping her chocolate shake. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Magic usually doesn't. But basically, you can do almost anything, but lots of things are either so hard to do that they're not worth it, or so easy to do that you cause problems for yourself." Orton shoved his fry basket aside and pulled out some coins. "You ever write a computer program?"

Julie snorted. Seventeen-year-old girls didn't usually write computer programs in her school district. "Shouldn't you know that already, if we worked together before?"

"You didn't like to talk about yourself much." Orton was carefully arranging the coins into a grid. "Also you tried to kill me and I had to bury you alive in a hole in Scotland, but I'm pretty sure that's because I was all cagey last time. I'm gonna try the whole full-disclosure thing this pass."

She blinked. "Excuse me? You buried me alive?"

"Yes, because you were a pretty powerful sorceress at the time and I wanted to get away without you turning me inside-out. You probably survived. Besides, I'm sure things will go better between us this time." He finished arranging the coins to his satisfaction, then tapped on them, causing them to float up into the air. "Right. As you can see, I am levitating some coins, in complete defiance of logic and physics."

Julie sniffed. "Big deal. I've seen David Copperfield do that on TV."

Orton shrugged, then gestured; the coins arranged themselves into a column, then folded themselves around a central point in space and disappeared, replaced by large flaming dagger. "Better?"

Julie, against her better judgment, reached out and took the hilt of the dagger; it was cool to the touch, but the flames radiating from the blade were palpable. Her skin was going to dry out. "Damn. Okay, that's pretty cool." She glanced around nervously. "Should you be doing this sort of thing in front of, uh... normal people, though?"

Orton shook his head. "Look around. Do you see anybody panicking or calling the cops?" Julie had to admit that she did not. "Most people can't even notice magic. You could turn their hat into a pumpkin while they're wearing it and they'd never even be aware that it happened."

Julie wrinkled her nose and stuck the dagger in her milkshake, trying to extinguish it, which did not work at all; the room began to fill with the smell of burnt dairy. "Won't they notice later, when their hat is missing and they find a pumpkin instead?"

"It doesn't work that way. It'll turn back once you're not around, or they'll remember someone put it there as a prank and they thought it was funny, or some other way to restore normality. States of equilibrium always correct." Orton unwrapped his burger, taking a huge bite and savoring it. There was no denying it; stuff just tasted better when you were eighteen.

"So it's like... mind control, or something?" Julie asked.

"Nah, f'more complicated van vat." Orton chewed reluctantly and swallowed. "Let's say you have two doors, but you can only go through one. A left door and a right door. With me so far?" Julie nodded. "Now, what actually happens when you choose a door is that, for lack of a better explanation, the universe is doubled. One universe where you go through the left door, and one where you go through the right."

Julie blinked. "Is this that... quantum physics stuff?"

Orton nodded. "That's right. The specifics would take forever to explain, but basically, magic is manipulation of the quantum state. For normal people, magic literally doesn't even happen in their universe -- they get a completely different set of events than we do, usually very normal ones. While you were waving around a flaming dagger, other people probably saw you playing with a lighter, or something else unremarkable. It's the same with things like video cameras, too; they'll only record normal things."

"So... you're saying that if I try to show magic to other people, I'll just look crazy." Julie was becoming less enthused about her career as a sorceress by the sentence.

"Essentially. With practice, you'll get better about using it in a way that doesn't disrupt other people's preconceptions, but early on it's best to practice in private." Orton took another bite of his burger. "Pretty much the biggest mistake you can make is alerting another magic-user to your presence and ability; a lot of them are what you'd call 'hostile'."

"Wait, wait a minute." Julie tried frantically to cover the smoking ruins of her milkshake with a handful of napkins. "Are you saying there could be dangerous magicians in here? In Curbside Burgers?"

"Nah. I checked." Orton took a sip from his Diet Coke. "Divination's the first school of magic I mastered. It's got its share of drawbacks and shortcomings, but it's a great way to stay under the radar."

Julie nodded. "And that's how you can see the future?"

Orton crumpled up his wrappers and threw them in the trash without looking. "Sort of. There's a lot involved. But before I can tell you anything else, you need to understand something." He steepled his fingers and peered over them at her. "Just knowing magic exists is dangerous to you, but so far, I haven't done anything to you besides shown you some tricks and told you a few crazy stories. If I actually teach you magic, though, there will be consequences."

Julie rolled her eyes. "You mean like I might become super awesome?"

Orton chuckled. "Well, that too. But specifically, it means you have to give up your old life."

"So what?" she narrowed her eyes. "Like, I have to come live with you, or something? Because that's not creepy at all."

"No." Orton always hated this part. "I mean you literally have to lose your past. Everyone you ever knew will forget you existed. Your parents, your friends, everybody."

Julie's eyes widened. "Wait, wait a minute. Are you saying you're going to wipe their memories, or something?"

"Not me. You'll change, and in changing, the person you are will stop existing. Juliette Atborough will disappear forever, and only Enna -- the new, true you -- will remain." Orton had learned her true name on his previous loop.

She pushed her chair back from the table, shaking her head. "This is all too crazy. I don't... I must be out of my mind." But her gaze kept drifting back to the ruins of her milkshake.

"It's fine. Take your time, think. If you decide not to, that's cool -- I can probably find another way to deal with the problems you solved for me in the last loop." Orton stood up, taking his drink with him. "If you decide you want to become a sorceress, write your true name and mine on a piece of paper and circle them. That'll bind you to me and notify me." He drained the last of his drink, slurping it up through the straw noisily.

Julie stood up too. "And if I don't? Are you gonna... come around me again?"

"Nope." Orton threw his empty cup in the trash can. "Got better things to do."

The best part, Orton reflected, was not having to go to work. On his first pass through this time period, he hadn't known any useful money-making spells, so he'd spent every day scrubbing dishes in a grubby Cajun eatery to make just enough money to pay his rent for nearly five years. His powers were still greatly diminished; knowing spells didn't actually help you cast them if you didn't have the spiritual strength or ritual preparations, so he could mostly only manage the simplest and most basic cantrips in his current state. But he'd learned during his first few times through this that while divining the winning lottery numbers required shifting far more entropy than his current strength allowed, guessing combinations on cheap, shitty safes was very much within his domain. He always hit the place he had worked first, as a rule. Suck on that, Mr. Armstrong. Shoulda let me have my breaks.

This next part, however, was always a bit dicey. With his powers at their weakest, clearing out a nest of revenants by himself was no joke, but he'd learned on his third pass that failing to do it by the end of the day caused an unpleasant chain reaction of events that would culminate in Gentry destroying the world nearly five years earlier than normal. So if he wanted any shot whatsoever at chasing down some of his missed opportunities in Sri Lanka and Bhutan (sixteen and eighteen years from now, respectively), he needed to get this done. Standing outside the abandoned warehouse, he wished he had somebody to watch his back -- on his first pass through the timeline, he'd stumbled into this with a coworker named Vinny while goofing around, entirely by accident. His dime-store, shaky spellcasting had carried him through more by luck than anything else; Vinny had started showing up on milk cartons a week later.

Talismans would have been ideal -- great against spirits of any kind -- but they required either infused ink (which he couldn't get) or a pearlescent oversoul (which he wouldn't be able to manifest for another ten years). He was going to have to do this the hard way. Grabbing a sturdy piece of rebar from a junk pile, he muttered the words for his most powerful reification, and the iron bar twisted and flared, becoming a glowing white longsword. This particular trick -- the transformation of a physical object using an expression of a primal concept -- was technically beyond the reach of mortal-tier magic, but his mastery of Platonic forms allowed him to use it for short periods even at his current level. It would last about three minutes, if he was lucky. He probably wouldn't be lucky.

Shouldering his way through the door, he decided to get this over with. "Hey, dead assholes!" he shouted into the gloom. "Your dicks rotted off when you weren't looking!"

The echoes of his insult died away quickly, replaced by an oppressive silence shot through with plausibly deniable creaks and wind noises. He closed his eyes and turned his back to the building's interior -- revenants liked to attack from concealment. But his sight beyond sight, which had as much to do with his eyes as Thursday has to do with the Norse god of thunder, warned him anyway. At its current level, it was a bit like comic-book danger sense instead of an actual perceptive facility -- he couldn't discern auras, which he really missed, and he couldn't sense divination anchors passively, which meant he was going to need to cultivate a healthy bit of paranoia for a while. But he could sense the revenant manifesting behind him, reaching out for his throat, with just enough time to react.

He spun around, ducking under the undead creature's grasp, and stabbed upwards through the creature's ka, in the place where a human's stomach would be (revenants sometimes had hearts, but they were mostly just ornamental). For the vast majority of prey, revenants were tricky to kill -- they had physical bodies, so they could injure or kill you much more easily than incorporeal undead like poltergeists, but they were also spiritual beings, which meant they could ignore most physical wounds, even gruesome injuries like dismemberment or decapitation. But an enchanted weapon straight through their spiritual nexus could drop them, and this one fell like a sack of potatoes almost instantly. One down, three to go.

Two more revenants rushed out of the darkness, trying to catch him off-guard, but he was ready. He stepped backwards, leveling a horizontal swipe that kept them at bay, while his free hand sketched a quick series of gestures to form a banishing sigil. Without a physical structure, it wouldn't last longer than a few moments, but that would be enough to stagger the revenants.

Suddenly, a scream rang out behind him. His head snapped around, startled -- there wasn't supposed to be anybody else here! The sigil dissolved like wet tissue paper before it could even take effect, and the revenants seized the opening instantly. One clawed fiercely at his face, causing him to jerk backwards in shock, while the other latched onto his ankle and sank its teeth into his thigh. Orton didn't quite manage to stop himself from screaming, but he did keep his lips clamped together so it came out as more of a squealing hum.

Fighting against the pain, he grabbed the revenant's slimy skull with his free hand and reversed his grip on the sword's hilt, then plunged it into the creature's back. He couldn't be sure of hitting its vital nucleus with a blind stab, but even if he missed its spiritual core, the weapon's vivic aura would sicken and quell it for at least a few heartbeats. The revenant howled mournfully and released him, its bloodied jaws agape, as he staggered back and turned, limping, to run towards the sound of the scream. The other revenant gave chase, leaving the stunned one behind, as he ducked through the doorway into the adjacent room.

Peering through the darkness and growling, Orton finally managed to make out the crouched and quivering shape of Julie, attempting to fend off the fourth revenant with a broken board. He stomped up behind it and stabbed it through the stomach as it turned to face him, dropping it, but the sword abruptly wavered and turned back into a length of rebar in his hands. Definitely not lucky.

As the other two revenants scrambled towards them, he cast the rebar aside. "Thought it would be a good idea to follow me, huh?" he muttered out of the side of his mouth. This was not going well. Julie clawed at his shoulder, but he couldn't count on her to do anything useful -- she was a teenage girl with the spellcasting capability of a dead weasel at this point. He could try to stagger the revenants again, but he was already running out of magical power and that would only slow them down for a moment or two. Fortunately, he'd already done this once, so he was pretty sure it would work. Mostly.

Dabbing his fingertips in the blood seeping from the wound on his thigh, he carefully daubed a circle on the concrete as quickly and accurately as he could, trying desperately to maintain his concentration as the revenants closed the distance. He smeared a triangle within the circle, then began dabbing out the four runes required to complete the sigil. Julie screamed something in his ear, but he wasn't listening. The revenants reached out, bony fingers and ravenous mouths inches from his face. Just as the lead revenant's claw bit into his cheek, he completed the sigil.

The symbols flared with bright white light as he poured every erg of his remaining power into the binding. A blast of celestial power erupted outwards, disintegrating both the revenants into ash, and Orton fell backwards panting. At least this time he hadn't wet his pants.

"What... what were those things?!" Julie shrieked. Her jacket was in tatters, and it looked like she'd lost a shoe somewhere.

"Revenants," groaned Orton, gripping his thigh wound and struggling not to lose consciousness. "Ghosts driving zombies around, basically. Not cuddly." He really needed to get out of here -- he wouldn't be able to perform the rite of regression until he had at least another five years of power, and there were a lot of preparations needed first. Dying before he could set up the next run through the loop was the biggest danger right now.

"Jesus Christ," Julie gasped, fighting for breath. "You fight monsters like this all the time?"

"Not if I can help it," muttered Orton, and passed out.