“What is it?” Dara asked. Millie was holding her phone, and she looked grim.

“You know how I help people now and then?”

“Yes…”

“Well, I helped a lady with her kid. And it looks like well…” Millie sighed. “He’s gotten himself involved with some crooks.”

“What kind of crooks?”

“The stealing cars kind. Denise thinks they got James on board because he’s fifteen and it’s less likely that he’ll be tried as an adult.”

“And he’s…”

“Stopped answering his phone when he goes out at night. Fortunately, it’s her account, not his, and that means she can track him via the GPS. She’s asked me to get him and bring him home before the police get him—or worse.”

“But he’s breaking the law…” Dara said.

“Sure, but he will get caught and he will get tried as an adult, and then that’s the end for James. Hard to get a start in life if you’ve got a felony on your record.”

“But what’s going to keep him from doing it again?” Dara asked.

“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. First thing we need to do is get him back home so we can scream at him. You on?”

Dara nodded. “Yes. But I don’t have any time to set any new rituals for my staff or any other foci. I’ll be limited in what I can do.”

“Don’t worry, hopefully you won’t have to do anything. But it’s good that you have your…” Millie chuckled. “Superhero outfit on.”

“I’m not a superhero, I’m a mage,” Dara replied in a prim tone. “What’s a superhero?”

“You should read more comics,” Millie said. “But are you willing to give me a hand?”

“Yes.” Dara nodded. “Let’s go.”

Moments later, she was in the car with Millie.

“Bring your other clothes?”

“In my bag,” Dara said. “But when I change out of my… disguise, I need a hidden place to do it.” She flushed and shook her head. “So I don’t give anyone a show.”

“Don’t worry. You can sneak back into the car.” Millie shrugged as they pulled onto the freeway. “But be careful. I just wanna try to get James’ out of this before the idiot gets arrested. So we just wait until he leaves, then grab him and give him a scare.”

“And I’m here…”

“In case anything goes wrong. That little fog spell could come in awfully handy.”

“Yeah.” Dara nodded. She got up and followed Millie, heading for the car.

And in just a few moments, Millie was on the freeway, zipping past other vehicles, and once again Dara found herself clutching the dashboard.

“Oh, for God—again?” Millie asked. But she didn’t slow down.

As they zipped along the freeway, Dara looked around and noticed that there were fewer houses. “Are we leaving the city?”

“Eh, sort of. This is on the way to the Inland Empire,” Millie said. “Lot of cities out there, but not as big as the ones where we live.”

Not as big… Dara shook her head as she saw another cluster of lights approaching.

“Right, good, the freeway’s not jammed,” Millie said. “We’ll be out of Corona and on our way…” She glanced down at the phone, the screen displaying a glowing map with several dots on it. “To San Bernardino.”

“That can track him?” Dara asked. “How? I mean, a ritual of finding might do that, if you had forewarning and a personal item, but…”

“His phone.” Millie gestured at a strange tower that went zipping by, ignoring Dara’s squeak as the car drifted to the side, coming closer to a looming truck. “It talks to those cell phone towers and they can locate it if you have permission. Which we do.”

“Wouldn’t he know that?” Dara asked. “If he’s trying to stay hidden? Only a fool would commit a crime when they could be located!”

“He’s a teenager. Which means stupi—ah, well, some teenagers are stupid. Some other ones are very smart and would never accidentally get chucked into another world.”

Dara opened her mouth. Closed it. Then she folded her arms and glared out of the window.

Millie grinned. “C’mon, you walked right into that one.”

“I did not expect that something all my classes stated was impossible was going to happen,” Dara said. “That is not being stupid, that is being uniformed!”

“Okay, well, James is uninformed about the idiocy of getting involved with crooks.”

“What about his father?”

“Part of the reason for the idiocy. James adores him even though he’s doing twenty for manslaughter.”

“Ah.” Dara didn’t know what to say about that.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Millie said. “First thing, we find him. If he’s alone, I’m going to grab him, sling him into the car and drag him home. If he’s with people, we wait until he’s alone. You do that fog spell, and I grab him and yank him into the car, and then we take him home and ask him what the hell he’s doing.”

“Um… I could stun him.”

“You have a magical knock-out ray.”

“Yes.”

“New plan. You stun him, then I grab him.”

“Right.” Dara shook her head. “Millie?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s going to keep him from doing this again?”

“His mother will threaten to murder him, I’ll threaten to murder him, and I’ll point out that if we can find him, the cops sure as hell can find him if he gets on their radar.”

Unless he thinks that he knows how you did it… Dara didn’t know if Millie would be able to convince this individual. After all, he had to know all of this already, didn’t he?

Eventually, Millie pulled off of the freeway, leaving Dara utterly confused as to where they were. But the houses were smaller, the streets less crowded, and…

Dingy. Dara noticed that most of the houses had bars on their windows.

“Are there dangerous animals here?” Dara asked.

Millie looked over at the houses. “Just the two-legged kind.” She pulled the car into an empty parking lot behind a closed store. “Right, this locator works to within thirty meters, so…” She gestured down the road to what looked like a yard filled with debris and wrecked machinery. “Guess where our idiot probably is?”

“That lot.”

“Yep. Now what would an honest kid be doing in a wrecking yard at night…” Millie glanced at Dara. “Can you pull the fog?”

“I can…” Dara said. “But it’d take a little more time and effort, unless I have a source of water.”

“Fine, hold that for if we need it.” Millie flicked her fingers over the glowing screen. “Thank you map app—how does a drainage ditch work for you?”

Dara frowned, staring at the map. “That takes us right to the rear of the lot. So what do we do then?”

“Listen. Listen and get information and then the moment James walks out, we grab him, haul him back to his mom, and remind him that if we can do it, anyone else can.”

“Can they?”

“Okay, fine, we lie to him. But that hopefully keeps James out of prison.”

Dara didn’t reply. Evidently, Millie noticed her dubious expression. “You got a better idea?”

Turn him over to the guard? But Dara didn’t say that. “We should hurry. I need time for the working.”

“Right.”

They darted across the street, the asphalt still warm from the light of the day. Dara was prepared to harden some air to walk up and over the fence, but she didn’t need to—there was a gap in the fence where the material had been torn away. Inside, they both scrambled down the steep concrete slope, barely avoiding the sluggish stream of water that took up the center of the drainage ditch.

“Can you work your mojo?” Millie asked. “Just enough to shield us from anyone looking down. I don’t want to fill the neighborhood up.”

“I—if anyone looks down, they’ll see a channel filled with fog. Isn’t that going to… worry them?”

“Maybe, but you’d be surprised what people can ignore. Besides, it’s dark, so they might not even notice.”

“Right.” Dara nodded and cast the working. It was a little harder than it had been in the park, because they had less water to play with, but equally she wasn’t having to cover an entire park. Soon, the fog was rising from the stream of water, growing denser until anyone looking down couldn’t see into the ditch.

“Bit wet, isn’t it?” Millie asked.

“It’s not like I have a lot of room to play with,” Dara told her. “The fog has to be very dense.”

“Right, well, open us up a tunnel and let’s go.”

Dara nodded. She gestured, and just as with the park, a pathway opened for them. Millie pointed her phone down and a dim light emerged from it, letting them avoid the debris.

Communications, maps, the ability to speak to others, even a light. Dara shook her head. Some things back home were that flexible, but they weren’t nearly as common as they were here. When she got back, she wondered if anyone would believe her.

Moving quietly, they got to the rear of the lot. Nobody seemed to be out back, but they heard some noise in the lot. Talking, laughter. Millie scrambled up the slope. “The things I do for my friends,” she muttered. “Okay, I can see some light. Let’s…” She paused. Dara waited behind her, then frowned and moved up the slope to rest beside the older woman.

“Shit,” Millie whispered.

“What is it?” Dara asked. There were cars around, some dim light banishing the darkness, with some men standing around. There was also a teen, younger than anyone else.

James, Dara presumed. He raised his hand, and another man smacked it.

“Great job!” he said.

“Millie,” Dara whispered. “What’s wrong?”

“This isn’t a chop shop,” Millie whispered. “See those paper packages on the table?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s cocaine. This is a drug operation. Oh, that little moron…” Millie took a deep breath and slide back down the slope. “James is so fucked.”

Dara glanced at Millie. “How?”

“Car thefts are one thing. But those are drugs. Those are drugs for trafficking. If the feds get involved, he’ll end up in prison for a long time, and they can take everything his mom has!”

“But she doesn’t know—“

“This is no time to talk about asset forfeiture, but trust me, it doesn’t matter. And that presumes he doesn’t end up getting killed because this is not a safe job.”

“So we wait until he goes home—“

“Not a good idea.” Millie shook her head. “Those packages are worth a few million bucks if they’re pure. If James says ‘I quit,’ and goes back home? Yeah, dead men tell no tales. Shit, shit, shit! How can someone be so stupid?!”

“This is a serious crime.”

“Oh yeah.”

“And we can’t just make James leave, not without a good reason.”

“Yep.”

Dara looked up at her. “You helped me, and this is important to you.” She let her power fill the staff, the metallic surface gleaming with a soft light. “What if we gave them a very good reason to assume James had nothing to do with their misfortune?”