Instead of giving me an explanation for what happened at the concert and helping me lick my emotional wounds, the brief encounter with Joe was a bitter disappointment that sent my mood to new lows. I knew it wasn't directly his fault for succumbing to the influence of Mephi's fog, but I still hoped that when he awoke from its effect, he'd worry about me. But no, he didn't even feel the need to talk to me.

I really needed to do something to help me change my mind.

It was a fine late April day, and it would be sad to let my current state of mind fester it. The afternoon's sun was warming my back as I was heading home from school.

Should I go home and find Lola? She must have finished her classes an hour earlier. We hadn't done much together lately, and I missed our shopping tours that mostly ended with visits to a coffee shop or restaurant. They used to be fun and enjoyable, but were they not kind of shallow?

Shallow? That was a new thought I was trying to process when I heard somebody running behind me:

“Lores! Wait for me!”

I turned with a grin: there were not many people who would call me like that. It was Matt.

“Is your mother not coming today to pick you up?”

He sighed, not angered by my comment: “No, I have to use public transportation. It will take me one and a half hours to get home.”

I wondered:

“Is this some kind of punishment? Have you been a naughty boy?”

He sighed and nodded: “Indeed.” - he then smiled - "May I accompany you on your way home? It's on my way to the bus station..."

It wasn't in his way unless he took a detour, but I wasn't going to point that out. However, there was something else that I had to talk about with him:

“Well, do you know your mom called my mom to complain that I'm a bad influence on you? Do you still think it's okay to come with me?”

He paled at that.

“She shouldn't have done that.” - was all he could muster.

“Indeed!” - I answered, raising my shoulders.

Maybe I brushed that off too quickly. He tried to synchronize his walk with mine, walking beside me:

"So, what do you plan to do today?"

I shrugged:

"I was planning to do some experiments in a quiet place away from civilization. Possibly I'll drive somewhere in the woods."

He chuckled:

“Quiet, tranquil place? Far away from the civilization and yet close enough? I know of no better place than Hew's cabin! We could go there and wait for the rain to come?”

I laughed at that. There was a glint in his eyes. Not exactly a thin-veiled allusion.

“Heh, you seem to be sorry that you missed the party! It's not exactly the kind of experiment I had in mind, but the location could be suitable. Would Hew not be angry if we invaded his cabin? Actually, I do not need the cabin; just the woods around would be fine.”

“I have a key to the cabin. We all have a key, you know... It is our place where we meet to compose new songs.”

"And how do you get there? I doubt that your mom's car would make it there even if she wanted to give you a ride."

"Mostly Hew or Mike take me with them, even if I made it up there with my bike a couple of times. About three hours ride from my home."

So the cabin is kind of a headquarter in the woods for the boys. A bit too far away from civilization. Does any of them have a girlfriend? I haven't seen any so far.

“What happens when you all go at the same time there?”

He shrugged: “Sing? Play a game of cards? Have fun? If I want solitude, I can send a message. First come, first served principle, but we never used it. Well, not true, Tom did it a couple of times, but we think he just went to eat some berries.”

“So you all abuse Hew's cabin in the woods? And you have only one blanket, no woods for fire, no matches, nothing there? Not even electricity?”

“Hey, it was the first time we went there this year. I guess Hew was there a couple of times before, but none of us. It's basically Hew's place. The electrical installation is in work; we'll make it sometime in the summer. Why do you ask?”

His invitation was for the laughs, but the place would suit well for my experiments. I looked at him.

“OK, I might take you up on your invitation.”

That took him by surprise. He watched me, unsure of what I was planning. I grinned:

“You'll see. When do you have to be at home?”

He shrugged:

“In the evening?"

We walked into the park near my house.

“Give me your schoolbag and your mobile!” - I said

As he handed those to me, he wondered.

“Mobile? What if my mother calls?”

I shrugged, making them disappear into my inventory box. I answered with an impish grin:

"She'll get to your voicemail."

He watched me dumbfounded as he saw the bag and the mobile disappearing:

“Wow, wow!? Is this a trick? What have you done? Where's my mobile? My schoolbag?”

“Is it not better like this? You don't have to carry that bag!”

“OK, but I need that bag when I get home, you know? Homework is still a thing for ordinary mortals?”

“I may consider giving it back to you. Now come!”

We went to a toy store where I wanted to buy cheap LED toys. Toys with LEDs because of cheap electronics. There was a large box full of various glittering toys, priced between five and twenty cents a piece, that had caught my eye. He participated happily in the quest of choosing the funniest ones. It took us about ten minutes to get a sizable collection that amounted to seven dollars and fifty-five cents.

With the capture secured in my inventory box, we went to Sweenie's, where my bike was still sitting in the parking lot.

Once on the bike, he hugged me and pressed his temple to my neck instead of holding on to the available buckle. I didn't correct him because I was strong enough to hold him, and he warmed my back nicely. It soothed my poor soul a little after the debacle with Joe.

I stopped at a gas station, filled the tank, and bought two ready-made steaks. Cala couldn't resist seeing them hot on the grill.

The bike meandered smoothly through the traffic, and we got to the forest faster than yesterday with Hew's car. The forest road was still muddy, but nothing that my bike could not handle. We found Hew's car still abandoned about twelve kilometers from the cabin. We stopped but didn't force the doors. It would have been even easier to push the canvas covering the back of the jeep, but I was afraid I'd break something, so I looked at my clothes through the glass, shrugged, and left them there. I planned to ask Hew if he needed help getting his car out of the mud; maybe I could get Gonzo to help him.

We left his car and continued through the forest. I didn't even stop at the gate, managing to bypass it, much to Matt's shock. The only minor problem was that we ended up covered in a layer of mud by the time we got to the cabin.

The air was colder but very clean, with clouds covering parts of the sky. I laughed at his unhappy face once I parked in front of the cabin as he was examining his clothes. He covered his face with a hand:

“Wow! You're crazy!”

I put a hand on his breast. Indeed his heart was racing mad. Actually, I didn't have to do that; I could hear it, but a bit of theater was useful, wasn't it? I gave him a short kiss on his cheek.

"This is payment for your emotions."

His face lit up.

“That was worth the trouble I'm in. Look at my clothes, what can I say once at home? You should have warned me to undress before...”

I imagined the scene and had to laugh:

“Bike riding with a nude companion is all I miss to my achievements. For that dirt, you can always make some ruthless driver guilty, but if you want, you can give me your clothes, and I can have them washed for next time.”

"And what should I wear until then?"

"I'll give you a pair of socks and a blouse."

He laughed and raised a brow:

“So what do you want to experiment with? From what you bought, I think it is a little early for Christmas decorations experiments?”

“OK. We'll spread some of these on the hill above, one every ten meters or so, up to one hundred meters. Of course, we turn them on.”

“Should we not wait for the night for the best result?”

I laughed and shook my head.

“Here is paper and pen. We'll give them numbers, one to ten. I want to note when they turn off if they turn off, and the minute. Also, please note if you see any turning back on. I'll make you sign when to start. Try to find the best place from where you can see them all, or else we need to run through and check.”

"Oh, so you want to turn them on and off with the power of your mind?"

I chuckled.

"Not exactly that, but you are close."

Matt is the only person who knows about me being a witch, but even with him, I did not dare yet to go with the full information. Just thinking about the way they 'closed' that lab in the woods with a huge radioactive mushroom cloud chilled any thoughts of sharing too much information.

Doing these tests should be OK and would help me understand how to better handle my environment. I could do them alone, but he knows of me anyhow, so why hide from him?

The idea for the test came after thinking about my mobile-phone killing history, about that event with the gamers, and also about what the black angel had done in that compound with the electronics there.

These toys with LEDs do have some electronics inside, isn't it? Even a LEd is a simple transistor. The idea was to test at what magic intensity something happens.

I expected to get a gradual result depending on the intensity of magic, some more or less linear dependency, but to my surprise, it did not happen like this. First, nothing happened. I was confused. Even when I unleashed my complete aura, nothing happened. Only after I concentrated my mana to a maximum did they start to flicker.

OK, but that was not what I encountered before? Or were these toys more resilient? Am I weaker?

I tried to investigate one toy, and it promptly went bust.

Then I started to understand: it is not so much the quantity but the quality that creates the problem.

A specific type of mana is the problem.

When I investigate something through mana, things go bust. It is during the investigation process that mana is somehow 'charged,' and that kills electronics. I could exercise this process to be less burdensome; then, the process takes much longer, but there is a good chance that the parts will survive. Interestingly enough, this 'mana charging process' is not a simple process; it requires advanced mana manipulation capacities. I understand from Flo that most casters are not even able to investigate through mana.

This was some good but also bad news. It might mean that some electronics survived at the compound during my presence there. OK, they did not survive the end mushroom, so I probably have nothing to fear.

The good news was that I could unleash my aura without causing havoc if I did not use that charged investigation, the one that, according to Flo, gives the fastest and best results.

A normal aura can be harmless; a dense aura would make electronics flicker up to 80 meters from me, and a charged aura would bust them even at ninety meters. Unfortunately, I could do that test only once. A directly charged test pulse would bust electronics further than one hundred meters. An unexpected result was to see Matt's nose bleeding after one test.

So not only electronics go bust...

Fuck, I forgot he is the equivalent of a level-one character. Such low-level spawns have problems when subjected to high-intensity magic pulses. I never thought that my magic could be simply dangerous for your average person. But yes, high mana environments are damaging for low-level people, and everybody here is low-level. It's like in the beginners' zones in Dreamland.

I healed him, then made one last test at one hundred fifty meters; that's about the limit I could reach with one directed pulse of mana.

“So? Happy with the results?” Matt asked from behind me. He was sweating as I'd made him run up and down the hill with my tests.

“Oh yes! We have earned our picnic steak!”

He grinned happily. I sat on a log and pulled the two steaks out of my inventory.