Prologue

The ringing stopped and Kate’s face appeared on Laurel’s laptop monitor. Beside her, her boyfriend Baz tried to maneuver into frame, but Kate refused to share the camera.

“Finally,” Kate said. “I am sooo sorry it’s taken this long to meet up with you. Things have been crazy so far this semester. I’ve got two classes back to back on opposite sides of campus. I swear the campus police are going to give me a speeding ticket!”

Baz managed to get two-thirds of his face on camera. “I’m looking into tricking out her wheelchair with a light bar and siren.”

Kate continued. “But I’m done making excuses. We need to hear why you’re not here with us at college for your sophomore year!”

“Okay, well,” Laurel began, “you know how over the summer I came to Montana to do magic studies with a bunch of other talented people our age?”

Kate nodded. “You went to wizard camp. Yes.”

Laurel giggled and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. Well, there was sex.”

“Wait,” Kate interrupted. “You are not quitting college just because you got a boyfriend!”

“No,” Laurel said, shaking her head. “Still no boyfriend. But I did have really good sex with two great guys. And there was a three-way with another girl, but that’s beside the point. The thing is, I sort of put a couple ideas together and invented a brand new form of divination.”

“And by ‘divination’, you mean...?” Kate asked. By now Baz had pulled up a chair and claimed a decent portion of the screen.

Laurel answered casually. “Discovering secrets through magic. Foretelling the future, finding lost things - stuff like that.”

Kate’s jaw dropped. “You invented predicting the future!?”

Laurel rolled her eyes again. “No! People have been doing that for millennia.”

Baz interjected: “Well, shit! Bring on the lottery numbers!”

Laurel shook her head. She enjoyed educating her mundane friends about magic, but sometimes their misconceptions seemed so silly to her. “You can’t use it like that. The more people who scry for a particular piece of information, the fuzzier it is for everyone. It’s sort of a tragedy of the commons situation.” Baz stroked his chin, trying to look intellectual as she explained. “It’s basically only practical for personal stuff - stuff nobody else would bother with.”

“Okay,” Kate said, “but you invented a new way to do it? And that’s a big deal?”

“Well, yeah!” Laurel said. “The most effective way until now has been to cut open live animals and inspect their guts. It’s ev ... cruel. My new way involves semen. Don’t you think that blowjobs are better than animal torture?”

Baz raised his hand and joked, “I have a strong opinion about this!”

Laurel continued her explanation. “Anyway, there’s still a lot of work to be done before I’m ready to publish it to the magic community. So I decided to stay here with Jennifer and my friend Theo and develop the technique. Probably a semester - maybe two. But I’m definitely coming back to college soon!”

“Huh,” Kate mused. “So you’re spending all day pouring over books and drawing diagrams with pentagrams and Viking runes and stuff?”

“Well, there’s a lot of that,” Laurel explained. “Jennifer is such an amazing mentor, and you should see her library! And she knows so many smart people! Mages from all over the world have helped us piece it all together. But a lot of it right now comes down to lots of experimentation. You know, practice, practice, practice!”

Baz feigned a whisper to Kate. “I think what she’s saying is she’s sucking this Theo guy’s dick twice a day for science.”

Laurel blushed. “I wish. Theo’s gay. He’s my wingman!” She sort of bounced around gleefully, saying it out loud. “He’s helped me meet a couple guys that I’m seeing regularly. We’re trying to gather a couple more. Theo is making me hang out in town a lot, talking to guys while dressed all slutty.”