Marty and Vanessa took cover behind an overturned table as a tongue of flame roared over their heads. The woman on the other side was wearing a leather corset with an attached pair of magical dragon wings, which allowed her to fly and breathe fire. The room wasn't big enough for the wings to give her an advantage, but the flame breath was trouble enough.
   "Man," said Vanessa, "I've heard of fiery redheads, but . . ."
   "Please don't finish that sentence," said Marty. "This is bad enough without terrible puns."
   "Oh, come on. Someone had to say it."
   "You have any ideas for how to take this psycho down?"
   "Well, there are two of us, and only one of her," said Vanessa. "If one of us creates a distraction, the other should be able to sneak around the back and, I don't know, put her in an arm lock or something."
   "Do you know how to put someone in an arm lock?" said Marty.
   "No. I was hoping you would."
   "Good, because I was hoping you'd be the distraction. Thanks for volunteering."
   "Crap. I guess I had that coming."
   "You stand up and make a scene, and I'll go around that potted plant."
   "Got it." Vanessa brought her arm in front of her and closed her eyes. Swirls of black mist coalesced around her forearm as she conjured a riot shield. She hoped it would stand up to the fire long enough for Marty to disable the dragon lady.
   Vanessa sprang from cover with the riot shield in front of her. Through the viewing window, she could see the dragon lady snarling at her in her thigh-high boots and bustier. "Begone from this place, foul sorceress!" Vanessa shouted, with what she hoped was a suitably hammy tone. As the dragon lady unleashed another gout of flame at her shield, she saw Marty sneaking along the walls into a flanking position.
   As soon as the dragon lady stopped to catch her breath, Marty leapt at her from behind and got his arms under hers, pinning her wings to her back and holding her head firm. She may have had magic on her side, but he had four inches and thirty pounds, easily enough to immobilize her and prevent her from flaming anything important. As she struggled in his arms, Vanessa got in under her threat range and zapped her with a taser, causing her to go instantly limp.
   Marty let go of her, and as soon as she dropped to the floor, she transformed into a lifeless wooden mannequin, with no trace of wings or flame. The furniture and scorch marks disappeared from the room, leaving the walls blank and Marty and Vanessa alone.
   "Nice work, you two," said Robby, entered through the room's solitary door. "You actually did better than the people who really recovered the dragon corset thirty years ago. Of course, they didn't have tasers back then."
   "That's a pretty realistic simulator, Robby," said Marty.
   "Yeah, it uses conjured illusions and telekinetically animated dummies to replicate past retrieval missions," said Robby. "The last generation of keepers built it."
   "Say, what would have happened if that fire had hit one of us?" said Vanessa.
   "The program would have aborted, and you would have had to start again," said Robby. "Storehouse protocol is to avoid risking a wound of any kind. By the way, Vanessa, the dramatic performance was a nice touch. The kinds of people who let magic get to them tend to get very histrionic. They respond well to scenery chewing."
   "Oh, really?" said Vanessa. "I was just getting into the spirit of the thing. I've never gotten to slay a dragon or defeat an evil witch with a magic shield before."
   "Well, now we've done both," said Marty. "Simulated, anyway."
   "All right," said Robby, "now I'd like to see you try one with Alicia, Marty. I'd like everyone to get used to different partners in case the normal pairings are unavailable. Vanessa, could you go get Alicia?"
   Vanessa was about to open the door when it burst open, with Alicia right behind it. "Robby, I've got a job for us! I tracked down a reshaping harness to a dominatrix in Vegas. Here's the file." She handed him a folder with a look of glee on her face, hopping up and down and clapping her hands.
   "You're awfully excited," said Vanessa.
   "We finally get to go out on a job! Venturing forth into the world to defeat evil magic users for truth and justice!"
   Robby took a look through the folder. "Oh yeah, I heard about this one." He pulled out a photo and handed it to Marty and Vanessa. "It's a leather bondage harness that makes the wearer more flexible and malleable, but it wasn't calibrated quite right. The person wearing the harness still feels like they're being twisted horribly out of shape, and it causes a lot of pain. Magical body manipulation isn't supposed to hurt."
   "I can see why a dominatrix would want this thing," said Marty.
   "Oh, please, can I go, can I go? I really want to go," said Alicia.
   "Vanessa, do you mind if Alicia takes this one with Marty?" said Robby.
   "Really?" said Marty. "I thought you wanted us to go into the sim first."
   "Yeah, but this one shouldn't be too dangerous. She's not committing violent crimes or trying to conquer the world. As far as she's concerned, she's just having some good, clean fun. I think you can handle it."
   "Yeah, go on ahead," said Vanessa. "Enjoy Vegas. I prefer the fire-breathing ones, anyway." She winked and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You two enjoy your road trip, now."
   "Actually, no," said Robby.
   "What, are we taking a jet?" said Alicia. "Helicopter? Flying carpet?"
   Robby laughed. "No, jets and helicopters are too expensive, and we try not to use the carpets in public. Come on up to the office so I can get you your gear, and then I'll take you to the gate."
   Robby took the others up to his office, where he took a small box from the desk. Inside was a matched set of shiny baubles with circular gems in the middle. He handed one each to Alicia and Marty, and then he opened the inside of the box to reveal a larger jeweled object. "These will allow us to communicate while you're in the field. The smaller parts are linked to the central unit. The whole set is enchanted with clairvoyance, so I can see and hear what happens to you without having to divert my concentration away from my normal duties in the Storehouse, and with telekinesis so I can speak to you."
   "How does telekinesis let you speak to us?" said Marty.
   "It causes the air near you to move to replicate the sound of my voice," said Robby. "TK has a lot of specialized uses. Anyway, your comm units can be worn as pendants, brooches, tie pins, key rings, or whatever else works with your outfit so you don't stand out too much." Alicia was wearing her usual athletic gear, so she attached her comm unit to her hair tie. Marty transformed his clothes into a three-piece suit and pinned his comm unit to his lapel.
   "There," he said. "Now I'm dressed for Vegas."
   "All right," said Robby. "Let's go to the gate." He led them out of the office and into a smaller room with a large circular symbol on the floor. The symbol had dozens of little statuettes sitting on it at strategic points, and all of them were connected to a wooden console by glass tubes.
   "This transporter is what we'll mainly use when we need to retrieve magical items," said Robby. "There's a whole complicated system for sending people to specific locations, but since this one is in Vegas, I can send you to our old annex on the University of Nevada campus. The coordinates are preset into the console."
   "We have a secret base in Vegas?" said Vanessa.
   "That makes sense," said Alicia. "There have been magicians in Vegas for years. We'd need an easy way to keep an eye on them."
   "Partly that," said Robby, "but mainly because whenever we want to test public reaction to magic use, we usually start in places like Vegas where weird things happen all the time. Once people can accept a sky full of lights and a miniature Sphinx, they're more amenable to a person who can passersby levitate."
   "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?" said Marty.
   "Yeah, pretty much," said Robby. He handed Marty and Alicia the folder. "Once you get there, the old truck should still be in the garage. It has a telekinetic engine, so it shouldn't need gas. Get to the dominatrix's address, grab the harness, and get back. I'll keep an eye on you from here."
   "Got it, Robby," said Marty.
   "Wish us luck," said Alicia.
   Robby stood behind the console, set a lever to point to the preset coordinates of the UNLV annex, and turned a valve. Colored, glowing liquid flowed out from the console through the tubes and caused some of the statues to light up. The symbol on the floor began to glow and shift, and Marty and Alicia slowly disappeared.
   When Marty and Alicia's vision cleared, they were standing in a dark room in an ordinary-looking house.
   "Huh," said Alicia. "Not what I was expecting."
   "I know," said Marty. "I thought it would be some kind of magical laboratory or something."
   "Oh, well. Let's look for the garage."
   They found the pickup truck after about five minutes, and Marty won the rights to the driver's seat following a quick round of rock-paper-scissors. He turned the key in the ignition, and the dashboard lit up, but he couldn't hear anything from under the hood.
"Well, Robby did say the engine was telekinetic," said Alicia. "Maybe people will think it's electric."
   "Just as long as they don't think it's the Flubbermobile," said Marty. He put the truck in gear, and they headed for the lair of Mistress von Klamp, the dominatrix in the file.
   As Marty and Alicia approached, a woman was already sitting at a table at a sidewalk café down the street from their destination. She had her laptop out in front of her, and on its screen was an image of Mistress von Klamp putting her current slave in manacles. Elena had been hired by the slave's wife to catch him being unfaithful to her so she could justify a divorce, and after some digging into the man's credit history, she found out about his side trips to the Mistress's lair. She had snuck in outside of business hours and planted a tiny camera in her room, so now all Elena could do was wait for her client's husband to compromise himself in a legally actionable way.
   She had been watching the room for the last few days hoping for a break, and while she hadn't yet gotten a glimpse of her target, she had gotten plenty of looks at Mistress von Klamp. Elena wasn't nearly submissive enough herself to consider that sort of approach, but all that skin-tight patent leather definitely pushed her buttons. Under other circumstances, she would definitely have cozied up to the Mistress and bought her a drink, but this job had gone on too long without a fee in sight. She just wanted to get what her client was looking for and move on, and if her camera was to be believed, the client's husband was currently getting trussed up like a side of beef. Finally. Maybe this time they'd do the nasty so she could get paid.
   Meanwhile, Robby was keeping an eye on the Storehouse and monitoring Marty and Alicia's progress, and Vanessa was going through the various rooms and taking an inventory of what needed fixing or replacing around the place. As the conjuration keeper, it was her job to keep the Storehouse stocked with mundane supplies and generally to get the place ready to live in again. She had already made new items in the dining room for dispensing food and drink, and she was in the middle of checking the light bulbs when she heard an alarm from the office. She rushed to see what was the matter, and she found Robby looking seriously rattled.
   "Robby? What happened?"
   "I think we've lost one of the wellsprings. Go and check, please. Quickly!"
   Vanessa ran down to the wellspring corridor and checked all the rooms. Sure enough, where the fortune-telling machine should have been was just a pile of decaying parts. She ran back up to the office and told Robby what she'd found.
   "The fortune-teller? That's the prediction wellspring."
   "What do we do?" said Vanessa. "Is it dangerous?"
   "Well, it's not like a bomb is about to go off or anything. This sort of thing happens from time to time. The details are complicated, but basically wellsprings wear out after a period of time and release their energy into the collective unconscious, based on public perception of what they represent, plus a handful of other factors. When that happens, the energy kind of floats around until it coalesces again, forming a new wellspring somewhere in the world."
   "Isn't the purpose of the Storehouse to contain and manage the wellsprings?"
   "Exactly, which is why we need to locate the new prediction wellspring as soon as possible and keep an eye on it from here until we can go get it. Now, there used to be a gadget for locating wellsprings when they shifted. I'm not sure where it is now, but Alicia's been collating the various item catalogs and she set up a neat little system for keeping them all straight. You'll need to look through her files for the, uh, I think it's called the Epistemic Resonance Antenna."
   "Got it. What do I do with it once I find it?"
   "I think the instructions are included. I'd do it, but I need to stay here and monitor the mission. You got this?"
   "Sure. I can handle it."
   Vanessa went to the library, where Alicia had her desk and files. The room was surrounded by old bookcases, and most of the available surfaces were occupied by open books. She spent most of her time doing research on the various items in the Storehouse and compiling a database of their names, locations, and functions. If there was any easy way to find this Epistemic Resonance Antenna, it was somewhere in here.
   Vanessa started opening drawers and flipping through papers until she found a stack of item manifests with numbers penciled in next to each entry in Alicia's handwriting. This had to have been her system. Vanessa looked down the list for the Antenna and wrote down the numbers next to it, and then she translated the numbers into a location and headed down to the storehouse floor. It took her a few minutes to find the right location, but when she got there, she was not disappointed.
   The Epistemic Resonance Antenna looked like a turn-of-the-century ham radio, with a big aerial on the top, a microphone on the front, and four wooden legs made of polished wood. There was a crank on the side, which must have been for building up a charge like the old wall phones, and a plaque next to the microphone that said, "Speak Your Question Here." There was a larger plaque on the side of the cabinet that said, "Warning! Use of this sooth-saying device may cause psychic feedback and emotional instability without the proper training. Use with extreme caution." Well, Robby had said that it was important, and this thing looked too heavy to drag back to the office, so she wound up the crank and braced herself for the psychic feedback, whatever that was.
   "What is the location of the prediction wellspring?"
   Something began to happen inside the machine. Vanessa heard gears and ratchets begin to turn, and there was a sound on the edge of her hearing that sounding like a ringing wineglass, which got louder and louder until her vision flashed white. She saw the front of a Vegas casino, and then she immediately saw the face of a woman standing at a craps table. She had long blond hair and was dressed for a night on the town, and she had her purse over her shoulder. Vanessa's vision zoomed inside the purse, where the woman had some kind of clear plastic ball filled with dark liquid.
   When Vanessa came to, Robby was standing over her in the aisle, with the communicator sitting on his custodial cart. "Are you all right?" he said.
   "I think so," she said. "What happened?"
   "You passed out. I'm sorry. There's always a risk with prediction items, and I couldn't remember if this one was designed to mitigate that or not."
   "It's okay, Robby. There was a warning label. I knew the risks."
   "Did you get anything?"
   "Yeah. I know what the new wellspring looks like, I saw the face of the person holding it, and I have her location. She's in Vegas."
   "Perfect. I'll get Marty and Alicia on the horn, and you can give them the details." Robby opened the communicator and handed it to Vanessa.
   Marty and Alicia were walking up to Mistress von Klamp's front door when they got the news from Vanessa. They stood still nodding for a minute while she described the new wellspring and its keeper.
   "And it's here in Vegas?" said Marty. "That's convenient."
   "Yeah, we caught a break on that one," said Robby. "Now, you need to be careful picking her up. The prediction wellspring is much harder to get used to than the others. It makes you hyperaware. There's a sudden rush of knowledge and foresight. It does a number on the mind, even for the keeper. The woman is likely to be behaving erratically, so be on your guard."
   "Got it," said Alicia.
   "Also, remember that each wellspring has an effective radius, so don't stand too close to her for any length of time unless she has the thing physically in her hand. If she's holding it, then she'll absorb most of the energy, but if it's just in her purse, it'll affect anyone near her."
   "Well, that should make her easy to find, at least," said Marty. "We'll just grab the harness, and then we'll head over there."
   "Keep in touch," said Robby, closing the box and helping Vanessa back to the office to lie down.
   From her post on the sidewalk, Elena watched as Mistress von Klamp got down to her business. She had trussed her client up in some kind of leather harness and hung him from the ceiling by his wrists. She ran another line over his shoulders and tied it to his ankles and pulled it toward herself, and his ankles rose up behind him and over his back on either side of his head, bending him in half backwards and making his face contort in pain. Elena hadn't thought that her client's husband was that flexible. He was no spring chicken, and he certainly didn't have the build for it. She then grabbed one of his feet and slowly twisted it until it was pointed in the opposite direction to the other one. Elena couldn't believe that he could stay conscious under that kind of torture, but she could tell that at least one part of his anatomy was.
   Suddenly, an old pickup truck pulled up outside, and two people got out and rushed inside. She didn't think anything of it until those same two people showed up on her camera in the room. The man was wearing a fancy three-piece suit, much nicer than most detectives wore on the job, and the woman was just wearing track gear. From the way they were talking to Mistress von Klamp, the woman looked like she was in charge. These definitely weren't ordinary law enforcement, and besides that, she knew all the local vice cops. Some other outfit was horning in on her job.
   She put her computer away and ran down the street to the pickup, where she hid under a tarp in the truck bed and continued watching the camera feed on her phone. The woman was talking to Mistress von Klamp about something, making her look very apologetic and much less in control than before, while the man was freeing her client's husband from his bonds. While the two women talked, the man in the suit carefully lowered the john to the ground and put him back in order, finally removing the harness and covering him with a blanket to preserve his modesty. Mistress von Klamp didn't seem too pleased that they were taking her property, but she also wasn't doing anything about it. Elena hadn't seen either of the interlopers flash a badge or credentials of any kind. Who were these people?
   They came out of the building and got back in their truck, keeping the harness with them in the cab. Elena stayed hidden in the bed waiting for them to take her to their headquarters, but they drove instead to a casino on the Strip, again parking on the curb and walking right in. She got out of the bed and followed them inside. The valet saw her, but she slipped him a C-note and showed him her PI license, and he agreed to keep it to himself.
   She stayed well behind while the two of them made their way across the casino floor. Up ahead, there was a disturbance. One of the guests was freaking out, like she was hallucinating or something. There were a couple of security guards by her, trying to get her to calm down, but she kept screaming about the voices and the noise. She seemed almost ready to melt down right there, and one of the guards got on his radio to call for an EMT.
   When the man and the woman arrived at the scene, they took charge right away. They kept their voices down, so Elena wasn't close enough to hear what was going on, but they seemed to be spinning a convincing story. The guards didn't seem too concerned about who they were, as long as the crazy woman wasn't they problem anymore. As soon as they were away from the guards, the woman in the track gear took a look inside the other woman's purse and closed it again after a second or two. Elena took that as her cue that they were on their way out, and she hurried back to the curb, where she slipped the valet another hundred and hid in the back of the truck again. The two mystery agents brought their new friend into the cab with them, and they drove away.
   Elena turned on her phone's GPS and brought up a local map. The truck was leaving downtown Vegas and entering the UNLV campus. They pulled into the garage of an ordinary-looking house and turned off the car, bringing the harness and their friend inside with them. Elena got out of the truck and quietly followed them inside. Now that they were out of the public eye, they were being much freer with their words.
   "Robby, we've got the harness, the wellspring, and the new keeper, and we're back at base," said the woman.
   There was a pause. They must have been getting instructions from an earpiece or something.
   "Roger that," said the man. "We're ready when you are." They stepped into a side room and shut the door. Elena jumped out of her hiding place and ran through the door to confront them.
   "All right, who the –" she began, but she stopped mid-sentence when she saw the glow coming off the floor. She could only stand speechless as the entire room flashed, and when her eyes recovered, she was standing in a different room.
   "What the hell?" said Elena.
   "Who the hell are you?" said the other two.
   "Calm down, guys," said another man in a jumpsuit she hadn't seen before. "She's welcome here." He arched his eyebrows and gave the other two a look, which they seemed to understand. He walked up to the newcomer and gently took her purse, dropping it into a custodial cart with an outstretched arm, like it was dangerous or something. "Vanessa, could you take out guest to the meditation room, please? Give her this when you get there, and make sure she's got enough for a couple of days." He handed her an old leather-bound book.
   "Sure thing, Robby," said another woman.
   "Marty, take care of the harness, will you?"
   "Got it," said the man in the suit.
   "And now," said Robby, turning to face Elena, "I believe you have some questions."
   Elena just stood there for a minute before speaking. "You're damn right I have questions! Who the hell are you people?"
   "Well, I'm Robby, and this is Alicia. That was Marty and Vanessa." He squinted at her for a moment. "And you are Elena, a private investigator from Las Vegas."
   "Who told you my name?"
   "Nobody. I'm clairvoyant. That means I can see and hear things from far away. I can also read minds a little, if I have some time to concentrate."
   "You're bluffing," said Elena.
   "All right," said Robby. "Think of a card."
   Elena laughed nervously. "Are you serious?"
   "Of course. No, don't pick the three of clubs. That's a cliché." Elena gasped and changed her mind. "Ah, the nine of spades, better." She changed it again. "Okay, that's the one with the list of poker hands on it. Are you convinced?"
   Elena began to back away. "How did you do that?"
   "That's not what you need to ask yourself," said Robby. "What you need to ask yourself is, how did that dominatrix bend a middle-aged man in half without paralyzing him?"
   "What?" said Alicia. "How does she know about that?"
   "She had a camera in the room. She was probably investigating the dominatrix just like we were."
   "Actually, the man's wife hired me to catch him cheating on her. I would have had everything I needed if you guys hadn't barged in."
   "Oh," said Alicia. "I'm sorry about that, but you don't need to worry about that anymore. Trust me, what we do is way more interesting."
   "And what exactly do you do?" said Elena.
   "Alicia, can you give her the tour?"
   "Sure, Robby."
   "Thanks, babe." He gave her a peck on the cheek. "I'm going to take care of the wellspring." He pushed his cart away down the hall.
   "All right, Elena," said Alicia. "Follow me." She led Elena to a door and opened it. Beyond was a massive room full of shelves as far as the eye could see. The two of them walked down a staircase to the main floor.
   "So who was that woman that you took from the casino?" said Elena.
   "Her name is Lily. One of our wellsprings made its way into her purse, and she became its keeper, which means that she has all of the abilities that the wellspring represents."
   "What's a wellspring?"
   "A wellspring is a special kind of magical object. All of these things here have some kind of magic in them, but the wellsprings . . . They kind of are magic. They're the physical embodiment of a particular kind of magic. For each one, there is a keeper who is especially attuned to that kind of magic, and as soon as they touch their wellspring, they gain the ability to use that magic whenever they want."
   "So what kind of magic did she get?"
   "She is the keeper of the prediction wellspring. She can see things coming, and she can answer virtually any question put to her. The problem with that one is that it's difficult for a person to manage that much information without becoming a total vegetable, so we're going to keep her isolated for a day or two until she can get her thoughts in order. Robby found the journal of the last prediction wellspring, and that should help her a lot. Plus, it will give her something tangible to focus on so she doesn't lose her mind."
   "How many other keepers are there?" said Elena. "Is Robby one of them?"
   "Yeah, he's the keeper of the clairvoyance wellspring," said Alicia. "He told you about that one. Other than him, there's Marty, who does transformation, and Vanessa, who does conjuration."
   "What about you?"
   "I do levitation. I can fly, walk on walls, and a couple of other things."
   By this point, they had reached the wellspring corridor. "This is where we keep the wellsprings," said Alicia. She pointed to Robby, who was holding the new prediction wellspring in mid-air in front of him using some kind of rod.
   "What's that thing?" said Elena.
   "Those are Robby's special tongs for handling the wellsprings. It can be dangerous to get too close to them unless you're the keeper."
   "No, I mean the thing floating in front of him."
   "Oh, that's the prediction wellspring we brought back."
   "It looks like a crystal ball."
   "Actually, it's a gimmicky little thing called a Syco-Slate. It's what the Magic 8-Ball used to be before it was an 8-ball. Works the same way, though, except that this one turns you into a soothsayer." Alicia walked down the hall in the opposite direction. "Why don't you take a look at some of the other wellsprings, see which one takes your fancy?"
   "Wait a minute," said Elena. "Are you telling me that you guys want me to be a keeper?"
   "It's not about what we want," said Alicia. "We don't choose the keepers. The wellsprings do. They exert a kind of pull on people that makes them find their way here. All of us came to the Storehouse for our own reasons, and we all stayed. I bet you will, too."
   "So, what? I just pick one?"
   "More or less. Take a look at them all, and one of them will just kind of speak to you."
   Elena looked through some of the windows, and she didn't feel any kind of pull. Once she got down to the room next to where Robby had been, though, she saw something interesting. Hanging around a wooden stand on a pedestal in the middle of the room was an ancient Egyptian medallion made of polished alabaster. She opened the door and walked up to it. It was absolutely beautiful. She had to touch it, to feel the oily smooth stone under her fingers.
   As soon as she touched the medallion, she felt a tingling throughout her body. It was like her leg was waking up after having fallen asleep, but all over. When the feeling went away, she left the room and found Alicia waiting for her.
   "That was weird," she said.
   "Oh, you found the amulet," said Alicia. "That belonged to an old Egyptian magician called Dedi. He was really the first performing magician in history. He was able to pull the head off a goose and reattach it without killing the goose."
   "So I can pull people's heads off now?"
   "Not just that. That amulet is the wellspring of physical molding and manipulation. It covers heads, sawing in half, stretching, squashing, piercing, shrinking, growing, all sorts of things. Kind of like that harness we brought back, but moreso, and without the pain. That's a fun one. Here, let me show you." Alicia led Elena to a different part of the Storehouse. She stopped at a garage door with a narrow hole in the wall next to it. "There's a lever in the back of this hole. Reach in and pull it."
   "That reminds me," said Elena. "Why did you take that harness? Is it just that ordinary people aren't supposed to have magic?"
   "Well, not without a license, which she didn't have," said Alicia. "The main reason was that the harness was defective, and it made the wearer feel pain every time it was used. That's not supposed to happen. Now, go on and pull the lever."
   Elena stuck her arm into the hole and felt for the lever. The hole was deep enough that she had to reach in up to her shoulder, but she could just reach the lever with her fingers. She got a grip and pulled, and a panel slid shut over the hole, chopping her arm clean off.
   "What the hell?" She squeezed the stump of her arm with her other hand to stop the bleeding, but there wasn't even a wound, just a smooth patch of skin where her arm had been.
   "You see?" said Alicia. "The effects of the wellspring even protect you from unexpected damage. If someone walked up behind you and shot you in the back, they'd just leave a clean hole through your chest. Cool, huh?"
   "But what about my arm?" said Elena. "I need that arm!"
   "Just let go of the lever."
   Elena realized that even though her arm was gone, she could still feel the lever in her hand. She let go, and the door slid back open. She looked inside the hole, reached in, and pulled her arm back out, still alive and moving under her control. "This is so weird." She stuck her arm to the stump, and it reattached without even a scar.
   "It's as simple as that," said Alicia. "All right, now let's head into the sparring room downstairs and try a few things." She brought Elena to the other side of the garage door, where there was another hole in the wall and a numbered keypad. "The code to this door is written inside that hole. See if you can get to it." She leaned against a shelf and folded her arms.
   Elena walked up to the hole and stood on her tiptoes to look inside. The hole went down into the wall and turned a corner, so she couldn't see the whole thing. The code must have been written on the hidden part. If she had a mirror, a stick, and some gum, she could look around the corner, but no luck there.
   She looked back at Alicia. This was obviously some kind of test, meant to test how well she could use these new powers. What sort of thing could she do to see around that corner?
One idea came to mind. She was probably supposed to stick her head down into the hole so she could see, but that meant she had to sever her own head and dangle it inside there, like Dedi with the goose. She looked around the nearby shelves for a blade, but she didn't see anything.
   Oh, well. If this was real magic, then she didn't need a knife. She closed her eyes, placed her hands on either side of her jaw, pressed inward on her neck, and lifted up. There was a tickle, followed by the sensation of her head rising above her body. So that's what that felt like.
   She opened her eyes and held her arms out in front of her, and she saw her headless body. She lifted her head slightly and saw the flat patch of skin on top of her neck, just like she had felt with her arm. She brought her head back in and held it in the crook of her elbow, and she turned to face Alicia. "This is a trip and a half."
   "You don't have to tell me," said Alicia. "The first time I came here, I put on a suit that let me do some of the same things you can do. I must have spent three full days with my head off before I couldn't take the dizziness anymore."
   "I don't feel dizzy at all," said Elena. "It feels completely natural."
   "One of the perks of being the wellspring. You take to it like you've been doing it all your life."
   "Why can I tell that my head is under my arm, even without looking? It's like I can tell my body is in a different order."
   "Do you know what proprioception is?"
   "No."
   "It's your brain's ability to keep track of your body's position, like how you can touch your finger to your nose without looking because your brain knows where your nose and finger are all the time. My guess is that your sense of proprioception is just supercharged now."
   "Cool." She switched her head to the other arm.
   "You still have to open the door."
   "Oh, right." Elena stuck her head down into the hole and read the code. She then pulled her head back out, punched in the code, and watched the garage door slide open. Behind the door was a long drop leading down to a much larger room.
   "Well done," said Alicia. She stepped up to the edge and walked right off it. Elena quickly replaced her head and ran over to make sure Alicia was all right, but when she reached the edge, she saw Alicia standing on the underside of the floor, looking back up at her like the reflection in a pond.
   "Unless you can walk on walls, you shouldn't come this way," said Alicia. "You need to take the ladder." She pointed to a tiny ladder set into the wall just inside the door. It couldn't have been more than two inches wide.
   "How am I supposed to –" began Elena, but Alicia was already gone.
   She sat down next to the ladder, which disappeared into the floor through a hole no bigger than her arm. She wasn't about to chop herself into tiny pieces and drop them down there. Did Alicia say something about shrinking? She thought so, but she couldn't think of a way to make that happen.
   Elena closed her eyes and tried to think herself tiny. She thought back to when she had seen Alice in Wonderland as a kid, and she imagined the room getting huge around her. After concentrating for a moment, she could feel the floor expanding and spreading beneath her. She opened her eyes, and she was already much smaller, but not small enough to fit down the ladder. She concentrated again, this time with her eyes open. She willed herself small with all her might, and once again, she felt the floor expanding beneath her. She kept that feeling going until she was the right size, and she descended the ladder.
   As she began to see light beneath her, the ladder suddenly retracted into the wall, leaving her with nothing to hold onto. She plummeted into the room, about twenty feet at full scale but at least a hundred to her, and landed on the floor. She had braced herself for broken bones, but she felt like she had only fallen off the bed.
   Alicia floated down from the ceiling and landed next to her. "You all right?"
   "Yeah. How is that possible? Body manipulation doesn't mean I can survive a hundred-foot fall."
   "You know how cats can fall really far without injuring themselves?"
   "Yeah, it's because they can twist themselves around in midair and land on their feet."
   "It's also because they're smaller. They don't weigh as much, so their terminal velocity is a lot less. Squirrels can fall even farther in relation to their size. It's an advantage of being teeny-tiny."
   "Huh. You learn something new every day." Elena concentrated for a second, and she grew back to her normal size. It was a lot easier than shrinking had been. Maybe it had to do with muscle memory. "All right, you said this was the sparring room. Shall we spar?"
   "Actually, this was just to show you about the falling thing. We can spar later if you want, but I only wanted to teach you how to use your abilities. For now, we can go back upstairs and get you settled in." Alicia floated into the air and back up to the opening to the main floor, twenty feet above Alicia's head.
   "Hey, how am I supposed to get back up there?" said Elena. "I can't fly, remember?"
   "Oh, don't worry. I'm sure you'll think of something." She flew away out the door, leaving Elena to think.
   Well, she had gotten down here by shrinking, so maybe she could get out by growing. If she could make herself lots taller, she could just climb out. She stood under the gap in the ceiling and thought about being able to reach the ceiling, and she felt herself begin to grow. It was actually pretty simple, since she had already grown from miniature back to normal size. She only had to do that again, but beyond her normal size.
   When she finally stopped growing, the ceiling of the sparring room came up to her waist, and she was leaning out of the garage door looking down at Alicia. "Figured it out."
   "Good job," said Alicia. "I can take you to the rooms now, if you want."
   "Not just yet," said Elena. She reached out and picked up Alicia.
   "Hey, now," said Alicia. "I have a boyfriend."
   "Hee hee," said Elena. "You're so tiny. You're like a Barbie doll." Elena took Alicia's head between her thumb and forefinger and popped it right off. She tried to set it down on one of the shelves, but it started flying loops around her head.
   "Hey, if you want to spar, we can go back down there and spar," said Alicia. "You think you can take me, girl?"
   "You are going to buzz around in my ear until I put you back together, aren't you."
   "Remember I said that I spent a few days with my head off? I learned how to levitate this way, too."
   "All right, fine." Elena grabbed Alicia's head out of the air and put it back where it belonged, and then she climbed out of the hole and shrunk back to her normal size. "You're no fun," she said, but she was still grinning.
   "Come on, Elena," said Alicia. "Let me show you a room, and you can get settled in."
   "You know," said Elena, "I think I'm going to like it here."