Thursday during breakfast, she cast the scrying spell on her parents’ front yard. She didn’t figure she’d see anything interesting, but at least there was no slight chance of seeing something she very much didn’t want to see, like there might be if she cast it on the inside of the house. She was rewarded by seeing one of the neighborhood cats stroll across the yard about five minutes in, and then seeing her dad come out to his car and drive off.

She kept casting the scrying spell every time she had twenty minutes to spare over the next few days, focusing on various public or semi-public spaces within range of the spell. At first she focused on public spaces back home in Greensboro, hoping to spot people she knew, but then she decided to start looking at pretty scenery in various parks in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. The zoo in Charlotte was just in range of the spell, and she cast it several times on different animals’ habitats. She also worked out a ditransitive version of the scrying spell, and used it to share some of the prettiest things she’d seen with Cassie.

She cast the detect magic spell repeatedly as well, until she could cast it right every time, though she didn’t learn anything new to speak of. She examined each of the other books in the magic writing system, and they all had the same enchantment – encryption to hide their contents from the eyes of non-mages or novice mages.

When Sarah called on Saturday and said to go to church without her, because she and all her housemates were sick, Eliza facepalmed. Of course she should have considered that Sarah might get sick from the same exposure at the same time. So Eliza offered to come over and cast her healing spell.

“Are you sure?” Sarah asked through a stuffy nose. “You want to tell my housemates about your magic?”

“Well, maybe not. Have you checked your temperature lately? It says it’s not safe to cast the spell if you’re over 104°.”

“Not since yesterday, but it was nowhere near that. 100.2°, I think.”

“Well, what about if we just meet at the front door and I cast the spell on you there? You’ll want to drink a lot of fluids just beforehand, and lie down for a while afterward. And check your temperature just to be safe.”

“Okay. What am I gonna tell them about why you’re coming over?”

“Uh… you want to borrow a book and since you’re not gonna see me at church for another week, I’m coming over?”

“All right.”

So Eliza took one of the books she’d brought with her from school, which she’d read and didn’t think she wanted to read again, and drove over to Sarah’s house. Sarah met her at the door, and Eliza cast the immune system booster on her, then handed over the book.

The next day not long before Eliza left for church, Sarah called and said she was feeling much better, but still too tired to go to church. “That’s fine,” Eliza said. “You want to get lunch together Monday or Tuesday? If you’re like me, you should be feeling fine by then.”

“Yeah, let’s do that. You can keep me posted on all the new spells you’re learning.”

But before that, she had her weekly call with her mom that afternoon. She’d been in girl voice almost all the time for the last two weeks, and even after casting the growing spell to return her vocal cords to where they had been, she found it hard to shift back to boy voice for the call; her mom noticed.

“Your voice sounds funny, sweetie. Have you been sick?”

“Yeah, I had a cold, but I thought I was over it. Maybe some lingering effects?” She should have cast the muscle control spell, practiced boy voice for a while, and then called her mom. Oh well.

“Your nose doesn’t sound stuffy, it’s more like your voice is higher pitched…? I don’t think a cold will do that, will it?”

“I don’t know.”

“If it keeps up, you should see a doctor.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

They talked for a few minutes more, and Eliza resolved to cast the muscle control spell and adjust her voice back to boy mode before her next weekly call with her parents.

On Tuesday of that week, Eliza unlocked chapter eight. She shared the new spells with Cassie during supper.

“Looks like another flesh magic spell that isn’t about transition,” she said. “It’ll let me adjust my eyes to see better in the dark.”

“Like infrared vision? Or just better at picking up dim light than normal human eyes?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Let’s experiment after sunset and see. I could warm up some cups of water in the microwave and you tell me if they look just different than cups that haven’t been warmed.”

“Yeah, and you let me know if my eyes look weird under the influence of the spell. Then there’s an information magic spell to… see the history of a thing?”

“Like psychometry? Cool.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where psychics claim to touch an object and get a vision of something that happened to it or something that was done with it. Like they touch a murder weapon and get a vision of the murderer.”

“Oh. Yeah, basically like the time-scrying spell I got earlier, only focused on an object instead of my current location. There’s probably a similar time limit, too… yeah, it’s longer than the location-oriented scrying spell, a little over a month rather than three days, but nowhere near long enough to let me figure out what’s up with that postcard.”

“Oh well. – Oh, shit. I just realized something… Could you touch a computer keyboard or phone and see someone logging in? Get their password that way?”

“Not sure. Maybe with practice? That does seem really powerful.”

“Test it with your computer, not mine, please.”

“Oh, sure. – And then there’s another energy spell, the first I’ve gotten in a while: it makes something produce a sound when someone touches it. Seems like it lasts longer than any of the ones I’ve got so far, too – three days or until someone touches the object, whichever comes first.”

“Good for a burglar alarm, I guess – cast it on the windows and doors when you leave the house and dispel it when you return? Or for a prank, like cast it on the refrigerator door and have it reprimand whoever opens it for snacking.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I’ll practice the psychometry spell for now, and the night vision spell later on. Maybe sitting on the porch with just enough light to read the spell book.”

“Sounds good.”

So after supper, Eliza went to her office and cast the psychometry spell on her keyboard. At first she didn’t try to focus on any particular time or event, as the book recommended, just trying to get the spell down before focusing it more. On the sixth try, the office around her changed slightly, and it was hard to pin down what the changes were, other than her hibernating blank screen lit up suddenly with her email app. And a phantom hand reached out – apparently she’d been sitting in the same position and same spot on whichever occasion this was – jiggled the mouse and opened the browser, then opened Facebook. The past her navigated to Monica’s profile page, which now read ‘Single’. It didn’t hurt like it had when she’d first seen that, but it did tear open the wound a little. Eliza got up and walked out of the office, and the vision of the past didn’t follow her.

She tried casting the spell on a couple of things in her bedroom and bathroom, getting brief visions of herself reading in bed or brushing her hair. After a few castings, she went back to the office and tried the keyboard again, this time focusing on the last time she logged in.

And it sort of worked, but she was a fast enough typist that if she hadn’t already known her login and password, she wouldn’t have been able to pick it up by watching the phantom hands tapping it out on the keyboard.

By then it was past sunset, and she went out to the porch and practiced the night vision spell a few times. She was already tired from a day of work and casting the psychometry spell a number of times, though, and didn’t manage to successfully cast the night vision spell that night. After four unsuccessful tries, she stopped to rest, then dozed off for a few minutes. When she woke, she dragged herself to bed and fell asleep again quickly.

---

At lunch on Thursday, Cassie said, “I’m thinking about coming out to my parents sooner than I’d planned. Sometime this summer instead of at Christmas.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“Well, with your help I already pass pretty well. I wanted to wait until the hormones had more noticeable effect, and maybe get laser hair removal on at least my face, before I came out to them. But thanks to your magic, there’s no reason not to do it sooner.”

“I hope it goes well.”

“Do you want to make a road trip of it? Like, we’ll stop to visit your family in Greensboro, and my parents in Raleigh, and stop some interesting places on the way?”

“Huh. I was kind of planning to visit my parents for several days near the end of summer, after I finish cataloguing your books and before I have to be back at school… but if I’m going to come out to my parents as trans in the first hour I see them, I’m afraid the next few days would be super awkward if they’re not okay with it. Which they probably won’t be.”

Cassie gave her a sympathetic look. Eliza gathered her anxious thoughts and continued.

“So… yeah, a kind of hit and run coming out might make sense. Go visit them sometime soon, just for a few hours, and come out to them. Then give them a few weeks to process it, and maybe do a longer visit just before I have to be back at school? And yeah, I’d really like to have you there for moral support when I come out.”

“Yeah, me too,” Cassie said. “I mean, I’d like to have you there when I come out to my parents.”

---

So they started making plans for the trip, which mostly involved talking with their families about when it would suit to visit. Eliza gave herself half an hour of voice practice before calling this time. She also looked up neat things to see on the way from Boone to Raleigh. She realized that even though she’d lived in Greensboro for her first eighteen years, there were several nifty things in the vicinity she’d never seen, like the World’s Largest Chest of Drawers and several interesting museums, only two of which she’d seen on school field trips.

After talking to their families, they set a date: they would travel leisurely on the first Friday in August, then visit with Eliza’s parents on Friday night and part of Saturday, and then Cassie’s parents on Saturday afternoon and Sunday.

---

Meanwhile, Eliza was practicing the night vision spell every night. She had it mastered by the third night, and then she worked out an other-directed version and practiced it on Cassie. Cassie tested her with two cups of water, one warmed in the microwave and one not, and they determined it was just increasing her sensitivity to low light, not detecting infrared light. They went for walks in the woods near the house after dark, enjoying the wonderfully clear view of a world that seemed utterly different from the same woods in the daytime.

During short breaks from work, she practiced the psychometry spell on various household objects, mostly things she had used herself, to avoid violating Cassie’s privacy. She also cast it on each day’s junk mail before Cassie threw it away, getting brief visions of postal workers or mail sorting machines handling each piece. After she was sure she’d mastered that one, she started trying the alarm spell, casting it on various things and making them play a snatch of music or say a few words. She waited until she thought Cassie had forgotten about her prank idea to try pranking her, casting it on the handle of the coffee pot after breakfast and before Cassie had woken up. She was working on cataloguing books from the living room an hour later when Cassie shuffled past her office door, mumbling a sleepy “Good morning.” Eliza paused what she was doing and listened with a smile as “Yakety Sax” played from the kitchen, its first notes almost drowned out by Cassie’s yelp.

---

Sunday morning, after breakfast, Eliza met up with Sarah and they tried out another church that seemed to be okay with trans people. They didn’t have any more to choose from without driving a long way. It was less formal than the Episcopal church, a little more like what Eliza was used to in some ways. Discussing it over lunch, they decided they liked it and would probably keep going there instead of back to the Episcopal church.

She told Sarah about the impending road trip and her plan to come out to her parents.

“I hope they take it well,” Sarah said. “What do you think they’re going to say?”

“I hope they won’t be as harsh as Jacob Glynn,” Eliza said in a small voice. “I know they love me, but I don’t think they’re going to understand. Not right away, not without a lot of work on my part. And maybe some help from Cassie. I dunno, Cassie isn’t a Christian, maybe I should talk to some trans Christians online and get their perspective before I try to talk Mom and Dad around?”

“Probably a good idea. Do you think there might be some trans people at the church we visited today?”

“Uh, maybe?”

“You could ask around next Sunday.”

“Yeah.”