After lunch, they said goodbye to Eliza’s parents and loaded their luggage into Cassie’s car. Eliza’s mom and dad stood around next to the car and they talked for a few more minutes, then Eliza hugged her mom and dad again and she and Cassie got into the car and drove off toward Raleigh.

“So,” Cassie asked after they’d been on the road a few minutes, “did that go better or worse than you expected?”

“Not as bad as I was afraid of. About like I expected, I guess? I didn’t think they’d be happy about it, and I was actually kind of pleasantly surprised that Dad made some attempt to call me Eliza, even if he said he was just doing it to be polite and he didn’t agree with me transitioning.”

“Yeah. I hope my parents will react better than that, but I can’t help but worry.”

They drove on in silence for a few more minutes. Then Cassie said, “About what you said at your uncle’s house… do you think you might be ace?”

“Ace?”

“Asexual. Not really interested in sex or sexually attracted to people, basically, though I understand there’s a lot of variation and some ace people are attracted to people in limited circumstances… anyway. What you said about how you’d rather have stayed friends with Monica instead of dating and getting engaged, that sort of made me think that you might be. One of my friends in college was ace; he explained it to me.”

“Oh. Maybe? I hadn’t really thought it all through until I got aggravated at Uncle Derek and it just came spilling out. But I think I meant what I said… so yeah, maybe. I guess I’ve got more stuff to read now.”

“I can send you some links later.”

“Thanks.”

A little later, Cassie said, “You know, we should have talked about this earlier, but are you okay with telling my parents about your magic?”

“I guess I kind of have to, right? Otherwise there’s no way to explain how you’ve changed so much since they saw you earlier in the summer.”

“Eh, maybe. Don’t worry about it, I’ll figure something out if you don’t feel comfortable telling them. But it would make things easier.”

They hashed it out some more and decided on a plan. They were still taking the scenic route along state highways instead of the interstate, so it took about an hour and a half to reach Cassie’s parents’ house, passing through several small towns. When Cassie parked in the driveway, Eliza unbuckled her seatbelt and started to open her door when she realized Cassie wasn’t doing the same. She reached over and squeezed her hand.

“I’ll be there for you like you were there for me,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Cassie blew out a breath, nodded, and unfastened her seat belt. They got out and walked up to the door, ringing the doorbell.

About a minute later, a woman a few years older than Eliza’s mom opened the door. Eliza could see where Cassie got her red hair. She looked at them blankly for a moment before she seemed to recognize Cassie.

“Hi, Mom,” Cassie said shyly. “So yeah, this is the surprise I told you about. Surprise!”

Eliza couldn’t help but giggle, though she suppressed it as soon as she could. That wasn’t helpful.

“Um. Come on in?” Cassie’s mom said.

They walked into the foyer. A little to the left there was a staircase, and a man was coming down it. He paused for a moment, staring, and then said, “Well. That wasn’t anything like I expected when you said you had a surprise for us.”

“Am I jumping to conclusions if I suppose I have a daughter now?” Cassie’s mom asked.

“No, that’s right,” Cassie said. “Um. Can I have a hug?”

“Of course, honey,” her mom said, and engulfed her in a big hug. By the time they let go of one another, Cassie’s dad had finished coming down the stairs, and he hugged his daughter next. Only then, it seemed, did they remember they weren’t alone.

“So yeah, Mom, Dad, this is Eliza,” Cassie said.

“Hi,” Eliza said, and was surprised when Cassie’s mom offered to hug her. She accepted gratefully.

“Well, let’s go sit down and you can tell us about your extremely eventful summer,” Cassie’s dad said. “I can guess there’s a few things you haven’t mentioned on the phone.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said with a laugh.

“Do y’all want something to drink?” Cassie’s mom asked.

“Just some water,” Eliza said.

A couple of minutes later, they were seated in the living room. “I should have asked earlier,” Cassie’s mom said, “but do you have a new name?”

“Um, I’m going by Cassie for now. I’m still thinking about other names, I guess I don’t have to decide for sure until I do a legal name change, but I’m planning to do that pretty soon, so I guess I’d better make up my mind.”

“Cassie is a good name,” her dad said. “I’m sure whatever you pick will be a good fit. But when did you figure out you were transgender? Have you been keeping it secret until you got on hormones or whatever?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I figured out I was trans last year, and got on hormones back in the spring, not long before Uncle Eugene died. But up until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t seen major results.” She turned toward Eliza and said, “Eliza helped out a lot.”

“Oh! Are you transgender as well? Do you mean, like, advice for how to look feminine and stuff?”

Eliza laughed. “Yeah, but no. I didn’t even know I was trans until after Cassie came out to me. No, I helped her like this.” And she cast the hair-growth spell on Cassie, tracing it on her scalp and causing her already long hair to grow another three inches in a few moments. “Magic,” she explained unnecessarily.

Cassie’s parents looked gobsmacked. “She changed you into a girl by magic? How?”

“I was already a girl,” Cassie said, a little testily. “But she gave me a more feminine body by magic, yeah. And herself too. Six weeks ago, I looked basically the same as I looked when I visited you back in May, and almost all this progress you see is from a few of Eliza’s spells.”

“So you hired a grad student to organize Uncle Eugene’s library, and she turned out to be a witch?”

Eliza flinched at the word “witch,” though she wasn’t sure it didn’t fit. “I prefer ‘sorceress,’” she said. “And I wasn’t a sorceress yet, or even a sorcerer, when she hired me. But –”

She went on to explain how she’d found the spellbook and started learning magic, and how that had led to her using magic to help Cassie transition and to her figuring out she was trans, too. Cassie pitched in with more details pretty often, and her parents had a lot of questions that led them into digressions, but after about half an hour they had the gist of what had happened. She left out all the stuff about getting kicked out of church, her car being vandalized, and looking for a new church with Sarah; she figured Cassie’s parents would want her to focus on stuff that was relevant to their daughter’s transition.

“So yeah, that’s basically what happened,” she concluded. “Surprise!”

“What other magic can you do?” Cassie’s dad asked. “Or is it all focused on, uh, making your body more feminine?”

“Well, I’ve got several information spells that help me learn things. Like a search engine spell that works on a physical library, or a spell that lets me memorize the contents of a book for a few hours. And there’s this one, it’s kind of fun.” She cast the levitation spell on one of the coasters on the coffee table, and made it do gentle loops and spins in the air while Cassie’s parents gaped and Cassie gave a proud smile.

“I never get tired of seeing that,” Cassie said.

“No shit,” her dad said.

“So Uncle Eugene was a wizard,” Cassie’s mom said. “Or sorcerer?” she added with a glance at Eliza. “I wonder why he never told us. I mean, you didn’t have any problem telling us, so there doesn’t seem to be some kind of worldwide spell or something that keeps ordinary people from finding out about magic.”

Eliza shrugged. “I’ve told… let’s see, seven people now counting you? It sure seems like magic should be common knowledge by now if there’s no barrier to telling people about it, but maybe I’ll learn something about it in the last few chapters of the introductory spellbook, or in one of the more advanced ones that I can’t read yet.”

Cassie’s parents were eager to see more of Eliza’s magic, so she wound up casting the knowledge-absorption spell on both of them, stuffing Cassie’s dad’s head full of a biography of Ernest Shackleton that he’d bought recently and hadn’t read yet, and her mother’s head with an electrical repair manual. After that, they brought in Eliza and Cassie’s luggage.

After stowing her luggage in the guest bedroom, Eliza walked across the hall to Cassie’s bedroom. Unlike Eliza’s bedroom at her parents’ house, it had been largely denuded of anything personal; there were only a couple of posters on the walls, and the bookshelves were empty.

“I’m so happy about how my parents took my coming out,” Cassie said, “but I’m pretty exhausted from the anxiety leading up to it, so I think I’m gonna take a nap before supper.”

“I should probably do the same,” Eliza said, glancing around at the bare walls and empty shelves. “Oh, this reminds me – have you found that Poul Anderson collection you were missing?”

“Oh. No, I haven’t.”

“Want me to cast the finding spell again and see if it’s here?”

“Sure.”

So Eliza cast the spell to find lost objects, and said: “It’s fallen down behind your bed.”

“Oh!” Cassie turned around and leaned over to reach down into the space behind her bed. After digging around for a few moments, she pulled out the book, trailing cobwebs and dust bunnies. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. See you after a while.”

Eliza want back to her guest room and laid down. Her head was full of what she’d talked about with Cassie during the drive, and with inevitable comparisons between her parents and Cassie’s. She tossed and turned, but didn’t fall asleep before someone gently knocked on the door.

“I’m awake,” she said, getting up and going to open the door. It was Cassie’s mom.

“Supper’s ready any time,” she said. “I made Irish stew, but it can keep simmering for a while before we eat if you’re not hungry yet. Oh, I should have asked if you have any allergies before I started cooking –”

“No, no allergies,” Eliza said.

But Cassie didn’t respond when her mom knocked on her door, so they decided to let her sleep a while longer and postpone supper a bit. She sat down in the living room with Cassie’s parents; Cassie’s mom said, “I guess we were so focused on Cassie coming out, and the magic, that we didn’t ask you how your trip was. Y’all stopped to visit your parents too, right?”

“Yeah… it didn’t go well. The visit with my parents and my aunt and uncle, I mean; we had fun doing tourist stuff before that.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

Eliza nodded and didn’t say anything more. She really didn’t want to talk about her parents’ attitude toward her transition.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Cassie’s dad asked her how she’d decided to become a librarian, and she started telling them about her childhood friendship with one of the librarians at their local library in Greensboro, and how she’d decided then to become a librarian. “Originally I wanted to work at a public library, but since starting undergrad I’ve considered working in a university or research center library. I don’t need to decide until I’m closer to graduation, anyway, and maybe I’ll do both kinds of work over my career.”

About then, Cassie walked into the living room, blinking sleepily. “I smell something delicious,” she said. “Have y’all already eaten or were you waiting on me?”

“We’re letting the stew simmer,” her mom said, “but it should be ready any time.”

So they went into the kitchen and served their bowls of stew, and sat down to eat. Cassie’s mom, who seemed to be a software person like Cassie, asked her about the software she’d been working on that summer, and the conversation quickly got too technical for Eliza to follow. At that point, Cassie’s dad asked Eliza if they’d found anything else magical in the house besides the spellbooks.

“Oh, yeah,” Eliza said. “I forgot to mention earlier, but the hot water heater was magic. It looked like it broke down and instead of getting an electrician to repair or replace it, he just cast a spell on it to make it keep working. And there was a razor that was enchanted to stay sharp, and there was this postcard…”

“Jeff Blevins?” Cassie’s mom asked after Cassie and Eliza described the postcard and its traces of magic. “I don’t remember him, but I’m sure Uncle Eugene had a lot of friends I never met. He used to travel around a lot when he was younger. Maybe my mom will remember him.”

“Where does your mom live?”

“She and Dad moved to California after they retired – they used to live not too far from here.”

“What was your uncle like? Cassie’s told me a fair bit about him, but you knew him when he was a lot younger.”

“Well, you know he was a voracious reader – his house in the mountains was where he kept most of his books, but he had a few hundred in the beach house and the condo in New York, too. And he was a really sharp investor – that’s how he made most of his money. Mom told me he started investing in the stock market when he was about thirty, I think? And he got really lucky with his first few investments – or maybe it wasn’t luck.”

Eliza wondered who had inherited the beach house and the condo, but decided it wasn’t polite to ask. “Yeah, I’m guessing with more advanced spells like some of the information spells I’ve learned, he could find out corporate secrets and know which companies were in trouble and which ones were about to come out with a hot new product or whatever.”

“And he used to come pick me up when I was little and take me to neat places all around the Triangle – the parks and museums and botanical gardens and the bookstores. All the bookstores.”

“Yeah, Cassie told me about how he used to take her to bookstores a lot. It sounds like he was good with kids.”

“Very. I don’t know why he never married; I never got the impression he was gay, or had an ill-fated love affair in his youth or anything.”

Eliza wondered if he had been ace, like Cassie thought she might be, but didn’t think it was useful to speculate.

“What other information spells have you gotten besides the one you showed us?” Cassie’s dad asked.

So Eliza told her about the library search spell, the time and space and object scrying spells, the spell to find lost objects, and so forth. Cassie overheard this and told her parents how Eliza had found the Poul Anderson book that had fallen behind her bed when she was packing up to move out.

After supper, they sat around in the living room again talking. But Eliza was starting to fade; it had been a long day with some stressful moments. She apologized to Cassie and her parents and went to the guest room to get ready for bed.

It didn’t take her long to fall asleep once she’d changed into her pajamas and lain down. But after getting to bed so early, she woke up early as well, about five in the morning. She decided to practice the bone-shaping spell some more, so she got the distorted squirrel skull out of her suitcase, opened the spellbook, and started casting.

After every two or three successful casts, she flipped the page to see if chapter ten had unlocked. After about half an hour of practice, she checked and found, not chapter ten as she’d expected, but “Afterword: Welcome to the Community.” She read through it eagerly.

Congratulations for completing this introductory course. A representative of the editors will be in touch shortly to welcome you to the community. You will find that more advanced spellbooks will now become readable for you, and we encourage you to study them while you figure out what your role in the community is to be. Mages do many important jobs, including moderating the impact of pollution and climate change (global mean temperature would already be 0.8 degrees higher without our efforts), influencing political and business leaders to be slightly less short-sighted than the personalities attracted to those positions would naturally be, repelling extradimensional invaders, and on rare occasions nudging asteroids and comets to avoid the Earth. You will naturally need to learn more advanced magic before you can help with these major tasks, but there are smaller ways you can make the world a better place even now…

Wait, extradimensional invaders?

It went on to explain something that Eliza had been wondering about: why magic was still a secret even though there had been no obstacle to Eliza telling her friends and family about it and showing them some of her spells. A mage could tell their friends and loved ones about magic if they chose, but a non-mage who learned about magic would find that they could not tell anyone else. And the mage would find that they hit a limit of how many people they could tell – it varied from one person to another, but generally around five to ten people. That helped explain why Monica had apparently been so vague in what she told her parents – saying that Eliza had “gotten involved in the occult” rather than specifically talking about the levitation spell. And it explained why Eugene Taggart had never told his niece or great-niece about his magic – presumably he’d run into his personal limit with his friends and maybe his parents and siblings before Cassie’s mom was born. Eliza resolved to be much more careful about who she told about her magic from now on, if she hadn’t already hit her limit with seven people, and wished the book had mentioned all this in the introduction instead of the afterword.

The afterword concluded with a few recommended titles for learning more about information magic and flesh magic, and was followed by an index. Eliza had no idea how to find those books if they weren’t in Cassie’s library, but presumably she could ask whoever it was that was going to make contact with her…

Someone cleared their throat, and Eliza yelped, looking round and clutching the book to her chest. There was a dim, shadowy figure standing over near the door, looking… apologetic?

“Sorry to disturb you, Miss Hudnall,” the figure said in a British accent. It was gradually growing more distinct, though no less transparent, and now Eliza could make out an old man with white hair, wearing a sweater and semi-casual trousers. “But I believe you just finished your introductory spellbook, didn’t you?”

“Yes… you’re the person the afterword said would be contacting me?”

“Yes, I’m Nigel Draper. Seems like all the editors in your timezone are asleep or busy, so it fell to me to welcome you. Any questions?”

“Lots,” Eliza said. “To start with, when I started learning magic, I promised my friend Cassie I would help her learn magic if I could. And I tried a bunch of stuff, but she couldn’t read the book, or the spells I copied out of it, whether by hand or on a computer.”

“Let’s see…” He took a small notebook out of his pocket and turned the pages. “Would that be Casey Merrick, great-nephew of Eugene Taggart?”

“Yeah, but she’s going by Cassie now.” Eliza wondered why the spellbook had addressed her as “Miss Hudnall” weeks before she figured out she was trans, but Mr. Draper didn’t seem to know Cassie was a girl. One more question to add to the pile.

“Well, once you’re sure you’re finished with your introductory spell-book, and don’t want to review the spells any more, you can cast a spell to put it back in a neutral state, so to speak, and then it will imprint on the next person of sound mind and good character to handle it. As a matter of fact, Eugene told us he was planning to give his introductory spellbook to his – er, niece, I suppose – after he – sorry, after she graduated from college. But he died before he had a chance to do that. I believe Cassie should have inherited his magical books, however? How did you come to imprint on the book before she did?”

“She hired me to organize her library – I’m a library science grad student, and it looked like Mr. Taggart had some system of organizing his books at one time, but they were a real mess by the time he died. And I guess I was the first person to touch the spellbook after he died?”

“Ah, yes, that makes sense. Well, Cassie has already been approved to get mage training, so you can just pass the book along to her when you’re finished with it.”

“Where do I find the spell to prime it for her?”

“It should be one of the first spells in Intermediate Information Magic, which ought to be in Cassie’s library.”

“Okay. Another thing – how did you know I was a girl weeks before I did, but you didn’t know Cassie was a girl until I told you?”

“…Before you did?” Mr. Draper looked perplexed, and Eliza was about to explain when he suddenly said, “Oh. Oh. That explains some of the spells you got… Well, the spells that personalize the introductory spellbook automatically detect the person’s gender so it can address them properly. Cassie hasn’t imprinted on a spellbook yet, so I was relying on what Eugene told me.”

“And I guess he never cast that gender-detection spell on her?”

Mr. Draper shrugged. “I suppose he never saw any need?”

“Another thing… the afterword said something about extradimensional invaders? How long has that been going on?”

“For as long as our records go back,” he said. “Fortunately, we’ve gotten very good at repelling them. Attempted invasions happen about once every twenty or thirty years – the last one was in Arizona in 2002, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the next one is pretty soon.”

“Is the same other-dimensional aliens every time or different ones?”

“Different ones, although there’s one particular empire that keeps trying every time they make an advance in technology or magic. So far we and our allies have kept ahead of them.”

“So you’re – wait, allies?”

“Yes, not all extradimensional beings are hostile. Some work with us to fight the militaristic, expansionist ones – they know if we fall, our mutual enemies will have a beachhead to attack them from.”

“Huh. And you’re making advances in magic, too? Inventing new spells?”

“Yes; perhaps you can start devising new spells someday. You’ll need a firmer grounding in the theoretical underpinnings of magic first; the introductory course focuses on practice more than theory.”

“Yeah, that makes sense… And it said y’all use magic to fight climate change and nudge politicians to be more sensible. Is that something like mind control?”

“We only use mind control in extreme cases, and we need help from our allies when we resort to it, because human magic can’t control people’s thoughts or feelings, just influence them slightly. Some of us are absolutely against using it, or think we use it a little too often, but given that the last time we did it was to prevent a nuclear war, I don’t think we’re excessive with it.”

“Couldn’t you do more about climate change and pollution if you didn’t have to be subtle about it? Use spells to extract huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere or whatever?”

“That’s exactly what we’re doing, but our abilities have limits. We can’t extract enough carbon from the atmosphere to make scientists scratch their heads about why the Earth isn’t heating up as fast as predicted, but we do what we can.”

Eliza’s head was spinning with all the new information. She tried to think of another question, she knew she’d had a lot just moments ago, but all that came to mind was: “There was an enchanted postcard in a box at Cassie’s house, addressed to Mr. Taggart from a guy named Jeff Blevins. Do you have any idea what that might be about? The detect magic spell didn’t tell me what it was enchanted to do, just that it was barely magical.”

“How old was it?”

“I think it was dated 1965?”

“Goodness, that’s a long time for a spell to last without being renewed. No wonder it was worn down to a nubbin… well, if I had to guess, it was enchanted to hide its text from postal workers and reveal its true message only to the intended recipient. Or maybe to play a prank on the intended recipient, enchanting them in some embarrassing but harmless way… Jeff was a jokester.” He sighed, perhaps in grief, if the past tense “was” was any indication.

“Oh. …Well, I can’t think of any more questions, though I’m sure I’ll have more later. Is there a way I can get in touch with you again?”

Mr. Draper gave her his email address and phone number; she entered him as a new contact in her phone. “And of course you’ll find the spell I used to converse with you in Intermediate Information Magic. Do give some thought to what you want to do, once you’ve advanced farther in your studies, and we can talk again in a few weeks. Probably one of the other editors in your region will contact you.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome,” Mr. Draper said, and vanished.

Eliza was eager to start studying Intermediate Information Magic, but it was two hundred miles away. And she was too wired to go back to sleep. She got up and paced back and forth in the guest room, hoping that would tire her out enough to get a little more sleep before morning, and after turning over what she’d just learned in her head a few times, she found her thoughts wandering to what Cassie had told her yesterday – apparently there were other people like her who didn’t want to date or marry. Probably she should look stuff up about it. What was the word Cassie had used – asexual?

She sat down on the bed again and picked up her phone.