"It is, though! Wood burns, but if you knock over a candle on a wooden table it just kinda scorches it a little, and your parents get mad, is all." In her defense she was five; all she wanted was to pick it up and wave it around. "When fire is strong, it gets stronger, but when it's weak, it gets weaker." Huh, she never thought about it that way before. Seem true, though.

How does her audience feel now? Reassured?

He doesn't quite trust Sophie the way he did an hour ago. He hates not trusting Sophie! Maybe he can fix it by just deciding to. "Okay, if you're sure."

So far it doesn't feel great. Maybe it needs some more time.

"I'm not your mom, and I'm not asking to be." Or rather your grandma, let's be honest. "I don't want you to burn anybody to death, but I don't want you to get hurt, either. Do what you have to, come back when you can, and I'll try and find this big lug some food." She waves her free hand at Otso. "I have chicken legs thawing in the freezer, we'll start with those."

Otso's never had chicken legs but he's extremely open to the experiment.

Also he kinda wants to be where Sophie's not, just for while she's transforming.

They can head inside together. To hell with the floors, insurance will pay for it.

Ah. They support her, but not in the way where they'll be in the same room when she transforms.

That makes sense, just, ow.

Anyway. She has things to do. She shuts her eyes, and lets the image of the card fill her mind, the way it did on the hill.

Hmm. The thing isn't happening.

Maybe that's the wrong way to think about it. It's not something that happens, it's something that she does. Or a part of her does...which means that all of her does. Right? She had a whole revelation about how all the parts of her including her Friend were really the same person deep down, and it felt right at the time. And she got extra superpowers out of it! Lots of them! That should really be a sign that she was on the right - oh.

She still knows how to relate to her powers that way; the problem is that the ordinary-teenage-girl parts of her brain remember how she almost killed some of her friends by doing it, and don't want to do it again. Those parts would like to maintain a little distance from the whole, thank you very much. Those parts...are making a pretty good argument.

All right. She had a profound revelation about the nature of her identity a little while ago. How about she just doesn't do anything with it for the next little while? How about she acts like she's made of different parts even though it isn't exactly true?

There's a reason I held back so much, before, when I was alone. I was scared I would miss something, do things for bad reasons. You know it wasn't You I was scared of, right? If I'm scared of either of us it's me.

We saved Emily's life. That never would have happened without You. We made mistakes together, but I'm still so glad we met. We'll learn more, and do better. We'll save Kyle. We'll find out what the world is really like. And we'll fix it.

You're enveloped by yellow light, and just for a moment your sense of the world cuts out completely, and then you're back. You're still in Gill's garage, surrounded by warm, pleasant heat. You're dressed as you were before, in red tunic and sandals. Your aura is warming the steam around you against the chill from the garage door. And your sense of the Juice Man has returned, bright as ever. He's a good distance away, and moving fast.

Well that opens up some interesting new possibilities!

She was thinking before that she couldn't ambush him, that she'd have to just sorta blunder around and hope they ran into each other. Her best chance is a sneak attack, and that just didn't sound sneaky enough. But now she can run straight to him, choke him out like she did before, and be right back where she started before everything went to hell.

She's learned her lesson about getting random innocents involved in her battles, but she does need help. If she'd asked Pastor Reed about all this in advance, if she'd somehow known that she'd need exorcist help, would he have volunteered, even if he knew it was dangerous? She thinks so? She doesn't know him that well, but she thinks so. So if she -

Wait, no.

Come on.

She literally thought about this exact situation. She's going to school, and nowhere else. If ambushing the evil alchemist still seems like a good idea after dinner, she can do it then.

She'll jog out through the hole in the door she made, then sprint around the bend.

It really isn't far, and this time you have street signs to prove you're on course, so it isn't long at all before you get back to school. You don't see any other cars on the road, but you do have to jump over a couple of small trees. The parking lot is still pretty full, and here and there in the windows you can see the glow of flashlights or cell phones.

She'll circle the school, staying in the trees a little. She's looking for the side that's as un-lit as possible, so that - she hopes! - nobody will see her approach, even though she's glowing again.

The north side is all classrooms; the far end is dark.

Great. Now, the ground floor windows are always locked, just on principle, but the second floor windows aren't usually. Can she just jump up to the second-floor windowsill, grab on, and shimmy a window open? If not she'll just break one, but she might as well try not to.

The jump is easy, and the windowsill does hold your weight. You have to wiggle the bug screen a little to get to go up, but you manage, and then you're inside.

It looks like an English classroom, but not one you've been in before.

Also great. Now she just has to figure out how to untransform.

What to do. She'll try the same visualization as before, but backwards: she lets the five falling figures loom in the center of her mind's eye, then gradually pulls away. She needs something to visualize behind it, and she amuses herself by imagining she's a bird swooping over the City of Sophie, where the card is just one building. A big, grand building. But still, just one part of the greater whole.

Whatever else I am, I'm a normal person. Partially. For now.

Cool.

The next thing is to find her friends, and find out what they said to whom. If they told on her, then this whole thing was a waste of time...but they're her best friends, and Carol's so good at lying it'd be scary if she wasn't Carol. They probably made it work.

Can she, by chance, call or text them?