"That sounds like a wonderful thing and it's really nice of you to offer it."

And the hook...?

She shrugs. "You have a pretty serious problem, or a problem that will become very serious if left unattended, and it's one the Duchamp coven is positioned to help with. And I try to be on good terms with local practitioners. If things escalate between us and the Behaims, it means we have a history of being the preferable faction.

Not that I'm asking for loyalty, you understand, or a promise. Just that if there ever does come a time to take a side, you'll remember the Duchamps saved your life once."

...well that's actually not that bad at all? Of all things she could be asked, remembering that the Duchamps helped her doesn't sound like such a bad thing.

"I see. That sounds reasonable."

She smiles.

"If it's just since this morning you should have some time.

Would you prefer glasses, contact lenses? We could enchant your eyes directly but it'd be more complicated and you might not want near strangers doing magic to your body."

"What would the parametres be? Would I have to do anything to the glasses or contact lenses for them to work?"

"They'd be on by default, and cancel out the wearer's Sight. It's not something there's much use for usually, but doable. You'd have to take them off or deactivate them to see magic. If it's just lenses we'd try harder to make toggling it a purely mental action. In either case, it'd be drawing on your power to keep running. It shouldn't cost more than you can easily afford."

"I think I prefer glasses," she says after a pause.

Nod. "If it doesn't turn out to be harder than I expect, they'll be ready well before your situation turns serious. In the meantime, you should focus on maintaining nonmagical connections. People who aren't informed, activities with nothing to do with magic. That can help tie you to the normal world."

She nods. "Thank you very much for this."

"You're welcome. It's either help or don't help, and you'd have a much shorter lifespan otherwise.

How did it happen?"

"I made myself my implement."

"Interesting." Nicole looks at Sadde again. "That could do it. My impulse is to say you're lucky it didn't shunt you across the boundary entirely, but I've never heard of anyone trying so I don't know if that would be true."

"Perhaps I'm too attached to this world for that to happen, or something," she shrugs, trying to affect lack of concern. Probably succeeding, too.

Nah, enchantresses are good at this. But also often polite enough to play along.

"Perhaps. Or for all I know that was never a danger in the first place and anybody could do it safely if they're prepared to deal with this specific side effect.
I still wouldn't recommend the risk to people."

"Well, it's done, I suppose, no use crying over it, and I thank you very much for your assistance still."

She smiles and shrugs. "You can thank me after it works."

"Okay," she says, smiling, too.

The enchantress smiles her way off back to the other Duchamps.

And unless anyone else wants to talk to her, she'll leave.

No one else seeks her out.

Then out she goes, back home.

Nicole and Johannes both advised her to do as little magic as possible and act mundane if she starts slipping into that world. Glamour experiments?

...tempting, but she'll do the smart thing this time and return home and definitely not do any magic and be scolded by her father and confined to her room all Sunday and she tells him she has to work and he's annoyed but lets it go (and he'll surely drop her off at work tomorrow and pick her up there), and they're also grounded on Monday, and Tuesday they have to work, but on Wednesday, finally, they have some free time after school.

(And of course, they pet and talk to Bob, telling it about their day, making sure it won't be forgotten.)

(They bump into an invisible thing once, too.)

And on Wednesday, after school, he uses his implement—specifically, his knuckles—to knock on the correct bricks of a certain brick wall.

With no apparent change, his surroundings go from normal to questionably Euclidean.

As before, there's a pretty clear forward without a corresponding obvious backward. Unlike before, the occupants stand out. Instead of being weird-looking people or animals, or even recognizably things that aren't supposed to exist, he can see them for what they are. Predator Others glittering with magic, without any concession to what the unawakened would see. The prey being hunted don't look human. On the scale of creepiness, this isn't an improvement. The vestiges have enormous gashes with small animals living inside, but no blood. They're humanoid bundles of scraps held together with rodent and dog spirits. Which are apparently a magical equivalent of duct tape. The screams, when they scream, sound distinctly animal.

Not a fun theme park to walk around in.

...okay eugh. This is horrible. He'll—walk. And try to ignore the screams and things. Also, how the heck did the Others who attacked him the other day even think he was a vestige?

"By the way, Johannes, I'm here, if you can hear this from wherever you are."