“Girls! Who wants to come to River’s Edge with me?”

  Mom’s voice rang up the stairs early next morning, before the shop opened. Our bedrooms were split between the third and fourth floors, but there was no soundproofing, so if she stood at the bottom of the stairs on the second floor and yelled up, we could all hear her.

  Garnet had taken the bus back to her Downtown apartment last night already, but downstairs, I heard Sam open their door and call, “I’m grocery shopping today!” She could have gone anyway and stopped by the market with Mom on the way home, but she’d never cared for dolls. Or magic, for that matter.

  Electra and Chara’s door opened too.

  “Sorry, Mom, I’ve got music practice!” came Electra’s voice.

  Chara called, “I’m getting brunch with friends!”

  Neither of those answers was surprising. Electra cared about magic only insomuch as spells were composed and performed using music. Since she couldn’t hear the piece of music that they had performed on the xiao yesterday, she wasn’t interested.

  As for Chara, well, according to our aunts, she’d hit the age where she was starting to differentiate from family, so friends were more important to her.

  “Okay.” Was it my imagination, or did Mom sound disappointed? “Anyone else? Dia? Mei? Tania, how are you feeling?”

  I was planning to meet up with Aly to go over cookie recipes for the Activities Fair. “I’ve hanging out with Aly, Mom.”

  I expected Tania to go, but when I poked my head into the twins’ room, I found Mei bending over her twin’s bed, feeling her forehead.

  “She’s running a fever, Dia. She feels really hot.”

  I put my own hand on Tania’s forehead and jerked back. “I’ll get the Tylenol.”

  “I’m okay…,” moaned Tania. “Tell Mom I’ll go too. As soon as these…” She lifted a floppy arm and batted at something neither of us could see. “As soon as these butterflies go away.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mei snapped. “See? This is exactly why magic was banned! Because this happens when you do it.”

  Mom’s head was coming up the stairs when I exited the bathroom with a pill and a glass of water.

  “Tania says she wants to go, but she’s running a fever,” I reported. “It feels pretty high. And she’s hallucinating.”

  Mom nodded, unsurprised. She was holding a plastic washbasin. “That’s to be expected. She worked hard yesterday.”

  We entered the twins’ bedroom, and Mei glared at Mom. “She’s so hot it’s going to do brain damage! And she’s seeing things! It’s just like we learned in school!”

  “She’ll be all right.” Mom sat down on the edge of the mattress and brushed Tania’s damp hair back. “How are you feeling, Tan-Tan?”

  “I’m fine…,” Tania mumbled. Her eyes lingered on Mom’s right ear. “That’s a pretty…earring….”

  Mom wasn’t wearing any earrings. She patted Tania’s hand. “Stay in bed and rest. You did good work yesterday.”

  She helped Tania sit up, and I handed over the glass of water and Tylenol. It took Tania two tries, but she managed to swallow the pill. Then she tried to shuffle her legs towards the edge of the bed.

  “Lemme change, and I’ll be ready….”

  Mom stopped her. “Rest today.”

  “But I want to see….”

  “I’ll take you to the shrine once you’re better. In a few days,” Mom promised. “You can see the image then.”

  Tania plucked at Mom’s sleeve weakly. “But…want to see…Grandpa Tu…want to see him open the box….”

  “I know, I know, honey. But you’re in no shape to get out of bed. Next time, I promise.”

  Tania might have protested further, but then she retched and rolled onto her side. Mom was right there with the washbasin. Water, stomach acid, and the undigested pill came up. Tania kept heaving. I ran to get more water and medicine.

  “Mom! We have to get her to the hospital!” Mei fluttered in a panic, unable to help.

  “The doctors won’t be able to do anything, honey. And it’ll pass on its own.”

  “This is why it’s wrong,” Mei muttered. “This is why it’s wrong. This is why it’s wrong. This is why it’s banned.”

  “Here.” I set the bottle of Tylenol and a new glass of water on the nightstand and nudged Mei. She’d feel better if she had something to do. “Have her try again in a bit.”

  “In a bit? She needs it now! She’s literally burning up!”

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  It took a while before Tania managed to keep down a pill, and even longer before Mei calmed down enough that she wouldn’t call an ambulance as soon as our backs were turned. It would be pointless, and she knew it too once she was thinking clearly again. The Toll wasn’t something that anyone could cure. That anyone had ever been able to cure. It was why, in the past, many mages had only composed the spells, then hired poor spell-workers to perform the magic and bear the Toll.

  Eventually, we left the twins and went back out into the hall. Mom looked weary, and I suddenly realized that she still didn’t have anyone to make the delivery with her. She didn’t need company for the Metro ride, of course, but she looked as if she could use some.

  Quietly, I asked, “Do you have to deliver it today? I just saw the MEC inspectors yesterday. Wouldn’t it be safer to wait? And then Tania can go too?”

  She gave me a tired smile, absently massaging the joints of her right hand. “The people of River’s Edge need their Grandpa Earth, for comfort and for protection.”

  The shrine would have closed while she and Tania were making a new image, leaving people in that neighborhood without a place to pray for health or safe childbirth or high test scores. Even if they didn’t believe Grandpa Earth would show up to help, they’d feel naked, exposed, uneasy without that ritual.

  I thought of the MEC inspectors, their wolf-spider-like headpieces, the way they constantly scanned everything around them for magic. “I’ll come with you.”

  “What about Aly? What time are you meeting her?”

  I shrugged. “I can reschedule.”

  “Are you sure? You really don’t have to.”

  “Uh-huh. It’ll be fun. I want to see the shrine too.”

  And I did. Also, I hadn’t gone out with just Mom and me for ages. But mostly, I couldn’t let her make this delivery alone. If she got caught – if she got arrested – well, I didn’t know what one high schooler could do, but at least I had my phone and I could call Dad and Po-Po, maybe run to the Association of Shrines and Temples for help.

  Aly would understand. She’d even be thrilled to participate, if only in this minor way.

  So I texted her to push back our plans, threw on a sundress, grabbed a long-sleeved shirt that doubled as a jacket for the Metro, and clattered down the stairs to the store. The workshop door was open once more, as it always was when Mom and Tania weren’t performing The Spell, so I ran straight in.

  Mom’s workstation and its mounted magnifying glass sat next to the window that looked out on our backyard – a nearly-unheard of luxury for Jade City, but it was mostly filled by the shed where Dad did the porcelain casting and firing. That window got the best natural light. Mom needed it to paint faces on the dolls, using brushes so fine you could barely see the tips.

  Another wall was lined with sturdy cabinets for holding paints, brushes, doll hair, fabric dyes, a giant collection of scrap cloth that our family had amassed over decades, lace, trim, glitter, glue, miniature accessories, props and bases for the dolls, and much, much more.

  The workshop looked older than the rest of the house. On the walls, the paint was peeling again. A new crack ran along the ceiling, and even as I watched, a paint chip fell to the scuffed linoleum floor. That was the final Toll from The Spell. Tania was already paying the ones in the Corporeal and Spirit Realms with her fever and hallucinations. The workshop ceiling had borne the Toll in the Matter Realm.

  I picked up the paint chip and dropped it in the trashcan.

  It had been emptied already. Mom might leave cloth strewn all over her desk and the floor when she was dressing a doll, but she was meticulous about cleaning up after she finished a Grandpa Earth image. The MEC had allowed Jade Island to keep our shrines with the understanding that the Toll for the spells on them had already been paid, that the spells would degrade over time, and that they would not be refreshed.

  Well, two of three conditions had been met. Of course, on a test, sixty-seven percent would still be failing. There was a reason the inspectors kept coming back.

  “Should I tell Dad to repaint the ceiling?”

  Mom cast an expert eye at the crack, assessing its depth and length. “No, leave it. He’s pouring porcelain today.”

  Indeed, through the window, I could see Dad moving around in the shed, selecting the molds he needed.

  “Oh! Since you’re coming with me – ”

  Mom hurried out into the store and scanned the finished custom orders that we kept behind the counter. She picked up the Chang’e doll that Dad had worked on yesterday, gave it a thorough examination, and wrapped it in pale yellow and orange tissue paper. Then she nestled it into a small cardboard box with “Weaver Porcelain Dolls” and our address and phone number printed on the lid, and slipped the box into a gift bag with the same information. I was already crumpling more yellow and orange tissue paper to tuck into the bag so their corners would peek over the top.

  Mom motioned for me to take the bag when I was done. “We can stop by Madame Yang’s place on the way home. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

  It wasn’t dignified for a sixteen-year-old to squeal, but I did so anyway.

  In their new apartment in Silken Heights, Clem scrolled through arXiv, the website where scientists posted preprints of their papers. Only seven new titles had appeared in the magicist section today, and of those, only one piqued her interest.

  Back when she started graduate school, it would have taken her a couple hours every morning to read all the papers that caught her eye. Theoretical papers discussing the composition or historical evolution of spells. Experimental papers analyzing the data from spelled items that the MEC had confiscated from all over the world, or proposing improvements to scanner technology so the MEC could more easily locate those spelled items. Even then, those magicists willing to look into the future had already known it was a moribund field, but most academics preferred to focus on their research and leave future policy to a nebulous group of “other people.”

  In retrospect, perhaps that hadn’t been the best idea.

  But they were scientists, not politicians! If even the career bureaucrats at the MEC couldn’t save the field – and their own livelihoods – then who could?

  “Anything interesting on arXiv?” asked Francis from behind her.

  Without turning around, she shook her head. “Not really.”

  Clem felt her husband’s hands settle on her chairback as he leaned forward to read the titles for himself. He, too, had trained as a magicist before inheriting the position of MEC High Commissioner, the same way his father and grandfather had before him. The same way Hari one day would – assuming the MEC still existed when he received his degree.

  Assuming Hari would even accept the role when the time came.

  “Did the inspectors have anything to report?” she asked, and felt a mixture of relief and disappointment when Francis said, “No.” Relief, because she didn’t want the Jadeans to continue to abuse magic, to continue to pay a Toll that had been rendered unnecessary by modern scitech. Disappointment, because, well, if she were being honest, studying their illegal spells was her life’s work.

  “Come on,” Francis said, and she could tell that he was wrestling with his own mixed feelings. “There’s time before my flight. Let’s go explore a bit with Hari. Is there anywhere you’ve been wanting to visit?”

  At the question, an idea popped into Clem’s head, as if it had been waiting at the back of her mind all along and couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Yes, actually! There is.”