Fall in love in a weekwe get by

– She escaped with moderate exhaustion. And then, strictly speaking, I’m not sure that heartbreaking hysteria didn’t have a hand in exhaustion. Judging by the fairly quick effect of my experimental mixture.

– Number two thousand two hundred and forty three. Fifth prototype. No pepper,” I clarified. Just to make Sabella smile.

When we returned from the garden, the gazebo was empty. Sabella was waiting for us in the house and, it seems, was not even surprised when she realized that Dougal knew about everything. This was probably the only way to explain our lengthy walk. But Elsa and Chester have already left. And I could stop pretending to be Charlotte.

We sat in the living room and drank tea with jam from those very peaches that Borvoor had muttered with such delight. Sabella's face showed relief. It probably wasn’t easy for her either to remain silent and pretend that nothing special was happening. It's good that Dougal didn't demand an explanation from her. Maybe my thoughts were enough for him to draw conclusions about her too, or maybe he just didn’t want to touch on a painful topic once again.

But after the news about my pathological magical illiteracy, Sabella decisively declared:

– Something needs to be done about this. If only I had known… and at least I could have imagined that everything was so neglected! Of course, a girl who has lived her entire life without magic at all will not master everything at once, and that’s what I attributed to your mistakes that I noticed. But you know absolutely nothing and can’t do anything! You have been incredibly lucky all these days, nothing less.

Dougal chuckled, managing in that one sound to convey everything he thought about my incredible luck and equally incredible ability to get myself into idiotic situations and expose myself to ridicule. And the two of them began to fill my, as Dougal put it, “virgin emptiness” with at least some knowledge. Honestly, I had a hard time resisting a vulgar joke!

“Basics of Survival in the Magical World” began with what I had almost lost track of: protective domes against unauthorized movements. It turned out that the portal network is much more streamlined and gives less freedom than I imagined. Both people's personal space and public institutions are protected from uninvited guests very strictly. At the same time, they told me about other types of travel and opportunities to get “from point A to point B” – there were many of them. Not all the inhabitants of this world had magical powers, and only magicians could open portals, so there was public transport, taxis, trains, and planes. There was a whole industry of pocket private portals – they were low-powered, could only carry one person over a short distance, but anyone could use them. They were bought for schoolchildren, they used such portals to get to work and home, but the main thing is that everyone, magician or not, was obliged to have such a portal with them, configured for an emergency hospital. This was part of the health insurance system.

I haven’t seen this in Charlotte’s things.

“Most likely, she hid it before the ritual,” Sabella suggested. – Otherwise, his settings would work for dark magic.

“And she would be alive now, albeit up to her neck in trouble with the law,” Dougal added.

After which we logically moved on to magical medicine, laws, police… and then suddenly it turned out that it was already long after midnight, and my poor head was not able to let in a single piece of new information until everything I had seen and heard today had settled down in it.

“We’ll meet tomorrow, or rather today,” said Dougal. “I have a lecture to replace the one that had to be canceled because of the murderous Herr Wolger, and then we have the rest of the day to ourselves.”

I looked at my watch. The lecture will start at half past ten, now it’s five minutes to nine. Wonderful. You can have time to apply the knowledge you gained yesterday – purchase a portal to the hospital prescribed by law. At the same time we'll eat somewhere in London. Or is Edinburgh better?

The thought of Edinburgh, in a completely understandable chain of associations, pulled with it another – to dress smarter. Yes, at least in the same “almost evening”, aka “not-at-all-evening” dress, in which I already went there once. Looked in the mirror, styled my hair… ready? Ready. I hope this time the portal will work at the right address, and not deep into the Scottish moors.

The first meaningful – that is, with full knowledge of all possible dangers and consequences – journey through the portal network was successful. I walked around Edinburgh, found the hospital and received the portal without any problems. A simple white round with a red cross, the same as Sabella showed yesterday. They are standard, there is not even the name of the hospital, they are triggered by the nearest emergency department.