When Dara woke up, for a moment she didn’t know where she was.

I’m not in my room… Her room didn’t face the sun, so why was she here?

There was a hooting sound outside, and Dara shot up in the bed. Not her bed. The strange fold-out device that Millie had put her in. She staggered to her feet, grabbing her staff as she looked around. Millie was gone. But her pouch was still on the table, undisturbed. Outside, she glanced at a band of children walking somewhere under the gimlet gaze of an older woman. More of those cars were zipping around outside, some of them making that hooting sound.

Horns. They were blowing horns. How a horn made that noise, Dara didn’t know. I wonder, was the gem, or the portal, or whatever did this, only able to imprint the knowledge I knew about, leaving the rest as just words? Thinking about it, Dara shivered as she considered how you would be able to work such a marvel.

It was—

“Well, you’re awake, sleepy-head.”

Dara spun around, definitely not squeaking, as she saw Millie in a ratty dressing gown, leaning by the door. “So, do they have showers where you come from?”

Dara took a deep breath, her heart still thumping away. “Yes. They do.”

“Good. Go and get a shower. I have some clothes out for you that won’t immediately scream that you’re a refugee from a renfaire, but no underthings. Have to get them later, unless you go commando.”

That meaning the spell was happy to translate. Dara slowly turned red. “No. I am fine.”

“Good. Right knob is for hot water, the left knob is for cold water, and the hot water doesn’t last very long!”

Right. Dara nodded, and went into the bathroom, closing and locking the door before she disrobed.

The controls were simple and the college hot water never lasted very long, not with everyone wanting to use it in the morning, so she quickly jumped in and showered. The hot water playing over her skin helped get rid of the last twinges of pain from her chase last night, not to mention getting hit by the car.

At least the potion had helped end the worst of the pain.

I’ll have to brew up another potion. Dara paused. Did they even have potion shops here? If they didn’t have magic, did they even know how to make proper potion brewing equipment?

She put her head against the cool tile of the shower and whined. Who had ever heard of landing in someplace that didn’t even have a potion shop?

And then the shower water turned icy cold.

“I warned you!” Millie’s muffled voice said as the echoes of Dara’s shriek faded.

Dara didn’t say anything else. She was too busy jumping out of the shower.

A few minutes later, she was dry, had her underthings on, and was… staring at the clothes Millie had left her.

Yes. They were. Clothes. Things to cover her.

The pants looked like something a laborer would wear out in the field, and Dara had a slight shiver when she considered what her family would say. But she pulled them on, wiggling to get them over her hips, and then buckled them tight. she had to roll up the bottoms a little bit, since she was shorter than Millie. There was also a…

Zipper, her mind filled in. Some kind of unusual fastener. Dara nodded and pulled the pants tight, then reached out and grabbed the sweater Millie had given her. It was a little long for her frame, although a little tight. Millie was somewhat slimmer than she was, after all. Dara didn’t mind. The picture on the front of that sweater showed a small bird about to be eaten by a much larger one. Under it was the phrase “Typical Monday.”

Monday’s just a day, why would being eaten be a typical Monday…

Dara shrugged. Now she was dressed and they could start looking for the thief, the gem and her way back home. She turned and opened the door and suddenly…

The smell of ham and eggs hit her. It smelled…

Okay, maybe I can just wait a little while before I start my search. Millie had the food set out on the table and she gestured to it.

“The eggs were about to go bad and I’ve been saving the ham, so why not have it now?”

“Right,” Dara said. “Ah, thank you for your hospitality.”

“Hey, I hit you with my car, so it’s the least I can do.”

The food was good, Dara had to admit. She knew that the potion was going to make her hungrier, the magic using her reserves of body fat to repair the damage, but even so, she enjoyed the meal. Millie ate alongside her, waiting for a while before the older woman pushed the plate away from her.

“So, what’s your plan?”

“I need to find the thief,” Dara said. “I have some ideas on that. I think I can work a sorcery that will let me detect him if I can get within, say, forty feet. So I need to cast it and then I can start walking around your community. It shouldn’t take long, assuming he hasn’t left.”

“Huh.” Millie didn’t say anything for a few moments. “How big was your town?”

“The college town? Zeras’ Gate isn’t the biggest city in the kingdoms, but it’s pretty big. I think about fifty thousand people. Why?”

“Yeah… remember what you saw on the way down?”

Dara frowned, remembering all the lights, those endless streets, but… “I saw some things, but I must have been mistaken.”

“Right,” Millie said. “Time for a little tour of Southern California. C’mon.” She got up, grabbed her bag, and then headed for the door. Dara hesitated for a moment, looking at her finished meal, then nodded and followed Millie, grabbing her staff and pouch on the way. She shrank the staff down to baton size and quickly used a cantrip to fasten it to her belt.

Millie’s car, now that the sun was shining, looked like a scarred, dirty metal and glass box. One of the front lights was broken, and there were scratches on the paint.

Dara stared at it. I guess I’m getting better at making associations. Either that or the sorcery or whatever it was that had happened to her when she had come through to this world, took time to take full effect.

Still, it was a car, for transport. Dara nodded. That was at least normal. She could talk to Millie as they traveled.

“Oh, come on!” Millie said. “I know I hit you, but I’m not that bad of a driver!”

Dara didn’t respond. She was clutching the dashboard while she stared out of the car with wide eyes.

Millie had let her sit down, belt up, and then shot out of the driveway faster than some dragons flew! And then they were on the road, with dozens, hundreds of other vehicles, each one moving faster than anything Dara had ever seen before, at least on the ground, and each one seeming to compete with how close they could come to hitting her!

“Does everyone do this?” Dara said. She was not going to scream, she was not—

She screamed as another car zipped in front of Millie and they came this close to dying to the sound of crashing metal. Millie hit the horn and made a vulgar gesture at the man.

“Asshole!” she screamed. “It must be someone from Corona. Nobody from Corona knows how to drive.”

“I… Why are we out here?” Dara asked in a faint voice.

“We’re driving to Anaheim!” Millie said. “Now, if you can take your mind off of the road, I’m about to get on to the 57 Freeway. I want you to look out your window at the town.

Dara bit her lip and looked.

And then stared. She’d been occupied with the terror of dying after being crushed by another car, but now…

There was nothing but buildings. Small buildings, big buildings, some of them taller any anything but the largest towers back home. And they just kept going on and on and on! Dara stared, even as they passed a sign stating that they were entering another town—but there was no difference in the land. Not even a gap in those endless rows of houses and buildings.

How many people lived here?

“Now, if we had more time, I could take you to downtown LA, but hey, you know, I think I made my point.” She pulled into another lane, once against making Dara want to scream, but then they were driving off the larger street, onto a smaller, but still crowded street. “So, here we have one of the parks.” She turned into a smaller lot where there were other cars fronting an expanse of neatly trimmed trees and grass. In front of them was a small section with complex devices on it, where children were jumping up and down.

Swings and jungle gyms, Dara realized as she got out of the car.

She tried not to sigh in relief at the idea that she wasn’t moving among the other cars anymore. From Millie’s sour expression, Dara had a feeling she hadn’t been successful.

“How… How many people live in this city?”

“Dunno,” Millie said. “This is part of Orange County, so about three million people here. LA has about ten million… All of SoCal? A little more than twenty million or so.”

Dara stared at Millie for a moment. Then she turned and walked to a metal bench and sat down on it. Then she just stared across the street, where the park ended and more of those endless houses started up.

“More than twenty million.” Dara looked at Millie. “Just in this…”

“Part of the world. Whole world’s got a lot more, billions.”

Dara was past being shocked. “I need to find the thief.”

“Yeah. Problem is, wandering around hoping he’ll get into your… magic detection range isn’t going to work.” Millie sat down next to her. “That’s why I brought you out here. See, I do some PI work and the first thing a good PI does is sit down and figure out what they’re going to do.”

“PI?”

“Private investigator. I had some problems in my earlier job and well, turns out I had a friend who got me set up with this. Find out if someone is cheating on someone, recover some stolen property, stuff like that. And find thieves.”

Dara stared at the older woman. “You have no magic.”

“Nope.”

“You don’t know where he is.”

“Not a clue.”

“Then how”—Dara lowered her voice as a mother with a child on her hip frowned at her—“can you even start to find him?”

“Yeah, okay, first thing. Has he been here before?”

“I don’t think so.” Dara looked down at the pavement for a moment. “He didn’t have the gem before and acted like it was a big deal. I don’t think he could have come here before.”

“So does he know about cars, trucks, places like this?”

“No…”

“Fine. And he didn’t run into me. So let’s say that your thief is a magic-slinger, all alone, without anyone to give him advice. Hell, if he’s a thief, I doubt he’s much interested in taking advice. Was he violent back home?”

“He set part of the town on fire trying to distract me,” Dara said.

“Even better.”

Dara blinked. Better?

Millie noticed her look. “Better, because that means he’s likely to do something stupid. I bet you guys don’t have cell phones back home, do you?”

“Um, no.” Dara shook her head. “And I’m not getting the context.”

“This.” Millie pulled a small metallic rectangle out of her pocket. She did something and then turned it over so that Dara could see…

“That’s me!”

“Yep, that’s what a camera does, and I can upload it to the Internet. And everyone’s connected to the Internet. Everyone at this park has a cell phone, everyone, everywhere has cell phones. People take pictures of babies, cats, dogs, hell people take pictures of food so they can share it. So some guy acting weird, running around and casting magic? Oh yeah, you can bet that he’s gonna be popping up on someone’s feed. If he does something illegal, especially if it’s weird, we’ll also hear about it. Trust me, the news loves things like ‘man with magic robs store.’”

“But… but that could take a long time!” Dara said. “If I don’t get the gem back—“

“What? They’ll expel you?”

“No.”

“You’ll turn into a pumpkin?”

“No.” Dara folded her arms. Mother said it made her look about five, but she didn’t care at this point.

“Your entire world will transform into a blasted hellscape?”

“What—no!” She glared at Millie. “You’re not taking this seriously.”

“Sure I am. But wandering all over the place at random is a dumb idea. Hell, he could be walking out in the open two streets away and you’d never find him.”

“So what do we do?”

“We go see Mike.”

“Mike?”

“Guy I know and he’ll be able to help us. Trust me, he’s a prince.”

“How will he be able to help us?”

“He knows of a magical realm, but one full of dangers, evil, things that will forever leave you regretting you saw them.”

Dara stared at Millie, then folded her arms and waited for the older woman to continue.

Millie said nothing, then sighed. “Fine. He spends most of his time on the Internet.”

“And that’s full of danger?” Dara asked.

“You have no idea. Let’s go. Trust me, we don’t want to bother Mike if he’s running a raid.”

“He’s a warrior?”

“Sort of, but you’re too young and innocent to speak of such things.”

Dara waited, but Millie didn’t expand on her point.

I hope he’s not a bandit, Dara thought.