“But recruitment would have to wait. This new country was in its infancy and I intended to have my say on how it should be run.”

I sat at the cafe for about an hour before I worked up the strength to trudge home with the diary and my enslavement agreement. Despite the magnanimous way in which she presented it, there was no doubt in my mind what Beatrice was proposing.

I would be her lackey, her patsy, her guinea pig, her lap dog. And for what? A new kind of shiny worthless token? I already had one soul-crushing job where I was overworked and underappreciated. Why did I need another and one where I would be in the employ of someone who could bind me to her will with a bit of ink and paper?

But then I opened the diary again on my bed and started to read. The entries started almost as if they were recounting a history. An alternative history from the one I learned in school, where the first settlers of New York weren’t seeking religious freedom or new trade goods, but something bigger.

Magic.

But what magic they had discovered remained hidden off the page. Or only in cryptic references to vaguely described locations that had probably been paved over by Robert Moses.

The narrative then abruptly shifted to Rita’s musings on the Revolutionary War and her seemingly important role in it. Because after some quick Google research, Rita’s letters, written apparently in the same ink that Beatrice now had, were responsible for the inexplicable buffoonery of one William Howe. Who upon receiving said letters no doubt filled with instructions written in the compulsion ink, committed military blunder after military blunder. And the sums of those blunders eventually allowed Washington to retreat to Valley Forge, and, well, the rest is history.

A secret history.

I closed the diary.

It was all so much to take in that my head began to spin and I collapsed backward onto the bed.

I reached for my phone. The digits were still burned into my memory after all these years: my mom’s cell phone number. After she had died, I had called the number by mistake one day only to get sent straight to her voicemail. It shouldn’t have gone through, I remember canceling it as part of the flurry of activity that had consumed me after the funeral. The sound of her voice had been too much to take, so I had hung up before her greeting could finish.

But I called back. I didn’t know why it still worked, but hearing her voice, even for those few seconds, helped me in ways I couldn’t explain. Then in college I started leaving messages. It was an accident the first time, as I had forgotten to hang up before the beep sounded. But the next time it was on purpose and I talked to my mother again for the first time in years, even if it was only one way. It felt like magic sometimes, like I was leaving her messages in Heaven.

Other times, I just felt pathetic, that I was pouring my heart out to a hard drive in some server farm in the middle of nowhere. Each time I called, I had wondered if this was going to be the time that the phone company caught on and shut it down, and my mother would be completely gone. Eventually I weaned myself off of that crutch, but a part of me wondered if she was still out there, waiting for me to call just one more time.

I must have fallen asleep before I could decide to call her, because next thing I knew, I was Beatrice again. In the cafe where we had just met. I was reading a newspaper, sipping coffee, and something in the paper made me smile, but I couldn’t make out the words. Then a redheaded girl ran up to the table and sat down.

“Sorry I’m late! The subway was a complete disaster,” the girl said.

“No worries. I take it you have the book?” I said in reply.

The beep boop of an incoming FaceTime call jostled me from the dream-memory and I sat up in bed, again covered in sweat. For a millisecond, I thought it was somehow my mom, but the number on the screen was Duncan’s.

I looked over at the clock. It was one in the afternoon already, one a.m. the next day in Hong Kong. We didn’t usually talk at this time, but maybe he was feeling guilty for having missed our last call. I clicked the green button and waited for Duncan’s face to appear.

But it didn’t.

Instead, a blurry dark image filled the screen and all I could hear was the unintelligible noise of what sounded like a party. He had pocket dialed me. Just what every girl dreamed of. I waited to say something, but the screen didn’t change and then I heard the raucous muffled laughter of a woman followed by the similarly muffled tones of Duncan’s voice.

“Duncan!” I screamed into the phone. Nothing happened. Several more shouts did nothing to get his attention, so I finally gave up and ended the call.

I wanted to believe that what I had heard was nothing out of the ordinary, that he was just out for a fun night with his co-workers, but instead all I felt was anger. Anger that he was not here when I needed someone to turn to, anger that he couldn’t even make the effort to remember that he had forgotten to call me.

Well, I didn’t need his counsel. Or my mother’s, for that matter. I had done pretty well on my own, so there was no point in doubting myself now. I pulled out the contract, turned to the second page, and was about to sign on the anointed line, when a better idea popped into my head.

The inside of the coffee shop was practically empty, except for a sole barista behind the counter who was staring down at her phone. Behind her was an intimidating wall lined with cubbies full of bags of coffee.

“Hi,” I said to the barista.

She didn’t look up.

“Umm, where’s the bar?” I asked.

“We’re closed,” she said, still not looking up.

OK then.

I stood there for a few minutes, to see if she would relent and reveal the secret entrance, but she kept on with her act and didn’t say a word. I was about to risk the wrath of texting Beatrice, when suddenly the wall of coffee opened inward, and a gaggle of scantily dressed college girls burst through the opening, lifted up the counter, and brushed passed me.

The coffee wall remained ajar and the barista remained oblivious, so I crept forward and walked into the dark passage, which after several feet opened into a dimly-lit room.

The bar resembled more of a cellar than a lounge, with exposed brick along the walls painted black and individual light bulbs hung from wires attached to the low ceiling. I walked between the teal-upholstered leather booths on one side and the bar stools on the other, until finally reaching Beatrice at the end of the bar, an empty martini glass in front of her. I walked over and sat down next to her, and she glanced at her watch.

“10:29. Cutting it a bit close but fine.”

She flagged down a bartender.

“Another martini please. Up, no vermouth, and very cold. And my friend here will have…”

“Gin, neat.”

The bartender nodded and then retreated.

“So,” said Beatrice, “did you think it over?”

“Yes,” I said. “And I have a few changes to your deal.” I took the contract out of my bag and placed it on the bar.

“Do you?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes. First, I want some real money, not just tokens. If I get fired from my job because I’m off on some crazy expedition for you, then I still want to be able to live.”

“Fine, that’s reasonable. In addition to the tokens, you’ll get a $1000/month stipend.”

$1000? That won’t even cover my rent. I want $1800.”

“$1500.”

“Deal.”

“OK, now that that’s settled, let’s-”

“I wasn’t done.”

“You weren’t?”

A crinkle formed on Beatrice’s nose and she took the olives from her empty glass and began chewing them slowly.

“No. The way I see it, this contract binds me to you indefinitely. I want a buyout option. If I want to quit after six months, you’ll agree to release me if I pay back everything, the tokens and the cash.”

The bartender finally returned with the drinks and Beatrice took hers, raised the glass to her lips, and took a long, drawn out sip, before setting the nearly empty glass down again.

“Two years,” she said.

“What?”

“You’ll give me two years. Then, we can reconsider the terms of your contract.”

“That’s too long, I don’t want to-”

“No, it’s not. I’ve been at this for 12 years, Jen, and I’ve only now just reached the crest, ready to make the final ascent to the top. So you can leave now, if you want, and waste the next decade of your life retreading my path up the mountain. Or, you can recognize the opportunity in front of you and grab it.”

She finished her speech and got up.

“Another one, please,” she said to the bartender before retreating into the back of the bar.

I sat in silence, contemplating her offer, and my thoughts drifted to the fragmented memories that had seeped into my dreams.

Beatrice had done this before - tried to train someone to help her - but what had happened to the girl from the dream?

Had she failed and been cast aside?

Or worse?

Maybe it was better to run now, while I still had the chance. I would just forget everything that had happened, that there wasn’t a secret magic underpinning the world, that I didn’t have a silver ring stuck on my finger for the rest of my life.

Or I could stick it out on my own. Learn everything from the ground up. If Beatrice could do it, then so could I. I could take my time, forge my own path, on my own terms.

I pictured late nights in my apartment trying to come up with my own concoctions, rainy afternoons spent in abandoned alleyways seeking out rats, weekends wasted in the bowels of a library trying to track down any reference to alchemy or to Rita or to prima materia.

It would be an adventure, sure, but one in which I was utterly alone.

The bartender brought Beatrice’s third martini and I suddenly wished I knew enough alchemy to spike the drink with a poison that would kill her in just a sip.

But I didn’t.

And I couldn’t.

I stared off into space, angry at myself for even thinking about that path, when Beatrice finally returned and sat back down.

“OK,” I said to her.

Beatrice turned to me.

“OK what?”

“We have a deal.”

“Oh. Oh! Excellent. Let me just make a few edits to the contract and we’ll be all set to execute.”

She produced a pen from her own bag and began scratching out the provisions we’d changed, before sliding the document back to me.

“Just initial next to my changes and sign on the dotted line.”

Without giving myself another chance to change my mind, I quickly jotted “JJ” next to Beatrice’s “BT” and then signed on the second page.

“Fantastic. I’ll make you a copy.” She took the contract and put it in her bag and then raised her glass to mine. I clinked it and we both sipped.

“This is a momentous day for you, Jen. For both of us. I’m - we’re - finally going to give the Guild a run for its money.”

The Guild. Beatrice had mentioned it in her note to me, but I had completely forgotten about it.

“W-what’s the Guild?”

“It’s the biggest puppet master of them all. It runs the Council. It has been lurking in the shadows of New York before there even was a New York.”

I suppressed a laugh. One minute into my new apprenticeship and apparently I had signed on to take down a hundreds-year-old secret society.

“You make it sound like they were the ones who bought the island from the Lenape.”

Beatrice nodded.

“They were. Didn’t you read the diary? Rita van Asch laid it all out for you. The Guild came to America to find a new source of magic, and as far as I know, they’re still looking for it.”

“But they did find something, Rita mentioned-”

“That’s just the same trace of magic that you can find anywhere, if you know how to look for it. No, they were looking for pure magic.”

“To do what though? Rule over everyone as our magical overlords?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like they don’t know either. It’s been so long, they might have forgotten.”

“And the two of us are going to just bring down this Guild?” I asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “We’re just going to steal from them.”

“What are we stealing?”

“The Compendium.”

“Oh. I thought everyone had a copy of that.”

“No,” Beatrice said. “Each family keeps a log of their discoveries, alchemic recipes, etc. You could call that a compendium with a lowercase ‘c.’ But the one we’re after, THE Compendium, it’s the sum total knowledge of the Guild. It’s all their secrets, all their prima materia, everything. With even a fraction of that information, I could finally send a message to them that I’m here to stay.”

She downed the rest of her martini and threw some cash down on the bar and got up.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m going to bed, Jen. I’ve got a toddler who will come bursting into my room without fail in about six hours and I need some sleep.”

I followed her out of the bar and back through the wall to the coffee shop, which was now mobbed with people dressed to the nines. We pushed them aside and walked out to the patio where we had met for the first time only 12 hours earlier.

“Next time I see you, you need to have read that diary cover-to-cover, OK? I’ve sussed out all the secrets it’s hiding but a fresh pair of eyes is always welcome.”

“Will do,” I said.

“Good. As long as you do what I say, we’ll avoid all the unpleasantness of our first encounter.”

She continued out of the patio and waved down a cab, before turning back to me.

“Oh and Jen?”

Her words sounded in my head, just like at the party, and I froze.

“Don’t try to fuck with me. Because if you do, the last thing you’ll remember is reading the words ‘kill yourself’ on a random scrap of paper.”

Next: Beatrice goes radio-silent and Jen is forced to go dress-shopping with her friends.