Zoe and magic are complicated. She knows that her mother loved hers (loved as much as she can convey to an eight year-old, where every emotion is so much bigger than it is for an adult, as though they can make up for what they lack in size and maturity with pure intensity), but her father ... magic turned her father into a man she doesn't recognize and it's hard to reconcile the two sides of the same coin. The ecstasy of life and possibilities with the hard truth of the limits and the problems that not even magic can fix. But in the end, the answer is usually the same.

"It's part of me. I'd feel weird without it. The world ... you kind of feel connected to it, in a way. I don't want to be disconnected from that."

No matter what it costs her or what she loses along the way, she wants to be a part of the universe. That has to be worth something.

"Well, all magic is different. It depends what discipline you were raised in. My mom was a witch so she taught me to be a witch so that's natural magic through spells and stuff, but druids learn different magic - they have potions and heavy rituals, not so much with natural communion. Shamans focus on the spirituality and visions - like, they think Cassandra of Troy was a shaman." She still is, actually. She's working as "psychic" in the middle of Manhattan, but Zoe doesn't know that. "I don't know much about the Asian disciplines, but I'm still learning, so I've got time to figure it out."