Just then, a glowing point of light passed through the door of the study. It was like the light that led Kellan and G-Dogg through the house the previous night-perhaps the same one. Kellan couldn't tell, though now she could guess that it was some kind of watcher spirit, similar to Nicodemus. It floated over to Lothan and hovered by the troll's horns for a moment. He cocked his head and seemed to be listening to something Kellan couldn't hear. Then he waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal, and the light sped out of the room as he turned back to Kellan.

"Let's take a short break, shall we? Allow you some time to catch your breath and rest a bit after your exertion. Other business calls: we have a visitor."

"Liada, do come in," Lothan said. The elven woman stepped into the study, adjusting the bulky bag she wore over her shoulder and glancing briefly at Kellan.

"I astrally scouted out the route," she told Lothan with no preamble. "I don't think we'll have any problems with contamination from Glow City or any of the other hot spots in the Barrens, though it's not exactly the cleanest astral environment."

"Good, good," Lothan said, getting to his feet. He picked up a datapad from his desk and tapped the keys a couple times before handing it across the table to Kellan.

"Kellan, here are some introductory texts I'd like you to review. Please excuse us while we talk business, won't you?"

Kellan looked at the proferred datapad before taking it from Lothan's hand and glancing over at Liada. The elf's face was as unreadable as Lothan's.

"Yeah, sure," she said flatly, getting up from her chair and heading for the door. Liada closed it behind her and she could hear the two magicians talking in low voices. Kellan clutched the datapad and stalked down the hall to the kitchen. She almost slammed it onto the big, heavy table in the middle of the room.

Fraggit! Just when she was starting to think that Lothan and the others were taking her seriously, he treats her like a child, giving her a toy to play with and sending her off into a corner while the grownups talk! She thought that she was supposed to be a member of the team. Why did Lothan want her out of the way?

Was Lothan up to something, trying to keep her in the dark while he set her up? Was Liada's warning a game of misdirection, to get Kellan to mistrust Lothan? Were she and Lothan in on it together?

Kellan took a deep breath. These were crazy thoughts. After all, Lothan and the others hardly knew her, right? They weren't going to trust her overnight. They were professional shadowrunners.

They were going to hedge their bets, play things safe, until they knew that Kellan was okay. So she would just have to prove to them that she was, that she could handle anything they had to throw at her.

Kellan dropped into a chair and picked up the datapad. It displayed a text entitled "The Essentials of Modern Thaumaturgical Theory" by Miles Swinburne, Th. D. She looked at the page display and saw that Lothan's idea of a "basic text" was nearly two hundred pages long.

Geez, isn't there a vid-version of this?

"I can handle it," she muttered to herself. "Whatever it takes," and she settled back to start reading.

The document was just as dry and dull as Kellan had feared, but it still managed to be interesting. It elaborated on some of the concepts Lothan had been talking about, describing the existence of the astral plane, the magical energy called mana and how magicians used both to do magic. A few times Kellan had to ask the datapad's dictionary to define a term, but she was pretty confident that she understood most of it. There was certainly a lot of information to absorb. What little she'd seen of magic seemed so simple that it was hard to accept that it was really so complicated. Even the stuff Lothan did; he seemed to just wave his hands, say a few words and things happened. Apparently, a lot of explanations, diagrams and theories went into explaining that process.

A faint creak of the floorboards in the hall caught Kellan's attention. She looked up from her reading as Liada strolled into the kitchen.

"How's it going?" the elf asked her, nodding toward the datapad.

Kellan sighed. "Okay. This book is really long."

Liada laughed. "That isn't the half of it," she said. "There are entire libraries full of books on magic and magic theory. Just look at all the dead trees Lothan has lining the walls of his study."

Kellan thought about having to read all of those books and shuddered. "How do you remember it all?" she asked.

"You don't really need to," Liada said, going over to the counter and pouring herself a cup of soykaf from the dispenser. "Once you know the basics, it's mostly just variations on a theme. The really complex stuff is only used for rituals, and even old-timers like Lothan crack the books then to make sure they're getting it right." She brought the steaming cup over to the table and sat down across from Kellan, taking a sip and making a face at the bitter taste.

"Of course," she continued, "Lothan will make everything seem at least ten times more complicated and mystical than it needs to be, and he'll probably have you reading drek that you'll never really use:." She reached over and picked up the data-pad, turning it around to read the display.

"Swinburne?" she said, with a raised eyebrow. "See, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Swinburne's stuff is old news, written more than thirty years ago, but mages like Lothan still consider it a Classical Foundation of Modern Hermetics." She managed to vocally capitalize the last four words. "I'm surprised he didn't start you off reading Waite, Crowley and Carroll, while he was at it." Kellan didn't recognize the names, but it was clear Liada didn't hold them in especially high regard.

"So what should I be reading?" Kellan asked.

"If you ask me, you should be doing something other than just reading," Liada replied, taking another sip of her coffee substitute. "Reading is all well and good, and there are some perfectly good modern grimoires and texts available on the Matrix, but there's no substitute for practice."

"We did some of that," Kellan said, a bit sheepishly. "I almost set the place on fire."

Liada laughed again. "I wish I could have seen Lothan's face when that happened."

"Where is Lothan?" Kellan asked, glancing toward the hall.

"Meditating," Liada replied. "Checking up on me is more like it. He wants to make absolutely certain that everything is ready."

"More of that 'astral scouting' you were talking about?"

"Yeah, although I'm better at that sort of thing than Lothan, if you ask me," Liada said with a smile. "But if he wants to double-check, that's his business."

"What's it like? The astral plane, I mean. Part of what I read today talked about that."

Liada thought for a moment. "How do you explain what color is like to someone who's been blind all their life?" she said. "No offense," she added, seeing the expression on Kellan's face. "But you said you didn't have any experience with it. That's the hard part about the astral plane. It's a place that isn't really a place, because it's right next door to the physical world, in a way. You see it with a kind of psychic sixth sense, by doing what we call assensing. It lets you sense emotions, mana flows, magical impressions, things like that. Most people see them as colored auras of light, though some perceive them as sounds, or smells, or just strong feelings. It's tough to describe. That's what I mean about experiencing it for yourself. But once you do, there's no greater sense of freedom in the world."

"Sounds wiz," Kellan said.

"Yeah, it is. But don't fool yourself-the astral plane can be dangerous, too. Spirits live there, and some of them aren't too friendly. In fact, some of them are downright nasty."