"Magic powers are a thing you can sell," Chris says dryly. "Under certain circumstances. To select people. For varying prices, depending on which powers and who wants them. I'm not in the business, I just know some people."

"What kinda powers are in the powers catalog? What kinda prices do they go for? Examples. Ballpark."

"There is no catalog," she says. "If you really want to buy some, and if the right people happen to think you're worth their time, I can put you in touch and you can ask them for a magic power and they will ask you for something in return. I don't know what; I've never bought any. But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it's probably beyond the means of your average Stanford undergrad."

"The usual way. You meet someone, you become friends, you learn about their career... then you learn about their other career."

"You're making it sound like a drugmarket underworld or something."

"I won't deny that there are parallels. But I'm happy to report that as far as I know, none of my friends are in the drug trade."

"That's probably for the best. So if you've never bought any... you were just born with your power? Or something? What makes that happen?"

"It came in when I was about six," she recalls. "I had a younger sister who ran into things a lot, and I worried about her, and then one day I could just tell she was okay. And the next time she got overexcited and had an unfortunate encounter with a door, I could tell she wasn't hurt. As for why it happens, your guess is probably only slightly worse than mine. They're rare enough that it's hard to see any kind of pattern."

"Do you know anyone else apart from Bridget with a 'native' power?"

"A few. One, interestingly, who can detect and analyze other people's powers. He sat down at my table in a coffee shop one day and asked if I believe in magic, and has remained rude yet fascinating ever since."

"Ooh. I bet he's useful to your weird magic-market friends. Is he? I'm not sure how these things are supposed to interact. Who else?"

"One who has a limited ability to see the future—she makes a decent living as a stockbroker and tends to answer phone calls and emails very promptly. And one who is magically unobtrusive. He's friends with the magic detector."

"Unobtrusive how?" Bella asks.

"Unobtrusive. Hard to notice. You wouldn't tend to pick him out of a crowd, and if he's feeling especially shy he could be sitting on your couch in a red-and-white striped top hat playing the accordion and you'd walk right past him."

"So he can make the accordion and his hat unobtrusive too. How far does that go?"

"Well, you know that favourite college pastime of drawing on your sleeping friends with Sharpie? According to rumour, he can skip the sleeping part."

"That's... interesting, but not exactly what I was asking. If he can play the accordion and no one notices, can he also turn on iTunes and have no one notice even though the computer is playing the music? What happens if he releases a cageful of excited hummingbirds into a room, do people start noticing them when they get a certain distance away or after a certain length of time or what? Can he steal objects - big obvious objects - without anyone paying attention? What if you're concentrating on the object at the time, what exactly happens to your attention or your cognition around it?"

"Why do you imagine I will know the answers to all these questions?" she wonders. "Just from knowing the guy, the rule of thumb seems to be that you notice whatever still makes sense without him in the picture. So, floating Sharpie drawing on your face: doesn't make sense. Accordion in a top hat on your couch playing itself: doesn't make sense. Sudden explosion of hummingbirds: granted, doesn't make much sense either, but once they're out of the cage they make just as much sense without him, so I bet you'd start noticing them at that point. And from experience, I can tell you that things don't appear out of thin air when he puts them down; it's like they were there all along and you only started paying attention a second ago. How that would interact with the hummingbirds is anyone's guess."

"I don't know how well you know him," Bella points out. "I know a heck of a lot about what Bridget's does; for all I knew you'd have comparable information about this guy. How does the precog work, what do you know about her?"

"If you grilled her like this, I'll bet you know a lot about what Bridget's does," Chris says amiably. "The precog doesn't like to have long conversations about her power. I gather she doesn't necessarily see the future, and her predictions sometimes change even without her doing anything about them."

"Er, I don't want to be rude, but how do you know she's a precog and not just a lucky investor who keeps on top of her inbox?"

"Because once in a while I get a perfectly coherent reply to an email I haven't actually sent yet."

"I guess that would be convincing, especially if you aren't predictable in what emails you send," Bella muses. "Can I talk to her, too? What about the unobtrusive guy?" She ramps up to 3x so she can think about how to phrase her next question without pausing: "And, hey, can the power-checking guy work over the phone or whatever? Even if he can't I wanna talk to him too, anyone with powers who'll let me."

"The unobtrusive guy has the power of ultimate shyness for a reason. I don't think you'd get along. And the precog, like I said, doesn't like to talk about it. Lazarus is always ready to talk your ear off about magic, though. Why, did you want him to check you for latent superpowers?"