Mr. Valenti's email arrives before she lands. It has links to his favorite inspiration references for fine-tuning his clients might wish to do at home with only magic guidance, on various subtopics including nail art.

Caroline whistles whens Margaret shows up, then looks a little awkward about it.

Margaret just smiles. "Guess who shelled out for a top-notch stylist!"

"Looks like you!" says Vanessa. "Very snazzy! It working its magic for you?"

"Yup, it's me! And my magic is loving it." She hops into the truck.

"More predictions? Better ones?" asks Susan.

"Hard to say, I was getting about one a week before and I got one yesterday afternoon, but I'll need more data to know what the new frequency is. "The skies will open at the fourth hour." But it's probably more prophecies and also we should put the tarp on the truck in a couple hours." She goes for her notebook again.

"Good to know!" says Susan.

As the truck starts rolling, she finishes her prophecy recording and pulls out her phone to leave a glowing review of Valenti on Elements of Style. "I came in with a high point count and lots of preferences about mods I wanted to keep and practical constraints I needed for work, and he worked within those limits to find a totally new look that really enhanced my magic! Pricey, but you get everything you pay for." She attaches the shot of herself in the action pose from yesterday.

Elements of Style dutifully posts her review.

While she's idly flipping through the nail art site (and not trying anything, she heard the spiel about not messing with your look on duty) she suddenly sits bold upright. 

"Head northeast!" She shouts to the driver. "My danger sense is longer range now, and it can tell swarms from not swarms!" She adds by way of explanation.

The driver turns and heads northeast.

Everyone's swarm-sense will be able to pick it up in a minute. It's a little one, still new and exploring a pharmacy parking lot.

That makes it easy to take out. They dispatch it and only puncture a couple tires.

"That was interesting. My danger sense comes in, like, flavors now, and one of them is swarm flavored."

"Ew," laughs Vanessa.

Margaret giggles too. "Oh blech, no, it doesn't come with a literal sense of taste, thank goodness."

"What is it like, then?"

"It's like . . . the difference between different kinds of fear? Like being afraid of monsters versus being afraid of falling off of something versus being afraid of embarrassing yourself. Except instead of fear it's the knowledge that there's something I could be afraid of? Describing magic qualia is hard."

"No kidding," says Susan.

Margaret finishes sweeping ammo. "What sort of sensory stuff does yours come with?"

"Kinda tingles. Almost musically."

"Huh. Sounds nice. I want to know what other flavors I can distinguish but not badly enough to try the obvious way of finding out."

"What've you run into just incidentally?" wonders Vanessa.

"This was the first thing to set it off since I glammed up yesterday, and it didn't have the flavors before that. I guess I could try, like, mildly reckless jaywalking, or go to one of those flight parks and try a difficult stunt, or something."

"Turn up at a shooting range," suggests Susan.

"Walk through an iffy part of downtown at night," says Vanessa.