"Silent never told me what she could do. Sweets are just sweets. And probably because fire is intangible?" Another shrug.

"Oh, okay. I didn't realise you spoke with the cards to gather this information," he says, a little confused. He continues, "How... does Voice steal voices? What kind of plants can Wood make? Magical moving ones? Toxic ones? Ones that are really useful for making magical items when they've been cut down, maybe?"

"It just does? Wood focuses on trees, magical moving ones, but they disappear once you seal it away again. You can't turn them into anything."

"Like... why and when does Voice steal voices? Does it just find people and go 'oh, that's a nice voice' and they are somehow now unable to speak and it can use their voice? Does it have to hear them and then it literally yanks some weird ball of light out of your throat? Does it make you unable to even comprehend the idea of you speaking? There are so many ways it could 'steal your voice', and so many reasons it might do it."

"It just does. There's no ball of light, the voice's just gone and Voice has it."

"These cards go from 'harmless and cute' through 'useless' and 'freaky' to 'outright terrifying.' What's a card like that even for."

"I guess if we had to fight other magic people who were using cards, we could try it to stop them from directing their cards verbally?"

"Silent can do that."

"I don't suppose it would let us control their cards instead of them? I don't know. It's a weird card. Seriously, was Clow evil or just... confused and evil?"

"Clow wasn't evil! The cards just do what they do."

"And he couldn't direct them to do something nicer? I feel like we need to know more about how he created them. And 'he was the greatest magician of all time!' isn't an explanation of how."

Shrug.

Theo just looks frustrated at the unhelpful response.

"Maybe he couldn't? If magic is kinda sentient like that maybe transforming it into the cards wasn't exactly a very directed process."

"Yeah, that's possible, but it's still annoying."

"Careful, you'll end up offending more cards."

"Is there any magic we should be able to do without the cards? Other than my weird speed thing, whatever that is."

"Probably, but I don't know it. I'm an incarnation of the magic used to create the cards."

The rest of the day proceeds without anything really important occurring. Theo wants to see if he and Sadde can target different things with Change at once, but unfortunately it seems like the 'only one thing at a time' thing applies to the card, not to them, so when Sadde tries to change something after Theo still has something targeted, Theo's one reverts. They have more cake. Kero has to be stopped from eating all the cake. Theo's dad continues to stay quiet, watching TV, and remains ignorant of the magic that's going on in the house.

Eventually Sadde leaves, and they arrange to meet at the bakery late at night.

Here Theo is, at the bakery, late at night. He asks Kero to try telling him when Sadde gets here, in case they don't spot each other immediately.

"Pss!" The voice comes from a bush across the street. "I'm here!"

Hm. Theo wonders who that could possibly be.

He goes over to the bush, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, and says, "Hi."

"Hi!" she says, and she's wearing...

a black ski mask.

Of course.

Of course.

Mind you, Theo's not much better. He's dressed in really dark clothing, including a hoodie that can hide his face.

"So. How are we getting in?"