"Sadde can change things using the Change, or I can use the Shadow or the Glow or something?"

He frowns.

"Or," says Tyler helpfully, "you could show them the Staff."

To the girls, he says: "It's just wonderfully pink."

Both of them lean forward, interested.

So Theo gets the Key out of his pocket and then says the words – the words as always sound ridiculous and he will be so happy when he never has to say them again – and then he is holding the pink staff.

He looks positively thrilled to be doing so.

"Oh. My. Goodness. You're a magical girl!"

Thrilled.

"He is," says Tyler, laughing a bit. "You know, I feel like this is some sort of karma – he gets to continue being a magical girl, whereas I just get some frustrating touch phobia. And potentially get made to not exist." Bit more of a grimace now. "It's just wonderful. I really love this magic system."

"Back up, what? Made to not exist, what?"

"Oh, I guess we didn't mention – the Twin created us, using magic, but if it gets stopped, it's possible it'll stop that. Because apparently we might not be permanent creations, since we were created before it was trapped, though it's possible we're permanent."

Sorry about that.

"Er, yeah, I very much want to figure out a way to help. Are you sure you can't find a way to use the fairly excessive amount of money we have to figure it out?"

Willow seems completely unfazed by her new twin's offer.

"… I have no idea how well it holds up against being trapped, and I couldn't think of any proper way to do this before, but presumably if you trapped both halves of the card at once it might work? It wouldn't let us use it, but it might mean we don't disappear."

Theo: shrugs.

He feels like most of his thinking can probably just be ignored, now that he has a duplicate who seems better at it than he is.

And Theo's magic sixth sense chooses this moment to tingle!

Does it pull him in any specific direction? Because he will snap his head around to look in that direction if it's a specific direction.

"Okay, that's weird, but there is some sort of magic happening somewhere…"

It is! It is in a specific direction.

"What kind of magic? Is it the Twin? I bet it's the Twin. It'd be just like these darned cards to activate before we've talked to other victims and it was night and we could implement our plan."

"...did you just actually say the word darned, with your actual mouth?"

He shrugs. "Don't like swearing."

"It's… over that way," he says, pointing in the direction of the weird magical pull. "It might be the Twin? I didn't get a weird magical pull before then, I don't think, so… probably?"

"Yes, but as your power grows you will be able to sense magic without needing to get into a trance."

"Okay," says Tyler, looking at them like they're a bit thick, "so how about we go that way?"

"Possibly a good idea," says Theo, getting up.

"Do you have the torches we'll need on you, then?"

"Yeah," he says. "I got them last night."

He gets them out of his bag, showing them to Sadde.

… So presumably Tyler also has the torches. Hm.