A/N: I don't own YW or James Taylor. Saying I did would be giving me way too much credit.

Chapter One

Fire and Rain

Audrey Rodriguez was bored out of her mind. Very, very usual for the small, auburn-haired thirteen-year-old. She lay on the thankfully green front lawn of her house and breathed in the smell of summer, her brown eyes closing as she relaxed in the warmth of the sun.

She could hear her mother and father arguing about something again in their upstairs bedroom, and she wondered what on earth kept provoking these arguments. They had been a lot tenser than usual as of late, and when Audrey asked about it, her usually fun-loving father snapped at her and told her to shut up.

In despair, she had resorted to isolating herself from her bickering parents and hoping that it wouldn't get so bad that they'd refuse to talk.

And so she lay on the front lawn, daydreaming of the beach, of what to do during the course of the summer.

It was the day after school had, at long last, let out on the fifteenth, and Audrey could not have been happier. Summer, summer, summer, without a care in the world. Well… besides those summer assignments she'd received from English and Science… but, hell, those could wait.

She sighed and nestled her head into the comfort of the grass. Her parakeet, Reefer, cheeped indignantly at the prominent absence of birdseed from his bowl, and Audrey's daydreams of surfboards, sand, and sun were turned to dust. With a moan of reluctance, she sat up and, brushing herself off, trudged into the house, kicking off her Adidases in the process. She grinned at her younger brother, who was contentedly watching The Weekenders on the living room couch, and plodded up the stairs to the second floor.

Audrey had her hand on the door of her room when she heard her mother exclaim exasperatedly, "Kit, look. It's not like the old days. He's already been spreading his power around the US… and no one's done anything about it! Look, even in California, we have wildfires with more and more occurrence, those are all his fault!"

Whose fault? Audrey wondered pensively. And why does this matter?

Her dad's voice, soft and controlled, reached her ears next. "Look, Neets, is it my fault we've been commissioned to help watch Orange County? Is it my fault that Dari has her hands full with the fires? Is it my fault…"

Nita's voice interrupted him. "Hold on, Kit…" she said shakily.

There was silence for a short while, and Audrey had barely decided that it just might be a good idea to pull out, when the bedroom door opened, and her mom's ashen face looked back at her.

"How long have you been here?" she asked quietly. Audrey couldn't quite decipher the emotions that were in her mom's voice. She caught worry, a hint of panic, and a small amount of anger, but everything else was jumbled up in her shaking voice.

So she merely shrugged nonchalantly. "Um… about twenty seconds."

Her mom glanced over her shoulder at her dad, who buried his face in his hands and nodded.

Audrey felt herself being pulled into her parents' room and the door being shut behind her.

Her mom placed both hands on her shoulder in an obvious attempt to calm her, but it didn't help much, as Nita was involuntarily trembling hard.

She glanced wryly at Kit, however. "It looks like we've got to tell her everything…"

Her dad nodded, and Nita began. "Look… see, this all began one day when I was twelve…"

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Audrey lay on her back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, contemplating what she'd been told. Everything about Seniors, other worlds, worldgates, and, of course, the Lone One and his dealings with entropy.

The whole exchange had taken nearly two hours, and Audrey suddenly felt drained. She rolled over onto her stomach and quickly dropped off into a deep slumber.

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It was still dark when she woke up, and she moaned softly as she rolled over to look at her alarm clock, stretching laboriously as she did so.

"Ah, crap…"

The clock cheerfully blinked its bright red LCD digits at her: 4:40 AM.

Audrey, disgruntled at the amount of time remaining until her parents woke up, rolled back over and pulled the covers back up, trying to catch the last vestiges of sleep before they… slipped… away…

Dang it.

She groaned again and reluctantly flung her legs out of the warmth of her bed, the rest of her following soon after, and after taking a look at what she was wearing, decided to change into something not wrinkled and creased beyond belief.

Ten minutes later, she padded quietly downstairs, her stomach mumbling about its state of semi-emptiness as she entered the kitchen and flicked the lights on.

Hmm… she thought as she opened the freezer and began to hunt for the waffles. Did Rick eat the last waffle again?

Coming up fruitless in her search, she resorted to pulling out the bread and tossing two slices into the toaster.

She sighed and checked the clock once more.

4:54 AM.

Jeez, can time pass any slower…? Just gotta make it to six AM… then, to the library!

Easier said than done.

By the time five thirty rolled around, she had munched her way through two peanut-butter-coated pieces of toast and a bowl of Frosted Flakes, and the Friday comics had been discarded, having been reread for the eightieth time.

Audrey sighed and buried her head in her arms.

Just thirty more minutes. That's… um… 1800 more seconds. Wait… that can't be right, can it? Maybe it is… start counting, Ree.

The next thing she knew, the sun was beginning to wink at her over the horizon, and she blearily lifted her head and checked the clock.

7:32 AM.

"Oh, no…"

Audrey hurriedly scribbled a note to her parents on the stack of Post-Its they kept on the kitchen counter, grabbed her helmet and bike, and within a minute and a half was pedaling steadily down her street.

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Brushing her auburn hair out of her eyes for the umpteenth time, Audrey ignored the admiring looks she was receiving from one of her former classmates and stalked down the nonfiction aisle, intent on finding something that dealt with the time-space continuum. Finding the subject in question, she ran her finger lightly over the top of the books, leaning the ones she wanted out at an angle.

What happened next was a sort of blur. She could have sworn the cursed book actually jumped up and slit her finger open with one of its pages, but she wasn't extremely sure. All she knew was one moment she was starting to tilt a book next to it backward, her fingers outstretched for balance, and the next, she was sucking at the nasty papercut she now had, and glaring at the book that had so foolishly injured her. But that annoyance quickly dissolved as she picked the book up.

So You Want to be a Wizard, it read in faded gold script down its spine.

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The book tucked snugly under her arm, Audrey ruminated about what the librarian had told her. "Keep it," she had been told. "I have a feeling you'll be needing it more than others."

And Audrey knew exactly why.

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She stared at the Oath in front of her, and, hoping that this little speech worked, began to speak.

"In Life's name, and for Life's sake…"

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The Oath was finished, the spells were locked, and Audrey was very, very frustrated. She had peered into the bathroom mirror more than once, and what she saw majorly disappointed her. The exact same reflection as always blinked back at her; long auburn hair that reached halfway down her back, the dark brown eyes she had inherited from her father, and maybe one or two many freckles and a mole on the underside of her chin. Not particularly what she had been hoping for. Hey eyes could at least maybe brighter… but then her parents had never told her about the physical effects of the Oath. Maybe it wasn't supposed to do anything…

Even more frustrated, Audrey gave a short, exasperated sigh, slammed the book shut, and retired to her bed, able to sink back into a deep slumber as seven AM rolled around.