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all the world like the training remote from A New Hope . Eastwood pushed a few buttons on the sphere, raised it to head level, and let go. The remote stayed in place, hovering and spinning slightly. Then Eastwood pulled the lightsaber prop out of his coat and handed it to Ree.
    “You know what to do—elegant weapon, civilized age, all that good stuff.”
    Ree smiled. “Can you put on some John Williams?”
    Eastwood smiled and pressed a button on a remote she had never noticed him pick up. Luke’s theme started playing on the massive sound system, and a chill washed over Ree.
    Okay, this is pretty cool. She had to admit, the prop was damned pretty. The metal was cool to the touch, and its rubber grip was sturdy but flexible in her hands. She found what should be the activation switch, then struck a stance she remembered from The Force Unleashed and flipped the switch. The saber jumped to life with the appropriate sound, but the blade didn’t feel any heavier.
    Ree smiled from ear to ear. “Wow.”
    Eastwood grinned. “Right?”
    “So if I can’t use the Force, how am I supposed to keep from chopping my own hand off?”
    “I’ve tweaked it so that it won’t cut through matter, but it will absorb the blasts. Speaking of which.” The drone spun and floated to the left, shooting out a white bolt of energy. Ree tried to bring the blade across her body to parry, but missed. The bolt hit her in the left shoulder, hurting like a bee sting. She let go of the lightsaber with her left hand and curled the arm up in pain.
    “Sonofa . . . But this is all stuff you can do with a good animatronics department and a roofie,” she said, not sure she believed herself. Or what to believe at all.
    The drone spun and moved to one side, then fired another bolt.
    Ree continued trying to block the zaps while Eastwood talked. “Really? Or are you just trying to keep from freaking out? You accepted the troll’s existence when it was about to crush you into smithereens, but now that you’re only getting stunned, you feel like you can play Doubting Thomas.”
    Damnit. He was right. There were too many weird-ass things to be able to brush them all off with roofies or David Blaine sneakiness. Eastwood might be a crazy stalker, but he was giving her more answers than she’d had before, and the weird had stacked up way past the level of prank. Was her lingering skepticism good old human logic, or was it all the Doubt?
    Ree walked up toward the drone and grabbed it, looking for the off switch. “Okay, that’s enough drilling for now. Keep spilling your guts about these Technomancers, but first go to the part that tells me why you came into the store and why there was a troll in the alley but I’ve never seen anything weird before today.”
    “It could be that you’ve never run afoul of any creatures or magicians before today, or maybe someone’s been protecting you, or maybe you’ve had encounters before but this time the Doubt didn’t cover it up . . . What do you think?”
    “Is this some kind of test?”
    Eastwood shrugged. “I actually don’t know, but I’d like to hear your opinion. In case you didn’t notice, I’m no Dumbledore, and I have better things to do than spend all day educating nascent Geekomancers—but you do intrigue me enough to figure out why you fell through the cracks.”
    Ree walked back to the chair, sitting and feeling it roll toward the stacks. She reached out and stopped herself before she hit anything. “Well, for one, I wouldn’t know if someone’s been protecting me, since, to my knowledge, this is the first time I’ve seen something that would make normal people run screaming for Prozac or the psych ward. And what the hell kind of title is ‘Geekomancer’?”
    Eastwood shrugged. “The name stuck. It’s no less ridiculous than Bromancer, Plutomancer, Celebromancer, or any of the other schools of magic.”
    “How many schools are there?”
    “Seems like it changes every day. Blame