 
## **Contents**

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Witch Slap

Ravenridge College, Book One

Val St. Crowe
WITCH SLAP

© copyright 2017 by Val St. Crowe

http://vjchambers.com

Punk Rawk Books

CHAPTER ONE

He'd been following me for nearly six blocks.

Not fond of being followed, just saying. It's not high on my list of ways I'd like to spend my evening. There are lots of other things I'd rather do. Watch TV, eat a snack, read a trashy magazine, or even go through social media stalking boys I used to have crushes on in high school and convince myself I'm better off without them. Lots of things.

This guy? He thought that I didn't know that he was there, but I knew. I had caught sight of him right away, when I left The Sunset Diner, the restaurant where I worked. I came out the back door, into the alley behind the place, and there he was, down at the end of the street. He was sitting on a bench on the adjacent street, and he wasn't facing me. But he still stood out.

I suppose it wasn't entirely his fault. This was a small town, it wasn't easy to blend in. And it was especially hard to blend in as a gargoyle. In this area, magical creatures didn't show up very often. They kept to the cities, or to their own places. Not that I have anything against magical creatures, per se. In fact, if I did, that would be pretty hypocritical, considering I'm a witch and all.

He didn't give any outward sign that he'd seen me, but I could sense an alertness in him, and I knew he was here for me.

I've had more experience being chased than I care to think about.

And usually, I was being chased by things that were much less nice to look at than the gargoyle was. Things that stalked my dreams and haunted the periphery of my vision. I was always wary, always watching for them.

The gargoyle was tall. I had never met or seen any other gargoyles in real life, so I didn't know if most gargoyles were tall or not. It can be hard to tell in videos and pictures. I can't tell you how many celebrity crushes I've had that were dashed to pieces when I found out they were super short dudes.

But the gargoyle was tall. I saw that when he stood up, which he did after I cleared the alley. He had the sense not to follow me through the alley, though. Instead, he went around the block and was strolling along in the near-darkness of the early fall twilight. He had his hands in his pockets, nonchalant. He never looked at me.

I looked him over pretty good, though. He was completely gray. That was typical, all gargoyles were. They were living stone. I didn't know exactly how that worked, owing to the fact that I'd never seen a gargoyle up close before. But, looking at him, he looked like a sculpture come to life. He was chiseled and perfect. He had rounded muscles and broad shoulders. His facial features were like a classical statue.

Admittedly, his being really damned attractive made him stand out too.

I stared at him for a long time, not moving.

He glanced up, looked over my head, and then ducked into one of the shops on the street.

Another girl might have thought she was paranoid and that she wasn't being followed. But I knew better.

So, I took off down the street, the opposite direction from home. I wasn't going there. I didn't know who this guy was, but he was obviously following me, and I wasn't going to be so stupid as to take him back to my house. My gran could probably hold her own, take care of herself, but my mother, well, half the time she was as helpless as a child. I always protected her, no matter what.

I glanced back to see that he'd come out of the shop and had stopped at a newspaper rack. He was taking a newspaper out, pretending to peruse it.

I kept going, down to the end of the block, out of town. We don't have a lot of town here, maybe seven blocks of it. After that, the sidewalk disappears and the road narrows, and there are houses spread out with big yards. But before I reached the houses, I turned onto the road that goes down over the hill towards the river. I'd lead him there.

There was a bridge that went over the road, made of stone. It was an old railroad bridge, from back in the days when the only way in and out of town was the train. Nothing drove on the bridge anymore, so it was covered in vines and even had a few trees splitting up between the stone, their branches reaching for the sky. The plan was to get far enough ahead of the guy to get on the bridge and then wait for him to show up.

It wasn't hard to manage getting up on the bridge. His little detour to get a newspaper gave me the time to get ahead. By the time he came to the bridge, I was crouched on top. I stared down at his stone head.

He had picked up the pace, clearly a little concerned that he seemed to have lost me.

I waited, taking his measure. I couldn't tell if he was armed. I could only see that he didn't have anything bulky, like a sword or something.

What? It's not a crazy idea. People sometimes fight with swords. Especially weird magical creatures.

Even if he was armed, I was going to take my chances. Gargoyles were magical creatures, but they didn't have any magic, like, say, dragons or something. Their bodies didn't create magic just by existing. Gargoyles had been created by magic, but they themselves couldn't use magic unless they had a talisman.

Most beings couldn't. Magic tended to come from dragons. Their bones and claws and scales were used to make magical talismans. Crazies might even go far enough to drink their blood and become a vampire, or eat their flesh and become a drake. That was pretty hardcore, though.

Me? I was unique. I wasn't a dragon, but I had my own kind of magic. Not dragon magic. Something else. It was one of the reasons that my gran was always saying that I was a challenge.

I couldn't wait forever. He was close now. I had about two seconds to decide what to do before he went under the bridge.

I jumped down. Sprang up into the air and fell down directly on top of his shoulders.

The force from my fall knocked us both to the ground. I landed on top of him. I punched him right in the jaw.

It hurt like hell. I crumpled away from him, cradling my hand. Wow. So that was what hitting living stone felt like.

He was startled. He took a moment to get himself together, rubbing his jaw with one hand. He looked me over. "Well, I didn't see that coming."

I got to my feet. "What do you want with me?"

He was still rubbing his jaw. "Who says I want anything? I was strolling along, minding my business, and you jumped down and punched me in the face."

I tilted my head to one side. "Oh, please. You were following me. We both know it."

He chuckled. "Well, it seems they were right about you."

"Who was?" I said.

"The Order of Ash," he said.

"I'm supposed to know who that is?" I said. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"The Order of Ash is an organization of mages who run Ravenridge College. I work with them. I've been tailing you to assess your potential," he said. "I was supposed to observe you for a few days, get an idea of who you were and what you could do." He shrugged. "I'm guessing that's not going to work since you know I'm here."

"Assess my potential? For what?"

"There's a space for you at Ravenridge College," he said. "That is, if I determine you're qualified for it."

"A school? I don't want to go to a school," I said. Much to my gran's chagrin, I had foregone college. She didn't like it, because I still lived at home, and I still had the same job as in high school, waiting tables at The Sunset Diner in town. She said I was never going to be able to make a career of that. Maybe she was right. These days, I didn't much feel like I had the ability to see far enough in the future to think about things like a career. It was all I could do to live from day to day. Gran didn't understand. She didn't know how hard things were. Part of that was my fault. I hid things from her. I hid things from everyone. Talking about it sometimes just made it worse.

"It's not a regular school," said the gargoyle. "It's a magic school."

I raised my eyebrows. "For serious? No thanks."

"No thanks?" He raised his eyebrows too. "You don't even know anything about it. And anyway, I haven't determine if you're qualified."

Maybe he was right. Maybe I was being hasty. Magic school? Maybe I was interested. I shoved my hands in my pockets. "Fine. What do I have to do to qualify?"

"Magic."

"Magic?" I said. "That's it?" I pointed behind me at the bridge without looking at it. With my other hand I reached inside my shirt and clutched the dragon claw talisman my gran had given me. I could feel the magic inside the talisman without touching it, but touching it sometimes helped. This kind of magic, dragon magic, I had to pull the magic out of the talisman, through my body, and then into the object I wanted to move.

The object I wanted to move was a piece of stone on the bridge. I used the magic to lift it into the air. I felt it move, rather than saw it. I let the object pass over my head and then floated it down so that it set down on the ground between the gargoyle me. "There. Magic. Do I pass?"

He held out his hand. "Give me your talisman."

I let out a disbelieving laugh. "What is this? Everybody knows that the only way you can do magic is with a talisman, unless you're something else. Dragon. Vampire. Drake. I'm not one of those things. I need a talisman or I can't do magic."

"That so." It wasn't a question.

I lifted my chin and answered him anyway. "That's so."

He shrugged. "I guess you don't qualify after all."

I squared my shoulders. What did he know about me? Did he know about the kind of magic I had? He knew something. But, damn it, the hell if I was going to trust some gargoyle who tailed me in the shadows. He was a complication, and my life was complicated enough as it was. "Fine," I said. I turned away from him and started to walk back up the hill, away from the bridge.

"You're special," came his voice from behind me, a dark whisper. "Aren't you?"

I turned back to him.

He curled his fingers, a give-it-here gesture.

I swallowed. My whole life, I had wondered why I could do the things I could do. No one around me had ever been able to give me any answers. If this gargoyle could do that, well, maybe I was interested. I pulled the talisman over my head and handed it to him. "The magic I can do this way, it's not the same."

He nodded. "I know."

"If I do it, we can't stick around here," I said. "Doing this kind of magic, calls to these... things." I didn't know how else to describe them, but they lived in my nightmares most every night.

He nodded. "I know."

"You do?" Did he really understand me? Did he know what was going on with me? I desperately wanted it to be true. I didn't know how to turn the magic all off. Maybe I could go to school and learn how to stop being this way. I held out my hands, and I reached out into the ether. When I used my magic, I reached out with an invisible part of myself into the universe and requested things. This time, I called forth a wicked looking blade with a sharp tip. It appeared in my hand.

He backed up, hands up. "Hey, hey, there's no reason to attack me again."

"It's not for you," I said. I looked up over his head at the bridge.

I could see one of the creatures up there. It was crawling down the bridge, heading for us. It was an awful spiderlike thing. It had long, spindly legs that it crawled on. When it moved, it made this strange chirping noise, like a cicada. And on top of its head, it had this eye/mouth thing that squirted a green, glowing liquid that burned like fuck when it hit me.

I darted up to the creature and I used the knife to cut off its legs.

"What are you doing?" said the gargoyle.

"I've tried stabbing them," I said. "It doesn't even slow them down." They didn't get far without legs, though.

"Come away from there," he said.

I turned to him. He had a pistol in one hand. He was aiming it at the top of the bridge, where more of the creatures were crawling over. They always traveled in herds.

"Guns don't work on these things," I said.

"This one does," he said. "Get behind me."

I put my hands on my hips. "Look, I've been fighting these things since I was—"

"Behind me," he insisted.

I hesitated. The creatures were coming closer. In two seconds, they'd be close enough for me to start excising more legs.

"It's the bullets," he said. "We harvest their venom to make bullets."

"Harvest?" I said. "You capture these things?"

"Behind me."

I hurried out of his way.

He started to pull the trigger, and the gun banged, and with each bang, there was a flash of green light.

One of the creatures was hit. It exploded in another flash of green, screaming.

Another was hit. Same thing.

More gunshots.

More dead creatures.

And then... there were none left. The dead things had all shriveled up, leaving nothing behind but a dark smear.

I shook my head, mouth hanging open. I'd never been able to kill them.

The gargoyle put his gun back in the holster at his waist. He wasn't even breathing hard. He turned back to me. "You all right?"

"Yeah," I said. "Peachy."

"That's a good move, cutting off their legs. Innovative. That's the kind of thinking we need to fight these things. When we get back to the school, I think you'll be quite an asset to the team." He gave me a wry smile. "By the way, you qualify."

"Wait," I said. "An asset to fighting them?"

"Yeah, that's what you'll be doing at the school. You'll be on the front lines against these kinds of creatures and others like them. We need people like you, who can—"

"No."

"What?"

I backed away from him, shaking my head. "I don't want to fight them. I've fought them long enough. I want to learn to hide from them. I want to get rid of this magic I have."

"But we need—"

"No," I said again. I turned and ran up the road away from him.

CHAPTER TWO

When I got home, I went straight to my mother's room to look in on her. It was still early evening, but she was already asleep, curled up in a ball on her mattress. The mattress was on the floor, but it wasn't because we were trying to make her sleep in the ghetto or whatever, it was because every time we gave her a bed frame she used it to hurt herself.

My mother was disturbed. Her mind didn't work well. She was angry a lot, but mostly she was sad.

She said she wanted to die a lot. Once, when I was in middle school, she grabbed my hand when we were alone together in her room one night. I always came in to give her a goodnight kiss. She begged me to help her die. She had it all thought out. She said that I could just get my hands on some of the medicine that Gran kept in the cabinet in the bathroom. She said that she'd seen it when she was getting a shower. She said I could give it to her. She said I wouldn't have to do anything, I could let her take it.

That was pretty upsetting.

I looked in on my mother that night, not because I thought she might kill herself (although that was always something that could happen), but because I was worried that the creatures might have gotten to her. Sometimes, after I called the magic, they seemed to know where she was as well, and they would be crawling in through cracks in the ceiling or underneath doors. I didn't understand how it all worked, or why. But I'd done magic, and I knew they might be there. I was worried about her.

I always worried about her.

She wasn't always so bad. Occasionally, she had good days. On a good day, she might play the piano, or make cookies, or lie out in the sun in a hammock in our backyard and read poetry by Walt Whitman.

Gran said that my mother used to be different. When she was young, she was more like the way she was on her good days.

Gran never really came right out and said it, but from what I understood, the thing that had changed my mother was me. I was pretty sure that giving birth to me had done something to her. I didn't understand that either. It made me feel guilty. It made me feel even more responsible for her. I wanted to be sure she was safe.

Since my mother was asleep, and since there were no spindly-legged creatures trying to get in the window, I closed the door and headed down to the kitchen.

I had been surrounded by food at the restaurant all day, and usually when I got home I wasn't hungry. The smell of food reminded me of work, and it wasn't particularly appetizing. But I wanted a little snack, because I did do bit of magic with the gargoyle. Doing magic tended to take a little something out of me. I needed to refuel a bit.

I opened up the refrigerator and peered inside. It was stuffed to the gills with containers full of leftovers, bags of vegetables, cheese, and loaves of bread. Gran always bought enough food to feed an army, even though it was only me, her, and my mom at home. My mom didn't eat much. I was usually at the restaurant all day, and, when I got back, I was disgusted by the thought of food, so I didn't eat much either. Admittedly, my Gran had a healthy appetite. Still, she cooked as though she had a family at home, and most of it went to waste.

But tonight, I was glad of it. I found some chicken and rice casserole in a Tupperware container and popped it in the microwave. I got a fork and stood in front of the microwave watching the numbers count down.

"Did you do magic?" came a voice.

I turned. There was Gran in the doorway to the kitchen. My shoulders slumped. "I did."

"You told me you weren't going to do it anymore. It's never a good idea, Petra."

I tapped my fork against the palm of my hand. "There was a gargoyle."

"A gargoyle?" Gran made her way into the kitchen, pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, and sat down, giving me her full attention. "Tell me everything."

I did. I told her all about how the gargoyle followed me, how he told me about some school, and how I had done magic to prove that I could qualify.

"So you'll be leaving me then," said my Gran.

I shook my head. "No, didn't you hear me? He said that he wanted me in the school so that I could fight those weird creatures and use my magic to do it. I don't want anything to do with that. I wouldn't think you'd want me to either. You're the one who's always on me about not using my power."

Gran tapped her index finger against her lip. "It seems to me like this gargoyle might know more about the magic than we've ever known."

The microwave beeped. I opened the door and got out my snack. I carried it to the kitchen table and sat down next Gran. "So, what? So, he knows things? Big deal. Fighting those things..." I didn't finish, because I didn't want her to know to what extent it was that I had actually fought those things. She only knew about the tip of the iceberg.

Gran shrugged. "I've always said this town was too small for the likes of you, Petra."

"You want me to leave?" I dug my fork into the casserole, but I didn't take a bite. I stirred it around. "Then you'll be all alone here with Mom."

"I can manage your mother," said Gran. "Besides, it's not as if I don't have your aunts and cousins around to help me out."

That was true, as far as it went. We had a pretty big family, close knit. Nearly all the women in my family were witches. Even though humans could only do magic if they had a talisman, some humans took better to it than others. Probably because somewhere back in our bloodline, we had dragon blood. We knew of at least several dragons along the bloodline who had contributed. None of us had enough dragon blood to shift or anything, but we had enough that we had an affinity for magic.

But what I could do, it was completely different. My affinity for dragon magic was the same as everyone else's in my family. My other magic? No one had ever seen anything like that before.

"I just wasn't aware you were so eager to get rid of me, that's all."

"Oh, Petra. Don't be ridiculous. Of course I don't want to get rid of you."

I raised my eyebrows at her. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. I did seem to annoy her a lot. She did refer to me as a challenge. Always had. "You think I should go to the school."

Grand didn't say anything. She shrugged. "Well, you ran off from that gargoyle, so unless you got an address for him, I don't suppose you have a way to contact him or the school."

"That's true." Thing was, it didn't matter whether I should go to the school or not. The opportunity had passed. I took a bite of casserole, chewed it, and swallowed. Then I set my fork down. "Well, that's that, then. I don't guess there's any real reason to think on it anymore." I got up from the table and picked up my casserole. "I think I'll eat the rest of this in the den, watching TV."

* * *

I couldn't much concentrate on the TV, though. I ended up finishing my casserole, leaving my food in the kitchen sink, and heading upstairs to my bedroom.

But as I closed the door, I saw that my curtains were fluttering in the breeze. That was weird. I didn't remember leaving my window open. I went over to inspect, and that was when I noticed that the screen had been taken out of my window and set on the floor next to it. Now, I knew that I hadn't done that.

The gargoyle stepped out of the shadows next to my closet. "I was going to put that back before you got in here," he said.

I pointed at the open window. "You broke into my house?"

"I'm sorry about that," he said.

"Something wrong with coming through the door?"

"No, nothing wrong with it, I guess. But I wanted to talk to you alone. This seemed like the best place to do that."

"Who says I want to talk to you?" I crossed my arms over my chest. Of course, after that conversation with Gran, I had to admit I wasn't as sure of myself as I had been. Maybe I should go with him to the school. Maybe I should learn to use my magic.

He crossed the room, so that we were closer. He was maybe two feet away, and I realized just how tall he was. I had to crane my neck up to look into his face. And I was not exactly a short girl. I wasn't super tall, or anything. I was about five foot seven. He must've been at least six three. "Just give me a few more minutes. Listen to what I have to say."

"I don't know," I said, even though I guessed I didn't see anything wrong with hearing him out.

"I may have misrepresented the Order of Ash's interest in you."

"I don't know what that means, and I don't care." Except maybe I did care. When it came down to it, there was nothing for me here in this town. Gran was right about that. The place was too small for me.

"We need you," said the gargoyle. "That's really the way it is. It's not so much about your qualifying or anything like that. It's more about me coming here to beg you to come and help us. The situation is getting worse and worse. There's a lot of danger. You are uniquely suited for this fight. You have to come to the school."

I laughed a little. "Need me, huh? Well, I don't think anyone's ever said that to me before."

"I'm serious. There are others like you, but I've never seen someone quite as strong. You are, very literally, our best hope."

I shook my head. "Maybe you do need me, I don't know. But other people need me too. I can't leave them." I was thinking about my mother. I was somehow connected to those awful creatures, but she seemed to be connected too.

"Your family?" he said.

"Yes," I said. "Especially my mother. She's, um, she's not..."

"I know about your mother," he said.

I furrowed my brow. "You do? How do you know this?"

"As I said, there are others like you."

"And they have mothers that are like mine?"

"If you come with me, everything will be explained." His voice was low and urgent. He seemed very earnest and serious, like we were averting the end of the world or something.

I rubbed my forehead. Part of me wanted to go with him. For one thing, that deep voice and serious expression was really working for him. He was all broody and attractive and muscular. I mean, his upper arms? Those were nice upper arms. There was definitely something tempting about running away from all this and starting new somewhere, especially if I was really so special. "The creatures come after my mother. If I leave, she'd be all alone and defenseless."

"They come for your mother because you're here. They sense you, not her," he said. "If you leave her, she would be safer than if you were here."

"How do you know that?"

"Well, to be honest, we aren't entirely sure, but from our observation that's what we've pretty much figured out."

"From observing these other people like me?"

He nodded. "That's right."

I heaved a huge sigh. "So she would be safe?"

"She would."

I turned away from him. I looked out my open window, felt the autumn breeze on my skin. Outside, everything was dark and peaceful. "And if I come with you, you can teach me to fight these things better? You can teach me to kill them?"

"That will be your entire focus," said Logan. "We'll kill them all. With your help, we'll do it. Say you'll come."

I licked my lips. I turned back to him.

"Please?"

I couldn't say no, could I? I had to do this. It was important. So, I nodded at him. "Okay," I said. "Okay, I'll come."

He smiled. "Good. You're making the right choice."

Yeah, I wasn't so sure about that, but taking it back would make me look like an indecisive coward. For better or worse, I was going to a magical college.

CHAPTER THREE

"You the new girl, then?"

I was standing at the top of a flight of stairs. Overhead, tall paintings of serious-looking mages from the 1800s or something were glaring down at me. The framed paintings followed the stairwell all the way up from the first floor. This ten-story building was apparently Ravenridge College, and it housed all the classrooms, the dormitories, and everything else.

The person talking to me had jet black hair and an eyebrow piercing. She was wearing a bunch of bracelets on one wrist. "I'm Tatum Booth," she said. "They said I was getting a suitemate, which is fine. I liked having the bathroom to myself, but I can share. I'm enlightened."

The semester had apparently started weeks ago, but I was a late recruit. I had a bag slung over my back, and I was carrying my pillow in one hand and a suitcase in another. I had more junk in my car to lug up.

The car was junk too. It was the best I could afford with my savings from waiting tables, a real clunker. I'd driven myself up to the school, even though Gran had offered to come with me. She said I might want some help moving in. I'd told her I could do it myself, mostly because I didn't want to look like an idiot having my grandmother take me off to magic school.

I was twenty-one years old, for God's sake. I wasn't some kid. I could do it on my own.

However, these flights of stairs were killer. I'd been told my room was on the fifth floor, but I hadn't known that the stairs would be so steep and narrow.

"I guess I'm the new girl," I said.

"You Petra?" she asked.

"That's me," I said. "They told you I was coming, huh?"

"You're another primal," she said.

"What's that mean?" I said.

"You have your own magic without a talisman," she said.

"Oh," I said. "Yeah. You do too?"

She nodded. "Most of the other students don't. Until recently, this was a respected mage's academy and they taught upstanding mage students only."

"We're not upstanding mage students?" I said. I did know that some people preferred the term mage to witch. Usually, snobby people. Frankly, I preferred witch, because I didn't want to be associated with mages. Over a thousand years ago, an order of mages had created the gargoyles by using human and dragon sacrifice and dark magic. They had created the gargoyles to be their slaves and protectors. During the day, the gargoyles were stone statues, but at night they came to life.

That kind of thing had gone on for far too long. It was less than a hundred years ago that gargoyles had been emancipated.

No, I was much happier being called a witch. Witches were backwoods magic users who did spells, used cauldrons, and didn't go for all the snobby mage crap. Some people thought of it as a derogatory term, but not me.

She shrugged. "Maybe you are."

I laughed.

She held out a hand. "You want me to carry something?"

"Oh, do I ever," I said, handing over my pillow.

She took it. "Yeah, I think I can handle carrying this. Anything else?"

"You want to come down to my car with me and help me bring everything else up?"

"Ah, I see how it is. I make one offer to help out, and then you're using me like free labor."

"No," I said. "You don't have to—"

"I'm joking," she said. "Of course I'll help." She gestured with her head. "Come on."

I followed her down the hallway, which was narrow. The walls were covered in a raised wallpaper with an ornate design. The building was quite old. We turned a corner to a similar hallway. There were black doors on either side. They had numbers on them. The information I'd gotten said that my room number was eleven. All the odd numbers were on the left hand side. I watched them count up as we went down the hall. One, three, five, seven, nine...

She turned, pushing open the door.

We had emerged into a small living room. There was peeling patterned wallpaper on the wall, emerald and white alternating diamonds. A green velvet couch was thrust against the wall. The couch almost matched the wallpaper. It was too tall for the windows behind it, and the back came up over the sills. There was a coffee table in front of it, and there was a haphazard stack of old-looking books sitting on it. Bolted to the wall opposite the couch was a television. It was sleek and modern, in contrast to the clutter and old furnishings in the rest of the room.

"Sorry about the mess," said Tatum. "I was going to clean up, but then I remembered I don't do that."

I snickered a little. "Okay."

She shrugged at me. "You're not a neat freak, are you? If you're a neat freak, we're going to have a terrible time together."

"Uh, not really," I said. The living room wasn't too messy for me. I didn't mind clutter, but I wasn't a big fan of things being dirty. I noted a cluster of coffee cups sitting on the floor next to the couch. Had they all been used and not cleaned? Yeah, that was kind of gross.

"Damn," she said. "You hate me already."

"I don't," I said.

She pointed at me. "You're not going to admit it until after I lug all your shit up three flights of steps, anyway."

I laughed. "You got me. I'm hiding my deep-seated loathing of you."

"Seriously?"

"No, not seriously," I said. "I don't hate you. I swear." I gestured around the room. "I don't get it. What is this place? There are no beds? Don't we sleep here?"

"Oh, sorry," she said. She crossed the room and pushed open a door on the wall adjacent to the couch. "This is your room." She pointed across the room at another door on the opposite wall. "That's my room. And..." She pivoted, pointing at yet another door. "We share the bathroom."

"Oh," I said, turning in a circle to look around. "Cool. Did you have all this to yourself?"

"Yeah," said Tatum.

"You're the one who probably hates me, then," I said. "You know, for taking over your space."

She shook her head. "Actually, it's been kind of lonely. I think the mage students are afraid of me."

I stepped into my room and set my suitcase and my bag down on the bed. The room was small. It contained a single bed with a wrought iron headboard, a small desk made of dark wood, and a wardrobe that was shoved in the corner. It was too big for its space too. It protruded over the one window in the room. I looked around, trying to see if there was another place I could put the wardrobe.

"You thinking about moving that thing?" Tatum was pointing at the wardrobe.

"Maybe," I said.

"Good luck," she said. "Those things are heavy as hell."

I reached into my shirt and put my hand around my dragon talisman. Using a bit of magic, I picked the wardrobe up off the ground and floated it into the air.

"Whoa," said Tatum. "You have a talisman?"

"Yeah," I said. "My gran gave it to me." I made the wardrobe float higher, so it could clear the bed. I settled it against the other wall. Then I let go of my talisman.

"So, you're like Reid," said Tatum. "You're a mage, too."

I turned to her. "I'm not. Who's Reid?"

"You have a talisman," she said. "He's another primal. You'll meet him. He's from a rich mage family."

"Yeah, well, I don't live in some crumbling mansion with gargoyle servants or anything," I said. "I'm from the middle of nowhere, dirt poor town in the country. My gran calls herself a witch."

She nodded. "Right. Got it."

"You know, you don't have to be a mage to do talisman magic. Anyone with a talisman can do it."

She cocked her head at me. "Yeah, but to get those talismans, dragons have to, like, die."

"True," I said. "But that doesn't mean they have to be murdered. Our talismans come from our dragon ancestors. They wanted us to have their remains to make magical objects."

"Eew," said Tatum.

I shrugged. "Kind of, I guess."

Tatum leaned against the doorway of my room. "Listen, I want us to be friends. I'm not really good at making friends, to be honest, so I think it's probably against some unwritten code to just come out and say that, but I'm doing it anyway, because I want you to know. Let's be friends, okay?"

I smiled at her. "Yeah, okay."

She smiled back.

My smile widened. "And now, friend, let's go get the rest of my stuff."

She wrinkled up her nose. "Great."

* * *

"I thought it was going to be worse than that," said Tatum. We were sitting at a table in Barley and Bells, which Tatum had informed me was the favorite hangout of Ravenridge students. Even though she was a first year student, she wasn't typical freshman age either. She was my age, twenty-one.

Barley and Bells was bar that used to be a church, and the bar was up where the pulpit used to be. The tables in the place were all ringed with old pews. The ceiling was high, all the way up to the point of the roof, and there was a balcony that had been built in up on the second level. That was where we were sitting. We peered down at the heads of the people below us. "I thought you were going to have lots of really, really heavy possessions."

"Well, Gran did try to buy me a mini-fridge but I talked her out of it," I said. "She was more excited about me leaving than I was. She said it was because I was finally growing up and she was proud of me, but I think she was just glad to get rid of me, to be honest."

"Too bad, actually," said Tatum. "I don't have a mini-fridge. Would have been nice to have one for the suite."

"I'll tell her to bring one when she comes to visit," I said. "Which she is threatening to do really soon since I wouldn't let her come and help me move in."

"Why didn't you let her come?" Tatum took a drink of her beer.

"I don't know," I said. "I guess it seems kind of silly now, but I was kind of nervous about making an impression. I didn't want to look like some idiot kid going off to school for the first time. Even though, you know, that's what I am."

"We're not kids," said Tatum. "We're sophisticated women."

I laughed. I liked Tatum. She might be disgusting with her coffee cups, but she was straightforward, and I appreciated that. I held up my glass. "I'll drink to that."

She laughed. She clinked her glass against mine.

We both drank.

"What about you?" I said. "Did your parents drop you off?"

"I don't have parents," she said.

"Oh, well, I don't really either," I said. "I mean, no dad. My mom got knocked up and had me, and she's, uh, she's..." I remembered what the gargoyle had said. "Actually, what's your mother like?"

"A bitch," said Tatum.

I drew back, surprised at the force of her pronouncement.

"Sorry," said Tatum. "It's only that I haven't seen my parents in nearly ten years. I ran away from home when I was like fourteen."

"Oh, geez," I said. "Wow, I didn't know."

"How could you know?" said Tatum. "I tried to go home once, after this happened." Tatum gestured to her wrist.

I squinted. There was something there, like a tattoo... No, her skin was raised. There was something under her skin. It was like a wraparound bracelet, or a thin snake, but it was beneath her skin. My lips parted. "What...?"

She shook her wrist. "What's this?"

"Yeah," I said.

"I take it you don't have one."

"No," I said.

"So, you're like Reid, then. You were born a primal."

"I..." I took a drink of my beer. "I don't even know what that means. And where is this Reid?"

"Oh, you'll meet him," she said. "We're the only ones in the school. Maybe in the world, who knows."

I shook my head. I was starting to feel as if all this new information was coming too fast.

She pointed at her wrist. "This is a long story."

"Is that why you ran away from home?"

"No, I didn't have this then," she said. "I didn't have a great home life, to be honest. My parents were trailer trash, and they drank a lot, and they were mean drunks. I started to get into magic, because I thought it could solve all my problems. When my parents found out, they freaked out. Magic scared them, and they didn't understand it, so they didn't want me doing it."

"So, you know all about talismans, then," I said. "But when I moved the wardrobe—"

"I thought maybe your primal magic could do that," she said. "I mean, mine can't affect things in the real world. I can, uh, summon things, but I can't move things."

"No, that's how mine works too," I said. "I call things forth. I don't know where they come from, but I can bring out anything that I want with my magic."

"Okay," she said. "So, that's the same, then."

"I guess so," I said. "I don't really know if what we do is the same. I'd demonstrate, but every time that I do that kind of magic, it seems to be a beacon for these horrible spider-type creatures—"

"The skitters," she said. "Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with those too."

"Skitters," I repeated. As a name, it fit them perfectly. "That's what you call them?"

"Yup."

I nodded. "Anyway, even if I could use my magic to move around wardrobes, I wouldn't. Not worth having to fight off those things. I made the mistake of doing my magic in my home, and then they knew where I lived. They'd come after my mother sometimes." I snatched up my drink and took a huge gulp. Actually, I didn't much want to talk about that.

"They suck," she said in understanding. "Here at the school, they have these bullets—"

"Yeah, I saw those. The guy who recruited me, the gargoyle—"

"Logan?"

"I don't know. Is that his name?"

"It had to be Logan," she said. "Logan Gray. You don't see a lot of other gargoyles hanging out with mages unless they work for the families, you know?"

"Yeah," I said. It was kind of a messed-up situation, I thought. In the 1960s, gargoyles had been emancipated, and it was now illegal for any mage to keep a gargoyle as a slave. But the gargolyes had simply been set free with no fanfare. They weren't given money or land or taught skills other than what they already had. So many of them had no choice but to continue to work for the mages that had previously been their owners. They were paid wages now, so I guessed it was better. And the younger generation of gargoyles now got the chance to go to public school—night school, of course, since they were stone in the day—so they had better opportunities. Things were getting better, but it was a slow process.

"He's mysterious," said Tatum. "Really fucking hot, though."

I laughed. "Yeah, he's easy on the eyes."

Tatum picked up her beer. "Where was I? I was telling you about my wrist?"

"Oh, right," I said. "How'd that happen?"

"Well, I ran away from home so that I could keep doing magic, and I fell in with this coven in Baltimore. It was shit. It was a bunch of us runaways squatting in condemned buildings and selling illegal magical artifacts—dragon scales, teeth, you name it. We even sold dice." Dice was a drug made of dragon meat. It was dried and powdered and put in pills. Supposedly, it was an incredible magical high that made a person feel invincible. "We had to turn all of our profits over to this guy who ran our crew. In return, he was supposed to teach us magic. But he never taught us much. Instead, he used us in weird experiments that he did. One night I got caught up in something he was doing, some dark spell that involved slitting the throats of white mice and ripping a hole between this world and another one. I was tied down, an offering to whatever he thought was going to come out of that tear between the worlds. But the only thing that came through was this." She touched the raised part of her skin.

"Oh my goodness," I said. "He was going to kill you?"

"Probably," she said. "I have no idea. But this little black snakelike thing with no face slithered out of it. It climbed up my body, and I was screaming. It slipped under my skin, and it never left. After that, I could do things."

"That's insane."

"Yeah, you're not wrong." She took a drink. "Anyway, I got away from that asshole after that. I didn't have anywhere else to go, so I was happy when I was offered a spot at this school."

I shook my head in disbelief. And I thought my life had been hard. It didn't compare to what Tatum had been through.

"Don't," she said.

"What?" I said.

"You're feeling sorry for me."

"I'm not," I said, even though that was kind of not true. I'd been feeling sympathetic, which wasn't exactly the same thing.

"I don't want you to be my pity friend," she said.

"I wouldn't do that," I said.

She looked me over.

And suddenly there was a guy pulling a chair up to our table. "Hey, hey, hey, is this the new primal?"

I sat back in my chair, a little disoriented at his abrupt appearance.

He grinned at us. He was attractive in a preppy sort of way. His hair had product in it. It was artfully disheveled. He flashed a white-toothed smile at me. He had a cocktail in one hand, complete with a lime on the rim of the glass. He set his drink down and squeezed the lime into it. "I'm Reid Darkmore."

Tatum rolled her eyes. "God, leave her alone, Reid. She barely moved in. Give her a chance to breathe before you pounce."

Reid shot her an amused glance. "That's not what I'm doing." He turned back to me. "I'm saying hello. To be friendly. We primals need to stick together."

Tatum picked up her beer. "Reid is a dog. Everything out of his mouth is a lie. You should stay away from him."

"Oh, Tatum, that's not nice." He made a clucking noise in the back of his throat. To me, "I swear, I'm not that scary. I don't even bite. Well, unless you're into that kind of thing."

Tatum made a sour face.

Reid pointed at my drink. "You want a refill?"

"No," said Tatum. "She doesn't."

"I think the pretty lady can speak for herself," said Reid, grinning at me. He winked.

Aw, hell. He said I was pretty. He wanted to buy my drink. And he was nice to look at. What was the problem here? I handed him my glass. "Sure thing."

Reid beamed. He turned back to Tatum. "I'll get you a drink too."

Tatum heaved a sigh. "Suit yourself."

Reid got up from the table. "Be right back." He sauntered away.

"Seriously," said Tatum. "I'm warning you. Stay away from that asshole."

"He seemed nice enough," I said.

"Yeah, he always seems that way," said Tatum. "And then he drops you like used toilet paper once he's done with you."

"Oh," I said. "One of those."

"Charming two-faced dick."

"I take it you speak from personal experience?"

She made a dismissive noise. "Hell, no. I can spot that kind of jerk from a mile away. I never gave him the time of day."

"Well, thanks for the heads up," I said.

"You going to tell him to get lost?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. He's not bad looking. I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."

* * *

When I was younger, I used to read my share of historical romance novels. Devoured by the Duke, Mated to the Marquis, or whatever.

They'd usually be about women who met these guys that they hated at first, but then—by the end of the story—they'd realize that whatever they hated about the man wasn't really the truth about him, that underneath it all, he was truly a tortured, sweet soul. And then there would be a sex scene, and the guy would know things about her body that she herself didn't know, because women back then were sheltered and all that. The sex would always be mind-shatteringly pleasurable, but it was always more than that.

It happened on some other level at the same time. A sort of soul level. Like the sex wasn't just about physical joining, but about some entwining of the ethereal essences of two people.

I used to believe in that shit.

When I was in high school, some of my friends were having sex with their boyfriends, but I didn't do that. For one thing, I didn't have a boyfriend. The creatures—skitters—started showing up right around puberty, when my powers surfaced, and it tended to get in the way of being normal. But it wasn't like I never dated. A guy took me to the Homecoming Dance once, and he kept trying to call me afterward, but stuff with my mother kept coming up, and it never worked out, and he gave up. But even if it had, even if I'd started dating that guy, I wouldn't have done it then, either.

I wasn't waiting for, like, marriage. I was waiting for love. And not just any love. Soul love. Romance novel love.

I wanted my first time to be like in those books, something transformative, something beautiful, something exquisite.

So, I waited.

I waited a long time.

It's funny, actually, because when Tatum was talking about that rip between two world that resulted in her getting that weird black thing curled around her wrist, it was familiar to me. I think there might have been a rip between two worlds in my mother's bedroom.

It was last year that it happened. I was twenty. I woke up one night and my mother was screaming. I ran to her room, and when I got inside, there was this gaping black hole on one wall, and there were all these... things crawling out of it. Awful things that slithered and squirmed. They came for both of us, and I was the only one that could fight them off.

I fought for hours, and I tried everything I could to close that rip.

My mother and I were both badly wounded. We were bitten and burned and cut and bruised. There were moments when I was fighting one of the creatures, and I was sure that I was going to lose, that I was going to die. I watched my life flash in front of my eyes more than once that night.

Sometimes, when I try to remember all the things that happened, I can't. It's as though it was too much for my mind to handle, all that fear, and it's simply been erased.

Finally, the rip closed.

My mother and I crawled into her bed and held each other, sobbing. We didn't sleep for the rest of the night, even though we were both exhausted.

I didn't tell Gran about it.

I just...

I don't know. Talking about it would have made it real, and I wanted to believe it was only a bad dream. I wanted to run from it, because it was the worst night of my life.

I was different afterward.

A week later, I was at work, and one of the girls I worked with invited me to a party at her house. I didn't usually go for that sort of thing, but suddenly, it didn't really seem like anything mattered. I guess I always thought it would be risky to go out and get drunk at a stranger's house, that maybe something bad might happen to me if I did.

But...

Well, I realized that was stupid. Bad things happened to me all the time, anyway. Why was I trying to protect myself? There wasn't any point.

So, I went the party, and I got wasted. There was a guy there. I had sex with him.

I don't remember his name. I think it started with a J, though. Jeremy, I think. Jason? I don't know. Not important. What's important, I guess, is that it was... well, it wasn't like a romance novel, for one thing, but it wasn't bad either. It was kind of nice being in someone's arms and having them want me to feel good for once. I mean, I didn't even know the last time I'd felt good.

I liked it.

So, I did it more. And it got easier once I turned twenty-one. It was easy to go out to some bar somewhere and let a guy pick me up and then go back to his place and screw the shit out of him. I liked it to be fast and fierce. I liked it when everything was wiped out except for me and that guy, whoever he was. Not because I felt particularly close to him in those moments. I didn't. It was strange. Sometimes, I felt even farther away while we were having sex. Talking to him had made me feel closer to him, but with his body inside mine, I felt like I was a million miles away.

Look, it's not like it was that good, not in the end.

A lot of times I woke up and looked down at the face of the man I'd shared a bed with, and I got sort of sick to my stomach. I felt ashamed of myself.

But I didn't stop.

I didn't let anyone know I did it either. I mean, I didn't want anyone to know. People might judge me, and I didn't want to hear their stupid bullshit about how sex was supposed to be sacred or about love or whatever. Maybe I didn't understand whatever it was that they got out of sex, but they didn't understand what I got out of it.

Going home with random guys, it helped. It made it easier to deal with all those monsters that were at the edge of my consciousness, squirming and seething and screaming. The creatures were always after me. But when I was in bed with someone, none of that mattered.

So, I let Reid Darkmore take me home, and I fucked him.

Big deal.

Doesn't matter. I'm still a good person. I didn't hurt anyone.

He was so over-the-top with the whole thing, too. I asked him to dance, and then he was on me for the rest of the night like white on rice. The only time he let me be alone was when he went to get us more drinks. He really tried to pour the liquor down my throat, too, but I didn't want to be too wasted, so I didn't drink too much.

He wouldn't shut up with the cheesy compliments. He kept going on about how beautiful I was, how funny I was, what a great dancer I was. It was hard not to let it go to my head, I have to admit. He seemed so genuine. If Tatum hadn't warned me, I might have fallen for it.

But I kept my wits about me. I didn't take anything he said to heart. I soaked it all in, and let him think he was manipulating me.

He lived in the same building we did, on the same wing, for that matter. As it turned out, Ravenridge was not brimming with students. Reid told me that there were probably twenty-five of us, tops, and that most of them came from the upper crust of mage families. Rich kids who were going to a magic university so that they could go home and rule over the empires their daddies or grandaddies had built for them. Well, he didn't put it that way. That was my interpretation. Near as I could tell, Reid was one of those rich kids himself. He talked idly about his family, about vacations they'd taken, about his nanny growing up, all the kinds of snobby mage crap that I'm not real fond of.

But I didn't express my disgust to him. Wasn't worth it. He was the type of guy who did what he wanted and thought what he wanted and didn't take much notice of anyone else. He wanted to get a girl in bed? Fine. He said whatever was likely to get her to come home with him.

Reid's suitemate wasn't there when we got there, which was fine with me. I didn't want to make awkward small talk before getting down to business.

Luckily, once we got back to his room, we did just that.

He kissed me. He was a good kisser. Not too forceful, not too timid. Confident, but gentle. He slid his hands under my shirt and expertly unhooked my bra with one hand.

I had to admit, that was impressive. I'd never met a guy who could unhook a bra that easily, even when looking at the thing.

The sex was good.

Enthusiastic and athletic. He was proficient at what he did, and I gave myself over to the sensations of it. It felt good. It wiped everything else away. While it was happening, I clung to him, and I kissed him, and I writhed, and I gasped, and I threw myself into it with all the energy I could muster.

But when it was over, I didn't bother trying to cuddle.

He didn't either, for what it was worth. He trailed kisses down my shoulder and then rolled over, facing away from me. He let out a contented sigh.

I swung my feet over the side of the bed and sat up.

He made a little noise. "You going somewhere?"

"Yeah," I said. "Thanks, this was great." I leaned over, kissed him quickly, and then got up. It was dark, but my eyes had adjusted. I spied my underwear on the floor. I picked up them and stepped into them.

He rolled over so he was facing me. "You're not going to stay?"

"Why?" I said. "So you can make up some excuse to get rid of me in the morning and then promise to call me, but never bother?"

"I wasn't going to do that," he said.

I laughed. "Okay. Sure."

"Hey," he said. "I like you."

"I like you, too," I said. "This was fun." I put my bra on, hooked it in the front and then scooted it around to the back before putting my arms through the straps.

He sat up in bed. "Are you serious? That's it?"

"That's it," I said. I yanked my shirt over my head and headed for the door.

He got up and came after me. "Wait."

"What?" I was already out of his bedroom and out into the living room in his suite. It looked a lot like our living room except it had a different couch and coffee table. Same wallpaper, though.

He grabbed me by the arm. "Stay. If you're seriously cool with this, then you're like... the most awesome woman in the history of the universe."

I shook him off. "I don't think so, Reid."

"Okay." He folded his arms over his chest. He was completely naked and not even attempting to cover himself. "What are you doing tomorrow then?"

I laughed. "Seriously?"

"You should at least give me your number."

"You want to see me again because I don't want to stay with you? Am I getting this right?"

"I want to see you again because you're beautiful, and we had awesome sex, and you're not clingy like other girls. You're different."

I bit down on my bottom lip. "That's sweet. I really appreciate that compliment. But I don't know, I think I'd just like to keep things loose. I don't want to be tied down."

"I don't want to be tied down either," he said. "I just want us to have sex again is all."

I shrugged. "It's not you, it's me. I don't much care for reruns."

His lips parted.

I looked him over, letting my gaze settle on his penis.

He shifted on his feet, looking uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry, Reid." I smiled a sympathetic, apologetic smile. "I'm sure you're a really great guy." And then I swept out of his suite.

CHAPTER FOUR

"When did you come home?" said Tatum from the doorway to my bedroom.

I stretched, yawning. "Late." My head hurt. I should have drunk more water before bed last night.

"I thought you went home with Reid."

"I did," I said. "And then I came back here after we were finished."

Tatum raised her eyebrows.

"You can judge me if you want," I said. "I don't care."

"I'm not judging you," she said.

"I don't think it's all that comfortable sharing a bed, to be honest." I sat up, rubbing my temples. "God, I feel like hell."

"Yeah, me too," said Tatum.

"If you don't want to be my friend anymore because you think I'm a big ho—"

"I never said that, and I don't think that," she said. She shrugged. "If Reid didn't mess with your head or anything, and you're fine with everything, then everything's fine."

I smiled. "Cool."

"You hungry?"

"I could eat."

"Let's get breakfast."

* * *

Breakfast was served in a big room on the first floor of the building. Tatum called it the dining hall, but it more resembled a cafe than anything else. It was full of round tables, enough to seat maybe fifty people. At the front of the room, there was a breakfast buffet set up. Tatum said that was there every morning. There was all sorts of good stuff. Eggs, blueberry muffins, sausage, bacon, and even scrambled tofu, which Tatum heaped up on her plate.

"Don't knock it until you try it," she said. "It's good." She insisted that I put a little bit of it on my plate, so I did.

Once we were seated at a little table next to a window overlooking the street outside, I asked her why she'd eat tofu when there were eggs. "You allergic to eggs or something?"

"No, I try to eat plant based, though."

"Plant based?"

"Yeah, I'm a vegan."

"So, you don't even eat eggs? I thought eggs were vegetarian."

"I don't eat any animal products."

I crinkled up my nose. When she said animal products, it made the eggs sound really gross, for some reason. I tried the tofu. It wasn't bad. It had a similar texture to the eggs, and it had crispy bits on it that were pretty tasty. I preferred eggs, though.

"So, when do we have, like, classes?" I said. "Today?" I hadn't gotten a schedule or anything. "Where do I go to find out about my classes?"

"It's, um, not exactly like that," said Tatum.

"No?" I said.

"We've had... sort of... missions?" said Tatum. "They give us stuff to try to do, and we work on that pretty intensely, and then... well, there hasn't been anything lately, not since Estelle."

"Who's Estelle?"

"She's another primal like us."

"I thought it was only you, me, and Reid."

"Well, Estelle disappeared," said Tatum. "No one knows where she is. We've been trying to close this breach that's in a room in the library, and Estelle said they wanted her to try something new, and that she was going to tackle it in the morning. But, in the morning, she wasn't there anymore. That was weeks ago. We haven't really been doing anything since. Then they told us you were coming. Now that you're here, maybe we'll have to do something else."

I ate some eggs. That was crazy. That wasn't at all what I'd been expecting. "So, if they're just sending us on missions, then they aren't teaching us anything?"

"Not so far," said Tatum.

"That's stupid," I said.

"Of course, we're not paying tuition like the other students either," said Tatum. "I mean, at least I'm not. Are you?"

"No." I looked around the empty dining hall. "Where are the other students?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. They do have classes."

"Fabulous," I said. "So, we get invited to this school, but we're not actually even students here. They just want us to..." I paused. "Hold on a second. Go back. What were you saying about a breach? What's a breach?"

"It's a portal between two different dimensions," she said. "A rip in the fabric of the universe that allows travel between two worlds."

"That's like what was opened up to let out the thing on your wrist?"

"I call it my bracelet," she said. "But yeah, basically."

"I know about this," I said. "It's what happened in my mother's bedroom. I thought it was my fault, because those skitters show up after I do magic. But I hadn't done magic before the... the breach opened. It was awful. I barely managed to close the thing before—"

"Wait, you closed it?" said Tatum, leaning forward.

"Yeah," I said. "Well, it closed, anyway. I'm not entirely sure how that happened. I was trying everything, and there were all kinds of nasty things coming through it, going for my mom, and I was trying to fight them off, and trying to seal it up, and then... it closed."

Tatum gaped at me, frozen with a forkful of tofu halfway to her mouth. "No wonder they wanted you here."

I bit down on my bottom lip. "I don't get it. Why do they want me?"

But Tatum had put the tofu in her mouth. She was chewing. I had to wait until she swallowed. "We've been trying to close that damned breach since we got here. We haven't figured out how to do it. And you did it all by yourself with no advice from the professors or anything." She set down her fork. "How'd you do it?"

"I... I don't know," I said. "Like I said, I was trying a bunch of things. I used magic to call forth different things. Like, I had this big hot glue gun type thing, and I was trying to glue the world back together, but that wasn't working. And I tried some other stuff too. I can't remember all the things. I kept getting distracted by having to fight the monsters and keep them from hurting my mom. Finally, I tried a big needle thing and thread. I sewed it closed."

"And that worked?"

"It... it must have," I said. "But I don't know how, because the first stitches I made were being ripped open by—" I broke off when a man came into the dining room. He was wearing a shirt with flowing sleeves and a vest over top. He had a cape that streamed out behind him when he walked.

"What?" said Tatum, confused that I'd stopped talking. She turned around to see what I was looking at. "Oh, it's Professor Weathersbane." She waved at him.

"Hi there," called Professor Weathersbane in a big, booming voice. "Good to see you, Petra."

"Uh, hi," I said.

He came over to our table and pulled up a chair. "Settling in okay? I'm sorry that I couldn't be there to officially greet you yesterday, but I hope Tatum was gracious and welcoming."

"Oh, uh, yeah," I said. This guy made me nervous for some reason. "Tatum was great. Is great."

Tatum smiled. "Thanks."

"Sure," I said.

"I hope we can introduce you to Reid Darkmore, the other primal at the academy soon," said Weathersbane.

"I already met him," I said.

"Excellent," said Weathersbane. He looked down at our plates. "Are you finished with breakfast?"

"Um..." I had actually been planning on getting more bacon.

"Great," said Weathersbane. "Why don't you come with me to my office, then?"

* * *

Weathersbane's office was like something out of the Middle Ages, with an antique desk and chair. He had similar chairs in front of his desk for people to sit in. The walls were lined with old books and the place was dimly lit with wall sconces.

Weathersbane sat at his desk, surveying stacks of papers. He muttered something under his breath, and then his pen stood up of its own accord and began taking notes on a piece of paper on this desk.

"All right, let's talk a bit about you, is that all right?" he said to me.

"Sure," I said.

He asked me a bunch of questions about my experience with magic, how much training I'd had, and in what areas. He wanted to know if I knew about mixing potions in cauldrons, if I'd used spellwork, if I'd written my own spells, or if I could only do simple magic with a talisman.

Magic could be done in three basic ways—telekinesis, compulsion, and pyrokinesis (fire starting). Only the dragons could do fire magic, but using a talisman would allow a person to move things with their mind and also to use mind magic on other people. However, the mind magic only worked on people with no magic whatsoever. Even having a small talisman protected a person from compulsion. Compulsion wasn't very useful most of the time.

Mages and witches had expanded the capabilities of magic using potions and spells and other such things.

I had to admit that I only had a rudimentary knowledge of that kind of thing. Gran could do various styles of magic, and she'd offered to teach me, but I was wary. Whenever I tried to do complicated talisman magic, I sometimes accidentally used my inborn magic as well, and the skitters came.

But Weathersbane didn't react to what I told him, other than to make occasional hmm-ing noises. While I spoke, his pen scribbled away, recording everything I said.

When he'd exhausted his questions about that kind of magic, he started talking to me about the breaches. "We understand that you closed one on your own," he said. "We felt it, in fact. It was a powerful act that sent ripples through the magic of this world. We spent months tracking you down. Now that you're here, what we most want to know is how you did it."

"I don't really know," I said. I recounted to him everything that I'd told Tatum, adding to the part about the needle that I'd stabbed myself with it. "I wasn't doing a very good job with sewing it closed, though. I was clumsy, and I pricked myself with the needle."

"But once you finished sewing it closed, it did seal off?"

"I... I can't remember if I finished or not," I said. "I remember that I was panicking, because the part I'd already sewed together was being broken apart by things on the other side of the breach. But then, yeah, it sealed up."

"You know, it would be marvelous if you could do that for our breach," he said.

"Tatum was telling me about that," I said.

"Yes," he said. "It's in our library, and we've had a devil of a time containing it. Things are always getting through, and they're very difficult to kill."

"I've noticed that," I said. Although I would have said they were impossible to kill, because I'd never managed it. I tended to dismember them. That slowed them down. Thinking about cutting up those strange creatures made me feel queasy. I shuddered. Honestly, my memory of the night of the breach was fuzzy. I theorized that it had been so traumatic that I'd tried to block it out.

"The last girl that tried to close the breach disappeared without a trace," he said. "We have no idea what happened to her."

"Estelle, right?"

"How do you know about Estelle?"

"Tatum told me about her."

"Ah, I see." Weathersbane nodded. "I had thought that perhaps you had some sort of telepathic gift as well."

"No," I said. But I did know that some witches could do a bit of telepathy and mind reading. It was an inversion of compulsion, being able to read thoughts instead of control them.

"You're plenty powerful as it is, I suppose." He chuckled. "Well, what do you say? Will you look at our breach for us?"

Man, that was the last thing I wanted to do. "Uh, sure," I said.

"Good. Well, it's up in the library, so—"

"You mean, right now?"

"Is this a bad time?"

"Uh..." The last time I'd been in a room with an open breach, I'd almost died. My mother had almost died. I wasn't crazy about doing it again.

"How about tomorrow morning?" said Weathersbane. "Be ready at eight o'clock sharp in the dining hall. We'll get started then."

CHAPTER FIVE

"Oh, come on," I said from the doorway to Tatum's room. "I don't want to go alone. You can be there for moral support. Besides, maybe you can help me with this breach." I didn't want to admit that I was scared shitless of going into the room where the breach was. I'd had nightmares about trying to close the one in my mother's room last night. I kept hearing her screams, and I woke up sweaty and breathless.

"Weathersbane didn't say I have to be there, right?" She was lying in bed on her side. Her eyes were closed.

"Well, no, but—"

"Then why should I get out of bed? It's too early."

"Please?" I said. "Just at least keep me company at breakfast."

She groaned, pulling the pillow over her head.

"I don't even remember where the dining hall is," I said.

"We went there three times yesterday," she said. "You remember."

"I don't," I said. "I need you."

She groaned again. But she threw aside the covers and sat up. "Okay, okay, fine. Let's go."

I was still fuzzy on the location of the dining hall, it was true, but I probably could have figured it out on my own. Still, I was glad to have some company.

The dining hall looked much the same as it had yesterday, only there were more people in it. At least fifteen other students were sitting at tables and eating together. Tatum ignored all of them, but I scanned their faces, looking for Reid. The thought of seeing him made me feel a little unsteady.

I didn't feel guilty about what I'd done. And I didn't have any lingering affection for Reid.

But, okay, having sex with someone was kind of a big deal. I tried not to let it affect me at all, but I didn't always succeed.

Anyway, Reid was nowhere to be seen, which was fine with me.

I got a plate and loaded up with food. Biscuits and gravy, bacon, eggs, the works. I figured I was going to need all my energy with the stupid breach. Last time—

But I wasn't going to think about last time. If I thought too hard about it, I'd psyche myself up and I'd just run out of this school screaming.

Honestly, though, why didn't I just run?

Tatum only had a coffee, no food at all. She was sipping it. "You know, for someone who wanted company, you're really quiet."

"Sorry," I said. "I was just thinking."

"Thinking about what?"

"You going to get any food?"

"It's too early to be hungry," she said. "Thinking about what?"

I pushed my eggs around with my fork, suddenly not sure if I had an appetite either. "Just sort of wondering why I'm doing this at all. I should go home."

"What?" She set down her coffee with enough force that a little sloshed out on the table. "Why would you do that?"

"I don't want to try to close one of those breaches again." I was fierce. "You have no idea how much doing it the last time screwed with my head."

She licked her lips. Her voice was quieter. "I know the things that come out are bad, but—"

"Bad doesn't describe it," I said.

"But you won't be alone in there," she said. "Every time we've tried anything, we've had Logan around to shoot the things that come out. Lots of times, it's only skitters anyway."

"But sometimes it's other things, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah, those octo-monsters aren't great either."

I raised my eyebrows. "You think giving it a funny name makes it easier to deal with?" I knew exactly what she was talking about. There were creatures that were comprised of tentacles, like an octopus. But they were horrible, awful things. Thinking about the slimy touch of one of its protuberances sliding over my skin made me shiver. Last time I'd had to deal with one of those, I'd tried to cut off all its writhing arms, but there had been so many, and—

I stood up.

"Petra?" said Tatum.

"That's it," I said. "I'm not doing this. I'm getting the hell out of dodge. You people want to risk your lives against those things, be my guest, but I'm not doing it any more."

Tatum got up too. She seized my hand. "Hey, calm down. It'll be okay."

I pulled my hand free. "It won't."

"But you've closed a breach before," she said. "And these things, they have to be closed. Please, we've already lost Estelle, and other students at the school have been injured, and the professors here can't keep it all contained forever. Pretty soon, those things are going to get out into the general population, and people will have no protection against them."

Damn it. I sat back down. "Fine," I muttered. I dug into my eggs, appetite or no. I needed my strength if I was going to do this.

Tatum sat back down too. "Hey, I don't mean to put you on a guilt trip or something, but I really think it's important—"

I held up a hand to stop her. "Let's not talk about it anymore."

She sighed.

I sighed.

And then a shadow loomed over our table.

I looked up to see the gargoyle. Logan. He was standing next to our table. "You about ready?"

I squinted at him. "What are you doing out in the daylight? Gargoyles are stone during the day."

"That's a long story," he said. "Which we don't have time for. We've got a breach to close."

"I'm not supposed to meet Weathersbane until eight o'clock."

"It's 8:03," said Logan. "And Weathersbane's not coming."

I gestured at my plate. "I'm still eating."

Logan folded his arms over his chest. "Okay. Finish your breakfast."

I picked up a slice of bacon and considered it. Then I glared up at the gargoyle. "Um, can you not hover over me like you're doing?"

"Just finish your breakfast," he said.

I shoved the whole piece of bacon in my mouth and chewed. I swallowed it and took a big gulp of coffee. "Do you always have a stick up your ass? Inquiring minds want to know."

Logan peered down at me over his bulky, stone forearms. "I'm the one who's going to be covering you in there, so maybe it's not a great idea to insult me."

Tatum wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. "So, I think I'm going back to bed now."

"No way." I glared at her. "I might need you."

"Actually," said Logan, "it's probably better if it's just you and me. If something happens, we'll need Tatum as a backup to try to close the breach. We can't lose both of you at once."

I swallowed, and I pushed away my plate. So, I was going to have to do this alone. That was fine. I could handle that. But I definitely wasn't hungry anymore.

* * *

Logan and I climbed all of the steps to the top floor of the building, which was where the library was. It was kind of a workout, but he didn't seem the least bit winded. He strode out of the stairwell and down the hallway, but I moved a little more slowly, stopping to check out portraits on the wall of stern-looking mage after stern-looking mage. "Who are these guys?" I called after him.

"I have no idea," he said, not looking back at me.

"You don't even know what I'm asking about."

"I know that you're stalling."

I called him a string of really bad words under my breath. And then I took off down the hallway.

Logan was at the end of the hallway, holding open the heavy wooden door to the library.

Inside, it was a lot like I expected. There were books everywhere, rows and rows of shelves. There was a little space with ten or twelve computers set up, and there was a big round desk in the center of the room. A woman sat behind the desk in a gray skirt suit. She had her hair pulled into a bun on top of her head. Talk about your stereotypical librarian.

"This way," said Logan.

I was starting to feel sweaty. My palms were moist, and so were my armpits. I didn't want to do this.

But Logan was already ahead of me.

And we were saving the world, so I didn't really have a choice, did I?

I took a deep breath, and I went after him.

We walked past shelves of books, our feet padding over a light brown carpet. We weren't walking too fast, but it was getting harder and harder to draw breath.

Then Logan stopped in front of a wooden door that had been fitted with about twelve deadbolt locks. There was also a hinged metal cage bolted down around the door. It had several padlocks on it.

My heart picked up speed.

Logan pulled a keyring off his belt and began unlocking the padlocks.

My heart started to pound.

Logan moved the metal cage on its hinges, moving it out of the way so that he could get to the door behind it.

I was sweating at the back of my neck now. And on my forehead. I looked back the way we had come, thinking about making a break for it.

Logan was unlocking the deadbolts, one after the other.

I shut my eyes. My stomach churned. Maybe all that bacon had been a bad idea. I opened my eyes.

Logan's hand was on the doorknob. He turned it.

I stopped breathing. Stopped moving. I couldn't move. The only bit of motion in me was my heart slamming its way against my rib cage.

The door swung open. Inside, it was dark.

Logan gestured. "After you."

I shook my head, about to protest that I wasn't going in there for a million dollars, but then I found that I didn't want him to see me acting like a big wuss. So, I put one foot in front of the other, and I went through the door. The darkness wrapped around me.

I blinked hard, allowing my eyes to adjust to the light in here.

Logan came in behind me, shutting the door after us, turning all the deadbolts again, locking us in.

I felt dizzy.

The room was small and the walls were all lined with book shelves. There was an overturned table in the middle of the floor and several chairs that had been broken into splintery pieces. In one corner, there was a pile of books, the pages ripped out and littering the floor. It looked as though there had been a struggle here and no one had cleaned up afterward.

The breach was directly in front of me. It was a six foot rip, going from the floor to the ceiling, except it wasn't the wall that was ripped. It looked more as though the wall ahead—book shelves and all—had been flattened into a printed fabric, and that fabric had been ripped open. Now it hung limply around a gaping, dark portal into nothingness.

Looking into the breach made me lose my balance. I flailed for something to hold onto. I caught Logan's arm.

His voice was quiet. "Well, go ahead. Henrik said you stitched it closed."

I looked around the room. Where were the creatures? Why weren't they here? Had they all crawled back into the breach to hide? "I need to use my magic to call forth the needle and thread," I murmured. "That'll attract the skitters. Maybe it'll attract other things as well." I wasn't sure where the skitters came from, exactly, but I had seen them come out of a breach before, and I'd seen other things besides skitters come when I did magic.

He pulled his gun out of its holster. "Like I said, I'll cover you."

"Okay," I said. I took a shaky breath. I reached out into the ether, conjuring a huge needle and thread, making it clear I needed something strong enough to sew the world back together.

Something moved out of the corner of my eye.

I jumped, startled.

It rose up out of the corner, behind the destroyed pile of books. It leapt through the air, far to fast for something so large. It was one of the tentacle-creatures, the thing that Tatum had called an octo-monster. It landed on my face, and it thrust tentacles into my ears and eyes and mouth.

I tried to scream, but it was too muffled by the tentacle in my mouth to be heard.

I stabbed at the thing with the needle I'd just conjured.

It squealed, but it didn't let go.

"Hold still, Petra," came Logan's voice.

Hold still? What was he going to—

A gunshot, a bright green flash.

A high-pitched scream from the creature. It loosened its grip on me.

"Damn it," said Logan. "I only winged it. I can't get a good shot with you in the way."

I dropped the needle and conjured something better—a long curved dagger with a pointy end. I began to stab the thing over and over.

When I stabbed it, it would recoil the stabbed tentacle.

I sliced that off.

I did that over and over. Stab. Wait for a recoil. Slice.

And then another gunshot, another blast of light.

The thing screamed and screamed. It fell off me and lay on the floor, twitching.

I went for it with my knife.

"Get to the breach!" Logan yelled. "I'll take care of this. You've done magic, and we've got skitters coming."

Right. Okay, I guessed that made sense. I hit the floor, feeling around for the needle. Luckily, it was big—nearly a foot long—so it wasn't too hard to find. With it in my hand, I ran for the breach.

It wasn't dark inside anymore. Instead, the air in there was a strange shimmery dim light, like the sun shining through deep water. I didn't waste time looking into it.

I just started to sew.

Skitters started to come through the breach. They crawled over me, spitting venom as they burst through the threads that held the rip together.

I dropped everything, covered my head, ducked down. Where was my damned dagger when I needed it?

"Flat against the floor!" yelled Logan.

I flattened out. I heard his gun shooting, saw the green light, heard the skitters screaming and dying. They fell down around me on the floor, one after the other.

When the gunshots stopped, I got back up.

Logan was across the room, reloading his gun. "Don't just stand there," he said, nostrils flaring. "Sew."

I turned back to the breach. I started over. Maybe last time, I hadn't made the stitches tight enough. I started to sew tiny, tight stitches, as quickly as I could, pushing the needle through the fabric of our world, shutting out whatever was on the other side.

The stitches strained.

Something was behind it.

I kept sewing.

The stitches strained and strained.

I kept sewing.

The stitches burst and a human hand reached through the breach.

I stopped sewing. "What the hell?"

The hand was joined by another. Together, the hands forced the breach back open, ripping open all my stitches.

CHAPTER SIX

I stared at the hands, unsure of what to do. "Logan!" I yelled in a hoarse voice. "You seeing this?"

"Estelle," he said, sprinting forward, pushing me away. He seized both of the hands and pulled as hard as he could.

A girl came out of the breech. She looked about my age, in her early twenties. Her eyes were open, but she had no irises and no pupils, just strange gray-silver eyeballs. She blinked, turning her head unnaturally.

"Estelle?" said Logan.

Something was attached to Estelle's foot.

Logan noticed it at the same time I did.

It was...

It moved fast, almost like it was scribbled into our world. It was a cloud of strange strings of blackness. They twisted and twirled and tangled faster than a blink of the eye. They were always moving. And they were tangled around her ankle.

I reached down to try to remove them.

They tangled around my wrist.

I let out a hollow yell and I tried to pull free. I only succeeded in losing my balance and falling backwards on my butt.

The tangle came with me. It flitted around my wrist, my forearm, holding on tight while the rest of it squirmed in the air behind me. It was free from the portal.

Logan shot at it.

The strings parted, letting the bullets through.

I shook at it, trying to get it off.

To my relief, it slid away from my skin.

It pooled together in the ground, like a discarded bit of ribbon. And then it shot up into the air, heading toward the ceiling.

My gaze went up to watch its ascent.

It was twisting in the air, forming itself into a shape, something... human? It solidified, and it was a man, dressed in a copy of my clothing—a t-shirt and jeans. The man's face looked similar to mine. Had he... copied me somehow?

The man strode toward the door. He held out his hand and the door blew off its hinges. The man strode through.

Logan shot him again, shot him in the back.

His body parted, turning into strings again. The bullet passed through harmlessly.

"Damn it," said Logan, rushing to the door after the man.

The girl that had come out of the portal whimpered.

Logan turned back to her. "Damn it," he said again.

* * *

"...so, then he turned into a human and blew the door open and walked out," Logan was saying.

Weathersbane was ruefully looking at the remains of the door. We were all outside the room that contained the breach. The girl, who was apparently Estelle, had shut her eyes and stopped moving. Logan had carried her out of the room and laid her down on a table just outside the door.

"We'll have to get someone to fix this," said Weathersbane.

"Do you want me to go after him?" said Logan.

"The man from the breach?" said Weathersbane.

"If he even is a man," said Logan. "His clothes looked like Petra's."

"I think he copied me or something," I said. "Like The Thing. Only he was a man, not a woman. It was weird."

Weathersbane pursed his lips. "Don't go after him."

"What?" said Logan. "But we can't let him run loose—"

"I need you here," said Weathersbane. "I'll send others after him. A team. But you stay here. It's even more important that we close the breach."

"Not today," said Logan. "I'm exhausted. So is Petra. Besides, we've got Estelle to think about."

"Yes," said Weathersbane, turning to look at the girl on the table. "Do you think she's all right?"

Logan strode over to her and took her wrist in his hand. "She's got a pulse. She's alive. She was conscious when we pulled her out, but then she went into a faint or something."

"There was something wrong with her eyes," I said.

"What?" said Weathersbane. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know," I said. "Did you see it, Logan?"

"See what?" said Logan.

I pointed at my own eyes. "No pupils. No irises. Just..." I grimaced, thinking about it. It had been horrid.

"We need to get Estelle to the healer's," said Weathersbane.

"I'm on it," said Logan.

Weathersbane turned to me. "And you, why don't you run down to the dormitory wing and tell Estelle's brother that she's been found."

"Estelle has a brother?" I said.

* * *

Reid opened the door to his dormitory. He didn't have a shirt on, and his hair was a mess. He yawned, scratching his bare stomach. He'd obviously been asleep. "Seriously, why are you pounding on my door? It's not even noon."

I smiled tightly at him. "I'm only here because Weathersbane asked me to come."

Reid blinked. "Hey. Petra. It's you." He grinned. "Did you change your mind about us hanging out, because—"

"It's your sister," I said.

"Estelle?" he said.

I nodded. "Logan pulled her out of the breach this morning."

Reid disappeared from the door.

"Reid?" I said. I pushed the door open and stepped inside his suite.

I didn't see him anywhere. His living area was mostly tidy, except for a few crumpled up potato chip bags on his coffee table. Where the hell was he? I took another step inside.

The door to his bedroom stood slightly ajar.

I went over there, and gave it a tiny shove. "Reid?"

Reid looked up at me from the other side of the room. He was taking off his pajama pants.

"Oh, shit," I said, backing away.

"Nothing you haven't seen before," he said. "I'm getting dressed, okay? And then you're going to take me to Estelle."

"Well, she's unconscious right now."

"Like a coma?"

"I don't know," I said. I decided not to tell him about the weird thing that had happened with her eyes. I didn't think that was going to make him feel very good.

Reid emerged from his room, dressed in jeans and a shirt. His shirt was inside out. I decided not to say anything about that either.

"I'm ready," he said. "Let's go."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Reid sat next to Estelle, clutching her hand.

The school was equipped with a magical healer's office. I'd never been to a magic healer before, but Gran had talked to me about them. They weren't always really good at dealing with typical physical ailments like a cold or something, but they were the only person you wanted to visit if you had a magical sickness. I guessed Estelle was here because whatever was wrong with her was probably magical in nature.

We were in a partitioned area, with curtains dividing us off from the rest of the place. Kind of like a hospital, only the curtains were bright red and covered in magical symbols and Latin words. Estelle lay on a narrow bed. She was hooked up to a set of tubes, almost like an IV. Only these tubes went into her mouth and nose, and they were connected to different cauldrons—one containing a green potion and the other pumping purplish glittering vapor into her lungs.

"Damn it, sis," Reid was whispering to her. He seemed on the verge of tears. "Why'd you have to go off on your own? You know it's not safe."

"Um, I'm going to let you guys have some privacy," I said, backing away. I started to move through the curtain.

"Hey, no, wait," said Reid. "You can stay. I mean, there's not much point in giving us privacy. We can't have a conversation or anything."

"Um... okay." He was distraught. He got what he wanted. I stayed. I felt out of place, though, so I hung back, and I looked down at the floor instead of looking at Reid.

It was quiet for several minutes.

"I've always been close to my sister," said Reid suddenly.

I looked up.

He wasn't looking at me. He was staring at Estelle's motionless form. "Maybe it's because we're twins. Maybe it's because our mother is a headcase."

"Your mother's a headcase too?" I said. I'd asked Logan about this before, and he had said it would all be explained. Maybe that explanation was coming.

Now Reid did look at me, drawing his brows together. "What kind of headcase is your mom?"

"She's, um, depressed a lot. And confused. Like sometimes she doesn't know who I am, or sometimes she talks to things that... that..."

"That aren't there?"

"Yeah," I said.

"My mom does that too," said Reid. "Near as Estelle and I can figure, she was fine until she gave birth to us. People don't say that to our faces or anything, but sometimes my uncle gets drunk and says things. It's pretty clear he blames me and Estelle for ruining my mom."

"That's the same with me," I said. "It's like going into labor with me was too much for her or something. And my gran never talks about what it was like. If I ever ask her about it, she gets short with me and changes the subject really fast."

Reid set Estelle's hand on her chest. "So, that's kind of weird."

"Yeah, it is," I said.

He stood up. "What about your dad?"

"I don't have a dad," I said. "I mean, I obviously do, but I don't know who he is."

"Yeah, me either," he said.

"Do you think all of that means something?"

"I wonder if our mothers did some sort of magic when they were pregnant, something that affected us, made us what we are," he said. "Maybe it had something to do with neither of us having fathers. I mean, my mom was young when she got pregnant."

"Mine too," I said. "Younger than I am now."

"Yeah, me too," he said. "So, maybe they both tried to do... I don't know... love spells or something to make our fathers fall in love with them. Maybe those love spells backfired. Although, I guess I didn't ask if your mother does magic."

"She does," I said. "I come from a long line of witches."

He raised his eyebrow. "Witches? Really?"

I tilted my chin. "That's what we want to be called."

"Okay," he said, shrugging. "In the circles I travel in, it's considered an insult is all."

I shrugged right back.

He looked back at Estelle. "Maybe it doesn't matter how we got this magic in the first place. The fact is, we do have it, and it's dangerous."

"Because the professors in the school send us into dangerous situations," I said.

"Yeah," he muttered, gazing at his sister. "She was trying to save the world, and that's why she went in there alone. She thought if she did it alone, she could protect me. And look at her now. And you know who never gets his hands dirty?"

"Who?" I said.

"Professor Weathersbane," he said darkly.

"I kind of noticed that," I said.

He grimaced. "Hey, I know it's not even noon yet, but you want to get a drink?"

I considered. "Why not? It's been a hell of a day already."

* * *

Reid peered into his nearly empty glass. It was three in the afternoon, and the two of us were sitting in the balcony at Barley and Bells, both pleasantly buzzed. We'd ordered up a bit of food as well—the bar served wings and fried foods—because I needed a pick-me-up after the magic I'd expelled earlier. "Anyway, what I'm saying is that Weathersbane just sits behind his desk and orders us around, and he never lifts a finger to help."

"Never?" I said.

"Never," he said. "He says it's because we're the only ones who can fight those creatures or close the breach. Supposedly, he's completely useless when he tries to fight. But I can't help but wonder if—" He broke off, looking over my shoulder.

I turned to see a girl about our age stalking across the balcony towards our table.

Reid cringed.

"Who's that?" I said.

But she was at our table now. She bent over, placing her hands on the table and got right in Reid's face. "Seriously? You're already back here with another girl?"

Reid pointed at me. "She's not a girl. She's a fellow student. We're here for school."

Exactly how did being a fellow student mean I wasn't a girl?

The girl turned to me. "You should know that this guy is a royal bastard."

"Hey," said Reid, grabbing her arm. "We had fun, right?"

She shook him off, straightening. "Oh, my God, no. I never touched you. It was my best friend Gloria. You poured it on thick with her and then never bothered to call her. You can't even keep track of which girls you've slept with and which you haven't?"

Reid spread his hands. "You know, in my defense, I was drunk, and, um, you know, you have one of those faces."

The girl rolled her eyes. "You're unbelievable."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," he said.

She shook her head at him. "I'm not wasting any more of time on you." She turned and flounced away.

"My best to Gloria," Reid called after her.

I gaped at him. "Really?"

"What?" he said.

I took a drink of my beer. "You're shameless."

"Look," he said, "I'm sorry about the other night with you and me."

"You're sorry?" I said. "I was the one who ran out on you."

"Yeah, but that was a good thing. I didn't think it through before I made a move. I never do. I mean, if you'd been a normal girl, then you would have been all hurt, and it would have been hell for us to work together from here on out."

"Normal girl?" I said, eyeing him. "Seriously?"

"You know what I mean."

"I don't, actually."

He shrugged. "I'm an asshole sometimes, okay? I can't help it."

"Then who can?"

"I don't know, no one, I guess. It's in my nature. I act before I think. Talk before I think. Whatever. All I'm saying is that I'm glad things are cool between us."

I guessed they were. I'd honestly been able to not think about the fact we'd slept together until now. I found I didn't want to think about it now. I felt a little ashamed of myself that I'd gone to bed with this guy.

"They are cool, right?" he said.

I took another sip of my drink. "Sure."

"Hey." He lowered his voice and he looked straight into my eyes. "I'm not a bad guy. I have my faults, but I'm not all bad."

"You don't have to convince me."

He raised his eyebrows. "You want to have sex again?"

"No," I said. "I don't."

"I just thought maybe you would. We had fun, right?"

"Like I said, I don't like reruns," I said. "Can we stop talking about this? I don't want to think about it anymore." I basically wanted to pretend it had all never happened. Ugh. Sometimes, I made really stupid decisions.

"Okay," he said. "Let's change the subject. Uh, what were you doing when you found Estelle?"

"Trying to close the breach," I said.

"By yourself?"

"I've done it before."

His eyes widened. "Seriously? You can close breaches?"

"I don't know if I can or not," I said.

"Why are we sitting here having drinks?" he said. "Let's go close the fucking breach."

"Um, Logan and I are supposed to do it tomorrow," I said. "After we rest up."

"Screw that, let's do it now. If we close that breach, all our problems go away."

"They do?"

He stood up. "Come on. Let's go."

* * *

Which was how I found myself back in the room in the library (which was easy to get into, considering that it had no door anymore), stitching up the breach.

It was eerie in there. Quiet.

I didn't like it.

I stitched. Reid covered the door. Some skitters had come through the breach when I'd used magic to conjure the needle and thread that I needed to close up the breach, but Reid had conjured himself a gun with bullets like Logan's, and he'd shot them all dead.

After that? Nothing.

"You about done?" Reid said.

"I'm getting there," I said. I actually was pretty close to being done. The breech was nearly stitched closed. I kept going.

"Like how much longer, you think?"

"I don't know." I shot a glance over my shoulder. "Why do you ask?" Then I squinted. "Where's your gun?"

"It disintegrated," he said.

"What?"

"Doesn't the stuff you conjure disintegrate after a while?"

"No," I said. "It does not."

"Ever?"

"I've never seen in disintegrate. Sometimes I don't want it anymore, so I vanish it, but—"

"What's vanishing it?" he said.

"I just sort of send it back to wherever it came from," I said.

"Well, that's cool," he said. "No wonder you're the one who can close the breaches. You're more powerful than all of us, even Estelle, and she's a lot more powerful than me. Stuff she conjures stays solid for hours sometimes."

I went back to stitching. "I didn't know that I was more powerful."

"Hey, it's not like I'm threatened or anything. Actually, I think it's hot."

"Reid, I'm not going to sleep with you again."

"Right," he said. "And that's cool. We'd be better as friends, I think."

"Yes," I said, continuing to stitch.

"Friends with benefits?"

"Reid, please."

"Okay," he said. "So, anyway, I was asking how long it was going to be because I thought that if it was going to be awhile, I'd conjure another gun, but if I did that, it would probably call more skitters. But if I didn't conjure anything, and something came through the breach, I might be unarmed and—"

"I'm done," I said. I stood up, surveying my work. The breach was stitched up. I shook my head. "It didn't work."

"Looks closed to me."

"No, you can see the stitches." In front of me, it looked as if fabric patterned with books and floor and ceiling had been sewn together. "Last time, it closed up and there was no sign it had ever even been there."

"Oh," he said. "What did you do differently this time than last time?"

"Nothing," I said. "This is exactly what I did. I mean, there are no creatures coming through to fight, so maybe—"

Rip.

The world ahead of me bulged. Something was behind the breach. The stitches strained and then gave way, and tentacles came through the breach.

"Shit," said Reid. He reached out his hand and a gun appeared in it.

The octo-monster climbed through into our reality, its tentacles waving and reaching for us.

I conjured a gun as well.

Reid shot at the thing. A bright green blast, but when the bullet hit the creature, there was no effect.

"Damn it," said Reid. "I'm tapped out."

"What do you mean?" I took aim at the thing and pulled the trigger.

"When I use magic too much, sometimes the things I conjure look real and feel real, but they have no actual effect on the world."

Oh. Great.

The bullet from my gun exploded into the creature. It made a high-pitched keening noise.

I shot again.

It connected.

But the thing was still coming, so I just kept shooting. I emptied the gun into the monster.

And then it lay on the floor, still twitching, its tentacles splayed out on the floor.

"What the hell is going on?" came a voice.

Reid and I turned.

Logan was in the doorway.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Logan was pacing in front of the door. "You don't go in there on your own, you got that?"

Reid and I were standing in the library, heads bowed as Logan screamed at us.

"Answer me," said Logan.

"Yeah, okay," I said.

Read raised his head. "Uh, actually, I think we were just trying to fix all this."

"By nearly getting yourselves killed?" said Logan. "Estelle went in there on her own, and look what happened to her."

"Hey, low blow," said Reid, folding his arms over his chest. "Besides, we weren't on our own. We were in there together."

Logan looked back and forth between us. "Right. Together."

"Not like together together," I suddenly felt the need to point out. I didn't want anyone to think I was involved with Reid, not even super-serious gargoyle Logan. "Just, we were trying to close the breach."

"And you failed," said Logan. "So, tomorrow morning, bright and early, you and I will be back at it."

"Actually, I don't see the point," I said.

"Why not?" said Logan.

"Because I stitched the whole thing together, and it didn't work," I said.

"Yeah, she did," said Reid. "I saw it."

"So... maybe I didn't close the other breach before. Maybe it just closed on its own or something," I said.

Logan made a face. "Well, that's not good news."

"She is crazy powerful, though," said Reid. "Did you know that the objects she conjures don't disintegrate?"

"Actually, I did," said Logan, and his hand went to his belt, where the knife I'd conjured the first night I'd met him was hanging from a sheath. He'd kept that? He stroked the hilt of the knife thoughtfully. "I've got to talk to Henrik about this. We'll see what our next move is, okay?"

"Who's Henrik?" I said.

"That's Weathersbane," said Reid, his voice sharp and ironic. "Good old Henrik."

* * *

Professor Weathersbane sat behind his desk, making a tent with his fingers and resting them against his nose. He stared at us, narrowing his eyes.

Tatum, Reid, and I stood side by side, facing him. We were all a little bleary-eyed, considering that he'd called us here at 7:30 in the morning. I wanted coffee, especially because I was still feeling a little hungover from my afternoon drinking session with Reid. Which was utterly unfair of the universe, considering I'd stopped drinking in the middle of the afternoon. If I'd gotten a decent night's sleep, I'm sure I would have felt fine.

"So, um, when are we going to go to, like, class, Professor?" I asked. "This is a school, right? There are classes?"

Weathersbane lowered his hands and placed them on top of his desk. "This is class."

I looked around. "It doesn't look like—"

"Individualized curriculum, written especially for the three of you," said Weathersbane.

"Yeah, and it coincidentally also happens to be about sacrificing us so that you can save your own ass," said Reid.

Weathersbane's eyebrows shot up. "What happened to your sister was tragic, Mr. Darkmore, but we have every hope she will recover. And it is not just my ass that needs saving. It's everyone's in the world. So, if you three could attempt to take this seriously, I would appreciate it."

"Who says we aren't taking it seriously?" said Tatum.

"I know you are, Ms. Booth," said Weathersbane, "but then, being homeless without the school does tend to be motivating, doesn't it?"

"Hey," I said, folding my arms over my chest. "You don't have to throw that in her face."

Weathersbane sighed. "No, you're right, forgive me. I shouldn't have said that. It's only that I'm at a loss. We are quite literally at square one with these breaches."

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry about that. I wish I could have closed it."

"It's not your fault," said Weathersbane. "We just have to work harder to find a solution. Now, I've been up all night searching our libraries for answers about the breaches."

"A sleepless night?" said Reid. "You really have put your life on the line for us, Professor."

Weathersbane went on as if he hadn't heard him. "But all I've been able to find is that there is some book in there somewhere that contains an answer to how to close a breach."

"There is?" I said.

"Apparently, it's happened before," said Weathersbane.

"What has? A breach?" said Reid.

"Yes," said Weathersbane. "I found an entry in the previous dean's journal that spoke about closing breaches. But I was a professor at the college then, and I had no idea about the breaches being open, so he must not have spoken out about the danger. A good move, probably, considering the panic that would be induced if it were common knowledge. However, it puts me at a serious disadvantage, because I know nothing of the breaches or how to close them."

"But you said there was a book?" said Tatum.

"That's right," said Weathersbane. "I need the three of you to find it."

"What are you going to do?" said Reid.

"I'm going to run this institution of higher learning, Mr. Darkmore," said Weathersbane. "Would you like to trade jobs? Because I'd much rather look through the library with three other people to share the burden of my labor."

Reid made a noise in the back of his throat.

Weathersbane held up a hand to stop him from speaking. "Off with you. All of you. To the library. Now."

* * *

"So, wait," I said. "There aren't librarians in this place?"

"No," said Tatum. "Who needs librarians when you can just use magic to find what you need to find?"

"But I saw a librarian at the desk when I came in," I said.

"Oh, sure," said Reid. "She can check out books and things, but she doesn't reshelve them or anything, so she doesn't know where anything is."

"How are the books reshelved?" I said.

"It's a reshelving spell, I guess," said Reid.

"Oh," I said. "And that works well?"

"I guess so," said Reid. "You know, I don't usually spend much time in here."

The three of us were standing in front of the door to the room where the breach was contained. Yeah, the door. There was a new door. And a new cage. And twice as many deadbolts as before. Not that I was planning to go back in that place, because I had no intention of doing that. If I never went in there again, I'd be just fine with that.

I wasn't even sure why we'd come here. I guessed I'd come here naturally. This was the spot I always came to if I came into the library.

"Okay," I said, turning my back on the door deliberately. "So, if there are no librarians, how do we find books?"

"We use spells," said Tatum.

"Oh, great," I said. "I guess you guys are good with spells?"

Tatum shrugged. "I don't even have a talisman anymore. I'm conflicted about them on a moral level."

"Why?" said Reid, looking her over.

"Because they come from dead dragons," she said.

"So?"

"So, dragons are people," said Tatum. "I mean, would you wear human bones around your neck?"

"If they gave me magic, I would," said Reid.

Tatum rolled her eyes.

Reid reached into his shirt and pulled out a talisman. It was a dragon tooth on a leather strip. "I have a talisman."

I took mine out. "Me too. But I don't know much about spellwork."

"Well, a simple locater spell should work," said Reid.

"Okay," I said. "Great. So, do one."

"Uh, sure," he said. He shut his eyes and wrapped his hand around his talisman. "Venite! Venite liberi..." He opened his eyes.

"What was that?" I said.

He chewed on his lip. "I'm not sure. I think I got the word for books wrong. I'm always confusing it with the word for children."

"What's that mean?" I said. "Kids are going to show up now?" I looked around, waiting for a bunch of small pattering feet and dirty hands to come rushing at us.

"I'm just trying to say, 'Come to me book about the breach.'"

"So, why can't you say that?" I said. "Why does it have to be in whatever language you were using?"

"Latin," he said. "Years of Latin and I still can't speak it."

"Libros," said Tatum. "You want libros."

"Right, that's the word for book," said Reid. "You know the word for breach?"

Tatum shook her head.

"We need a spell to find a Latin dictionary," said Reid.

I furrowed my brow. "What if we just tried our primal magic?"

"Well, there's the skitters," said Tatum.

"Both of you conjure guns and bullets to deal with that," I said. "I'll conjure the book." I started to try to reach for the book, forming a clear thought of the thing I wanted—

I jerked backwards, pain throbbing through my skull.

"What?" said Tatum.

"I don't know," I said. "I think it's blocked somehow. I couldn't even get a fix on it before something kicked me out. Maybe it's warded." I knew about wards. My gran had taught be about those. We'd never found wards tough enough to keep out the creatures forever, but sometimes we set some that could slow them down.

"Damn it," said Reid.

"Did you guys conjure guns?" I asid.

"Not yet," said Tatum.

"Yeah, it's not as easy for us as it is for you," said Reid. "It takes some pretty intense concentration."

I sighed, although I guessed it was good, because if they'd conjured stuff, it would have drawn more skitters.

And then I looked up at the shelf in front of me, and it had a label. It said, Cauldrons and Potions. I pointed. "Look!"

"What?" said Reid.

"They're labeled," I said. "It's not impossible to find things in this library after all."

"You think there's going to be a sign that says How to Close a Breach?" said Tatum.

"Well, we're never going to know if we don't look for it," I said.

So, we ended up spending the rest of the morning wandering through the maze-like shelves of books in the library, looking for something that might help us. The shelves and sections were labeled, but they weren't organized in any way—at least not a way that we could discern. Which meant that we spent all our time wandering around, and not finding anything.

Around lunch time, we were starving, and we thought we'd head down to the dining hall, but on our way out, we met Logan coming up. He had sandwiches for us, so we couldn't leave.

Perfect. Just perfect.

But while we had him there, we asked about spells.

"If it was that easy, don't you think Henrik would have done it himself?" said Logan.

We all groaned.

"So there's an easier way besides wandering around and just hoping we're going to run across it, though, right?"

"Probably," said Logan.

"Probably?"

"Well, if you figure it out, let Henrik know," said Logan. "He couldn't think of anything."

By the end of the day, we'd all come up completely empty. We sneaked out of the library at dinner time, in case Logan was skulking around with more sandwiches, trying to get us to stay in that place for longer. I swear, the place was huge. It took up two whole floors of the building.

We didn't meet Logan, though, and we were all glad to be eating our dinner in peace.

So, of course, that's when Logan showed back up again.

I was sitting at a table with Reid and Tatum, and we were all eating french fries and burgers, which had been in the buffet line that night. Well, okay, Tatum was eating some bean burger or something, but Reid and I were eating normal burgers. The food was tasting so freaking good, and I had to think it was because it was such a relief to come back from that boring, pointless day in the library.

I never wanted to go back there again.

"There you guys are."

We all looked up. There was Logan. He was wearing a black tank top that clung to every dip and swell of his chest and stomach. I looked at him—that body, that face, those freaking wings—and I was struck speechless. He was too gorgeous to be real.

"I've been looking all over for you," said Logan.

Reid pointed at him with a fry. "If you think we're going back up to that library tonight, you're insane."

"Nah, not tonight," said Logan. "But tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow."

I glared at him. He might be insanely attractive, but he was a jackass for sending me back to that damned library. "I'm not going," I said. I picked up my burger and took a really big bit of it. I chewed, and gave Logan an even stare.

"You are," he said. "Because we have to find that book. Also, you and me? We're training tonight."

I nearly choked on the bite of burger I was chewing. "What?" I said, but my voice was muffled because my mouth was full.

"You need to train," he said. "You're powerful, but it's all raw material. It's not usable unless you can hone your magic."

I chewed and swallowed. "I try not to use my magic."

"Imagine how much better you'd be with it if you did use it."

"When I use it, those skitter things always show up."

Logan folded his arms over his chest. "So?"

"So," I said, "it's a stupid idea to use it. Even Gran always said that."

"Come on," he said.

"No," I said. "I'm eating here."

He glanced down at my plate. "After dinner, then. I'll meet you on the street out in front of the building." Then he strode out.

My shoulders sagged. "This cannot be happening to me." I looked back and forth between Reid and Tatum. "Do you guys have to do this training stuff too?"

"Uh, no," said Reid, peering after Logan. "I'm thinking he made it up to be alone with you."

I gave him a funny look. "What?"

Tatum laughed. "Oh, I'd like to be alone with him."

"I see the way he looks at you," said Reid.

"Yeah, super seriously," I said. "Like he's only thinking about saving the world and following the rules."

"It's true," said Tatum.

"Whatever," said Reid. "Guy wants to bang you."

I threw a fry at him. "Must you be so crude?"

"Hey, I want to bang you too."

"Not going to happen," I said.

"Not again, anyway," he said, sulking. He picked up the fry I'd tossed at him and ate it.

"If you don't want to train with Logan, I'll do it," said Tatum.

"You think he'd let us switch?" I said.

"Not in a million years," said Reid.

"Well, I'm not going to meet him," I said. "There's no way I would do that. After dinner, let's all go out to Barley and Bells for drinks instead."

"Do you think he gets sweaty?" said Tatum, getting a far off look in her eyes. "If he's made of stone, does that mean his dick is always hard?"

"Eww, please," said Reid. "I'm eating here."

I ate some fries. "I don't know," I mused. I had to admit that thinking about all that gave me a little shiver.

"I mean," said Tatum, "you should find out, if he's going to bang you."

I picked up my burger. "Do you think he does? Is Reid right?"

"Nah," she said. "Reid wants to have sex with every woman he sees, and he thinks all guys are the same way."

"I don't want to have sex with every woman," said Reid.

"Um, I beg to differ," said Tatum.

Reid considered. He looked Tatum up and down. "What are you doing later? You want to have sex with me?"

Tatum turned away, making a grossed-out face. "No, no, and no. Also, I rest my case."

"I thought we were going out for drinks later," I said.

"To get to the bar, we have to go through the front door," said Tatum. "He'll be waiting for you there."

"Good point," I muttered. "Is there a back door to this place somewhere?"

Tatum scrunched up her face, thinking. Then she brightened. "Actually, yes."

CHAPTER NINE

So, fifteen minutes later, we emerged onto the alley behind the school through a door in the back of the auditorium. We kept to the alley to walk down the block, and then crossed over to get to Barley and Bells.

But as I was going in the door, there was Logan.

Busted.

I groaned.

"Ooh, sorry," said Reid. "Guess you've got to train after all."

Tatum stepped forward. "Listen, Logan, I just want to make it clear that I'm utterly okay with being trained by you, if you know what I mean." She winked.

Logan's eyes widened, and he coughed.

I tried to use that moment to my advantage, to get inside the bar and away from him.

But he grabbed me by the arm and tugged me back. He did it somewhat forcefully, as well, so I ended up colliding with him, with all of his hard, firm muscles. It was like hitting marble.

But it was warm. He was warm.

I looked up into his eyes, my lips parting.

He let go of me like I burned him. He shoved his hands in his pockets. "This is about helping you with your magic, that's all."

"I want help with my magic," said Tatum.

Logan glanced at her. "Sorry. This is for Petra only."

"Fine," said Tatum, glaring at me. "Lucky witch."

I didn't feel very lucky.

But both Reid and Tatum ducked into the bar, leaving me alone on the streets with Logan.

"So," I said. "What's this training all about?"

"You need to learn how to be more proficient at conjuring and also at dealing with the consequences."

I squinted at him. "Okay. And how are we going to do that?"

"By practicing."

Great. That sounded fun. Dealing with the consequences? I had no idea what that meant exactly. "Why is it only me? Don't Reid and Tatum need to be more proficient too?"

"Probably," said Logan. "But I don't call the shots. This is what Henrik wants, so this is what we do."

"Yeah, what's up with that, anyway? Why are you the mages' little errand boy?"

Logan's mouth twisted. "I'm not their errand boy."

Ooh. Must have hit a nerve there. I opened my mouth to press my advantage.

"No more time for talk," he said. "Let's get going." He took me by the arm and dragged me down the street.

I longingly looked over my shoulder at the bar, wishing I was inside with my friends.

Logan took me to the alley behind the school. The alley was narrow and dark. There was a set of fire escape stairs hanging off one of the buildings. Otherwise, there wasn't much of anything back there except a few dumpsters. Logan took some small silver coin-like objects out of his pocket and placed them at the end of the alley. Then he strode down to the other end of the alley and put some more down there.

"Wards," he explained. "We don't want anyone wandering in here, and we don't want the skitters escaping before you get a chance to kill them."

"I'm killing skitters?" I said.

"I understand you can conjure a gun and bullets," he said. "I find that fascinating. You could have done that all along—"

"No," I said. "I can't conjure something I don't know about."

"I thought that's what you did with the breach in your mother's room. Conjured a needle and thread to close it, and you weren't sure what you needed."

"Yeah, well, that obviously didn't work," I said.

"Hmm," he said. "Doesn't matter. Let's start with that. Conjure yourself a gun."

I almost refused. I didn't want to fight those damned skitters and I didn't want to even be here. But I was beginning to realize the refusal ship had sailed a long time ago. If I didn't want to do this, I shouldn't have come to this school. For better or worse, I was the only one that could close that breach, and if this training was part of it, I had to make it work.

I reached out to the ether and called on my weapon and the gun materialized in my hand.

From overhead, I heard the noise of the skitters. They were on top of the fire escape stairs. Ten of them at least. They began tumbling down onto my head.

I brushed one off and then moved to the other side of the alley, brandishing the gun. I pulled the trigger.

A flash of green light.

One skitter down.

Nine to go.

Except it wasn't nine, because the minute I got that batch taken care of, Logan make me start conjuring other things. At first, I was simply conjuring different weapons. Battle axes, automatic machine guns full of the venom bullets, swords with the venom smeared on their blades. Each new conjuring brought more skitters. I hated the creatures—the way they looked, the way they sounded, how there were so many of them, always coming. I killed them all, but I didn't get out unscathed.

I was hit more than once by their venom. I had burns on my arms and legs and chest.

Logan didn't even help either. He stood off to one side and watched, arms folded, his face an expressionless mask. He didn't criticize me when I made mistakes or congratulate me when I succeeded. He only barked out orders as soon as I'd dispatched all the skitters.

Then Logan asked me to conjure an armored tank.

I looked around the alley. "It won't fit."

"Conjure one that will fit," he said.

I rolled my head on my shoulders. I was sore all over, and tired. "I've never conjured anything so big."

"Well, all the more reason to find out what you can do."

I closed my eyes. I didn't usually do that when conjuring, but this seemed hard, like it would take extra effort. I pictured the tank, requested it from the ether.

A staggering wave of exhaustion suddenly went through me.

I opened my eyes.

There was the tank.

Logan went up to it and put his hand on the side of it. He made a face.

"What?" I said.

Logan pushed at the side of the tank. The material gave under his hand, crumpling like aluminum foil.

And then the whole tank just... collapsed on itself, metal groaning as it did so. Then it disappeared.

I panted. "I guess I can't do things that big."

"Guess not," said Logan.

A strange, eerie growling sound behind me. The noise seemed to cut through my skin and tie my guts in knots. I turned, heart in my throat. Something shadowy and hulking was coming down the alley. It looked almost like a panther, sleek and black, but it was twice the size of any panther. And it didn't have a panther face. Instead its head was hollow with holes for its eyes and a slash for its mouth, and inside, an unearthly green light danced around, casting out beams of light like a roving searchlight.

Skitters were clinging to its back and sides, falling off as it moved. They chattered and clicked their way across the alley toward us.

I didn't have a gun anymore, so I conjured the machine gun I'd had before. I pulled the trigger and it rattled out bullets.

But it was the same as when Reid had tried to use a gun when we tried to close the breach. The bullets hit, but they had no effect. I was tapped out. Apparently, it could happen to me too.

Logan was next to me, ripping the machine gun away and pressing the cold metal of a pistol into my hands.

I took aim and began to shoot.

He did too.

We hit waved after wave of the skitters, taking them down. There had to be a hundred of the things.

I ran out of bullets.

Logan gave me more.

I reloaded. I started to shoot again.

He reloaded.

He shot some more.

And then the skitters were gone, but the hollow panther-thing was on us, and the slit at its mouth looked like a demented jack-o-lantern grin.

I shot its head.

The bullet went in through one of its eye holes. It bounced around in its skull and then settled somewhere, adding to the glow inside its head.

Logan put two bullets in the thing's torso.

It let out a keening noise and stumbled.

I shot its torso too.

We emptied our guns into the thing until it stopped moving and twitched out its death throes on the floor of the alley.

Then I dropped to my knees and lay down on the ground. Exhausted didn't even touch the tiredness I felt.

"Petra?" Logan's voice was alarmed.

"Can we be done now?" I murmured.

* * *

"Logan is the devil," I said the next morning when I got to the library.

Reid and Tatum were already there, sitting at a table with an open book in between them.

"Hey, you," said Tatum. "I tried to wake you up this morning, but you slapped me away and called me a dirty hussy."

I sat down at the table. I had a to-go coffee from the dining hall, but I'd woken up too late for any actual breakfast, and I was starving. I hadn't eaten since my late-night binge after training before bed. I'd needed something after doing all that magic. Luckily, it was only an hour until lunch, so I was hoping I could make it that long. "Dirty hussy?" I said. "I actually said that?"

"Something like that." She grinned at me. "Seriously, you okay?"

"No," I said, feeling sulky. I held up both my arms so that they could see the scabs from where I'd been hit by skitter venom. "Logan pushed me until my magic gave out last night. Apparently, I'm just like you, Reid. If I use too much, it gives out. Also, I can't conjure tanks."

"He made you try to conjure a tank?" said Reid.

"Too big," I said. I nodded at the book. "What do you guys have there?"

"Tatum decided to get over herself about using talismans—"

"It's not right," she said. "Dragons deserve respect, and you can't even be sure if your talisman was taken from a dragon killed by violence."

"Yeah, well, anyway," said Reid, "she did a spell. She's good at that shit."

"She was in a legit coven in Baltimore," I said.

Tatum made a face. "More like I was held captive in a coven."

"So, Tatum did a spell, and you found the information on how to close a breach?" I was hopeful that we were finally getting somewhere.

"Not exactly," said Reid. "She did a spell and this book appeared." He pushed it across the table toward me.

I peered down at it. The page on the left hand side was blank. The page on the right hand side had words. I read them aloud. "'What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away?'" I looked up at them, raising my eyebrows. "It's a riddle?"

"Turn to the next page," said Tatum.

I did. Same thing. Left page blank, same riddle on the right page. I flipped through the book. The riddle was printed all the way through the book. "Okay, weird."

"Yeah," said Reid.

"So, what's it mean?" I said.

"I don't know," said Tatum.

"We're clueless."

"It's a newspaper, right?" I said.

"No, you're thinking of black and white and read all over," said Tatum.

"Right," I said. "I get those confused." I sat back in my chair. "Black when you buy it..." I tried to think of things that changed color when you used them. Instead, all I could think about was that I was really hungry. I drank some coffee.

"All I can think of is maybe like something electronic?" said Reid. "With red lights?"

"Why would it be gray when you throw it away?" said Tatum.

"You throw it out," I said. "It's something that you use up, like toilet paper."

"It's not toilet paper," said Reid. "That would be like white when you buy it and when you use—"

"Stop," I said, holding up a hand.

Reid laughed.

I grimaced. "Uh... what are things that you buy and then have to throw away?"

"Paper towels?" said Tatum. "Which doesn't work either."

"Maybe it's like a drug you inject into your veins, and that's why it's red when you use it?" said Reid. "Like heroin or something."

"Heroin is white," said Tatum.

"You know this from personal experience?" said Reid.

"No," said Tatum.

I held up a finger. "I have an idea."

"What?" said Reid.

I whipped out my phone. "Let's google it."

"Isn't that cheating?" said Reid.

I shrugged. "Okay, Google," I said into my phone. No way was I typing that out. The phone beeped. "'What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away?'" A pause and then search results filled my screen. I scrolled. "Charcoal," I said triumphantly. "The answer is charcoal."

"Oh!" said Reid.

Tatum nodded, smiling. "Yeah, it is. That makes sense."

I set down my phone.

We were all quiet.

"Okay, great," said Reid. "It's charcoal. Now what?"

That was when someone screamed.

We all stood up, looking in the direction of the scream.

It was quiet now.

I motioned with one hand for Tatum and Reid to follow me, and then I began creeping in the direction we'd heard the scream.

We went past rows and rows of books.

Around each one, we turned to look down them, half expecting them to be full of chattering skitters.

But there was only carpet and books.

Then we turned a corner.

And there was the body of the librarian who'd been behind the desk the first time I'd come in. The one with the bun and the skirt suit. She lay on her back, but her hips were twisted unnaturally so that they were turned on their side. There was blood seeping out of her stomach, onto her creamy blouse, spattered on her clothes and face. Her eyes were wide open and terrified and her mouth pulled back in a silent cry.

CHAPTER TEN

Reid screamed then. He let out this throaty rasping yell that echoed against the ceiling.

Tatum put her hand to her mouth, looking ill.

I decided to stop looking at the body of the librarian. I stepped over her, reaching out into the ether. A gun appeared in my hand, the machine gun I'd conjured last night. I hoped it was going to work this time. I hoisted the thing up so that it was pointing at the ceiling and I trotted out into the main room of the library, where the computer lab and the main desk were.

Everyone in the room was dead.

There were maybe six people, their bodies flung over tables and chairs or crumpled on the floor. They all looked broken, like twigs snapped by a harsh wind.

In the middle of the room stood the thing that had come out of the breach—the scribble thing. It was composed of coiled black strands, all flitting and moving faster than the eye could follow them. The strands of the thing were spread out all over, in the corners of the room.

And facing the thing down was Professor Weathersbane. He had one hand at his chest, clutching a talisman that hung around his neck. His other hand was outstretched and he was muttering something. All the muscles in his body seemed tense, as if he was struggling hard against an unseen force. A trickle of blood was coming out of his nose.

The strands were wrapping themselves around Weathersbane. They wound around his ankles and his arms and his neck.

And then they tightened.

Weathersbane's mutter grew louder, and now I could hear that he was saying something in Latin.

I needed to help him, but how?

I shot at the scribble thing with the machine gun. Bullet followed bullet in a rat-a-tat-tat.

But the scribbly strands avoided the bullets with agility.

Now Weathersbane was shouting.

And the strands tightened around his limbs again.

Weathersbane's arms were sliced off at the elbow, his legs at the knees. And his head toppled off, the Latin words suddenly silenced.

It was my turn to scream.

The scribbly thing solidified, turning back into the man that it had been when it ran off. It turned and locked eyes with me.

I shot it again.

But its skin parted, turning back into scribbles, letting the bullets pass through him harmlessly.

He tilted his head to one side and smiled at me.

The smile made me feel cold all over.

For one terrible moment, I was sure he was coming for me.

But instead, he turned away and went through the door of the library, stepping over Weathersbane's severed head as he walked out.

* * *

"Should we go after him?" Reid said. He was shaking all over, but there was a fierceness in his eyes that I'd seen the night he'd convinced me to try to close the breach. Reid was brave, I realized. Braver than me. I wanted to turn and run, hide somewhere with the covers over my head.

"You saw what happened with the bullets," said Tatum. Her voice was too high, like a little girl's.

"Maybe we need something besides bullets." Reid conjured a double bladed ax and swung it through the air.

I swallowed. But if Reid could do it, so could I. Vanishing the machine gun, I conjured a similar ax. "Let's go," I said in a low voice.

Reid and I stalked forward.

Tatum's voice behind us. "Guys..."

I turned to look at her.

And she gulped and conjured her own ax.

We hurried across room and out the door of the library. When we emerged into the hallway, we didn't see the scribbly thing anywhere.

"Hey, Scribbles!" I called out, using a bravado I didn't feel. "Come out, come out, wherever you are. We have axes we'd like to introduce you to."

The door to the library was at the end of the hall, so there was really only one way he could have gone. We turned and followed the hallway toward the stairwell.

Logan came up the steps just as we arrived. He looked us over. "Where is it?"

"We don't know," I said. "We're looking for it." If it wasn't in the hallway and it hadn't gone down the stairs, then what? Had it just dematerialized? Sometimes it seemed like the skitters could do that...

"Okay," said Logan. He had his gun out already, holding it with both hands and pointing it at the ceiling. He turned the corner and leveled the gun. But there was no one there.

"We just came from there," said Reid. "He's not there. Everyone's dead."

Logan turned to us sharply. "Henrik?" And there was a catch in his voice.

I shook my head. "I'm sorry."

Logan dashed down the hallway toward the library.

I hesitated, unsure of whether we should keep going after the scribbly thing or follow Logan.

"It's gone," said Tatum in a quiet voice. She started after Logan.

Reid and I trooped after her.

We found Logan on the floor with Weathersbane's head cradled in his lap.

The room smelled like a slaughterhouse.

* * *

It wasn't long before the skitters showed up. We'd done primal magic, and that was the consequence. We conjured some of the venom on our axes and cut them to smithereens. They shriveled into dark smears.

As we were finishing up, other people started appearing in the library. They spoke to each other in low voices, glancing at us and at the carnage. The healer mage was there, but there wasn't anything she could do. It was too late for everyone in the library.

Except us, of course. The scribbly thing hadn't touched us. Why was that? Why had he killed everything else and left us alive?

We had some kind of connection to the breaches and, by extension, to him. It was unsettling.

Four or five people dressed similarly to Weathersbane, in vests and capes, came in and began asking questions of us and Logan. I gathered that they were the other professors, but they didn't introduce themselves or anything like that.

After we'd told the story of what we'd seen approximately a thousand times, we were told to go get some lunch from the dining hall. As if it was simple enough to go about our day after what we'd seen.

I was still hungry, though, so I didn't protest.

Reid, Tatum, and I all piled our plates high with food from the buffet line. We shoveled food into our mouths and didn't say much.

When our plates were clean, we all looked at each other as if we were coming out of some kind of eating trance.

"It's probably good to eat," said Reid. "We need to keep up our strength."

"I don't even know why I have an appetite after this morning," said Tatum.

"Primal magic always takes it out of me," I said. "I get wicked hungry afterward."

"That's true," said Tatum.

"Also, maybe we're in shock," I said. Then another thought occurred to me. "Unless stuff like this happens at this school all the time?"

They both shook their heads vehemently.

"No way," said Reid. "We got witch slapped bad. I've never seen anything like it." Then he glanced at me. "Sorry." Witch slap was a kind of insulting thing to say, since it implied that witches were lesser in some way. You didn't get "mage slapped" for instance. Only the bottom of the totem pole warranted it.

We were quiet.

Eventually, we left the dining room and went upstairs to our rooms. Tatum and I sat on the couch in our living room. She flipped through the channels on TV over and over again. I didn't tell her to settle on anything. I didn't really want to watch anything anyway. But having the television on was comforting somehow.

An hour or two later, someone knocked on our door. It was Reid.

He came inside the living room, and Tatum switched off the TV. Reid rubbed his hands together. "Look, that thing came out of the breach with Estelle, right?"

"Right," I said. Was he going somewhere with this?

"What is it?" he said. He looked at us with wide, earnest eyes, as if he thought we could actually answer his question.

But neither Tatum nor I said anything.

He thrust his hands in his hair. "The breaches are connected to us somehow, to our magic. Aren't they?"

"It seems like they might be," I said.

"But why?" he said.

"I don't know," I said.

"We don't have any answers," said Tatum.

"That thing killed everyone," said Reid.

"Except us," I whispered.

The words hung between us.

"Do you think..." Reid heaved. "Do you think it's our fault? Are we to blame somehow?"

"No," said Tatum, clearly horrified.

"Not like we did it on purpose, but maybe something we do—or something we are—opens those breaches, just like our magic brings the skitters," said Reid.

"No," I said, "because Weathersbane said there was a breach at the school before. That's why there's a book in the library about how to close it."

"Right," said Reid, looking relieved. "Right, of course." He nodded, and then blew out a noisy breath. "Okay, then. Let's go to the bar."

I raised my eyebrows. "Really? You want to get drunk in the afternoon again?"

"We watched the dean of the whole school get dismembered in front of our faces this morning," said Reid. "I can't think of any better reason to get plastered."

Tatum shrugged. "He does have a point."

So, we all left the room and went to the stairs to get out of there. But at the top of the stairs, we were greeted by Logan, who was coming up. His face was grim and his wings seemed to be drooping, as if he was carrying the weight of the world on them.

"I was looking for you three," said Logan.

"You were?" I said.

"We need to train," he said. "All of you."

"I thought you said only Petra needed to train," said Tatum.

"No," said Logan, "that was what Henrik thought. But Henrik's not..." His face twisted. "Anyway, this is my decision. You three are the only hope we have against this threat, and you're not strong enough by half, so we are going to train."

None of us argued with him.

We followed him back to the alley behind the building, where he set up wards, just like before with me.

And then we conjured and killed skitters for hours.

He pushed us to conjure bigger and bigger things. Never anything as big as a tank again, but things like flame throwers and rocket launchers.

The more that we conjured, the more skitters there were. We shot them and killed them and another wave came.

Another tentacled octo-monster showed up, and we shot it full of bullets and kept conjuring.

And then there were more things—things I'd never seen before. Horrible things that crawled and slithered and murmured and whined.

We shot them and killed them.

And still we conjured.

Logan pushed us until first Tatum's magic went out, and then Reid's, and finally mine. Not that we got to quit killing when the conjuring no longer worked. There were too many creatures in the alley for that. We had to keep fighting.

Finally, there was nothing left, and we had killed it all. The alley was covered in dark smears, remnants of the dead things.

"Conjure something else," Logan said to me.

"No," I said. "My magic is dead."

"It's not," said Logan. "Whatever object you conjure won't have an effect on the world, but it'll attract more things to kill."

We'd been at this for a very long time at that point. We were tired and sweaty and hungry.

"Maybe," I said through clenched teeth, "we don't want to kill anything else."

He glared at me. "This morning did you even try to help Henrik, or did you stand by and watch him die?"

"You saw us!" I faced him down. "We were following that thing with axes to chop it to pieces."

"Sure you were," Logan said sarcastically. "Try to pretend you're not worthless cowards who'd rather get drunk than step up to your responsibilities."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "And you're a gargoyle who does whatever the mages tell you to do. Boy, you're really setting your species back generations." I immediately regretted saying it. He'd called me a coward, sure, but what I said was worse. I had a tendency to do that when people insulted me. I insulted them back, but I took it to another level. "I-I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean it. It's only that I don't understand..."

But Logan was walking away from me. He went to the end of the alley and collected the wards he'd set up. Then he stalked past us, went to the other end of the alley, picked up the rest of the wards, and disappeared.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The next day, we all slept late. Tatum and I were awakened by someone rapping on our door. The knocking was clipped and precise. Clearly whoever was out there expected to be answered promptly.

I sat up in bed, groaning. My whole body felt like one giant sore muscle. If I was going to have to spend every night killing skitters, I wasn't going to last long around here.

"Hello?" called a voice on the other side of the door. "Anyone home?"

I groaned again.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of the door opening.

I leaped out of bed and headed for the living room, bracing myself to conjure any weapon I might need.

But the person in the living room was one of the professors. He was wearing a paisley vest and a long crimson cape. He had a goatee. He was putting a key inside the breast pocket of his vest.

They had keys to our rooms? There was no privacy here at all, was there?

He noticed me. "There you are. Kindly gather your roommate and meet me in my office as soon as possible."

I yawned. "Where's your office? Who are you?"

"Oh, I've taken over Professor Weathersbane's office. I'm Professor Graeme. I'm the new dean. See you soon." And he turned on his heel and left the room.

* * *

"Right, then, so I understand the events of yesterday must have been traumatic for you," said Professor Graeme, sitting behind Weathersbane's old desk. "I'm very sorry about that, but the circumstances of this situation have become quite grave, and there's really no time to try to recover. We must act now and lick our wounds later, I'm afraid."

Reid, Tatum, and I sat on the opposite side of the desk. All of us looked a bit frazzled. None of us had bothered to comb our hair before getting here and we hadn't even gotten any coffee or food. Personally, I felt like the walking dead. I blinked at Graeme, trying to focus on whatever it was that he was saying.

"It's more important than ever to close the breach," Graeme continued.

"How does that matter?" said Reid. "That thing from yesterday is still out there."

"Yes," said Graeme, "but if we close the breaches, all the things from the other world, including the creatures you call the skitters will all die. That's what I gather from the writings of the previous dean. You know that there was a breach at this school in the past, do you?"

"Weathersbane told us," I said. And it didn't make sense that Weathersbane was dead or that someone else had taken over his office. We'd been talking to him like this just days ago.

"So, as you can see, we must close the breach," said Graeme. "Have you made any progress on finding the book in the library?"

"Not really," said Tatum.

We told him about the book and the riddle and the answer to the riddle.

"Did we screw it up by cheating?" said Reid. "Was looking up the answer on the Internet a bad idea?"

"No," said Graeme. "At least I don't think so. It seems to me that you should now do a spell in the library to summon charcoal."

"We can go into the library?" I said. "Isn't it a crime scene or something?"

"We've cleaned it up," said Graeme. "I understand it might be a bit... upsetting to return there, but we all have to make sacrifices in wartime."

"This is a war?" said Tatum.

"Just head up to the library as soon as you can," said Graeme.

My stomach growled loudly.

Graeme cleared his throat. "You can eat breakfast first, of course."

* * *

So, we went to the dining hall to grab some breakfast and coffee before heading back upstairs to the library. The place did look clean and tidy, as if nothing had happened there the day before. The only difference than usual was that it was completely empty. There was no one else in the library.

Tatum did some more grumbling about not enjoying doing talisman magic, but she did use Reid's talisman to say some spell in Latin, after which I fully expected to be buried in charcoal from the heavens or something.

Instead, a book appeared in front of us. There was a flash of light and some smoke. The book thudded against a nearby table. It lay open to a page in the middle of the book.

We all hurried over to it.

The book was old, but not ancient. It was a hardback book with a thin spine.

Gingerly, I touched the book, half-expecting it to turn into charcoal when I made contact. But nothing happened. Seizing the book, I pulled it to myself and peered down at the page it was open to. It was a journal. Inside, the pages were lined with handwriting in a long, even hand.

"This is weird," I said.

"What?" said Tatum, snatching it from me. She began to read aloud, starting first with a date that was over twenty years ago. "'None of us are sure what happened when the breach was open last night, but Haidee, Isla, and I are all feeling horrible this morning, just sore all over.'"

"Wait, Haidee?" I said, grabbing the journal back.

"It's a kind of weird name," said Tatum.

"It's my mother's name," I said.

"Isla is my mother's name," said Reid. He sat down at the table with us.

I furrowed my brow at him. "What do you think that means?"

Reid nodded at me. "Keep reading."

I cleared my throat. "'Isla says she thinks those things that they shot at us burrowed under our skin, but they were so small, and everything was happening all at once, that I don't know what to think about that. I'm just glad it's over with.'"

"What's over with?" said Tatum.

I shrugged and kept reading. "'I still think that as a senior project, it was going too far. I fully intend to tell my father about it, so that he can report Professor Wagner for opening a breach to a nightmare world and making us close it. I don't care if we all do get As, nothing is worth the pain and suffering we went through.'" I cocked my head to one side. "So, this is a journal from a student at this school."

"Yeah," said Tatum. "Probably the last time that a breach was opened. Because Weathersbane did say it had happened before."

"But he also said that he wasn't aware of the breach when it was opened," I said.

"Maybe because this person did complain to her father and got the school in trouble for it," said Reid. "I've never heard of a Professor Wagner, and the teachers here pretty much stay for life. Plus, my family has been coming to this school for generations."

"So, wait," I said. "Your mother did go here?"

"Yeah," said Reid. "She would have been here when the journal was being written. She was a young mom."

"So was my mom," I said. "But she didn't go to this school." Did she?

Tatum took the book from me and continued reading aloud. "'Anyway, considering how long it took us to figure this out, I thought I'd go ahead and write down the spell for closing the breach here.'"

"Seriously?" I said, eyes wide.

"'As follows,'" read Tatum, "'the spell for closing breaches to other worlds, written by Isla Darkmore, Haidee Brightshade, and Sofia Grant.'"

"Holy shit," I said. "That is my mom."

"And mine too," said Reid. He got up from the table. "I mean, I guess that makes sense, because we knew that something similar had happened to them, and why couldn't they be at school together, but—"

"My mother didn't go here," I said. "If my mother had gone here, Gran would have told me that when I told her that Logan came and offered me a spot here."

"So, you're saying the journal's a lie?" said Reid. "Come on, it makes sense."

"But why didn't Gran—"

"The spell's torn out," said Tatum, who had flipped the page to find the spell for closing breaches only to find a ripped edge. She showed it to us.

"Oh, that's great," I muttered. "I thought this book was supposed to help us."

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Well, hello, Petra," said the voice of my gran over the phone. "It's good to hear from you. How are you settling in at Ravenridge?"

"Did Mom go to school here?" I said. I was in my room, sitting on my bed with the phone against my ear. I had to know the truth.

Gran was silent on the other end.

"She did," I said. "She did go to school here and you kept it from me. Why did you do that?"

"Oh, thank heavens!" came Gran's voice. "You finally know the truth and that gag spell that was put on me is broken. I've been trying everything to break that damned thing and having no luck whatsoever."

"Gag spell? What are you talking about?"

"Someone put a spell on me so that I couldn't tell you about your mother's history with Ravenridge."

"Why would someone do that? Who would do that?"

"I think it was the professors at the school," she said. "They wanted you there, and they thought that if I told you what happened to your mother, you might not want to go."

"Why?" I said. "What happened?"

"I was proud when she was accepted," said Gran. "It's a prestigious school, and I thought she'd be a proper mage when she came back. But she wasn't. She was only frightened and nervous. And pregnant, of course."

"With me," I said.

"Yes," said Gran.

I knew my mother had come back home pregnant and refused to ever tell anyone who my father was or how she'd managed to get pregnant in the first place. But I didn't know that she was coming back home from Ravenridge.

Gran continued. "She dropped out. She called me and said she didn't want to go to the school anymore, that it was too stressful, and could I please come and get her? Of course I did. When she got home, she proceeded to put up wards all over the house—in addition to the wards I have up already—and she checked them three times a day. She was always running around from room to room with smelly herb smudges, whispering strange spells under her breath. And when I tried to ask her what was wrong, she wouldn't say. But I think it was pretty clear that something happened to her at that school. Something bad."

I was quiet. "So, you think it was the fault of the school? You think something bad will happen to me too?"

"I couldn't say about that Petra, but I think that's why they put the gag spell on me. They didn't want me to scare you off with the truth. That tells me that they're desperate. Whatever bad thing that happened to Haidee, something worse is about to happen now."

"That's comforting," I muttered sarcastically.

"Your mother got worse and worse as the pregnancy progressed, sweetheart. And after you were born, she just seemed to... snap."

"I did it to her. I made her crazy."

"No," said Gran. "You don't blame yourself. Swear to me that you won't."

I didn't say anything.

"Petra?"

"I'm going to leave. They lied to me, and I can't trust them, so I'm going to pack everything up, and I'll be home—"

"For what it's worth, Petra, I don't think that whatever happened to your mother will happen to you."

"You don't?"

"You're stronger than she was in so many ways. And you've been through a lot in your life. It's not fair, because you should have had an easier life, but it does mean that you're not going to break as easily."

"You think I should stay?"

"I didn't say that," she said. "Obviously, if you want to come home, everything's waiting for you here."

* * *

I packed up all my stuff and started taking it down to my car in shifts. But I only got the first two loads down before Graeme showed up in the parking lot. It was windy, and his cape blew out behind him as he made his way over to me.

I slammed the door shut and put my hands on my hips. I glared at him while he closed the distance between us.

When he was within shouting distance, he called, "Petra, maybe we could go to my office and talk about this?"

"You put a spell on my gran," I said. "You lured me to this place under false pretenses. If I'd known that my mother had been at this school before she lost her mind, I might never have come here."

He winced. He took several more steps and then we were close enough to talk in regular voices. "That is true, I'm afraid. But we had good reasons to do so."

"No, you didn't," I said.

"These breaches are serious," he said. "Dean Weathersbane can attest to that. After Estelle disappeared, he felt he had no choice but to set the gag spell on your grandmother and to cast a spell on you to remove bits of your memory too, so that you wouldn't remember what you knew about the school before."

"What?" I was outraged. "You messed around in my head? And what did I know about the school?"

"Just that your mother went here, and that something bad happened to her here."

"Give me back my memories. Undo it!"

"Oh, those sorts of spells aren't really reversible," he said.

I shook my head at him in disbelief. Then I stepped around him and started walking back for the school.

"Are we going to my office?" he called from behind me. He was trying to catch up.

"I'm going to get the rest of my stuff, and I'm leaving this place," I said.

"I'm sorry, Petra, but these are desperate times." He caught me by the arm. "Give me the chance to explain everything. You must have questions."

I hesitated. When it came down to it, I was pretty confused about everything.

"We need you, Petra," said Graeme. "We won't be able to fight this without you. Now that Logan's brother's dead, we might lose him, as well. If we lost both of you, we'd never stand a sliver of a chance."

"Logan's brother?" I turned to Graeme. "What?"

"Oh, I suppose you don't know about that."

"No, he's the only gargoyle I ever met. How did his brother die?"

Graeme shook his head. "That's not my story to tell. I can only focus on you, on what you're capable of. Trust me when I say that you are very, very important to this fight."

"Why?" I said. "Why am I so special? Why do I matter?"

"Well, you've found out about your mother," he said. "So, I suppose you've managed to put some of the pieces together."

"Yeah, we found a journal of a girl who went to school here more than twenty years ago." I wracked my brain for the third name on the spell. "Sofia something."

"Sofia Grant," said Graeme. "Yes, she was a student here. But she met an unfortunate end."

"She was killed?"

"She killed herself."

"Why?" I said.

"We can't truly be sure about that," said Graeme. "It happened after she left the school. All three of them left the school, as a matter of fact, and we didn't understand why at the time. All we knew was that the three girls were in an upper level course together, and that they had some serious trouble with their final project in the class, which involved a breach to another world that the professor had opened up for the purpose of testing them."

"We read that in the journal," I said. "But Weathersbane said he didn't even know about the breach."

"No, he wouldn't have," said Graeme. "I only know because I would occasionally have a friendly cup of tea with Professor Wagner, who taught the class."

"What about the other students in the class?" I said. "Did anything happen to them?"

"No, there were no other students in the class. A class size of three to five is normal here. We don't have a lot of students."

"Oh, right," I said. I guessed that made sense, considering there were so few students at the school.

"Anyway," said Graeme, "occasionally, I spoke with Professor Wagner, and he told me that he had been experimenting with this breach for a senior project. But he said the breach was unstable, and he may have inadvertently opened the gate to a dangerous world. He said that he was having trouble closing the breach himself." Graeme sighed. "I advised him to close down the project, and he said he was considering it, but before he could do so, the students in his class managed to close the breach on their own. However, it took a terrible toll on them."

"So, whatever happened to my mother was a result of the breach?" I said.

"Yes, I believe so," said Graeme. "I've given it a good deal of thought, and that's what I believe. There was a fight to close the breach, and the students faced down against creatures not unlike the ones that are coming out of the breach in the present. I believe these creatures somehow high-jacked the students bodies, maybe through a penetrating spore or something, and they were able to create human hybrids that gestated in the wombs of the students."

My hands started to shake. "You're saying... what? That I'm half-monster?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it exactly like that."

I took a step back towards my car. My stomach churned.

"Now, now, Petra, please calm down. This is why we weren't eager to share the truth with you or Reid Darkmore. We were worried about how you might react to the news."

"I'm not even really human?"

"Listen, there are legends about things like this happening in our earliest mythologies. When Zeus descends in the form of a beam of light into Danae's lap and conceives a son, perhaps that is merely the way that a similar event was interpreted. We called those offspring demi-gods, which I think is a tad more flattering than half-monster."

I clenched my teeth. "Those things that come out of the breach aren't gods."

"Well, now, who are we to say what those ancient deities actually were?" said Graeme. "They were terrible, and they were mighty, and the people were obliged to slay fatted calves to burn up in offering to them. We can't be sure they weren't simply trying to get the great beasts to eat the dead animals instead of them. I'm sure you're aware of how dragons got into our world in the first place?"

"Yes," I muttered. What he was saying made sense, I supposed. I knew that there were other dimensions, and that travel between them was possible, so maybe that's all the Greek gods were. But it still didn't mean that I liked the idea of being a hybrid injected into my mother with spores to gestate. Especially not when carrying me had destroyed her sanity. I sighed. "Are you going to call Reid in and tell him this too?"

"I was thinking you could simply relay it to him?"

Oh, that figured. That was just like the professors around here. Never wanting to get their hands dirty.

But then I thought of Weathersbane battling in the library, and I felt ashamed for thinking that.

Wait a minute. Thinking of Reid made me think of our mothers, which made me think... "There were three students in the class. My mother, Reid's, and that Sofia person who left behind the journal."

"Yes, that's right."

"But Sofia didn't get pregnant."

"No, she did," said Graeme. "But she killed herself before the child could be born."

"Oh," I said, feeling horrified and ill.

"Listen, Petra, I realize this isn't pleasant," said Graeme. "But we need you to try to get past it as best you can. We have to close this breach. We need the spell."

"Well, it was ripped out of the journal," I said.

"Yes, probably by one of the three girls," said Graeme. "Perhaps your mother took it, or Reid's, or perhaps Sofia herself took it."

"But why would they take it?"

"To keep it safe," said Graeme. "To keep themselves safe, perhaps? When they left the school, all three of them were very, very paranoid. Any one of them may have wanted the spell as a sort of security blanket."

"If my mother had that spell, she never used it," I said.

"How can you be sure? You said that the breach closed up and you don't know how it happened. Maybe it wasn't you. Maybe it was your mother."

"No way," I said. "My mother wasn't doing anything but screaming and sobbing when that breach was open."

"You've got to find the spell," said Graeme. "Can we count on you?"

I just gaped at him. I'd been on my way out of this place for good. Now, he was basically sending me on a mission. I didn't know what to say to him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Reid and Tatum both stared at me, neither speaking. We were in the dining hall for dinner, and we'd all filled up our plates with lasagna and salad, but none of us were eating anything.

"Anyway," I finished up, "he wants us to go looking for the spell. He says either your mother, my mother, or Sofia had to have it, and he thinks we can get our hands on it if we go and track it down."

Reid shook his head. He picked up his fork and began spearing pieces of lettuce with it. "Tell me the part about how we're demi-gods again?"

I rolled my eyes. "You would latch onto that."

He shrugged. "Well, I've always felt a little bit divine."

"You're as badly behaved as a Greek god," said Tatum, shaking her head at him.

"I'm not badly behaved," said Reid. He stuffed a forkful of salad into his mouth and chewed. Then he said something else, but his mouth was full, and I couldn't make it out.

I decided not to ask him to say it again. It would only make me want to pummel him. "I guess this is why the thing in the library didn't kill us. Because we're like them."

"Well, not me," said Tatum.

"Yeah, but you've got that bracelet on your wrist," I said, pointing at it. "It's changed you somehow. You've got a part of the other world in you as well."

Reid set down his fork. "What I don't like about going away is that we'll be leaving behind Estelle, and she still hasn't woken up."

I held up both my hands. "Hey, I am just relaying Graeme's message, okay? I didn't say that I thought we should go do what he says."

"But we do need to close the breach, and that spell would do it," said Tatum. "So, maybe we don't have a choice."

"We always have a choice," I said.

"Not really," said Reid. "And look around." He gestured to the dining hall, which was only half-full. The students that were here were hunched over and talking to each other in quiet, fearful voices. "This school is falling apart. Half of the students went home after what happened to Weathersbane. And who can blame them, right? But that thing is loose. It's not confined to Ravenridge. And we know that closing the breach will kill it. So, I don't think we do have a choice. We have to find this spell."

* * *

Tatum and I stood outside the healing mage's wing, our packed duffel bags slung over our backs. We were planning on heading out as soon as Reid said goodbye to Estelle. We could have stayed the night and got going in the morning, but we figured we'd make better time driving at night.

Reid came through the door and picked up his own duffel bag, which he'd lain down on the floor. "Okay, well, I guess that's that. I really hope some monster doesn't dismember my twin sister while we're gone."

"She'll be okay," I said to Reid, even though I had no way of knowing that was true. It just seemed like the thing to say in a situation like this. Internally, I wondered about it all. Estelle was just like us. She was part of that other world as well. So, why had the creatures hurt her?

Even though we'd gotten out of the library unscathed, it didn't mean that we would always be protected. These things from the other world, they weren't predictable.

"I hope so," said Reid. He hoisted his bag over his shoulder and took the lead, heading toward the stairs.

Except Logan was there, coming at us. He was wearing a long black trench coat and carrying a leather briefcase. He had a bag slung over his shoulder.

None of us had talked to him since the other night when he'd walked out on us in the alley. I knew that he had some mysterious dead brother, so maybe that was part of why he was upset. We all stopped short at the sight of him.

"Uh, hello," said Logan. "I hear you three are going to look for a spell to close the breaches."

"Yeah, that's the plan," said Reid.

"I'm coming with you," said Logan.

Reid, Tatum, and I all turned to look at each other. What? Logan was what?

"You don't have to do that," I said.

"I think it's for the best," said Logan. "Besides, I have weapons for you. Since we know that your magic can run out when you're conjuring, it's good for you to have real, material backups." He opened the briefcase and inside were three shiny handguns. "Each of you, take one."

Reid shrugged. He took one of the guns. "Okay, fine, you can come. But we're still taking my car."

* * *

Reid had the nicest car of all of us. It was a luxury SUV. A BMW. Inside, it was all creamy leather and comfort. It was obvious we should take that car. My car was a beater and Tatum didn't even have a car. I didn't ask about Logan's car, but then he wasn't real forthcoming with details about anything. Even after we'd been driving for nearly two hours, I'd not heard but maybe five short utterances from Logan. Anyway, we all agreed to take Reid's wheels. It was roomy.

Reid asked me to sit shotgun with him, and I would have, but then he winked at me, and I made Tatum do it. Just when I was sure Reid had given up trying to get me back into bed, he did something stupid like that.

And so then I had to sit in the back with Logan (which was okay, because he folded his wings up and they didn't take up any space at all) and think about having sex with Reid, which I didn't want to think about. At all. Not because it had been bad sex, exactly, but because I felt stupid about having done it at all.

When I'd done it, I hadn't much cared about anything. My whole life seemed a big, miserable joke, so it didn't matter what I did.

But things were different now, and I didn't know why. Everything was dangerous—even more dangerous than it had ever been before—and I was still the same old Petra I'd always been. But for the first time in my life, I actually felt like I belonged somewhere and that I was important. That made things different. Somehow, it did.

If thinking about naked Reid wasn't bad enough, the fact that Tatum and Reid couldn't agree on music made the trip even worse.

They argued about everything, and sometimes I thought that Reid was just finding fault with the music because Tatum had picked it and vice versa. I said I wanted to pick the next song, but Tatum said that Logan should, because he could be neutral.

That was when Logan said one of his short utterances. "Don't have an opinion."

He couldn't be prevailed upon to pick music.

Right now, we were listening to absolute silence because that was all that anyone could agree on.

"I have to use the bathroom," Tatum suddenly announced.

"Are you kidding?" said Reid. "We've barely been driving for any time at all."

"Not kidding," said Tatum. "Find me a rest top, or I will pee all over your seat."

At the rest stop, Tatum cornered me in front of the sinks and grabbed me by the shoulders. "You're going to switch with me."

I made a face at her. "Tatum, I don't want to sit up front with Reid. Come on, please?"

"I don't want to sit with him either," she said. "And I do want to sit next to the hunky gargoyle in the back."

"Hunky?" I said. "After the way he made us train until we practically passed out?"

"He's intense," said Tatum. "I like that in a man."

"Who says hunky anyway?" I said. "Return with the dinosaurs to 1987."

"Nothing wrong with 1987," said Tatum. "The eighties are my jam." Her eyes got big. "That's it! Eighties music. Let's listen to eighties music. Everyone loves eighties music."

I considered. "Yeah, most people do, I think."

"But you suggest it, because Reid likes you," said Tatum.

Ugh.

That was how I ended up in the front seat of the car with Reid, and we came to be bopping our heads to Talking Heads as we sped down the highway.

For nearly another hour, there was peace.

Then Reid told me to open up the glove compartment.

I did, and a glass bowl and baggy of marijuana fell out.

"You know how to pack a bowl, Petra?" Reid grinned at me.

Logan leaned forward. "No."

Reid turned to look at him. "No?"

"No," said Logan. "We're not putting this mission in danger by having illegal substances in the car. Petra, roll down the window and throw that out."

"What?" said Reid. "You can't do that. You have no idea how much I spent on that."

I shoved it back in the glove compartment. "Let's not smoke weed, Reid. It'll only make us tired, and you need to to stay awake to drive."

"I don't like it in the car," said Logan. "What if we get pulled over?" He peered over Reid's shoulder. "Are you speeding?"

"'Are you speeding?'" Reid mocked in a high-pitched voice. "Sit back and calm down, Grandpa Gargoyle."

Logan pressed his lips together. He didn't sit back.

"Look," said Reid, "just because you've got that whole brooding thing going on does not mean that you can be a complete dick about everything. You know, I fucking hate guys like you, with your secretive pasts and your perfect hair. You just walk around and girls drop their panties."

Logan snorted. He sat back and looked out the window.

"What the hell was that, Reid?" I said, glaring at him. "You're the one who's on a panty-dropping mission."

"Yeah, well... ever since he showed up, I'm off my game." Reid glanced at me. "I mean, if he's around, you just..."

I furrowed my brow. "What are you talking about?"

He gripped the steering wheel and glowered at the road. "Nothing."

I stared at him for several minutes. Then I cranked up Culture Club and decided to stop looking at him for the next few hours.

We drove in relative silence for some time. In the back seat, Tatum made valiant efforts to draw Logan out of his shell, asking him personal questions like what his favorite food was and how long he'd been working with the Order of Ash and Ravenridge College.

But Logan only answered the questions and didn't offer any more information. He'd only been working with he mages for six months, which was a surprise to me, because I'd had it pegged that his whole gargoyle family had worked for them for generations or something. I wondered why he'd come to work for them. Maybe they paid really well.

Eventually, Tatum gave up and fell asleep with her cheek pressed against the window. We could hear her snoring.

Reid stopped for gas sometime around midnight. Tatum slept on, but I went into the gas station to get some snacks and use the bathroom. When I got back, Reid wasn't back yet. It was just me and Logan.

I wanted to ask him about his brother, but I couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't sound horrible. Besides, he probably didn't want to talk about it.

Instead, I said, "I'm sorry about Reid."

"It's fine," said Logan.

"No, he was rude to you. It wasn't fine. Reid's just... kind of a jerk sometimes."

Logan didn't say anything.

"But I mean, Tatum can be a little cutting, and I'm not exactly sweet and cuddly either, you know. We've been through a lot, and we're just trying to keep swimming, so you can't judge us too much."

"I don't," said Logan.

"Okay," I said.

And then it was quiet.

I had a bunch of snacks I could eat, but I just stared at them instead of opening some chips or something.

"Petra?" said Logan.

"Yeah?" I looked at him.

In the darkness, it was hard to make out his gray features. He looked like he was made of smoke and shadows. "I'm sorry about how hard I was on you all in training."

"Oh," I said. "Well, you were trying to help us get better."

"I wasn't, actually," he said. "I was upset about Henrik."

"Right," I said.

"Anyway, I was out of line."

"It's okay," I said.

He smiled, and I could barely make it out. "Thanks."

Then Reid came back with a huge cup of coffee. He slid into the front seat.

I opened up my chips and offered some to Logan.

Logan took a few.

"Not going to offer them to me?" said Reid.

I glared at him. "You have your own chips."

"It's the principle of the thing, Petra." He was in a pissy mood for the next three hours.

At that point, he announced that he was going to pull off and rest, because he was too tired to drive.

"I'll drive," said Logan.

"I'm not letting you drive," said Reid.

"I don't sleep," said Logan. "Gargoyles rest when they turn to stone, and I don't have to if I don't want to. So, if you need to rest, you let me drive."

Reid, for once, was too tired to argue.

Logan took over driving, and I finally drifted off in the passenger seat as the lights of the interstate streamed by around us.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Reid didn't want Logan coming in when we went to see his mother. He said that she'd be frightened of a gargoyle, that it would confuse her.

Logan was gracious about this and said that he'd wait outside.

But I was confused. "What is your deal with Logan, Reid?"

He gave me a disbelieving look. "I don't have a 'deal' with him."

Whatever. He did, and I didn't know what that was all about. I was pretty sure that Reid's mother had seen a gargoyle before, anyway. It was hard not to have seen one, unless you'd been living under a rock for your whole life.

Reid's family had money, but it didn't seem to be old money, so I guess I didn't think that his family was likely to have kept gargoyles in generations past. His house was sprawling, but sleek and modern and full of contemporary architecture and art. It was his grandparents' house, technically, so Reid and I had that in common as well. We'd both been raised by the older generation.

Reid's grandparents were out of the country at the time, however. They were off at some mage convention in Italy. They'd left Reid's mother in the care of people employed to see to her welfare—homemakers and nurses. Reid explained all this to us as we walked through his house, past buttery goldenrod walls and recessed lighting.

When we entered Reid's mother's room, a woman stood up. She'd been sitting on a rocking chair in one corner, scrolling through her phone. She looked startled and a little guilty.

"Hey, Hannah," said Reid. "You can take a break if you want."

"Oh, thanks," said Hannah, and left the room.

The room was wide and tall, with big, big windows on all the walls. Streaming, bright sunlight lit the place up. It was a cheery room, with murals of climbing sunflowers painted on the walls. In one corner was a bed, the covers askew. Scattered all over the floor were dolls and stuffed animals.

Reid's mother was sprawled out on her belly in the middle of the room, drawing on the floor with sidewalk chalk.

The entire floor seemed to be covered in some kind of chalkboard paint or something. It was apparently okay to draw on, because there were chalk drawings all over the place. Most of them were of flowers or horses or hearts. They were fairly detailed and realistic. Reid's mother had some talent for drawing.

Reid strode forward. "Mom, can we talk to you?"

His mother looked up. "Don't!" she cried out in horror.

Reid froze.

His mother got up and ran over to him. She pointed at the floor. "You were going to step on Daisy."

Reid looked down. There was a chalk drawing of a pony there. The pony had ribbons in its mane. "Sorry," he said, sidestepping the drawing.

"It's okay," said Reid's mother, whose name was actually Isla if I remembered correctly. "Just look where you're walking from now on, okay?" She skipped away from him, heading back to the drawing she'd been working on when they came in.

"Wait," said Reid. "Can we talk to you?"

Isla let out an exaggerated groan. "I'm busy right now, Donnie."

Tatum and I exchanged a glance. Who was Donnie?

Reid grimaced. He motioned for us to come closer to him.

We did, gingerly picking around any pictures that were drawn on the floor.

"She thinks I'm my Uncle Don, her older brother," Reid told us. "She gets confused sometimes. Okay, most of the time. As you can see, she's sort of... regressed." He gestured around at the room. He raised his voice. "This will only take a minute or two."

Isla looked up at us and scrunched up her face. "Okay, fine. But if it takes too long, then I won't want to talk to you anymore." She got up and came over to them, holding her piece of chalk deliberately at her waist using both hands.

"We, um, we want to talk to you about Ravenridge College," said Reid.

An alarmed look crossed Isla's face. "I'm too young to go there."

"Okay, but maybe you pretended you went there. Maybe a long time ago, you played a game where you went to school and you had to close a breach."

Isla's eyes widened. She shook her head violently. "No. No, no, no, no, no—"

Reid put his hand out, gripping her shoulder. "Shh, Mom," he whispered. "It's okay. You're safe now. Nothing can hurt you. But we need to know about the spell."

She ripped away from him. "I don't like this!" she wailed.

Reid's face tightened. "I know, and I'm sorry, but—"

"You're a meanie pants, Donnie," she said. "A big, big meanie pants."

Reid flinched.

Tatum stepped forward. "Let me talk to her."

"Tatum, she's my mother," said Reid.

But Tatum was already addressing Isla. "Hi, my name's Tatum."

Isla looked her over. "Hi."

"I know what it's like when something bad happens and you don't want to think about it anymore," said Tatum. "Did bad things happen to you?"

Isla stuck out her lower lip. "I want to draw more."

Tatum took one of Isla's hands. Her voice was gentle. "Sometimes it helps to talk about it. Sometimes it makes it a little bit easier."

"Really?" Isla looked very hopeful.

"Do you remember the spell to close the breaches?"

Isla shuddered. "No."

"Not at all?"

"We wrote it down so that we wouldn't have to remember it," said Isla, and something in her voice sounded a little more mature.

"But you remember doing it," said Tatum.

Isla nodded. "Sofia wrote it in her journal. That way it would be safe."

"Did you rip it out of Sofia's journal?" said Tatum. "Did you take it? Take it to help keep yourself safe? To help keep Reid and Estelle safe?"

"No," said Isla. "I didn't take the spell. Did someone take it?"

"Yes," said Tatum. "Are you sure it wasn't you?"

"Positive," said Isla. "I would never, ever have done something like that." She blinked and then turned to look at Reid. "Reid? Where's your sister?"

Reid's voice came out choked. "She's at school, Mom."

"Oh," said Isla. "Why do you need the spell? Is there another breach?"

No one said anything.

Isla hugged herself, turning in a circle and looking around the room as if she expected something to come out of one of the corners. "They'll come for me again, won't they? They'll come for me, and this time, they'll tear me into pieces."

"No, Mom," said Reid, reaching for her again.

She slapped him away, and she started to sob. "I don't like this! I just want to draw! I just want to draw!"

"Okay," said Reid, his voice strained. "Okay, that's fine. Just go back and draw, Mom, that's okay." He dashed at a tear that had escaped onto his cheek.

Isla tore across the room, back to her picture. She lay back down on her belly and began to scrape the chalk against the floor. But her sniffles were loud, and they echoed against the walls.

* * *

After hours in the car the night before, none of us were much in the mood to get right back in, and Reid's house had plenty of room, so he said it would be fine if we wanted to crash there that night. He was surprisingly bright and forcefully cheerful, and I figure it was probably because of seeing his mom like that. I could tell that it bothered him.

Reid might be a dick, but he hadn't had things easy either. He had a lot to deal with, especially now that his sister was in a coma. I felt bad for the guy.

Reid ordered in dinner from some nearby Indian place, and we all pigged out sprawled in front of the fireplace in Reid's massive living room. We would have sat on the couches, but none of them looked particularly comfortable. They were all harsh angles and crisp lines. They looked nifty, but they didn't seem very functional.

Reid started a fire in the fireplace, but it quickly grew far too warm for such a thing, so he used a spell to put it out.

Then he disappeared and came back with some wine.

"I have a great idea," said Reid. "Let's play a drinking game."

Logan made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat.

Reid glared at him. "You don't like that idea?"

"I think we should try to take this mission seriously," said Logan. "This isn't a road trip for Spring Break. We're trying to save the world here."

"Oh, come on," said Tatum. "Loosen up a little, Logan. Have a drink with us."

"I think I'll just go to bed." Logan stood up.

"I thought you didn't sleep," I said.

"I can turn to stone at will if I need to," said Logan.

"Don't be like that," said Tatum.

"Oh, let him go," said Reid. "He's Grandpa Gargoyle. It's too late for him."

"How old are you?" said Logan.

"Twenty-one," said Reid.

"I'm exactly three years older than you," said Logan. "But you—" And he expanded his gaze to include all of us. "Act like a bunch of children." And then he stalked out.

We were quiet.

Then Reid muttered, "Good riddance."

"I don't know," said Tatum. "Maybe I should go after him."

"No way," said Reid.

"I think something happened recently," I said. "Graeme said his brother died. Maybe he's just having trouble dealing, you know?"

"Who cares?" said Reid, handing me a bottle. "Drink."

The rules of the magical drinking game were simple at first. Drink until you could feel it. The spell that made the game work could sense when your blood alcohol was at a certain point, and it was being drunk enough that made the magic work.

Once we were all tipsy, we could begin describing things, and our descriptions would create three dimensional illusions in front of us. They were even solid. You could touch them, interact with them.

It was pretty cool.

Reid started us out by describing a tall silver tree with silver leaves and silver fruit. He made the wind shake its branches and make the silver leaves fall down all over us like shimmering snow.

Then we wiped that out, and it was my turn. I described a garden of glowing roses at twilight, with fireflies dancing and flitting about between the blooms. I made shooting stars zoom across the sky, leaving sparks in their wake that sizzled in the air.

I got a little carried away and one of the shooting stars hit the floor and started a tiny fire. But Reid got up and stomped it out before any damage was done. "No big deal," he said. "We'll cover it with the rug."

So, we dragged the rug over the burn spot, and it was Tatum's turn.

She described a living snowman, like Frosty, who ran around and played with us, singing songs, until he melted into a puddle in front of the now empty fireplace.

It was loads of fun.

We drank more wine, and we each took more turns.

The drunker we got, the more elaborate the descriptions and more unwieldy they became.

Tatum described a dragon who could breath ice instead of fire, and then the thing soared around the room breathing out icy flames that clung to the furniture and the floor and the ceiling fan overhead. Then the dragon slipped on its own ice and went sprawling, and we all cracked up.

We laughed and laughed, drank more wine, and stumbled around ourselves, completely forgetting about the dragon and the game itself.

Except that Tatum passed out, and the dragon was still flying around.

"We've got to get her to a bed," I said, getting behind Tatum and gathering her by the armpits. "Help me? You get her feet."

Reid staggered over to pick up Tatum's feet.

The dragon dive-bombed me and blew ice at me.

I shrieked, dropping Tatum and ducking. The ice sailed over my shoulder, singeing my ear with painful frigidness. Damn, that was incredibly cold. I glared after the dragon. "Is that thing going to go away?"

"Uh... yeah, probably," said Reid.

"Why hasn't it gone away already?" I said. Earlier, we'd all have to clear out our illusions before the next person started. "Maybe I should clear it out." I spoke the words of the spell that would erase the illusion. They were in a foreign language. I didn't really know what they meant.

But nothing happened.

"What the hell?" I said, trying again.

Then Reid tried. Didn't work for him either.

"Look, it probably only responds to Tatum since she created it," said Reid.

"So, we should wake her up?" I hiccuped.

"Nah, it'll fizzle out eventually," said Reid.

"Okay." I hoisted Tatum up again.

Reid got her feet.

It was awkward getting her to her room, not only because it was hard to carry her like that, but because Reid and I were both wasted and didn't have the best balance. But eventually, we managed it.

We lay Tatum down on her bed, covered her up with blankets and tiptoed out of the room.

Not that tiptoeing mattered, considering she hadn't woken up while we were banging into walls on the way there, of course.

Outside the room, I started to head back down to the living room.

Reid's hand snaked out and caught me. He slid his arm around my waist and tugged me close.

I pushed on his shoulders. "What are you doing?"

He didn't let go of me. "You felt this between us before, Petra, I know you did." His voice was slurred.

Up this close to him, I could smell the sickly sweet stale wine on his breath. I struggled to get out of his grasp. "Reid, you're drunk—"

"You went to bed with me before, and we were good together, so—"

"Reid, let go of me this fucking instant or I will conjure a poker through your damned skull," I whispered icily.

He dropped me. "Jesus. Way to overreact."

I squared my shoulders, trying to still my beating heart. I wasn't afraid. I was angry. My voice shook. "What the hell is your problem?"

"My problem?" he said. "What's yours? It's not like you didn't sleep with me before."

"Oh, I get it," I said sarcastically. "Once a woman consents to have sex with you once, she's consented for the rest of her life?"

"Yeah," he said. Then he shook his head. "I mean, no. Obviously, no. I just... is this some game with you, or what?"

"Honestly, Reid, I wish it had never happened."

He looked hurt. "What?"

I let out a groan of frustration. Where was my damned room again? I was going there, now, and I wasn't going to look at Reid until we were both sober again.

"Why?" he said.

I stalked away from him.

"Hey, come on, Petra," he called after me.

I didn't owe him an answer. But there was something vulnerable in his voice, just a hint of the little boy he once was. And I felt bad. Maybe I shouldn't have. He was a jerk and all, but... I turned to face him. "Reid, I'm sorry. I only went home with you that night because I... I don't know... Sometimes I get drunk and I do stupid things."

"It was stupid to be with me, huh?"

"You're an asshole," I said. "You treat women like toilet seats."

"I..." He jammed his hands in his pockets and hung his head. "Well, you're different."

"I don't think I am," I said. "I think I'm just convenient."

"It's because you met Logan afterward, isn't it?" Reid mumbled.

"No," I said. "I met Logan before I met you. And what does that matter anyway?"

Reid chewed on his bottom lip, considering this. "You really met him before?"

"Yes."

"So, you don't have like a thing for him?"

"Oh my God." I threw my hands up in the air and turned back away from him. I was so sincerely going to bed right now.

Except there was a noise behind me, so I turned again.

Just in time to see Tatum's dragon coming down the hall, jaws wide and gaping. It poured out flame-shaped ice at Reid, encasing him in it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I screamed and ran forward. I put one hand out and vanished the dragon, the same way I'd vanish something that I'd conjured.

The dragon winked out of existence.

Cool. I hadn't realized that would work.

I skidded to a stop in front of Ice-Reid. Was he okay in there? He wasn't moving.

I tried to chip at the ice, but that didn't work. I thought about trying to vanish it, just like the dragon, but I wasn't sure I could do something so precise. I might vanish Reid as well. I couldn't be sure Reid was even okay. Had the ice dragon frozen him in place with its ice flame? If so, Reid could be...

No.

Okay, I might not be super fond of Reid, but he was not dead.

I wasn't going to let anything happen to him.

A chirping noise.

I looked up. Skitters. They were coming down the hallway, crawling on the ceiling and on the walls and on the floor. Apparently using my magic to vanish things called them as well.

I conjured a hairdryer. I put it on full blast and began melting the ice away from Reid.

The skitters were clicking their way closer.

Damn it.

I fumbled at my belt for the gun that Logan had given me. I got it out, but it was in my left hand, and I was right handed. I switched the hair dryer and the gun.

Now, I could aim a bit better, but my right hand wasn't steady. Usually, I used both hands to aim the gun. I narrowed my eyes and forced myself to breathe slowly and evenly. And then I began pulling the trigger.

Skitters squealed and dropped dead.

The ice on Reid was melting, but not fast enough.

I kept shooting.

More skitters down.

And then the gun was out of bullets. Damn it. I had more, but they were in my room in my pack, not here with me. That was a stupid mistake I wasn't going to make again. If I had my gun, I was going to bring more bullets as well.

I could conjure more, but that would bring more skitters.

I debated.

And then there was a bright flash of green and the sound of a gunshot.

I whirled to see Logan coming down the opposite side of the hallway, opening fire on the skitters.

"Um, hi," I said.

"I heard gunshots," he said. "Thought you might be in trouble."

"Uh, thanks," I said.

Logan made short work of the rest of the skitters.

Then he came over to me. He eyed Reid. I had nearly melted through the ice around his face.

"Do I want to know how this happened?" said Logan.

"It's like you said," I muttered. "We act like children."

Logan shook his head. "Maybe we should just throw him in the shower. Hot water should melt this pretty fast."

Why hadn't I thought of that?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

My mother was sitting on her bed, staring out the window. Her hair hung limply in a ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she picked at the bracelets on her hands. They had been seeded with dragon sacrifice, so they blocked magic. If we didn't put them on there, sometimes she lashed out magically. I knew she didn't like them, though. She said they made her feel cold all over.

It was the next day. We'd driven all morning and some of the afternoon from Reid's house. Well, Logan had driven. The rest of us were hungover and slept in the car. Reid had recovered from being encased in ice with no side effects except a mild case of frostnip (the first stage of frostbite) on the tip of one of his pinkie fingers. The hot shower had melted it all fast enough to avoid further injury.

Now, we were here to talk to my mother about the spell to close the breach.

But currently, she was ignoring us.

I walked across the room to her bed and started to sit down next to each other.

"Don't." She wasn't looking at me.

"Hey, Mom," I said.

"You've been gone." She stared out the window. "Where have you been, Petra?"

"I've, um, been at Ravenridge," I said.

She turned to me, lips pulled back from her teeth like an animal. A growl came out of her throat and she sprang up and tackled me, knocking us both backwards onto the floor. "Stupid, stupid, Petra." She slammed my head against the hard wood floor. "Stupid, stupid, stupid—"

Logan was there, arms around my mother's waist, gently pulling her away.

I scrambled back, gingerly touching the back of my head. "It's okay. She gets like this sometimes. She's angry."

My mother elbowed Logan. It didn't do any good.

"They'll use you, Petra," said my mother. "They'll use you and spit you out."

"Mom, we need to know about the breach," I said. "Do you remember the breach when you were at school?"

"Of course I remember." She struggled against Logan, throwing her whole body into it, as if she was a tree flung by the winds of a violent storm.

"Let go of her," I said to Logan.

"But—"

"Just do it."

Logan did.

My mother tumbled down onto the floor on her hands and knees. Hair was coming out of her ponytail and hanging in her face. She hissed at me.

"Did you take the spell from Sofia's journal?" I said. "The one to close the breach?"

"Sofia took it herself," said my mother.

"Sofia did?"

"Yes." My mother crawled towards me, glowering. "When they took Sofia's journal and put it in the library for that spell, she was angry. It was her journal. But she couldn't get it out. It was bound there with strong magic. So, she just took the spell out. That would show them." My mother laughed, but it sounded hollow. She reached out a hand and snagged my wrist. "Can you take off these bracelets, Petra? I'm cold. I'm so cold."

I shook my head at her. "I'm sorry, Mom. If I take them off, you might hurt yourself."

She made an ugly face. "Oh, and that would be a tragedy, wouldn't it? Sofia managed it, but you keep me prisoner. Why won't you just let me die?"

I stood up, tugging my hand out of hers. "We have to go, Mom."

But after we left, my mother threw her body against the door, sobbing and screaming over and over that she wanted to die.

* * *

"Why did you stir her up like that?" Gran had me in the kitchen, just the two of us alone. She was livid, having just had to dose my mother with a strong tranquilizer to calm her down. "You know how bad a session like this can be."

It was true. If my mother got worked up really badly, it might take weeks for her to calm down again. My poor Gran was here all alone with her now, and I felt terrible.

"I'm sorry, Gran, but it's important."

"Who told you that?" said Gran bitterly. "Those mages at that school?"

"I thought you wanted me to go to the school, or was that just another spell they put on you?"

"No, it wasn't a spell."

"I can come home if you need me," I said.

"And have you resenting me all the time? I don't think so."

"I wouldn't resent you. If Mom needs me—"

"No, no, Petra, I'm not trying to make you come back from that school. I just wish, for once in your life, you'd think of other people. Don't be so self-absorbed."

I hung my head. My Gran was a loving woman, but she was sharp, too. She never had any problem telling me when she thought I was at fault. Or punishing me for my mistakes either. "I'm sorry, Gran. I know this makes things harder on you."

"It's fine. I'll get your aunt Briar to help me out," said Gran. "But you listen here, my girl—" She broke off and looked up over my head. "There something I can help you with?"

I turned.

Logan was in the doorway to the kitchen. "I'm sorry," he said. "I overheard."

Gran folded her arms over her chest. "You're eavesdropping is more like it."

"Petra's not being selfish," said Logan. "She's doing this to save other people."

"Logan," I said. "You don't have to say anything."

"Save others, hmm?" said Gran.

"The whole world could be in danger," said Logan. "There are creatures that are coming from another world, and we don't know how to fight them. Petra may be the only person who can. She's doing everything she can. She's tough and she's resilient, and she complains a lot less than she could."

Really? Logan thought that about me? I couldn't help but smile at him. I thought he kind of hated me. Hated all of us.

Gran's shoulders slumped. "Oh, I know she's a fine girl. I raised her. But there are better ways this could have been done, that is all that I'm saying."

"I'm sorry, Gran," I said.

She shook her head, and then she hugged me.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Gran offered to let us stay for dinner, but I didn't want to impose on her any more than we already had. She insisted that it would be no trouble, but I could tell she was stressed out and not up for company. We left and got back on the road, instead.

Apparently, we were going to have to go to Sofia's home. Maybe we'd be able to find the spell. We weren't sure how we'd do it, but it was the best shot that we had.

We drove until evening, and then stopped to eat at a bar and grill that was right next to one of those roadside motels that always reminded me of Psycho. This one only looked a teeny bit creepy.

Inside the restaurant, every surface was polished, natural-colored wood, from the floor to the walls to the tables. The walls were decorated with old road signs and license plates. There was a bar too, and neon signs advertising various domestic brands blared out at us from behind it.

As hungover as I'd been that morning, I'd been convinced that I would never drink alcohol again. But a beer with dinner sounded so nice. And everyone else was ordering one.

Even Logan.

"Oh my God!" said Tatum. "You're going to have a beer?"

Logan shrugged. "Don't get any ideas about me loosening up, though. I don't get loose."

We were quiet for a minute, and then we all laughed. That was a joke, right? Logan had told a joke? Well, that was pretty crazy. First Logan defended me to my Gran, and then he started telling jokes. Say what he would, I thought he was loosening.

One beer somehow turned into two, and then three, and then we'd paid for our dinner and left the booth and were sitting at the bar listening to Reid tell stories about pranks that the graduating class of last year had played on professors.

At some point, I went to the bathroom. When I got back, Reid was nowhere in sight. Logan was sitting on a barstool, looking uncomfortable, while Tatum was sitting next to him. Her legs were crossed and her knees pointed at him and her toes pointed at him. She was talking to him in a quiet voice.

Crap. Maybe I should find somewhere else to...

"Petra!" Logan looked relieved to see me. "Come over here and let's talk about... about... anything."

Tatum's face froze.

I cringed.

She narrowed her eyes, squared her shoulders, and flounced off.

I cocked my head at Logan. "You couldn't have been less subtle with that."

"Subtle?" he said. "She's the one who's not the least bit subtle."

"I should go after her," I said. Her feelings were probably hurt. I looked around the bar. I didn't see her anymore. "Where'd she go? And where's Reid?"

"Oh, Reid left the bar with a woman who is staying the motel across the way," said Logan.

I let out an annoyed noise. "You are not serious."

"Sorry," said Logan. "I know that the two of you—"

"No!" I said, shaking my head insistently. "There is no the two of us. Me and Reid? No way."

"Okay," said Logan.

I rubbed my chin. "It's only that he's holding us up. We need to get back on the road."

"He promised he'd be back within an hour," said Logan.

I grimaced.

Logan laughed. "Yeah, my sentiments exactly." He picked up his beer and took another drink. "Well, don't let me keep you. Go find Tatum. And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I'm sure she's a very nice girl. She's just a little much."

I couldn't help but smile. "That's Tatum all right." I finished my drink and left my empty glass at the bar, and then went looking for Tatum. I found her in the women's restroom, applying lipstick.

"Hey, Petra," she said.

"Hey," I said. "You okay?"

She looked confused. "Yeah." She grabbed a paper towel to blot her lips. "Is there a reason I wouldn't be?"

"It's only Logan, what he said."

"Oh, yeah, whatever." She waved that away. "I'm over that."

"You don't have to play tough."

"I'm not," she said. "I've decided he's really not my type. At all. Besides, I think he likes you."

"Oh, he does not," I said.

She shrugged. "I don't know. He was awfully happy to see you just then."

"You're imagining things."

"You should go for it," she said. "You have my blessing."

"Yeah, right," I said. "Not in a million years. I wouldn't do that to you. Besides, I don't like him like that."

"I seriously don't care," she said. "And I think you're protesting too much." She grinned at me and then left me alone in the bathroom.

I stared at myself in the mirror for several minutes. I looked like ass. I'd had a shower that morning at Reid's, but then I'd slept on the drive to my house, so I looked all rumpled and creased. I ran my fingers through my hair.

Then I let my hand drop, glaring at my reflection. I didn't care what Logan thought of me.

But now that Tatum had said that, I was going to be embarrassed if I tried to talk to him. I decided to go back to the car.

I sat in there in the back seat, surfing the Internet on my phone.

The door opposite me opened and Logan peeked his head in. "Looks like you had the same idea as I did."

I arched an eyebrow. "You running from Tatum?"

"No, she's ignoring me," he said, sliding into the back seat next to me. He just sat there, and it seemed rude to go back to my phone while he was there, so I switched it off.

But then, the two of us sat in silence for several long moments that seemed to stretch into eternity.

"I'm sorry about your brother," I blurted. Then I cringed. That was a great way to bring up something really painful.

But Logan didn't seem angry, only sad. "Thanks. I barely got to know him."

"Oh, that's awful," I said. "You guys didn't grow up together?"

"I grew up in foster homes," he said. "I mean, regardless of what my mother would have done, anyway, I'd never have grown up with Henrik. His family certainly wasn't going to acknowledge me."

"Wait, what?" I was throughly confused. "Henrik? You mean your brother was Professor Weathersbane? But..."

He raised his eyebrows at me. "You brought this up. You didn't know?"

I shook my head. "Graeme said something about your brother dying, but I assumed your brother would be, you know, a gargoyle." Then I cringed again. "I'm sorry. That's rude. It's only that I don't understand."

"I'm half gargoyle," said Logan. "But, uh, the gargoyle genes are pretty dominant. Most of the time, half gargoyles are indistinguishable from full-blooded ones. I didn't know I was a half gargoyle growing up, and I guess that's why."

"Wow," I said. "So, your whole life, you grew up in foster care, thinking you were a full-blooded gargoyle, and then you found out otherwise?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "Actually, it makes more sense. You know much about gargoyle family structure?"

"Uh, I know it's matriarchal, right?" I said.

"Right," he said. "If I'd grown up in a gargoyle home, I would have lived in my grandmother's house along with my mother and her brothers and sisters and their children. When my grandmother died, my mother would have had her own house, and I would have stayed with her until she died, regardless of whether or not I fathered any children. Gargoyle kids stay with their mothers, and fathers are sort of incidental."

"Wow," I said. "Interesting. Of course, it's not that much different than my family. We have strong matriarchal leadership in my family. And everyone gets the Brightshade name, even the boys. No one changes it when they get married either."

"I could tell your grandmother was a tough lady," he said, smiling.

"She is," I said. "But, to go back to what you were saying about something making sense? What made sense? Why?"

"Oh," he said, "well my being in the foster system. Because if I'd been born to a typical gargoyle family, there'd be no reason for me to be given up unless, for instance, the whole clan was killed or something. But, if a human female gave birth to me, then it makes a lot more sense."

I nodded, making a tiny noise of understanding. "I see."

"Henrik didn't even know about me until his mother was on her death bed, and then she confessed that he had a younger brother she'd given up for adoption. She had felt forced to do it, even though she was no longer married to Henrik's father. Her family would have been appalled. A mage raising a little gargoyle? Can you imagine the scandal?" He laughed bitterly.

"Geez, I'm sorry," I said. I never really thought of Logan as having emotions and stuff. He always seemed so buttoned-up and stern. But finding this out must have been pretty tough for him.

"It's all right," said Logan. "Henrik hunted me down after that. I'm glad I got to meet him, even if my mother died before I got the chance to know her."

"No, it's horrible," I said, turning to look at him, the full force of all of it really hitting me. "You grew up without a family, and then the moment you find your family, Weathersbane gets killed by that thing. And it was my fault it came out of the breach. I'm the one who did this to you."

"It wasn't your fault," said Logan. He considered. "In a way, Henrik brought it on himself by ordering us to do what we did."

"Anyway, I'm just so, so sorry about all of it."

"It's not your fault."

"I mean that sympathetically. I feel bad this happened to you. It's awful."

"Thanks," he said softly.

And then we were quiet again.

Several more long moments passed, and then Tatum showed up and climbed into the passenger's seat. She said that she'd run into Reid and that he was on his way back. We'd be on the road in ten minutes.

* * *

Thomas Grant massaged the bridge of his nose. He was standing in front of the mantle in the formal parlor of the Grant's home. It was more like a castle. The thing had turrets and wings and the top of the roof was lined with stone gargoyles. When I saw them, I felt tense all over, especially since we were with Logan. How could he look up at that without reacting?

Technically, the gargoyles were free to leave if they pleased, so if they wanted to stay up on top of the roof in the daytime in their stone forms, there was nothing anyone could do about it. And I supposed it wasn't my place to choose for them. But I worried that they didn't truly have a choice.

If I had a lot of money, the first thing I would do would be to set up some kind of trust for gargoyles who wanted to move out of mage's homes and get different jobs.

On the other hand, maybe such a thing existed, and I should just donate to it, rich or not. I'd have to google that.

But anyway, Thomas Grant wasn't happy to see us. He was Sofia's brother, and he'd received us here in the parlor and offered us something to drink (which we'd politely declined). But when he heard Sofia's name, his whole demeanor changed.

"Listen, whatever Sofia did or didn't take from that school is hardly important," Thomas said tersely. "That institution destroyed her. She came back to us insane and paranoid, and she eventually took her own life. If she stole a spell from that place, then I say, 'Good.' I don't mind the idea that they're a bit inconvenienced."

"It's more than an inconvenience, actually," said Reid, who was the only one among us talking much. He seemed at home in this huge, fancy mansion, probably because his mage family traveled in social circles that made something like this more normal. "You see, there are very dangerous creatures that are escaping from this breach, and we need the spell to close it and kill the creatures. Without it, a great deal of people could be in danger."

Thomas blinked. "Well, all right, if you say so, but that doesn't change anything. I still don't know where the spell might be."

"Could we maybe..." Reid tapped a finger against his bottom lip. "Do you have some of her things that we could look through?"

"You want to go hunting through my dead sister's possessions?" Thomas was horrified. "Have you no respect?"

Reid winced. He looked at the three of us for help.

I cleared my throat. "Uh, we're very sorry to have offended you. Maybe you'd prefer to look on your own and tell us what you find?"

"I think we really need to look ourselves," said Reid. "Besides, wouldn't that be sort of difficult for you, Mr. Grant?"

Thomas glowered at us.

We all winced.

Thomas strode across the room to the doorway. "I... I have to think about this. Give me some time. You may stay here and have some refreshment, but you'll have to excuse me." His voice sounded strained, as if he might be about to start crying.

I felt really bad for upsetting him. This whole road trip had basically blown big ones.

But he was gone now, and we didn't know what we should do. Before we could even talk about it, however, a woman in a black uniform with a white apron came into the room with a tray of drinks and cookies. She set them down on the coffee table and gave us all a big smile.

"I hope you'll excuse me," said the maid, "but I couldn't help but overhear. I'd like to help."

"You can help us?" said Reid, flashing her a grin.

The maid smiled back at him.

I rolled my eyes. God, Reid would seriously flirt with anything.

"I was close with Miss Sofia when she lived here," said the maid. "I remember this spell you're talking about. I know where it is. I can take you there, but we mustn't bother Mr. Thomas with all of this. It upsets him so."

"That's fine," said Reid. "We don't have to tell Thomas anything. Lead the way..." He winked at her. "I didn't catch your name?"

"Eda," she said.

"Lead the way, Eda," said Reid.

* * *

Eda led us out of the house and down a stone pathway that wandered down a hill and into a strip of woods. We walked for about five minutes, by which time we were completely out of sight of the main house. The trees provided enough cover to obscure us. Then we reached a small building in a clearing. It was the size of two sheds put together, but it was made of white brick and had a pointed roof, like a little house. There was a tall metal-studded wooden door but no windows.

There were three other maids waiting for us at the little building. They all smiled at us, and their smiles were very wide.

"There are deep magics on this place," said Eda. "Miss Sofia set them herself. It's necessary that you must all remove your shoes and enter barefoot. Also, you must leave behind any weapons you may have. They will trigger the magic and cause you all to be destroyed in a burst of white-hot flame."

"Well, that doesn't sound good," said Reid, stripping off his gun.

Logan furrowed his brow. "Maybe I should stay back and you three should go in without me."

"Oh, no," said Eda. "Even someone nearby with a weapon when others enter could set off the destructive charms. Please, remove them."

Logan sighed, but he took off his gun too.

We all followed suit, and the other maids helped us remove our shoes. Finally, Eda stepped forward and used a key on the lock of the door.

The door to the building swung inward. It was dark inside.

"Go on in there," said Eda, and her voice sounded a little breathless.

Wait a second. Why was she so eager to get us inside? I turned to look at her in alarm, and Logan did as well.

Eda snatched up one of our guns and turned it on us. "Get inside," she said in an ugly voice. "Get in there now."

"Whoa, hold on a second," I said. "What is this?" I pointed at one of the other guns, using talisman magic to float it through the air.

One of the other maids grabbed it out of the air.

The other maids all picked up the rest of the guns before anyone could do anything else.

"Inside," said Eda.

And, since we didn't want to get shot, we did what she said.

She slammed the door on us, enclosing us in stuffy darkness.

Reid's voice, a harsh whisper. "What the fuck was that? We just got played, didn't we?"

A flash of light. Heat.

And then a big ball of flame illuminated the small room. It was coming straight for us.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Down!" screamed Logan.

We hit the floor, and the fire ball sailed over our heads to hit the wall behind us and fizzle out.

"There's something in here with us, isn't there?" whispered Tatum.

Another fire ball, big and red and hot. It was coming straight for us.

We rolled out of the way.

Tatum whimpered.

I grunted.

Reid wheezed.

In the light of that last fire ball, I'd been able to make something out. At the other end of the room, I'd seen eyes and scales. We were in here with a dragon. But why was it blowing fire at us? Dragons were people, and surely we could talk it out with this one.

"Hey," I called to it. "Is there some way you can shift back?"

"Is it a dragon?" said Tatum.

"Shh!" said Logan at the same time

Another ball of flame. This one came so close it seared the hairs on the back of my neck. I let out a strangled squeal.

"Don't talk to it," Logan hissed. "It's a rogue."

"What's a rogue?" I said, too loud.

More flame—bright tongues of it lapping at me. I rolled out of the way of the fire. The light had illuminated the room for me now, and I had seen that the place was furnished, like a little study. There was a rug on the floor and a shelf on the wall. It probably used to have books on it, but the books had all been knocked down onto the floor. I saw all this in an instant, one flash of the light of the fireball, and then we were plunged into darkness again.

I could hear someone moving around in the darkness.

Was it the dragon?

I blinked hard, trying to see where it was. But there was no light in this room. The building didn't have any windows, and I had no way to see. I felt around me, first in front, and then to the sides.

I collided with flesh.

"Who is that?" said Tatum.

"Me," I said.

"Shh!" Logan was furious.

More flame, coming right at Tatum and me.

We clutched each other as we hit the floor face down.

I guessed it was a bad idea to talk.

But in the brief bit of light, I'd seen that Logan had something. He was holding something that looked vaguely like an end table.

I heard the crunch of splintering wood.

More flame, this time coming right for Logan.

But Logan walked right into it, holding up the leg of the end table, which he must have broken off the rest of the table.

I screamed. Why was he walking into the flame?

The fire ball sputtered out, but I could still see.

The leg of the end table was a torch. Logan was holding it, and he wasn't hurt at all. He looked as us over his shoulder. "Stay there. Don't make noise."

The dragon breathed more fire at Logan. I could see the dragon now. It had iridescent red scales and rows of sharp teeth. It growled at Logan, smoke rising from its nostrils.

Logan raised the burning end table leg over his head and ran at the dragon.

Fire poured out of its mouth, enveloping Logan. I screamed again.

But Logan seemed to rush through it unscathed, although some of the books on the floor caught flame.

In the light of the burning pages, I saw Logan jam the leg of the end table into the dragon's eye.

The dragon screamed and blew out more fire and smoke. It twitched, flapping its wings against the ceiling.

And then it collapsed, motionless.

Logan turned to us, heaving.

"Jesus," I whispered. He'd just run through flame to kill that dragon.

Tatum was getting to her feet. "You killed him."

"It was him or us," said Logan, panting.

"How are you not dead?" I said, going after Tatum to look at the dragon.

Reid was right behind us, picking up another of the legs of the end table and catching it aflame on the burning books. By that light, we were still able to see.

"Dragons are people, and you just committed murder," said Tatum.

"Gargoyles are impervious to flame," said Logan.

"Oh, right," I said. "I knew that." Gargoyles had been created as protectors of the mages. They were designed to protect against dragons.

"Murder," said Tatum again.

Logan turned to her. "No, this was a rogue."

"What's a rogue?" I said.

"Whoa," said Reid, holding the torch above his head. "You see what's written up here?"

"A rogue is a dragon who's lost the human part of itself," said Logan. "It can happen if dragons shift out of water. The stress is too much and it destroys their human form. There are other rogues, ones that never had a human form, but those shouldn't exist anymore. This one could have been a remnant, I guess."

"Wait, why shouldn't they exist anymore?" I said.

"How do you know this?" said Tatum.

"That dragon was Sofia's brother," said Reid, pointing at it.

"Really?" said Logan, looking at the heap of the dragon. "I guess maybe he was a genetic throwback. That can happen. Two recessive genes meet and bam! Mage families often have dragon blood in their bloodline. No one would have known he was a shifter until he, uh, shifted."

"Out of water," I said, feeling sick. "Killing his human self."

"Damn," said Reid, shaking his head. "Poor guy."

We all stared at the dead dragon in the corner that had tried to burn us alive. I felt sorry for him now.

Tatum had her arms folded over her chest. "Can you answer my question?"

Logan pointed at himself. "Me?"

"Yes, you," said Tatum. "How do you know all this?"

Logan took a deep breath. "That's hard to explain. Let's just say I've been at the monster killing business for a while. You find things out if you travel in the right circles."

"Why shouldn't the rogues exist anymore?" I said.

"That's a long story," said Logan. "But basically, some people I know fought really hard and made it that way."

"Look," said Reid, shining the torch at the wall, "underneath this dude's name, there's a pretty intense binding spell."

I squinted. I couldn't make it out. It was in Latin.

Tatum read it, her shoulders slumping. "We're stuck in here."

"Maybe we can conjure something," I said. I reached out for the ether to ask— But it was blocked, just like it had been in the library. "Damn it," I muttered.

"Blocked?" said Tatum. "Could have told you that. This is binding against other dimensions as well."

"You think that's what we do?" I said. "Conjure things from another dimension?"

"Hell if I know," she said.

I stared at the door, which was shut tight. "Well, can you counter the spell?"

She shook her head.

"Reid?" I said. "What about you?"

"No way, I'm shit with spells. You know that."

"Logan?" I said.

"Magic's not, uh, my thing," said Logan.

Damn it, damn it, damn it. We really were stuck there.

* * *

We found another level below the top one, and we descended down there, so that we could be away from the dragon corpse. There were more bare shelves down there, which Reid set about breaking up into other torches to use when the current end table burned up. I was worried about using up oxygen, but Logan said that it couldn't be air tight if the dragon had been living in here for all this time. Dragons were magical and long-lived, but they were mortal beings. They needed air to live and all that.

"Why do you think we're even in here," I said, sitting on an expensive rug and leaning against the wall.

"Obviously, that maid lady was sacrificing us to this dragon," said Reid. "Probably think they have to feed it to keep it happy. I wonder if it's only people who wander up to the house or if they go and steal people from the nearby town to feed to it."

"If that's true, shouldn't we find bones in here?" said Tatum.

"Let's not look too closely," I muttered.

"I wonder if good old Thomas was in on it," said Reid.

Logan glared at us. He was standing up while we were all sprawled out, acting helpless. "We have more important things to worry about, like getting out of here."

Reid threw up his hands. "It's hopeless."

"We've figured out other magical problems before," I said. "We figured out that charcoal thing."

"We googled that," said Tatum.

At the same moment, we all froze. And then we got our phones out of our pockets and turned them on. "You have service?" I said.

"Yes," said Reid. "I'm typing in the spell right fucking now."

Logan sat down, groaning. "All this time, no one thought of their phones?"

"Hey, you didn't think of it either, buster," I said.

"Man, I'm not getting any results," said Reid.

"That's impossible," I said. "You have to be getting something."

"Well, nothing relevant," said Reid.

Logan was doing something on his phone. Suddenly, we all heard the phone dialing.

"Who are you calling?" I said.

Someone picked up. Logan had it on speaker phone so that we could hear. "Nicholas Graeme, Dean of Academics and Methodology, Ravenridge," said Graeme's cheerful voice.

"Hi there, Nicholas," said Logan. "We could use some help here."

"Logan?" said Graeme. "Are you with the students?"

"Say hello, guys." Logan held up the phone to us.

We all chorused, "Hello," at pretty much the same time.

"What's going on?" said Graeme.

"We're trapped in a building with an astral chain binding spell over the door," said Tatum.

"Astral chain?" said Graeme. "Are we talking third level or fourth level here?"

"I've never seen anything quite like it," said Tatum. "I'm thinking maybe fifth."

"There is no fifth level."

"Let me read it to you." Tatum gestured for Logan to give her the phone.

Logan did.

Tatum disappeared up the steps, and we could hear a muffled echo of her voice reading the spell to Graeme. Then it was quiet. Finally, Graeme's voice said that he needed to consult some other sources and he'd get back to us.

Tatum trooped down the stairs. "He said—"

"We heard," said Reid.

"Oh," said Tatum. She handed Logan back his phone. She sat back down. "Can I just go on record as saying this is the worst way to spend an afternoon ever?"

* * *

"I know a round I could teach you guys," Reid was saying. "You want to learn a round?"

"I have a shit singing voice," said Tatum. "I don't think so."

"Maybe we could play the Kevin Bacon game," I suggested. "That's a really great way to pass the time."

"What's the Kevin Bacon game?" said Tatum.

"It's like you have to connect Kevin Bacon to any other actor in any other film by going from actor to actor. Like, you could connect Kevin Bacon to Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men and then Tom Cruise to Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire—"

"No," said Tatum.

"I haven't even finished explaining it," I said.

"No," she said.

I sighed. "Fine."

We were quiet. It had been nearly an hour since Graeme had told us he'd get back to us, and no word yet.

Logan cleared his throat. "We could try to train."

"We can't conjure and we have no weapons," I said. "How would we do that?"

"We could make training weapons out of—"

"No," said Tatum.

Logan pursed his lips. "You're not in a good mood, are you, Tatum?"

"Gee, I wonder why that would be." Her voice dripped sarcasm.

"Okay, guys," said Reid. "We need to try not to turn on each other, though, because if we don't stick together—"

The phone rang.

"Oh, thank God," said Tatum. She glared at Logan. "Answer it."

Logan was having trouble getting it out of his pocket. He fumbled with the phone.

It stopped ringing.

We all let out annoyed noises.

Logan got the phone free. "Sorry! I'll call him back."

But it rang in his hands.

Logan punched buttons on the phone. "Hello?"

"Logan?" Graeme's voice came through the speaker so that we could all hear.

"Yes," said Logan.

"You're all still there?"

"Where would we go?" said Tatum.

Graeme cleared his throat. "Yes, well, I suppose that was a silly question. All right, well, the good news is that I've got a solution for you. The bad news is that it's rather, er, awkward."

"What's that mean?" I said.

"The binding spell that you have in there can only be broken by a deeply powerful event involving a magical creature. If you still had the dragon alive, it would be one thing. You could kill him and use the death of the creature to break the spell."

"So one way to break it is death?" said Tatum.

"Yes," said Graeme. "Obviously, that's no good for you."

"Not really," said Reid. "What's the other way?"

"Well..." Graeme cleared his throat and then adopted a very clipped and matter-of-fact tone. "Sex."

We were all quiet.

Graeme kept going. "It might be adequate if any of you were to engage in intercourse and to say the proper incantation, but to be absolutely certain, it should probably take place between the two most magical beings among you. However, since that involves Logan, and it would be highly irregular to engage in such activity with a student—even though you are not really that much older than they are, Logan—I think if a substitution would occur, then that would probably be enough."

No one said anything.

"Well, then," said Graeme. "I'll text you the incantation, Logan."

"There's no other way?" said Tatum.

"No," said Graeme. "There is not. Believe me, I have been looking."

More silence.

"All right," said Graeme. "Well, call me when you've gotten out of there just so that I know you're safe, then." He hung up.

Logan looked down at his phone. He drew in a long, slow breath and then put it back in his pocket. He glanced at me, then at Tatum, and then swallowed hard. He looked down at the floor.

I hugged myself. I looked at Tatum.

She was chewing on her lip, making a face like she'd tasted something awful.

Reid raised his hand. "Uh..."

We waited.

He didn't say anything else.

More silence. Seconds ticked by.

"Petra?" said Reid.

"Yeah?" I said, and my voice sounded strained.

Reid studied his fingernails. "Since you and I have already, um... maybe you and I should do it?"

I sucked in a breath.

"I don't know," Tatum said quietly. "He said that to be certain, it should be Logan."

"By all means, volunteer me," Logan said in a raspy voice.

"You just want to bang Logan," said Reid.

"No, I don't," said Tatum. "I think it should be Logan and Petra. She's the most powerful of us, and he's a magical being."

I let out a whoosh of air. I swallowed.

No one said anything.

Reid's voice. "Look, I'm not saying this because I'm trying to be a perv, Petra. It's just that I don't think Logan really wants—"

"We don't want to have to do this more than once," said Tatum. "If Logan and Petra are willing, then it's better if it's them. That spell is extremely gnarly. It's going to take juice to break it."

More silence.

"Why don't you give Petra and I a minute alone to talk?" said Logan.

Reid made a noise. "Seriously?"

"Reid," said Tatum.

My voice was hoarse. "You held us up last night, Reid, so that you could screw some other girl, and you still think I want..."

Reid flushed. "I just thought that someone familiar—"

"Reid," I said. "Let me talk to Logan."

Tatum grabbed him by the arm and tugged on him. "Come on," she said quietly.

The two disappeared upstairs, leaving Logan and I behind.

Now, we were alone, but neither of us said anything.

Logan's voice was low and dark. "I thought there was no you and Reid."

"It was... stupid," I said. "I was stupid. I just was drunk and—" I put my hands on my hips. "What do you care?"

He shut his eyes and then opened them. "Sorry, that isn't why I said we should talk. That isn't what I wanted to say."

I waited.

He didn't say anything.

"Look," I said, "we can be adults about this. It's not a big deal. We don't even have to get completely undressed—"

"I've been in situations where consent is made murky because of magic before," he said.

My lips parted. I gazed at him in the flickering light of the torch, and I was suddenly struck by just how attractive he was. His chiseled features. His broad shoulders. His wings, which were trembling right now. "You have?" I said in a tiny voice.

He nodded. "Whatever we decide to do, we both have to understand that we're under duress, and that whatever it feels like it's not..."

I gulped. "Not what?"

"Not... anything except a spell," he said.

"Of course," I said. But it was harder to catch my breath. This was going to happen. I was going to have sex with Logan, with all of that big, hulking, muscly, hard, warm, stone flesh. Sure, it was a shitty way for it to happen, but I found that I couldn't say no to the opportunity.

I mean, not that I had a... a thing for Logan, like Reid said that I did, because I didn't. Logan was too laced-up for me. In fact, the reason that I was getting so worked up at the thought of being with him was probably because of the prospect of seeing him come undone. I mean, he'd have to, right?

Right?

I tilted my head. "Um, what do you think we have to do exactly? Just a quick, er, penetration, or do things have to be... finished?"

Logan's jaw twitched. "I don't know."

"Maybe you should, uh, ask Graeme?"

Logan sighed. "Really? You want me to ask him that?"

I twisted my hands together. "Well, we do have to know."

Logan got out his phone. "I don't even know how to phrase it."

"Like I did." I reached out and snatched the phone from him. "I'll do it. I'll ask Graeme." But when I turned on Logan's phone, there was a text message from Graeme, and it said, During climax, this is the incantation that must be said. Simultaneous climax is most powerful, but do the best you can. I made a little squeak.

"What?" said Logan.

I handed him the phone. "Guess that answers that question."

"Yeah," he said. He rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "No pressure."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

After we'd decided it was going to happen, we stood there, and then nothing happened.

Finally, I said something about protection, because I figured that was a responsible thing to do, but Logan didn't have anything on him, and neither did I, so I had to go upstairs and ask Reid, who I was pretty sure went everywhere with a massive supply of condoms.

Sure enough, he gave me one, but he wasn't pleased about the whole thing. I didn't time to deal with his issues right then, though. I wasn't particularly pleased that this was going down in the first place, but I had to admit I was happier that it was going to be Logan than Reid. The idea of doing that with Reid again made me feel wobbly and queasy. I definitely wasn't going down that path ever again.

Then I went back downstairs and gave Logan the condom.

And then... nothing.

We didn't look at each other.

I looked at my feet.

Logan flipped the condom through his fingers.

"Um, how's it going down there?" came Tatum's voice.

"Don't do that," Logan called back up to her. "Don't yell down here."

I lowered my voice. "You think they can hear us?"

"Look," called Tatum, "not to pressure you or anything, but we're up here with a corpse, so anytime you want to do this, that would be great."

I swallowed.

Logan shook his head. He spoke quietly. "Don't worry about her. We don't need to rush anything."

I took a deep breath. And then I unbuttoned my pants and shimmied out of them.

Logan's eyes widened. He glanced at my legs, and then away, studying the condom.

"Let's just get it over with," I said quietly. I hooked my thumbs into my underwear and removed those too.

Logan still wasn't looking at me. He held out the condom to me. "Hold this," he said, eyes on the floor.

I took it.

He undid his pants and took them off, along with his boxers. His shirt was long, but his erection was peeking out underneath it, and it was, well, impressive.

I licked my lips. "Is it always like that?" I whispered, thinking of what Tatum had said.

Logan glanced up at me, a confused look in his eyes.

"Because you're made of stone, so you're always hard anyway, and so maybe—"

"No," he said, annoyed. "It's not 'always like that.'"

"Oh," I said.

He took the condom back from me and stepped closer. Now, he looked into my eyes to avoid seeing me below the waist. "Like most males of any species, though, I can get aroused fairly easily, even if it's not exactly appropriate."

"Oh, no, it's fine," I said. I was stunned by how much more perfect and chiseled his features seemed up close. "I mean, it's appropriate to be aroused. It's necessary, so it's good that you..." I shook my head. Maybe I should stop talking.

Logan backed away from me.

"Sorry!" I said. What did I say?

"It's not you," he said, bending down and fishing his phone out of the pocket of his discarded pants. "It's only that we'll need the incantation."

I bit my lip. Reading the incantation off the phone's screen while doing it? Was that even going to work?

Logan stepped closer to me again.

I backed up into the wall. There was a recessed shelf next to me.

Logan set the phone there.

I guessed that was okay, but he was just going to have to move it again. I assumed this was going to happen on the floor.

"I suppose you're not." Logan's voice was gravelly.

"Not what?" My voice, however, was breathy and insubstantial.

"Aroused," he said.

"Oh," I said. "I'm maybe a little..."

His fingers against my thighs, the barest touch. "This okay?" he murmured.

"Yes," I breathed.

And then he expertly found the center of me, and his fingers were solid and firm, but warm and gentle.

I gasped.

"More than a little," he said.

I blushed. We'd been talking about having sex, and then he was all hulking and gorgeous and then half naked. And something about the fact that the situation was unconventional seemed to make it all the more exciting in an awful way.

"Okay, then," he said. He stopped touching me. He cleared his throat. "I guess we can just..."

"Okay," I said. This was awkward. "Should I...?" I gestured to the floor.

But he was putting on the condom.

And I looked away for some reason, because it seemed rude to watch.

He moved close to me again.

I was confused. Shouldn't we be like lying down or—

His hand touched the back of my leg and then trailed down to the hollow behind my knee.

Thrills went through me. I let out a huff of air.

He lifted my leg, and his other hand was at my opposite hip. He hoisted me up against the wall, like I weighed nothing, and braced me there.

Now we were face to face. My breath was shallow. I peered at him and he peered back at me.

"Okay?" he asked softly.

"Yeah," I whispered.

He took my hand and guided it to his crotch. His voice was a rumble against my ear. "It'll be easier if you..."

I understood. I wrapped my hand around him and eased his body into the opening of my own.

His fingers dug into my hips as he pushed his way inside.

I couldn't breathe. He was huge and hard and I was assailed by the sensation of being filled. I clenched my thighs around him, struggling to draw in breath.

Logan's eyes were closed.

I was glad. I was probably making a pretty weird face at the moment. I shut my own eyes, and then I found my breath had returned. I gulped in air. When I opened my eyes, his were open too.

Logan flexed his wings, spreading them out to their full span. They surrounded the two of us, cocooning us into another world where it was just the two of us. He gazed at me as he started to thrust.

I groaned. It felt really, really good. I felt as though I had been transported. Here, with Logan, inside the protection of his wings, I was in a land of pleasure. It was nice here. So nice.

I was kind of stunned by how... intimate it was. Like, okay, yeah, obviously, it was intimate, it was sex, but it wasn't as if I hadn't had my share of encounters. But with all those other guys, I had never really felt... in sync. I never really felt connected to anyone else. It had never been like the descriptions in those trashy romance novels I used to read. I thought that kind of stuff was crap, honestly. But this, what I was experiencing right now, it was different.

This was being in sync with someone. This was being connected. I didn't understand why it was different. I barely knew Logan, and this was the setup for the worst sex ever, but it was probably the best I'd ever had, and as much as I liked it, I was a little freaked out by how heightened everything was becoming.

I kissed him.

He kissed me back, his tongue soft and probing against mine.

I wrapped my arms around his neck. I smoothed my palms over his solid, firm shoulders.

He broke the kiss. "Sorry, is that—"

"Don't apologize," and there was a desperate edge to my voice. I was having a very pleasant, but very troubling, sensation of getting lost in Logan, as if parts of me were turning sort of liquid and flowing into parts of him, which were also liquid. Like, all of the places were we touched, we were co-mingled, and the outer parts of us were a shell that contained us both, and we were some complete other thing together. It was so intense that it was making tears spring to my eyes, and it was scary and wonderful and embarrassing.

He was kissing me again, but he wasn't kissing my mouth. He was kissing my jaw, and my ear lobe, and the hollow below my ear, and my neck.

And I was moaning, trying not to moan very loud, because I knew that Tatum and Reid were upstairs, but it felt really good, and I was feeling all the feels, and a tear was spilling out of my eye and I was holding onto Logan for dear life and...

His hand moved from my thigh and danced between my legs.

I cried out. There was sharp line of pleasure that had suddenly been ignited in the core of my being, and it was burning bright and bold.

He rasped at my ear. "Tell me when you're close."

"Okay," I gasped.

"I mean," he said in a labored voice, "if you're close. Does this even feel—"

"Perfect," I whimpered. "It's perfect."

And he was kissing me again, and the kissing and his fingers and our bodies together, and all of it, it was a whirlwind of goodness. I got spun into it, and it took me away.

Time passed.

Maybe a lot. Maybe not a lot. I didn't know. It was the same thing over and over, our bodies working in a kind of rhythmic pattern, but the effect it was having on me was anything but repetitive. I was climbing an exquisite ladder towards the heavens, and Logan was nudging me up one rail and a time. I threw all my concentration into getting to the next rung, and then the next, and the next...

And I knew the final one was coming soon enough, and I wanted it. Oh, hell, did I want...

My eyes snapped open. "Close."

He had been kissing my neck. He broke away. "Close?"

I nodded.

He nodded at the phone on the shelf. "Can you get that?"

I reached over and picked it up. I turned it on and there was the incantation. But now I was pretty sure that any pleasure that I had been feeling was—

Oh, wait, never mind.

Still there.

"How close?" He was panting.

"I don't know," I groaned, my eyes rolling back in my head. "I think I'm just..."

"Start reading it," he urged.

I groaned again. I was starting to ride a cresting wave, and I wanted to concentrate on that, but I had to read this stupid incantation. I began to stumble over the words. I didn't even know how to pronounce them.

Logan's voice joined mine.

And somehow, the distraction of the incantation put off the wave just enough that when it did crash into my thighs and hips, it was the most intense thing I'd ever felt in my life. I stammered the incantation as my body twitched and convulsed against Logan and around Logan. Hot, white pleasure exploded inside me, like glowing, brilliant waves of liquid. I couldn't tell where I began and Logan ended, and it was absolutely amazing.

He stopped moving, twitching inside me. His voice was hoarse and faltering too.

We kept reciting the incantation as best we could.

Then my climax ebbed out, leaving me sated and exhausted.

My voice quieted. I kept reading the incantation, but then I realized Logan wasn't saying it anymore, and I stopped.

We gazed at each other.

"Hey, there," he whispered.

I smiled a tiny smile. "Hey."

He kissed me again.

I slammed my eyes shut and clung to him.

He pulled away slowly, our lips remaining close.

"I hope that worked," I whispered.

"Yeah," he said.

I opened my eyes.

He was smiling at me.

I smiled back.

He reached up and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear.

I got shivers. I suddenly wished we could stay like that. I wished this hadn't been in service of a spell, that there was something else to this, because I really wanted to do this again, my dislike of reruns notwithstanding. This was an experience I thought I could stand having again.

"You all right?" he said.

I nodded. "Are you?"

He chuckled. "There any reason I wouldn't be?"

I wanted to kiss him again. I looked at his lips, and then I looked into his eyes, asking a silent question.

His smile slowly faded. He gazed at me, his expression the serious-Logan-face I knew so well. He kissed me on the forehead. His lips lingered there for a minute, and then he extricated my legs from where they were wrapped around him and set them on the floor.

And suddenly, we weren't connected anymore.

I felt it like a bucket of cold water in my face. I felt lonely and strange. I didn't look at him as I picked up my clothes and put them back on.

"Um," came Tatum's voice, "I know you said not to yell down there, but it's really been a while now. How's it going?"

"Try the door!" called Logan, who was already dressed and heading up the stairs away from me.

"You're done?" said Tatum.

He didn't even look at me as he climbed up and away. "We're done," he told her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Reid was sulky on the way back home. I sat up front with him because I didn't want to be in the backseat with Logan for some reason, but I still felt weird being near Reid. God, I felt like a freaking ho-bag. How does a girl end up in a car with two guys she's had sex with and not be some kind of slut?

Blame it on magic, I guess.

We got back on the road right away. We didn't talk to anyone, not Thomas Grant and especially not any of the maids. The spell obviously wasn't here. Even if it was, I was in no shape to look for it. No one even mentioned the spell.

Tatum tried to engage everyone in conversation about things like the most recent episodes of Game of Thrones, which had been on the air months ago, but I didn't watch that show, and neither did Logan, and Reid was too busy making faces at the windshield like it smelled bad.

At one point, Reid burst out with, "Well, I guess we should all just sleep together then. I should sleep with Tatum, too, for it to be fair."

Tatum snorted in the back seat. This had come out of nowhere. "I guess I get to sleep with Logan too?"

I cringed. Damn it. Was she mad at me? She was probably mad at me. She had said that she wasn't interested in Logan, but she obviously was, and I had just gone along with the whole thing when I should have tried to let her be the one to have sex with Logan.

Except... I was glad that I hadn't. I was glad that it had been me. Me and Logan.

I turned around from the front seat to look at him.

He was gazing directly at me, and our eyes locked.

Then he looked away.

"So, basically, everyone wants to sleep with Logan," said Reid. "I get it."

"Reid," I muttered.

"It's because of the wings, right?"

"Reid," I said, this time louder.

He glanced at me, then back at the road.

"Shut up," I said in a terse voice.

Reid's nostrils flared. But he didn't say anything else.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When we got back to the school, Reid wanted to talk to me, but I didn't want to talk to him. I wanted to talk to Logan. I wanted to be... close to Logan. Damn it, this was weird. I didn't understand it, exactly, I just knew that it was better when we were both in the car together, and now that we were in the parking lot, surrounded by our various bags, about to part ways, it was worse. I didn't want him to be one place and me to be somewhere else.

"Where you you live?" I blurted.

Logan was hauling Tatum's luggage out of the trunk of the car. He didn't answer.

"Do you live at the school like we do, or do you have an apartment or something?"

He set the luggage on the ground. "You're talking to me?"

"Well, I know where everyone else lives. Tatum's my roommate, and Reid—" I broke off.

Logan's mouth twisted. "And you've already slept with Reid."

I looked at my shoes.

Logan stuck his head back into the trunk. There was nothing else there. He shut the trunk and straightened.

Tatum was picking up her suitcase. "Well, you two should... talk?"

"Actually," said Reid, "I was thinking that maybe Petra and I could—"

"Shut up, Reid," said Tatum, taking him by the arm and dragging him away across the parking lot.

And then it was just Logan and me.

"I don't just sleep with guys all the time, you know," I said. "I'm not like that." Which was kind of a lie. But I didn't want to be like that anymore. I wasn't going to be like that.

Logan studied his palms. "It's none of my business."

"Right," I said.

"I have an apartment," he said, folding his arms over his chest and raising his gaze to meet mine.

"Oh," I said. "Well, that's good. I'm happy for you." Happy for him? What? What was wrong with me?

"Listen, this is clearly awkward, but like I said before, this was all about the spell, so..."

"No, I know that," I said. "Obviously, I know that." I laughed a little. "It's only that it was... nice." Oh, that was a perfect word for it.

His jaw twitched. "Maybe you feel that way now, but I know from experience that things which are forced like this leave residual emotional traces, but they don't..." He shifted on his feet. "Mean anything."

"Oh," I said again.

"Whoever it was you were sleeping with before is the person you're going to want in the end. The magic just confuses you."

"I wasn't sleeping with anyone," I said.

Logan rubbed his forehead. "Okay, sure."

"I wasn't. Reid and I aren't—"

"I don't think Reid knows that," said Logan. "Trust me, I understand what that's like too."

"What?" I said.

He let out a bitter chuckle. "Sorry. I, uh, should go."

"Okay," I said. "Did I say something or do something—"

"We can't undo this," he said. "We can't go back. But we still need to work together, so let's try to be friends?"

"Friends," I said. I shoved my hands into my pockets. "Definitely, friends." I forced myself to smile.

* * *

I dragged myself upstairs to my room after that, but I wasn't looking forward to it, because Tatum would be there, and I didn't know how to explain to her that I was not trying to break the girl code or anything, but that I was definitely having confused feelings about Logan, and I was sorry that she hadn't been the one to sleep with him, except that I wasn't sorry—

I shouldn't tell her that, though. I needed to keep that to myself, especially since Logan didn't seem to have been as affected as I was by the whole thing.

I was exhausted and my skin had that old-dried-sweat feeling and I really just wanted a shower and my bed, not another emotionally draining conversation.

But Tatum met me at the door. "Hey."

"Hey," I said. I tugged in my luggage and deposited it on the floor in our living room. I'd get it into the bedroom later.

"So, you okay?" she said. "You need to talk about anything?"

"Honestly?" I said. "I could stand not talking. But I know that you're probably feeling upset about what happened with me and Logan, and I know that you had a crush on him—"

"Please," she said. "A crush? I admire his physical form, that is all."

"Tatum, you don't have to pretend—"

"I'm not pretending," she said. "I told you that I had decided he was not my type. I was serious." She twisted her hands together. "I'm sorry I threw you under the bus and suggested you should fuck him. I could have probably womaned up and done that crap, but..." She shook her head, shuddering. "Was it awful?"

"No," I said. "Sort of the opposite of awful, actually."

She smiled. "Really? So, you don't hate me?"

"Of course I don't hate you. You don't hate me?"

"No way," she said.

We hugged.

I pulled away. "If you still feel guilty, though, I could use that as leverage to call dibs on the first shower."

She laughed. "Have at it, girl."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"Basically, you were all gone for days on end," Graeme was saying from behind his desk, "and you have absolutely nothing to show for it. No spell."

None of us said anything. Reid, Tatum, and I were back in Graeme's office. It was the next morning.

"Look," said Reid, "we went through a hell of a lot out there. Maybe we didn't find the spell, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't hard on all of us."

"Yes," said Graeme. "Well." He loosened his tie and cleared his throat. "The good news is that we have another idea for a way that you can find the spell to close the breach. Honestly, had I thought of it earlier, it should have been our first attempt."

I squared my shoulders. "What do we have to do?"

Graeme gestured to three small stoppered bottles, which were sitting on the edge of his desk. I had been wondering what they were doing there. The liquid inside was a pale green color.

"This cordial will transport you into the past for exactly two hours. You will be sent back to the time when your mothers and Sofia were attending the school. You can procure the spell from them," said Graeme.

"Traveling in time?" I said. "We can do that?"

"You'll be able to interact with people in the past," said Graeme. "They'll be able to see you and hear you. But you will not be able to touch anything. If you do, your bodies will pass directly through the matter. You will be incorporeal, like ghosts."

"Great," said Tatum. "So, how do we get the spell?"

"You'll need to memorize it," said Graeme. "Divide it into three parts, perhaps? Each of you are responsible for one third of the spell? I don't care how you do it. It's up to you. But you must do this. We need that spell."

* * *

The cordial tasted foul, like cough syrup mixed with anchovy juice. But it worked fairly quickly. One minute we were sitting in Graeme's office, and then the world began to fade and swirl and suddenly...

We were back in Graeme's office.

But it wasn't Graeme's office, exactly. It was different. The desk was the same, but there was an older style phone sitting on it. It was made of clear plastic so that all the guts of the electronics inside were on display. There was also an old computer on the desk, with the big cube monitor and everything. There was a professor sitting behind the desk. He looked us over.

"Who are you?"

"We're from the future," I said.

"Ah," said the professor, entirely unfazed by this, as if time travelers showed up in his office daily. "I suppose you've got important things to do, then?"

"Yes," said Reid.

"Anything I can do for you?" said the professor.

"Well, we are looking for some specific students," said Tatum.

"Who would that be?" asked the professor.

We gave him the names, and he told us that Sofia and my mother lived in a room together, room seventeen. We knew where that was, so we headed down the stairs to the dorm floor. It was kind of creepy how very much the same the school looked twenty-two years ago.

We didn't see anyone on the stairs, but when we emerged onto the floor where the dorms were, a girl our age was walking down the hallway. She looked vaguely familiar to me somehow.

"Mom?" said Reid.

The girl gave him a funny look.

"Uh, I mean, Isla," said Reid. "That's your name, right? Isla Darkmore?"

Isla cocked her head at us. "I'm sorry, I don't remember meeting you."

"That's okay," said Tatum, plastering a smile on her face. "Happens to me all the time. We're actually heading to Sofia Grant's room, though."

"Oh, I know where that is," said Isla. "I'll show you."

Tatum started to say, "Actually, we already—"

"Thanks," said Reid, smiling at Isla. Of course, he'd want the chance to talk to his mother. We let Isla take us down the hallway to room seventeen. Reid asked his mother silly questions like what her favorite breakfast cereal was and whether she wore socks to sleep. Isla giggled at him, and told him he was strange, but she found herself liking him in spite of that. It was obvious that Reid just wanted to hear her talk. He was grinning from ear to ear.

When we approached room seventeen, my heart started to beat in my chest. Would my mother be in there? Would I get a chance to meet her before she had become angry and sad?

I couldn't stand to knock on the door. I wanted to see my mother, and if it was Sofia who answered the door, I didn't know if I'd be able to handle it. What were the odds that we'd have enough time after memorizing the spell to go hunt her down if she wasn't here?

But then we all realized that none of us could knock on the door, because we weren't corporeal, so it was a good thing we had Isla there with us.

"Should I knock?" she said.

"That would be great," said Reid.

Isla knocked.

The door opened.

It was my mother. She looked confused, but she smiled at us all anyway. "Um, hi?"

"Hi," I said, just staring at her, drinking her in. She was so young. So pretty. And I'd never seen her look so light and untroubled. I wanted to hug her.

"There something I can help you with?" she said.

I was grinning a big, stupid grin, just like Reid had been. "Uh, what's your favorite breakfast cereal?"

My mother laughed. "Seriously? Is this a survey or something?"

"Actually," spoke up Tatum, "we need to talk about a spell you guys did to close a breach. We're from the future."

My mother furrowed her brow. "What do you mean you're from the—?"

* * *

It felt as if someone had thrust a meat hook into my stomach and hooked into my ribs and yanked me through the air at three hundred miles per hour.

I came to in Graeme's office gasping and sputtering. We were back in our own time.

I blinked.

The wall behind Graeme's desk was spattered in blood.

Graeme himself was face down on the desk. Well, his head was. His headless torso was slumped in the chair behind the desk. His arm was lying on the carpet next to my toe.

I screamed.

Reid and Tatum were sitting up next to me, both choking and gasping and trying to get their bearings.

What the fuck had just happened?

I turned to look at the doorway, ready to run.

But the scribbly thing was there. It was squirming and wriggling too fast to catch the movement, a swarm of tiny black lines.

Guns didn't work on that thing, so I held out my hand and conjured a knife. I darted forward, brandishing the blade. I slashed at the scribbly thing.

Two tiny black threads were severed. They fluttered to the ground.

The scribbly thing made a grunting sound, and it was coming for me.

And then it was all happening, and it was too fast to think or breathe. I was running from the scribbly thing. I was trying to get it with the knife. I ran over the furniture, climbing up on the chairs in Graeme's office. At one point, I was standing on top of the back of the sofa, hacking at the squirmy lines of the thing, but no matter how many I cut off, it just kept coming.

Reid and Tatum were fighting too.

The scribbly thing was big and fast. There was enough of it to go around. Even when it gathered itself into one big force, the scribbles tightly wound around each other, it moved so quickly that it could be cracking a thread through the air at me one moment and then slicing into the skin of Reid's forearm the next.

We fought it and we fought it.

But we didn't get anywhere.

We tried to conjure different things.

At one point, Reid had a bomb. He detonated it, and it blew a hole in the ceiling of Graeme's office, but the scribbly thing was unscathed.

I tried a bigger blade, a huge broadsword with a big reach. The thing was so heavy that I could barely swing it with two arms.

I connected with the scribbly thing, cut off pieces of it, and it made no difference.

The thing just kept coming.

Tatum tried regular talisman magic on it. She snatched up one of Graeme's old talismans and used the magic within to topple a bookshelf onto the scribbly thing.

For a moment, we thought we'd trapped it.

But then, the squirmy lines just appeared between the books, squiggling their way out from beneath what had fallen on them.

We started to get tired. We were panting and sweating and thirsty. We had to keep moving, but the muscles in our feet and legs ached.

The thing had chances to kill us, but it didn't. I was considering that possibly we should run away. Maybe the only thing we could do was to get away from this thing. We needed to regroup and make a plan to combat it.

All at once, the thing solidified. It turned back into person, like it had before. Only this wasn't the same person that it had been, not the one that had vaguely resembled me and worn similar clothes to me. No, this one looked a little bit like... Reid?

"That is enough," he (it?) said. "I will fight you no longer."

"Yeah?" said Reid, pushing sweaty hair away from his forehead, "well I'm happy to keep going so—"

"My son, please," said the man.

Reid froze, a horrified look on his face.

Tatum and I didn't move either.

"You cannot stop us," said the man. "Nor do you want to, not deep down. You carry within you our blood. You are our offspring, the first wave of colonization in this new world. We must not fight. You must help us."

Oh, gross. Gross, gross, gross. We were children of some horrible alien thing, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This was disgusting.

"You're not my father," said Reid.

"I am," said the man. "I see me in you." He cocked his head. "Do we not look alike?"

Reid looked ready to vomit. "No," she said, his voice cracking.

"We want rid of you," said Tatum through clenched teeth. She was still brandishing the knife she'd been fighting with.

"How do we close the breaches?" I said.

"Blood," croaked the man. "But you cannot stop us without life's blood. And we must show you that you are part of us." He leaped forward and seized Reid by the wrist. "Come with me, my son. I will show you who you truly are." He waved a hand in the air and a breach ripped through the fabric of the room, just above Graeme's body.

Reid struggled, trying to get away from the thing claiming to be his father. "Let go of me, you son of a bitch!" he yelled.

But the man was floating in the air now, and he was making Reid float too. They levitated until they were even with the breach and then they began to float towards it.

The man was taking Reid through the breach. I couldn't let that happen. I leaped up and grabbed at Reid, trying to catch him around the waist.

But they floated higher, and I only grabbed his ankles.

The man holding Reid sent down two wriggly lines out of the bottom of his pants. They snapped through the air like live wires and slapped me off Reid's ankles.

Reid yelled, conjuring a wicked, curved knife. He began to drive it into the man's chest.

Nothing happened. The cloth of his clothes tore, but there was no blood.

Reid and the man were floating toward the breach.

Blood.

He said that blood would close the breaches.

And suddenly, I remembered that when the breach had closed in my mother's room, I had been bleeding. I'd cut myself with that stupid needle I'd been using to sew it together.

Now the man was entering the breach. It parted wider to let them through. A wind blew through it, fluttering Reid's hair. He cringed.

"Turn the knife on yourself, Reid," I said.

The man was all the way inside the breach, with Reid trailing along. Reid had stopped trying to stab him. He was doing spastic movements in the air, a last ditch effort to get free.

Reid looked down at me with wild, wide eyes. "You think I should kill myself?"

"No, just cut yourself," I said. "Blood closes the breaches. Our blood."

Reid looked confused and terrified. "What?"

"Just cut yourself, damn it!" I screamed.

He was practically into the breach now. All that was left of the man was his arm.

Reid screwed up his face and then brought the knife down on his wrist, the one held by the man. Reid shrieked.

Blood welled up on his wrist and then dripped down onto the breach.

There was a hissing noise and the breach sealed up immediately, snapping closed like the jaws of a trap.

The hand of the man was neatly severed from his body. It fell to the floor.

And so did Reid, because nothing was holding him up.

He fell in a heap on the floor and clutched his bleeding wrist.

Tatum and I rushed over to him.

"Ouch," he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Reid scrambled to his feet. "Well, let's go before I scab over."

"Go?" said Tatum.

"To the library," said Reid. "Close the other damned breach." He was running for the door to Graeme's office. "How'd you know that would work, anyway, Petra?"

I was hot on his heels. "You know that other breach I supposedly sewed shut?"

Tatum brought up the rear. "Yeah?"

"Well, I remembered that I bled on it and it closed up. I had stabbed myself with the needle I'd conjured," I said.

We were out in the hallway next to Graeme's office now. Reid headed for the stairwell. We followed.

"And that thing said that blood was how we closed the breaches," said Tatum. "I can't believe it just offered that up as information."

"Yeah, they don't seem very smart," I said. "Thinking we'd just cross over to the other world with them? We'd never do that."

"It's not true," said Reid. He'd reached the stairwell. He threw open the door. "That thing isn't my father." He disappeared into the stairwell.

I hesitated. "Actually..."

"No," said Reid. He was climbing the steps now. His voice echoed. "Not my fucking father."

I didn't respond. I started climbing behind him and so did Tatum.

We rushed up the steps as fast as we could, and we didn't talk while climbing so as to save our breath. We were still exhausted from the fight with that thing, but we were also energized by our success.

Finally, we emerged on the top floor, and then we hurried down the hallway to the library.

It was empty, just like the last time we'd been in there.

We sprinted through the place, dodging tables and bookshelves, until we came to the door where the breach was located.

Of course, it had a cage in front of it and all those freaking deadbolts

"Great," muttered Reid, glaring at it.

"I got this," I said. I put my hand on the cage and vanished it. Then I vanished the door behind it as well.

Well. Sort of. Every other time I'd vanished something, it was made of magic, and when I vanished it, it seemed to cease to exist. But the door and the cage were solid and created from matter. So, when I tried to vanish them, I ran into a barrier.

I felt them rematerialize outside the building, maybe a quarter mile away.

So, they were still in the world, just gone from here. Which was good enough.

And no matter what had happened exactly, it was was probably going to make some skitters show up, so I conjured a gun and some bullets. I gestured inside. "Well, go close it. I'll get the skitters that show up."

Reid looked into the dark doorway. He took a deep breath. "Is anyone else getting a feeling like this is going to be a bad idea?"

Skitters. Climbing over bookshelves, coming for us, their horrid chirping noise grating against my ears. I opened fire. "Stop stalling and do it, for fuck's sake."

Reid ran into the room.

I shot the skitters. They dropped, one after the other, squealing as I hit them with the green bullets.

When I was done, I hurried into the room after Reid and Tatum to see what problems they were dealing with.

But everything seemed fine. Reid had collapsed on the floor and Tatum was staring at the place in the air where the breach had been.

Reid panted. "That went well, actually."

"Can't have been that easy," said Tatum.

I shrugged. "Maybe it was?"

Reid raised his eyebrows at me. "So, uh, I just closed two breaches. You think you might sleep with me again now?"

I glowered at him.

Reid's shoulders sagged. "I kind of figured you were going to say no." He pushed to his feet. "I think I'm giving up on you, Petra Brightshade. Other fish in the pond and all that shit."

"I think it's 'sea,'" said Tatum.

Reid headed to the door. "What time is it?"

"I don't know," I said. "Why?"

"I'm starving," he said. "You think they're serving lunch in the dining hall yet?"

* * *

But before we were finished eating our lunch, another breach opened.

It opened directly over the buffet line in the dining hall, and skitters started falling out of it into the broccoli cheddar soup they were serving.

"Got this," I said, snagging the knife that Reid had conjured. I marched up to the breach, pricked my finger and dripped some blood on it. Thing shut right up, snapping the skitters in half. The soup was really, really ruined.

I went back to the table.

"So, that was easy," said Tatum. "I wonder if my blood works."

Reid made a face. "I'm thinking we're going to get a chance to test that."

He was right.

Another breach opened about ten minutes later. This one was in the kitchen, and all the staff who cooked there came running out, screaming.

As it turned out, Tatum's blood did work. What do you know?

But things were far from good. Breaches started to open at an alarming rate, all over the school. They were opening in classrooms, dorm rooms, in professor's offices, in the alley behind the building.

We had to split up to deal with them all, and it seemed as though the minute that one got closed another opened.

There were skitters everywhere, crawling over the ceilings in the bathrooms and clinging to the railings in the stairwells. When we weren't bleeding on breaches, we were shooting skitters.

I passed Logan a couple of times, either going up or down the stairs to find the next breach, but we didn't acknowledge each other.

Even though I shouldn't have been thinking about crap like that, it stung. I wanted him to at least say hello or something. But I guessed I was to blame as well. When I saw him, it made my pulse race and the back of my neck start to sweat. I didn't know how to talk to him, not even how to say hello.

But I didn't have too much time to ponder it, because I had to keep closing breaches.

I went up and down the damned stairs at least fifty times that day. Around dinner time, I grabbed a sandwich, which I had to eat on the run.

It kept going on into the evening.

By midnight, we were dead tired.

Logan and the professors loaded all of the students in the entire school into the library and put up the wards that Logan had used in the alley to keep things out. Breaches opened outside the wards, but the things that got out couldn't get to us.

The entire school was there, all of us in sleeping bags and blankets. We had to sleep on the floor. It wasn't comfortable. But I was so tired that I didn't care. The minute my eyes closed, I was out. I drifted in a dreamless, healing darkness until morning.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The next morning, I awoke to Tatum nudging me. She was kneeling next to me with mussed sleepy hair, and she had her hands full. One to-go coffee cup in each.

I sat up and took a coffee. "Thanks."

"Sure," she said.

The library was empty. I looked around, rubbing my eyes. "Where is everyone?"

"Logan told me that they were warding the other students into the dining hall for today until we could figure something out."

"Oh," I said. I took a sip of my coffee. It was pretty hot. "Logan woke you up?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Where's Reid?" I said.

"Oh, Logan woke him up first," she said. "He's sealing up a breach in the dining hall before they set the wards. Should be back up in a minute."

So. Logan hadn't wanted to wake me up, huh? Damn it, that stung even worse.

And while I was still reeling from that, he appeared. Logan, Reid, and another professor that I didn't know came into the library.

Had Logan's chest always been so broad? How did I manage to spend any time in his presence at all without being distracted by it, then? Maybe it was just because I remembered being pressed against it. And then I noticed Logan noticing my noticing him, so I looking away.

The professor came over and introduced himself. "Hi, I'm Professor Norwood, the new dean." He shook my hand and then offered it to Tatum. Apparently, she didn't know him either. He gestured to one of the tables. "Shall we?"

Everyone sat down, except me and Logan. I was sort of waiting to see where he sat. Because... oh, I don't know why. I wasn't trying to sit next to him. Except, somehow, it ended up that there were only two empty seats and they were next to each other.

Logan gave me a wry smile and then sat down.

I sat down next to him. I didn't look at him, but it was like I could feel his presence next to me, like he was heavy somehow and tugging at my attention.

"We have a problem," said Norwood.

Right. Breaches. Danger. Stop thinking about Logan!

"We can't keep up with the breaches," said Reid. "They're opening at a ridiculous rate."

"We need the spell," said Norwood. "The spell shuts down all the breaches and kills all the beings in our world. I think that it should have ended the problem when it was done before, except for the existence of you."

"Who?" I said.

"You and Reid and Estelle," said Norwood. "You were already, er, conceived in your mothers' wombs, and that was a toehold for these creatures."

"But how will it be different this time?" I said. "If we close the breaches with that spell, then we'll still be here."

Norwood chewed on his lip. "That is true."

"We don't have the spell," said Logan. "And whatever it did, it obviously didn't work forever. We need something else."

"Well," said Tatum. "When that thing told us that blood would close the breaches, that wasn't all he said."

"Right," I said. "He said something about life's blood."

"He said we couldn't stop him without life's blood," said Reid.

"So, what?" said Norwood. "Someone has to die? That's out of the question. I can't possibly explain that to your parents. No."

"We shouldn't trust him, anyway," said Logan. "He may have been lying to you."

"He wasn't lying about blood closing the breaches," said Tatum.

"No one's dying," said Norwood. "Let's move on from this conversation."

"Okay," I said. Sounded reasonable to me. I wasn't keen on dying.

Tatum and Reid both nodded. I guess neither of them particularly felt like dying either.

"All right," said Norwood. "Other ideas?"

No one said anything.

I looked around the table and found Logan staring directly at me. I caught his gaze, my lips parting. I thought of the way it had felt to kiss him, the way it had felt when he had been inside me, and I felt wrecked.

Logan swallowed. He looked away.

I looked away too.

"Someone has to have some other sort of idea," said Norwood.

I shook myself. I really needed to focus here. This whole situation was bad.

"Maybe we just wait them out?" said Reid. "Eventually, they'll get sick of opening breaches?"

"I think they want a breach open," said Tatum. "It's fine as long as we leave one open, but if we close that one, they'll open another."

"Okay," said Reid. "Well, maybe it could be okay if there was a breach open all the time. I mean, the school's survived this long."

"No, not acceptable," said Norwood. "The school has lost two deans in a matter of days. It's only a matter of time until there are more casualties, and that we cannot allow to happen."

"We can't leave breaches open," said Logan. "It's too dangerous. But at the same time, you three can't be running around closing them like you were yesterday, either. You won't last long at that pace."

"So, we have to do something," said Norwood. "But no one has any idea what we can do?"

"Maybe there are some people I could call," said Logan.

"That vampire cop and his dragon wife in Sea City you've spoken of?" said Norwood. "Or the others... the, um, slayer and another dragon she's married to?"

"Not them," said Logan. "I was thinking Penny and Lachlan, yeah. They took on the Green King, and he was from another world, so maybe they'd be able to—"

"Vampires," I said. "That's it."

Everyone turned and looked at me. "That's how we could get around the life's blood thing. If I drank dragon's blood, and then you drained all my blood, killed me, I'd survive it."

"But you'd be a vampire," said Logan.

"Probably," I said. "Maybe not, though. I mean, I'm not completely human, so maybe dragon blood would work differently on me."

"Yeah, maybe it wouldn't work at all," said Logan. He shook his head. "No way. Too dangerous. You're not doing that." He sounded pretty definite.

I felt a flutter in my stomach. I didn't know he cared. I gave him a small smile.

He glared at me. "No. We'll find another way."

"Well, if I were a vampire, I mean..." I shrugged. "It's not that bad, is it? So, I have to drink some animal blood, but I'd live forever and shit."

"You'd have to leave the school," said Norwood. "We couldn't have a fledgling vampire around the students. Too dangerous."

I guessed the bloodlust part was kind of bad... I considered. "I still think it's worth it."

"No." Logan was adamant. "Stop talking about it. Out of the question."

"Are you the boss of me?" I said. "I'm pretty sure you're not."

"Uh," Reid spoke up. "It does sound pretty dangerous, Petra."

I squared my shoulders. "Danger is my middle name," I said lightly. "I eat danger for breakfast."

Logan gave me a withering look.

Tatum wrinkled up her nose. "Petra..."

"We don't have any other ideas, do we?" I said.

Everyone was quiet.

"Fine, then," I said. "We need to figure out where to find dragon blood."

Norwood cleared his throat. "Logan? You have some connections with the magical underworld, don't you?"

Logan sighed heavily. "I just want to go on the record as saying I really don't like this."

* * *

But he got the dragon's blood for us.

I asked if I could come along, and for some reason, he said I could. We left the school, got in his car, and drove to an apartment building out on the edge of town. While we drove, neither of us spoke to each other, and I felt like a dumbass for asking if I could come, because I couldn't actually talk to him.

When we got to the apartment building, he parked the car in the parking lot. The apartment building was two stories high, and there was an old green couch sitting out in the middle of a basketball court with no basketball hoop. Several teenagers in hooded sweatshirts lounged on the couch. Behind them, the windows of one of the apartments were covered in plywood. The place was pretty rundown.

"You want to stay in the car?" he said.

"What would the point of coming along be if I just stayed in the car?" I said.

He shrugged and got out, slamming the car door behind him.

I got out too. Was he angry with me? But I didn't have time to contemplate that, because I had to keep up with him.

He was striding across the parking lot toward an apartment.

I hurried to catch up.

The apartment was number seventy-two, but the seven was half-falling off.

Logan rapped on the door. He took up all of the space in front of the door with his broad chest and wings, so I had to stand behind him and kind of peer around him.

The door opened. The person who opened it had green skin with reptilian eyes and a tail dragging behind him on the ground. A drake. They were people who died with dragon flesh in their system and turned into dragon-human hybrids.

The drake looked Logan over. "Yeah?"

"I'm a friend of Sid's," said Logan.

"Really?" said the drake. "You don't look like someone Sid would be friends with."

Logan smirked. "Yeah, okay, whatever. I'm looking for some liquid. I hear you're the hookup in these parts. You going to help me or what?"

"What's a gargoyle want with liquid?"

"That your business?" said Logan.

I waved around Logan's wing. "It's for me."

The drake seemed to notice me for the first time. "Ah, for your girlfriend, huh?"

Logan glanced at me. Then, like it was nothing, he slung his arm around my shoulder, pulling me against his body. "Yeah."

I pressed into his side, feeling his warmth. I could smell him. His smell was familiar, and it made my stomach turn over.

"You some kind of all-around magic banger, sweetheart?" asked the drake. "That why you're blowing stone cock and asking after dragon blood?"

Logan gave him a dark look. "You got it or not?"

"Ooh, sensitive, huh?" said the drake. He eyed me. "You ever been curious about making it with a drake, babe?"

"Don't," said Logan, glaring at him. "Sell me the liquid or shut up."

The drake sneered. "Yeah, yeah, fine. I got it. But you're paying premium vamp price whether you're a vamp or not. Fifty and not a penny less."

"Not a problem," said Logan.

"Money first," said the drake.

Logan handed it over.

"One minute, then." The drake slammed the door in our faces.

Logan looked down at me.

I looked up at him.

The door opened back up and the drake handed out a plastic twenty-ounce Coca Cola bottle full of red liquid. It looked incredibly gross. Logan handed it to me, and moved us away from the door, his arm still around my shoulders. He didn't let go of me until we heard the door behind us close. Then he dropped his arm and stepped away, giving me space.

I wanted to grab his hand and wind it back around my shoulders. But I didn't.

When we got back in the car, I put the Coke bottle in the cup holder.

Logan flexed his wings before folding them behind his body in the driver's seat. He turned the keys over in his hands. "Petra?"

"Yeah?"

He wasn't looking at me. "I, uh..."

I waited. When he didn't say anything, I prompted him. "What?"

"Nothing," he muttered, jamming the keys into the ignition of the car.

I felt like a deflated balloon.

He started the car and squealed out of the parking lot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

When Logan and I got back to the school and opened the door to the building, we were greeted by tentacles.

"Damn it," said Logan, tugging his gun out.

"You got another one of those?" I said. The guns he'd given us before the trip had been taken by the maids who'd locked us up in that building.

"Sorry," he said.

"Figured not." I conjured my own gun. What were a few more skitters compared to octo-monsters?

The stairwell was full of tentacle things. Logan and I had to shoot our way through. He sent me upstairs to the library to look for Reid and Tatum. He said he wanted to check on the rest of the students in the dining hall quickly, and that then he'd meet me in the library.

Tentacles at my front and skitters at my back, it was slow going, but I made it.

I got through the door of the library, and it was dark in there. Some light was coming in through the windows, but the overhead lights had been smashed out.

The front desk was turned over on its side and there were stains on the carpet.

I didn't see Reid or Tatum anywhere.

A gasping sound. Movement out of the corner of my eye.

I whirled and collided with Professor Norwood. He clutched me, wide-eyed. "Breaches—ten of them at once—all open. Things coming out, things everywhere!" His shirt was untucked and his vest was torn. He was bleeding out of a cut on his forehead.

"Where's Reid?" I said. "Where's Tatum?"

Norwood's lower lip was trembling. "Tho-those things. They took her."

"Tatum?" I said. "What? Where?" I tried to disentangle myself from him.

Norwood dug his fingers into my arms. "I've never seen things like that."

I shoved him off. I ran past him, deeper into the library. I raised my voice. "Reid? Tatum?"

No answer.

I went faster. I picked my way through the library, following a trail of overturned tables and knocked down shelves of books. Whatever was in here, it was big.

I turned a corner, and—abruptly—something was there. It was like a giant centipede with hundreds of waving arms. It was black and slimy and it reared up, undulating against the ceiling. It had a wide open mouth, but no eyes or nose. The mouth was full of rows of pointy silver teeth. It had a long tongue, like a frog, that flitted out and made zapping noises. In one of its many arms, it held Tatum.

She wasn't moving. She looked lifeless. Her arms flopped as the thing moved and her eyes were wide open.

No.

That was when I noticed Reid. He was against the wall, curled up, his teeth bared. There was blood coming out of his mouth.

"Reid!" I ran to him.

He looked up at me. "Petra, thank fuck. I tried to conjure something big enough to blow that thing up, and I ran out my magic. It picked up Tatum and slammed her against the wall. She's unconscious."

"She's okay?"

"I..." He shut his eyes in pain.

My eyes widened. "Reid, are you hurt?" I looked more closely at the way he was curled up. He was clutching his stomach with both hands, almost as if he was trying to hold himself together. There was blood seeping through his fingers.

"It's fine," said Reid. "You need to get Tatum."

"Reid, what is going on behind your hands?"

He shook his head. "Can you conjure me a gun or something?"

I handed him the gun I had. I conjured myself something else, something bigger, a machine gun like I'd used on the creatures before. I aimed that thing at the centipede's head and started pelting it with bullets.

I squeezed the trigger and sprayed bullets at the thing. Reid was shooting too. Every time that I hit it, it seemed weaker, bobbing and weaving woozily. Eventually, I had to reload. Right after I did it, it'd had enough. The centipede-thing thudded against the ground, dead. It dropped Tatum, and she fell.

I conjured a mattress to catch her.

She landed. She bounced. She didn't move.

"Shit." I ran over to her. I put my hand to her neck to feel for a pulse. I couldn't find anything. Maybe her wrist—

"Petra." Reid's voice.

My head snapped up.

He looked gray and ashen. He was pointing. "A breach. It's opening. This thing came out of the last one before we closed it. God knows what's going to come out of this one."

I looked in the direction he was pointing. There was the breach, all right. Okay. Okay, I needed to just... do this. I fumbled to open the bottle of dragon's blood. How much should I drink? All of it?

"Petra?" said Reid.

I looked at him again. "Yeah?"

"Hey, how about a little of that?"

"What?"

"The dragon's blood, for shit's sake." He was crawling towards me.

"Will it heal you?"

"No, but it'll give me some damned magic," he said. "Regular dragon magic. I won't need spells. Come on."

I hesitated. I didn't know how much I could spare. But then Reid was there, and he was taking the bottle from me. He took a big swig. And then he coughed and sputtered.

"Tastes disgusting," he said, handing the bottle back. "But I can cover you now."

I nodded. "Okay." I put the lid back on the bottle.

"What are you doing?" he said.

I needed to check Tatum. I found her wrist. I searched and searched for her pulse.

"Petra, the breach," said Reid.

It was bigger now. Nothing had come out of it yet, but that didn't mean that something wouldn't.

And then—faint, but unmistakable, Tatum's pulse. "She's alive," I said, breathless.

"Of course she's alive," said Reid.

I picked up the bottle of dragon's blood. "Well, I couldn't be sure, now could I?" I upended the bottle into my mouth. Ugh. Reid was right. That was the worst taste ever. It was salty and thick and horrible. Gagging, I staggered toward the portal.

Skitters were starting to climb out of it. I ignored them. I stood squarely in front of the portal.

I conjured myself a very, very sharp knife, and I applied it to my wrist. Down the street, not across the road. I shut my eyes.

"Petra!"

I opened my eyes.

"Wait."

I turned.

Logan was coming toward me.

My heart started to pound. "Hey," I said.

He closed the distance between us. "You don't have to do this."

"I think I do," I said. "Everything's going to hell. We go off to get blood and the whole place is like Armageddon."

He looked around. The library was in pretty bad shape.

I turned back to the breach. I sliced the knife down my wrist, along my vein. The knife was sharp, so it went into me like butter, but it hurt like fuck. I screamed out something like a sob. Okay, had to do the other one, now, before I lost my damned nerve. I switched the knife to my other hand and sliced again. Oh, God, that hurt even worse.

"Shit!" Logan said, grabbing my wrists.

I was shaking. I dropped the knife. "Over the breach," I muttered. "Get it over the breach."

"Petra..." He moved my hands. Blood was gushing out of me. It flowed onto the breach, and the breach shut immediately.

I shook harder. It really hurt, and I was bleeding a lot, and I felt lightheaded.

"God damn it," Logan's voice was saying.

But the world was getting dark around the edges.

Darker and darker and darker...

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I opened my eyes. I felt surprisingly great, really rested and fresh, as if I'd been having a long afternoon siesta on a lazy summer day. Was this what it was like to be a vampire? Because, if so, not so bad.

"Hey." Logan was the first thing I saw.

Then I looked around and realized I was in a bed in the healing wing. It was exactly like the place they'd kept Estelle. I sat up and stretched. That was when I noticed that I had very gnarly scars on my wrists. I examined them. "How long have I been asleep?"

"An hour or two," he said.

"But my..." I ran my finger over the ugly scar. I always thought vampires healed without scars.

"Apparently," said Logan, "near as we can tell, the mingling of dragon blood and whatever blood you have from the other world works to heal you really fast. It worked great on Reid too. I went out and got some more for Tatum."

"Oh," I said. "Oh, cool. So, I'm not a vampire?"

"No," said Logan. "But we also don't know if your lifeblood idea worked. I mean, you didn't die."

"Oh..." I bit my lip. That sucked. All that for nothing?

"However, it's looking good," said Logan. "No breaches since you bled all over the last one."

I brightened. "I bet it did work."

"I hope so," said Logan.

I grinned at him.

He gave me a lopsided smile.

We were quiet.

Then he looked away, embarrassed. "Uh, look, I'm in here because it's late and everyone is asleep, but I don't have to sleep."

"Yeah, you told me that before."

"Right." He got up. He rubbed his jaw. "So, do you want me to call your grandmother?"

"I don't think that's necessary," I said. "I'm fine."

He nodded. "You're really fine? You sure?"

I did a quick inventory of myself. "I think so."

"Okay," he said. "Well, then..." He looked toward the end of the room.

Wait, was he leaving?

He didn't leave. He stared at the opening in the curtains, but he didn't move. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

"Logan?" I said quietly.

"I'm, um, I'm glad you're all right," he said in a low voice.

I smiled a small smile. "Thanks."

"I'd hate to lose a friend like you." He turned back to me.

I felt a little tremor at that word. "That's what we are, then? Friends?"

"Yeah," he said.

I grabbed a handful of my sheet. "See, I'm thinking that there's more to it than that."

He gazed into my eyes. "It was only a damned spell, Petra," he said, but the bottom had gone out of his voice.

I opened my mouth to tell him that whenever I looked at him, I felt something, and I was pretty sure he felt it too, but I didn't say any of that, what I said was, "Behind you."

Logan whirled.

And we both gaped as rapid squiggling lines of blackness jerked into the room. They swarmed out, like searching fingers, and then snapped back into their center. The lines solidified into human form at the foot of my bed. Now the scribbly thing was the thing that had looked strangely like me, only male. Well, he was still alive. Apparently, bleeding all over that portal hadn't worked.

It smiled at me. "Hi sis."

I licked my lips. Sis?

"Boy," it continued, "you really have cocked things up, haven't you? Don't worry. You're going to fix it." And then it exploded into stringy black strands that coiled themselves around my wrists and my ankles and my neck.

The strings tightened.

* * *

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