An Apple for the Creature

Magic Tests ILONA ANDREWS

Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.) They have coauthored the bestselling urban fantasy series of Kate Daniels. “Magic Tests,” the short story that follows, takes place right after Magic Slays, the fifth book in that series.

Sometimes being a kid is very difficult. The adults are supposed to feed you and keep you safe, but they want you to deal with the world according to their views and not your own. They encourage you to have opinions, and if you express them, they will listen but they won’t hear. And when they give you a choice, it’s a selection of handpicked possibilities they have prescreened. No matter what you decide, the core choice has already been made, and you weren’t involved in it.

That’s how Kate and I ended up in the office of the director of Seven Star Academy. I said I didn’t want to go to school. She gave me a list of ten schools and said to pick one. I wrote the names of the schools on little bits of paper, pinned them to the corkboard, and threw my knife at them for a while. After half an hour, Seven Stars was the only name I could still read. Choice made.

Now we were sitting in soft chairs in a nice office, waiting for the school director, and Kate was exercising her willpower. Before I met Kate, I had heard people say it, but I didn’t know what it meant. Now I knew. Kate was the Beast Lord’s mate, which meant that Curran and she were in charge of Atlanta’s giant shapeshifter pack. It was so huge, people actually called it the Pack. Shapeshifters were kind of like bombs: things frequently set them off and they exploded with violent force. To keep from exploding, they made up elaborate rules and Kate had to exercise her willpower a lot.

She was doing it now; from outside she looked very calm and composed, but I could tell she was doing it by the way she sat. When Kate was relaxed, she fidgeted. She’d shift in her chair, throw one leg over the other, lean to the side, then lean back. She was very still now, legs in jeans together, holding Slayer, her magic saber, on her lap, one hand on the hilt, the other on the scabbard. Her face was relaxed, almost serene. I could totally picture her leaping straight onto the table from the chair and slicing the director’s head off with her saber.

Kate usually dealt with things by talking, and when that didn’t work, chopping obstacles into tiny pieces and frying them with magic so they didn’t get back up. The sword was her talisman, because she believed in it. She held it like some people held crosses or the star-and-crescent. Her philosophy was, if it had a pulse, it could be killed. I didn’t really have a philosophy, but I could see how talking with the school director would be difficult for her. If he said something she didn’t like, chopping him to tiny pieces wouldn’t exactly help me get into the school.

“What if when the director comes in, I take my underwear off, put them on my head, and dance around? Do you think it would help?”

Kate looked at me. It was her hard-ass stare. Kate could be really scary.

“That doesn’t work on me,” I told her. “I know you won’t hurt me.”

“If you want to prance around with panties on your head, I won’t stop you,” she said. “It’s your basic human right to make a fool of yourself.”

“I don’t want to go to school.” Spending all my time in a place where I was the poor rat adopted by a merc and a shapeshifter, while spoiled little rich girls jeered when I walked by and stuck-up teachers put me in remedial courses? No thanks.

Kate exercised her will some more. “You need an education, Julie.”

“You can teach me.”

“I do and I’ll continue to do so. But you need to know other things, besides the ones I can teach. You need a well-rounded education.”

“I don’t like education. I like working at the office. I want to do what you and Andrea do.”

Kate and Andrea ran Cutting Edge, a small firm that helped people with their magic hazmat issues. It was a dangerous job, but I liked it. Besides, I was pretty messed up. Normal things like going to school and getting a regular job didn’t hold any interest for me. I couldn’t even picture myself doing that.

“Andrea went to the Order’s Academy for six years and I’ve trained since I could walk.”

“I’m willing to train.”

My body tensed, as if an invisible hand had squeezed my insides into a clump. I held my breath. . . .

Magic flooded the world in an invisible wave. The phantom hand let go, and the world shimmered with hues of every color as my sensate vision kicked in. Magic came and went as it pleased. Some older people still remembered the time when technology was always in control and magic didn’t exist. But that was long ago. Now magic and technology kept trading places, like two toddlers playing musical chairs. Sometimes magic ruled, and cars and guns didn’t work. Sometimes technology was in charge, and magic spells fizzled out. I preferred the magic myself, because unlike ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-whatever percent of people I could see it.

I looked at Kate, using a tiny drop of my power. It was kind of like flexing a muscle, a conscious effort to look the right way at something. One moment Kate sat there, all normal, or as normal as Kate could be, the next she was wrapped in a translucent glow. Most people’s magic glowed in one color. Humans radiated blue, shapeshifters green, vampires gave off a purple-red. . . . Kate’s magic shifted colors. It was blue and deep purple, and pale pearl-like gold streaked through with tendrils of red. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. The first time I saw it, it freaked me out.

“You have to keep going to school,” freaky Kate said.

I leaned back and hung my head over the chair’s back. “Why?”

“Because I can’t teach you everything, and shapeshifters shouldn’t be your only source of education. You may not always want to be affiliated with shapeshifters. Down the road, you may want to make your own choices.”

I pushed against the floor with my feet, rocking a little in my chair.

“I’m trying to make my own choice, but you won’t let me.”

“That’s right,” Kate said. “I’m older, wiser, and I know better. Deal with it.”

Parenting, kick-ass Kate Daniels’s style. Do what I say. There wasn’t even an or attached to it. Or didn’t exist.

I rocked back and forth some more. “Do you think I’m your punishment from God?”

“No. I’d like to think that God, if he exists, is kind, not vengeful.”

The door of the office opened and a man walked in. He was older than Kate, bald, with Asian features, dark eyes, and a big smile. “It’s a view I share.”

I sat up straight. Kate got up and offered her hand. “Mr. Dargye?”

The man shook her hand. “Please call me Gendun. I much prefer it.”

They shook and sat down. Adult rituals. My history teacher from the old school once told us that shaking hands was a gesture of peace—it demonstrated that you had no weapon. Since now we had magic, shaking hands was more a leap of faith. Do I shake this weirdo’s hand and run the risk that he will infect me with a magic plague or shoot lightning into my skin or do I step back and be rude? Hmm. Maybe handshakes would go away in the future.

Gendun was looking at me. He had sucker eyes. Back when I lived on the street, we used to mob people like him, because they were kind and soft-hearted and you could always count on some sort of handout. They weren’t naive bleeding hearts—they knew that while you cried in front of them and clutched your tummy, your friends were stealing their wallets, but they would feed you anyway. That’s just the way they moved through the world.

I squinted, bringing the color of his magic into focus. Pale blue, almost silver. Divine magic, born of faith. Mister Gendun was a priest of some sort.

“What god do you believe in?” I asked. When you’re a kid, they let you get away with being direct.

“I’m a Buddhist.” Gendun smiled. “I believe in human potential for understanding and compassion. The existence of an omnipotent God is possible, but so far I have seen no evidence that he exists. What god do you believe in?”

“None.” I met a goddess once. It didn’t turn out well for everyone involved. Gods used faith the way a car used gas; it was the supply from which they drew their power. I refused to fuel any of their motors.

Gendun smiled. “Thank you for responding to my request so promptly.”

Request? What request?

“Two of the Pack’s children attend your school,” Kate said. “The Pack will do everything in our power to offer you assistance.”

Huh? Wait a minute. I thought this was about me. Nobody said anything about the school requesting our assistance.

“This is Ms. Olsen,” Kate said.

I smiled at Gendun. “Please call me Julie. I much prefer it.” Technically my name was now Julie Lennart-Daniels-Olsen, which was silly. If Kate and Curran got married, I’d be down to Lennart-Olsen. Until then, I decided Olsen was good enough.

“It is nice to meet you, Julie.” Gendun smiled and nodded at me. He had this really strange calming thing about him. He was very . . . balanced somehow. Reminded me of the Pack’s medmage, Dr. Doolittle.

“There are many schools in the city for the children of exceptional parents,” Gendun said. “Seven Stars is a school for exceptional children. Our methods are unorthodox and our students are unique.”

Woo, a school of special snowflakes. Or monster children. Depending on how you chose to look at it.

Magic didn’t affect just our environment. All sorts of people who once had been normal and ordinary were discovering new and sometimes unwelcome things about themselves. Some could freeze things. Some grew claws and fur. And some saw magic.

“Discretion is of utmost importance to us,” Gendun said.

“Despite her age, Ms. Olsen is an experienced operative,” Kate said.

I am?

“She understands the need for discretion.”

I do?

“She has a particular talent that will make her very effective in this case,” Kate said.

Gendun opened a folder, took out a picture, and slid it across the table to me. A girl. She had a pretty heart-shaped face framed by spirals of red hair. Her eyes were green and her long eyelashes curled out until they almost touched her eyebrows. She looked so pretty, like a little doll.

“This is Ashlyn,” Gendun said. “She is a freshman at this school. A very good student. Two days ago she disappeared. The location spell indicates she is alive and that she hasn’t left the grounds. We’ve attempted to notify her parents, but they are traveling at the moment and are out of reach, as are her emergency contacts. You have twenty-four hours to find her.”

“What happens after twenty-four hours?”

“We will have to notify the authorities,” Gendun said. “Her parents had given us a lot of latitude in regard to Ashlyn. She is a sensitive child and her behavior is often driven by that sensitivity. But in this case our hands are tied. If a student is missing, we are legally bound to report it after seventy-two hours.”

Report it to Paranormal Activity Division of Atlanta’s police force, no doubt. PAD was about as subtle as a runaway bulldozer. They would take this school apart and grill all of their special snowflakes until they melted into goo in their interrogation rooms. How many would fold and confess to something they had not done?

I looked at Kate.

She arched an eyebrow at me. “Interested?”

“We would give you a visitor pass,” Gendun said. “I will speak to the teachers, so you can conduct your investigation quietly. We have guest students who tour the school before attending, so you wouldn’t draw any attention and the disruption to the other children will be minimal.”

This was some sort of Kate trick of getting me into this school. I looked at the picture again. Trick or not, a girl was hiding somewhere. She could be hiding because she was playing some sort of a joke, but it was highly unlikely. Mostly people hid because they were scared. I could relate. I’d been scared before. It wasn’t fun.

Someone had to find her. Someone had to care about what happened.

I pulled the picture closer. “I’ll do it.”

My student guide was a tall dark-haired girl named Brook. She had skinny legs, bony arms, and wore round glasses that constantly slid down her nose. She kept pushing them up with her middle finger, so it looked as if she was shooting the bird at the entire world every five minutes. Her magic was a strong simple blue, the color of human abilities. We met in the front office, where they outfitted me with a white armband. Apparently they marked their visitors. If there was any trouble, we’d be easy to shoot.

“Okay, you follow me and don’t touch things,” Brook informed me. “Stuff here is randomly warded. Also Barka has been leaving little tiny charges of magic all around the school. You touch it, it zaps you. Then your fingers hurt for an hour.”

“Is Barka a student?”

“Barka is a pisshead,” Brook told me and pushed her glasses up. “Come on.”

We walked up the stairs. The bell rang and the staircase filled with kids.

“Four floors,” Brook told me. “The school is a big square, with the garden slash courtyard in the center. All the fields, like for soccer and football, are outside of the square. First floor is the gymnasium, pool, dance studio, auditorium, and cafeteria. Second floor, humanities: literature, history, sociology, anthropology, Latin—”

“Did you know Ashlyn?” I asked.

Brook paused, momentarily knocked off her course by the interruption. “She did not take Latin.”

“But did you know her?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of a student was she?”

Brook shrugged. “Quiet. We have an algebra class together, fourth period. I thought she might be competition at first. You have to watch out for the quiet ones.”

“Was she?”

“Naaah.” Brook grimaced. “Progress reports came out last week. Her math grade was seventeen. One seven. She only does well in one class, botany. You could give her a broom and she’ll stick it in the ground and grow you an apple tree. I took botany last semester and she beat my grade by two points. She has a perfect hundred. There’s got to be a trick to it.” Brook squared her shoulders. “That’s okay. I am taking AP botany next year. I’ll take her down.”

“You’re a little bit crazy, you know that?”

Brook shrugged and pushed her glasses up at me. “Third floor, magic: alchemy, magic theory—”

“Did Ashlyn seem upset over the seventeen in math?” Maybe she was hiding because of her grades.

Brook paused. “No.”

“She wasn’t worried about her parents?” When I got a bad grade in my old boarding school, Kate would make a trip to the school to chew me out. When I got homesick, I’d flunk a grade on purpose. Sometimes she came by herself. Sometimes with other people. Boy kind of people. Of whom I promised myself I wouldn’t be thinking about, because they were idiots.

“I met her parents on family day. I was in charge of Hospitality Committee. They are really into nurture and all that,” Brook said. “They wouldn’t be upset with her. Fourth floor: science and technology—”

“Do you have lockers?”

“No. We have storage in our desks in the homerooms.”

“Can we go to see Ashlyn’s homeroom?”

Brook stared at me. “Look you, I’m assigned to do this stupid tour with you. I can’t do the tour if you keep interrupting.”

“How many tours have you done so far?”

Brook peered at me. “Eleven.”

“Aren’t you tired of doing them?”

“That’s irrelevant. It’s good for my record.”

Right. “If you don’t do the tour this time, I won’t tell anyone.”

Brook frowned. That line of thought obviously stumped her. I worked my iron while it was hot. “I’m here undercover investigating Ashlyn’s disappearance. If you help me, I’ll mention it to Gendun.”

Brook puzzled it over.

Come on, Brook. You know you want to.

“Fine,” she said. “But you’ll tell Master Gendun that I helped.”

“Invaluable assistance,” I said.

Brook nodded. “Come on. Ashlyn’s homeroom is on the second floor.”

Ashlyn’s homeroom was in the geography class. Maps hung on the walls: world, Americas, U.S., and the biggest map of all, the new magic-screwed-up map of Atlanta, complete with all the new additions and warped, dangerous neighborhoods.

A few people occupied the classroom, milling in little clumps. I took a second to look around and closed my eyes. Nine people in all, two girls to my right, three boys farther on, a girl sitting by herself by the window, two guys discussing something, and a blond kid sitting by himself at the back of the class. I opened my eyes. Missed the dark-haired boy in the corner. Oh well, at least I was getting better at it.

Brook stopped by a wooden desk. It was nice, large and polished, the sealed wood stained the color of amber. Pretty. None of the places I ever studied at were this nice.

“This is her desk,” Brook said.

I sat down into Ashlyn’s chair. The desk had one wide drawer running the entire length of it. I tried it gently. Locked. No big. I pulled a lockpick out of the leather bracelet on my left wrist and slid it into the lock.

The blond kid from the back sauntered over and leaned on the desk. His magic was dark, intense indigo. Probably an elemental mage. He had sharp features and blue eyes that said he was up to no good. My kind of people.

“Hi. What are you doing?”

“Go away, Barka,” Brook said.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” The kid looked at me. “Whatcha doing?”

“I’m dancing.” I told him. Ask a dumb question . . .

“You’re breaking into Ashlyn’s desk.”

“See, I knew you were smart and you’d figure it out.” I winked at him.

Barka made big eyes at Brook. “And what if I tell Walton you’re doing that? That would be a spot on your perfect record.”

“Mind your own business,” Brook snapped.

“He won’t,” I told her. “He wants to see what’s inside the desk.”

Barka grinned.

The lock clicked and the drawer slid open. Rows of apples filled it. Large Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, green Granny Smith and every color and shape in between, each with a tiny sticker announcing its name. Even a handful of red crab apples the size of large cherries, stuck between Cortland and Crimson Gold. I had no idea so many varieties of apple even existed. None of them showed any signs of rotting either. They looked crisp and fresh.

I concentrated. My sensate vision kicked in. The apples glowed with bright green. Now that was a first. A healthy hunter green usually meant a shapeshifter. Human magic came in various shades of blue. Animal magic was typically too weak to be picked up by any of the machines, but I saw it just fine—it was yellow. Together blue and yellow made green. This particular green had too much yellow to belong to a regular shapeshifter.

Most shapeshifters were infected with Lyc-V virus, which let them turn into animals. Sometimes it happened the other way and animals turned into humans. The human-weres were really rare, but I’ve met one, and the color wasn’t right for them either. Human-weres were a drab olive, but this, this was a vivid spring green.

“What kind of magic did Ashlyn have?”

Brook and Barka looked at each other. “I don’t know,” Barka said. “I never asked.”

Whatever she was, she didn’t advertise it. Totally understandable. Seeing the color of magic was an invaluable tool for law enforcement, for mages, basically for anyone who dealt with it, so much so that people actually made a magic machine, called an m-scanner, to imitate it. My magic wasn’t just rare, it was exceptional. I was a hundred times more precise than any existing m-scanner. But in a fight, being a sensate didn’t do me any good at all. If I walked around telling everyone about it, sooner or later someone would try to use me and I had to use other means than my sensate ability to protect myself. It was easier to just keep my mouth shut.

Ashlyn could be that kind of magic user, something rare but not useful in combat.

Still didn’t explain her obsession with apples, though. Maybe she was using them to bribe her teachers. But then her grades would be better.

The shorter of the three girls to our left glared at me. Her magic, a solid indigo when I came in, now developed streaks of pale celery green. Normally the magic signature didn’t change. Ever. Except for Kate.

Hello, clue.

I pretended to look at the apples. “Did Ashlyn have any enemies?”

Barka picked up a pen and rolled it between his fingers. “Not that I noticed. She was quiet. A looker, but no personality.”

Brook pushed her glasses up at him. “Pervert.”

The girl took a step toward us. “What are you doing?”

“Dancing!” Barka said.

Brook didn’t even look in her direction. “Mind your own business, Lisa.”

Lisa skewed her mouth into a disapproving thin line, which was quite a fit because she had one of those pouty-lip mouths. Eyebrows plucked into two narrow lines, unnaturally straight hair, carefully parted, pink shiny on those big lips . . . Lisa was clearly the Take-Care-of-Myself type. Good clothes, too. Girls like that made my life miserable at the old school. I was never put together enough, my clothes were never expensive enough, and I didn’t stroll the halls broadcasting to everyone who cared that I was much better than they were.

But we weren’t at my old school, and a lot has changed since. Besides, she could be a perfectly nice person. Although somehow I doubted it.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Lisa said, entirely too loudly.

If I poked her, would her magic get even veinier? Was veinier even a word? “I’m looking for Ashlyn,” I told her.

“She’s dead,” Lisa announced and checked the room out of the corner of her eye.

Don’t worry, you have everyone’s attention.

“Here we go,” Brook muttered.

“How do you know that? Did you kill her?” Poke-poke-poke.

Lisa raised her chin. “I know because I spoke to her spirit.”

“Her spirit?” I asked.

“Yes, her spirit. Her ghost.”

That was nice, but there was no such thing as ghosts. Even Kate had never run across one. I never saw any ghost magic and I had seen a lot of messed-up things.

“Did her ghost tell you who killed her?” I asked.

“She took her own life,” Lisa declared.

Brook pushed her glasses up. “Don’t be ridiculous. This whole ‘I see spirits’ thing is getting old.”

Lisa rocked back on her heels. Her face turned serious. “Ashlyn! Show yourself, spirit.”

“This is stupid,” Barka said.

“Show your presence!” Lisa called.

Yellow-green veins shot through her magic, sparking with flashes of dandelion yellow. Whoa.

The desk shuddered under my fingertips. The chairs around me rattled.

Brook took a step back.

The desk danced, jumping up and down. The two chairs on both sides of me shot to the ceiling, hovered there for a tense second, and crashed down.

Nice.

Lisa leveled her stare at me. “Ashlyn is dead. I don’t know who you are, but you should leave. You disturb her.”

I laughed.

Lisa turned on her heel and walked out.

“So Lisa is a telekinetic?” I asked.

Brook shrugged. “A little. Nothing like this. The chair-flying thing is new. Usually she has to sweat to push a pen across the desk.”

And this new power wouldn’t have anything to do with those lovely yellow-green streaks in her magic, would it? Like Ashlyn’s apples, yellow green, but not the same shade. Two weird magic colors in one day. That was a hell of a thing, as Kate would say.

“You’re not leaving?” Barka asked me.

“Of course she isn’t leaving,” Brook told him. “I haven’t finished the tour.”

“When people tell me to leave, it’s the right time to stick around,” I told him. “Did Lisa have any problems with Ashlyn?”

“Lisa has problems with everyone,” Brook said. “People like her like to pick on you if you have any weakness to make themselves feel better.”

“She’s a dud,” Barka added. “Well, she was a dud, apparently. Her parents are both professors at the Mage Academy. When she was first admitted, she made a big deal out of all this major magic that she supposedly had.”

“I remember that.” Brook grimaced. “Every time she opened her mouth, it was all ‘at the Mage Academy where my father works’ or ‘when I visited my mother’s laboratory at the Mage Academy.’ Ugh.”

“She claimed to have tons of power,” Barka added, “but she couldn’t do anything with it, except some minor telekinesis.”

“Let me guess, people made fun of her?” I asked.

“She brought a lot of it on herself,” Brook told me. “Not everybody here has super-awesome magic.”

“Like Sam.” Barka shrugged. “If you give him a clear piece of glass, he can etch it with his magic so it looks frosted. It’s cool the first time you see it, but it’s pretty useless and he can’t control it very well either. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it.”

“It’s in Lisa’s head that she is super-special,” Brook said. “She feels entitled, like we’re all peons here and she is a higher being. Nobody likes being treated that way.”

“Does she get picked on?” I asked.

Barka shrugged again. “Nothing too bad. She doesn’t get invited to hang out. Nobody wants to sit with her at lunch. But that’s just pure self-defense, because she doesn’t listen to whatever you have to say. She just waits to tell you about her special parents. I guess she finally got her powers.”

“Did she get them about the time Ashlyn disappeared?”

“Yeah.” Barka grimaced. “Then she started sensing Ashlyn’s presence everywhere. Who knows, maybe Ashlyn is really dead.”

“Location spell says she is alive. Besides, there is no such thing as ghosts,” I told them.

“And you’re an authority on ghosts?” Brook asked.

“Trust me on this.”

Ghosts might be better. I had this sick little feeling in my stomach that said this was something bad. Something really bad.

I could call Kate and ask her what would cause the magic of two different colors to show up. The colors weren’t blended or flowing into one another the way Kate’s colors did. They were distinct. Separate. Together but not mixing.

Ehhh. There was some sort of answer at the end of that thought, but I couldn’t figure it out.

Calling Kate wouldn’t be happening. This was my little mission and I would get it done on my own.

I tried to think like Kate. She always said that people were the key to any mystery. Someone somehow did something that caused Ashlyn to hide and Lisa really didn’t want me to keep looking for her. “Did Ashlyn have a best friend?”

Brook paused. “She and Sheila hung out sometimes, but mostly she kept to herself.”

“Can we go talk to Sheila?”

Brook heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Sure.”

“You’re leaving? In that case, Brook, hold this for me for a second.” Barka stuck the pen he’d been rolling between his fingers at Brook. She took it. Bright light sparked and Brook dropped the pen and shook her hand.

Barka guffawed.

“Moron!” Brook’s eyes shone with a dangerous glint behind her glasses. She marched out of the class. I followed her.

We went down the hallway toward the staircase.

“He likes you,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” Brook growled.

Sheila turned out to be the exact opposite of Ashlyn. Where Ashlyn’s picture showed a petite cutesy girly-girl, Sheila was muscular. Not manly, but really cut. We caught her in the locker room, just as she was going out to play volleyball. It’s not often you see a girl with a six-pack.

She sat on a wooden bench by the small wooden room inside the locker room that said sauna on it. I wondered what the heck sauna meant. It was a first-class locker room; the floor was tile, three showers, two bathrooms, “sauna,” large lockers. The clean tile smelled faintly of pine. Special locker room for special snowflakes.

“I don’t know why Ashlyn pulled this stunt.” Sheila pulled on her left sock.

“Was she worried about anything?”

“She did seem kind of jumpy.”

“Did she have a problem with Lisa?”

Sheila paused with the shoe on one foot. “Lisa the Dud?”

Okay, so I didn’t like Lisa. But if they called me that, I’d get pissed off really quick, too. “Lisa who senses Ashlyn’s ‘presence.’”

“Not really.” Sheila shook her head. “One time someone left a paw print on Ashlyn’s desk. She got really upset.”

“What kind of paw print?”

“Wolf,” Brook said. “I remember that. She scrubbed her desk for ten minutes.”

“How big was the print and when did this happen?”

“Big,” Sheila said. “Like bowl-sized. It was about a week ago or so.”

Prints that large could indicate a shapeshifter, a werewolf, possibly a werejackal or a werecoyote.

“If anybody had a problem with her, it would be Yu Fong,” Sheila said.

“He is the only eighteen-year-old sophomore we have,” Brook said. “He’s this odd Chinese guy.”

“Odd how?”

“He’s an orphan,” Sheila said. “His parents were murdered.”

“I thought they died in a car accident,” Brook said.

“Well, whatever happened, happened,” Sheila told me. “For some reason he didn’t go to school. I heard he was in prison, but whatever. Anyway, he showed up one day, talked to Master Gendun, and got himself admitted as a student. He tested out of enough credits to start as a sophomore. He’s dangerous.”

“Very powerful,” Brook said.

“Uber-magic,” Sheila said. “You can feel it coming off of him sometimes. Makes my skin itch.”

Brook nodded. “Not sure exactly what sort of magic he has, but whatever it is, it’s significant. There are three other Chinese kids in school and they follow Yu Fong around like bodyguards. You can’t even talk to him.”

“And Ashlyn had a problem with him?” Somehow I couldn’t picture Ashlyn deliberately picking a fight with this guy.

“She was terrified of him,” Sheila said. “One time he tried to talk to her and she freaked out and ran off.”

Okay, then. Next target—the mysterious Yu Fong.

The search for the “odd Chinese guy” took us to the cafeteria, where according to Brook, this uber-magic user had second-shift lunch. Brook led the way. I followed her through the double doors and paused. A large skylight poured sunshine into the huge room, filled with round metal tables and ornate chairs. At the far wall, the buffet table stretched, manned by several servers in white. Fancy.

The students picked up their plates and carried them to different tables. Some sat, talking. To the right, several voices laughed in unison.

To the left, a wide doorway allowed a glimpse of a smaller sunroom. In its center, right under the skylight, grew a small tree with red leaves, all but glowing in the sunshine. A table stood by the tree and a young guy sat in a chair, leaning on the table, reading a book. He was too old to be called a boy, but too young to be called a man, and his face was inhumanly beautiful.

I stood and stared.

I’d seen some handsome guys before. This guy . . . he was magic. His dark hair was brushed away from his high forehead, falling back without a trace of a curl. His features were flawlessly perfect, his face strong and masculine, with a contoured jaw, a tiny cleft in the chin, full lips, and high cheekbones. His eyebrows, dark and wide, bent to shield his eyes, large, beautiful, and very, very dark. Not black, but solid brown.

I blinked, and my power kicked in. The guy was wrapped in pale blue. Not quite silver, but with enough of it to dilute the color to a shimmering blue gray. Divinity. He was either a priest or an object of worship, and looking at him, I was betting on the latter. Glowing like this, he reminded me of one of those celestial beings of Chinese mythology they made me learn about in my old school. He looked like a god.

“That’s him,” Brook said. “And his guards.”

Two boys sat at a second table a few feet away. “I thought you said there were three,” I murmured.

“There are—Hui has algebra right now.”

I scanned the two guys sitting next to Yu Fong—plain blue—and let go of my sensate vision. His face was distracting enough. I didn’t need the glow.

“I’ll go ask him if he’ll talk to you,” Brook said.

“Why don’t we go together?” They took the pecking order really seriously in this place.

Brook compressed her lips. “No, they know me.”

She made it about two-thirds of the way and then one of Yu Fong’s guards peeled himself from the chair and blocked her way. Brook said something, he shook his head, and she turned around and came back to me.

Of course, it was a no. And now they knew I was coming.

Well, you have to work with what you’ve got.

I raised my hands and wiggled my fingers at the uber-magic guy. He continued reading his book. I waved again and started toward him, a nice big smile on my face. I’ve seen Kate do this, and if I didn’t screw it up, it would work.

The first guard stepped forward, blocking my path. I gave him my cute smile, looked past him, and pointed to myself, as if I was being summoned over and couldn’t believe it. He glanced over his shoulder to check Yu Fong’s face. I drove my fist hard into his gut. The boy folded around my fist with a surprised gasp. I slammed my hand onto his head, driving his head down. Face meet knee. Boom! The impact reverberated through my leg.

I shoved him aside and kept moving. The second bodyguard jumped to his feet. I swiped the nearest chair, swung it, and hit him with it just as he was coming up.

The chair connected to the side of his head with a solid crunch. I let go and he stumbled back with the chair on top of him. I stepped past him and landed in the spare chair at the table.

The uber-guy slowly raised his gaze from his book and looked at me.

Whoa.

There was a kind of serious arrogance in his eyes, a searing intensity and determination. Living on the street gives you a sixth sense about those things. You learn to read people. Reading him was easy: He was powerful and arrogant, and he imposed control on everything he saw, including himself. He had been through life’s vicious grinder and had come out stronger for it. He would never let you know what he was thinking and you would always be on thin ice.

I touched the surface of the table with the tip of my finger. “Safe.”

There was some scrambling behind me. Yu Fong made a small motion with his hand and the noises stopped. I’d won the right to an audience. Wheee!

He tilted his head and studied me with those dark eyes.

I smelled incense. Yep, definitely incense, a strong, slightly sweet smoke. “I always wondered how would one address an object of worship? Should I call you ‘the lord of ten thousand years,’ ‘the holy one,’ or the ‘son of heaven’?” Dali, one of the shapeshifters, was teaching me the beginnings of Asian mythologies. Unfortunately, that’s as far as we got, since I only just started.

“I am not an object.” His voice was slightly accented. “You may call me Yu.”

Simple enough.

“Is there something you want?” he asked.

“My name is Julie Lennart.” Might as well go with the big gun. Most people didn’t know the Beast Lord’s last name so if he recognized it, it would be a good indication that he was some sort of magic heavyweight.

“It is a weighty name for someone so small.” Yu Fong smiled a nice easy smile. He would smile like that while he watched a cute puppy play with a butterfly or while his flunkies were torturing his enemy. Take your pick. “The Beast Lord commands fifteen hundred shapeshifters.”

“More or less.” It was more, but he didn’t need to know that.

His dark eyes fixed on me. “One day my kingdom will be greater.”

Ha-ha! Yeah, right. “I’m here with Master Gendun’s knowledge and at his request.”

He didn’t say anything. The metal table under my fingers felt warm. I rested more of my hand on it. Definitely warm. The cafeteria was air-conditioned and even now, with magic up, the air stayed pretty cool, which meant the metal table should’ve been cold.

“A girl disappeared. She was a small girl. Shy. Her name is Ashlyn.”

No reaction. The table was definitely getting warmer.

“She was scared of you.”

“I don’t kill little girls.”

“What makes you think she was killed? I didn’t say anything about her being killed.”

He leaned forward slightly. “If I take notice of something that offends me, I choose to ignore it or kill it. I ignored her.”

Boy, this dude was conceited. “Why did she offend you?”

“I’ve never threatened her. She had no reason to cringe in my presence. I don’t expect you to understand.”

I thought hard on why he would find an obvious display of fear offensive.

“When she cringed, you felt insulted. You had no intention of hurting her, so by showing fear, she implied that your control over your power was imperfect.”

Yu’s eyes widened slightly.

“I’m the ward of the Beast Lord,” I told him. “I spend a lot of time with arrogant control freaks.”

The table under my hand was almost too hot to keep touching it. I held on. “Ashlyn annoyed you. You said you ignored her. You didn’t say anything about your bodyguards. Did they do something to Ashlyn to make her disappear?”

His face was the picture of disdain, which was just a polite way of saying that he would’ve liked to sneer at me but it was beneath him. I’ve seen this precise look on the Beast Lord’s face. If he and Curran ever got into the same room, Kate’s head would explode.

I waited but he didn’t say anything. Apparently Yu decided to not dignify it with an answer.

Thin tendrils of smoke escaped from his book. The table near him must have been much hotter than on my end. That had to be something because the metal was now hurting my fingers.

“If I find out that you hurt Ashlyn, I’ll hurt you back,” I said.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Do. Your book is smoking.”

He picked it up. I slowly raised my hand, blew on my skin, and got up to leave.

“Why do you care?” he asked.

“Because none of you do. Look around you—a girl is missing. A girl you saw in class every day got so scared by something, she had to hide from it. Nobody is looking for her. All of you are just going on with your business as usual. You have all this power and you didn’t lift a finger to help her. You just sit there, reading your book, comfy behind your bodyguards, and demonstrate how awesome your magic is by heating up your table. Somebody has to find her. I decided to be that somebody.”

I couldn’t tell if any of this was sinking in.

“True strength isn’t in killing—or ignoring—your opponent, it’s in having the will to shield those who need your protection.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly. “Who said that?”

“I did.” I walked away.

Brook was staring at me.

“Come on,” I told her, loud enough for him to hear the derision in my voice. “We’re done here.”

In the hallway I walked to the window and exhaled. The nerve. All that power, all that magic boiling in him, and he just sat there. Didn’t do a thing to help Ashlyn. He didn’t care.

Brook cleared her throat behind me.

“I just need a minute.”

I looked outside at the courtyard, enclosed by the square building of the school. It was a really large courtyard. No place to hide, though: benches, flowers, twisted stone paths. A single tree rose toward the northern end of it, surrounded by a maze of concentric flower beds, spreading from it like one of those little handheld puzzle games where you have to roll the ball into a hole through a plastic labyrinth.

“You’re wrong,” Brook said behind me. “You know what, we all got problems. Just because I didn’t look for Ashlyn doesn’t make me a bad person. Do you have any idea how competitive the Mage Academy exams are? Getting the right credit is taking up all my time. And I don’t even know you! Why do I have to justify myself to you?”

The flowers were in full bloom. Blue asters, delicate bearded irises, cream and yellow, purplish spiderwort—I had a lot of herbology in my old school. Normal for early June. The tree had tiny little buds just beginning to unfurl into gauzy white and pink petals.

“It’s not like I even knew her that well. I don’t see why I should be held accountable for whatever problem made her hide. If she’d come to me and said, ‘Brook, I’m in trouble,’ I would’ve helped her.”

“What is that tree?”

“What?”

“The tree down in the yard.” I pointed to it. “What kind of tree is it?”

Brook blinked. “I don’t know. It’s the dead tree. You can’t get to it now anyway, not with the magic up, because the flower garden is warded. Listen, I’m not proud that I didn’t look for Ashlyn. All I am saying is that maybe I didn’t look for her and I probably should have, but I was busy.”

I bet it was an apple tree. Some apple trees bloomed late, but most of them flowered in April and May. It was June now.

“How long has that tree been dead?”

“As long as I can remember. I’ve been in this school for three years and it was always dead. I don’t know why they don’t cut it down. Are you listening to me?”

“It’s flowering.”

Brook blinked. “What?”

“The tree is blooming. Look.”

Brook looked at the window. “Huh.”

Perfect hundred in botany. Apples in the drawer. Wolf print on the desk. Terrified of a boy who creates heat, because where there is smoke, there is fire. Blooming apple tree that has been dead for years.

It all lined up in my head into a perfect arrow pointing to the tree.

“Can we get down there?”

Brook was staring at the tree. “Yes.”

Two minutes later I marched out of the side door into the inner yard and down the curved stone path. I was fifty feet from the tree when I sensed magic in front of me. I stopped and snapped into the sensate vision. A wall of magic rose in front of me, glowing lightly with pale silver. A ward, a defensive spell designed to keep out intruders. Currents of power coursed through it.

Some wards glowed with translucent color, both a barrier and a warning that the barrier existed, and walking into it would hurt. This one was invisible to someone without my vision. And judging by the intensity of the magic, touching it would hurt you bad enough to leave you writhing in pain for a few minutes or knock you out completely.

I turned and walked along the ward, with Brook following me. The spell followed the curved flower bed.

“What’s the point of the ward?”

“Nobody knows,” Brook said.

“Did you ever ask Gendun?”

“I have, actually. He just smiled.”

Great.

Ahead, a two-foot-wide gap severed the circle of the ward. I stopped by it, looked through, and saw another ward. This was a magic maze, with rings inside rings of wards and in the center of it all was the apple tree.

“She’s watching us,” Brook hissed.

“What?”

“Second-floor window, on the left.”

I looked up and saw Lisa looking at us. Our stares connected. Lisa’s face had this strange mix of emotions, part realization, part fear. She had figured me out. She understood that I saw the ward somehow and I knew about the apple tree, and she was afraid now. It couldn’t be me she was scared of. I wasn’t that scary. Was she scared that I would find Ashlyn?

A bright green glow burst from Lisa’s back. It snapped into the silhouette of an eight-foot-tall wolf. The beast stared at me with eyes of fire.

My heart fluttered in my chest like a scared little bird. Something ancient looked at me through that fire. Something unimaginably old and selfish.

The wolf jerked and vanished. If I had blinked, I would’ve missed it.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” Brook asked.

So I had seen it with my sensate vision.

Lisa turned away and walked off. My forehead felt iced over. I swiped the cold sheen off my forehead and saw sweat on my hand. Ew.

Things were making more and more sense. I turned to Brook. “Do you have a library?”

She gave me a look like I was stupid. “Really? Do you really need to ask that question?”

“Lead the way!”

Brook headed to the door. Just as she reached for it, the door swung open and Barka blocked the way. “Hey!”

Brook pushed past him and marched down the hall, clenching her teeth, looking like she would mow down whoever got into her way. I followed her.

Barka caught up with me. “Where are we all going so fast?”

“To the library.”

“Is it on fire and they need us to put it out?”

“No.”

Barka must’ve run out of witty things to say, because he shut up and followed us.

The library occupied a vast room. Shelves lined the walls. With magic coming and going like the tide, the e-readers were no longer reliable, but the library stocked them, too. If you needed to find something in a hurry, the e-readers were your best bet. You just had to wait until the magic ebbed and the technology took over again.

Sadly the magic showed no signs of ebbing.

I walked through the library, checking labels on the shelves. Philosophy, psychology . . .

“What are you looking for?” Brook snapped. “I’ll find it faster.”

“Greek and Roman mythology.”

“Two ninety-two.” Brook turned and ducked between the bookshelves. “Here.”

I scanned the titles. Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Myths. Score!

Brook’s eyes lit up. “Shit! Of course. The apples. It’s so plain, I could slap myself for being so stupid.”

“You got it.” I yanked the book from the shelf and carried it to the nearest desk, flipping the pages to get to the letter E.

“What’s going on?” Barka asked.

“She found Ashlyn. She is in a tree,” Brook told him.

“Why?”

“Because she is an Epimeliad,” I murmured, looking for the right listing.

“She is a what?”

“An apple dryad, you dimwit,” Brook growled.

Barka raised his hand. “Easy! Greek and Roman was three semesters ago.”

“Epimeliads are the dryads of apple trees and guardians of sheep,” I explained.

Barka leaned again the desk. “That’s a bit random.”

“Their name comes from Greek melas, which means both apples and sheep,” Brook said.

“This explains why she’s scared of Yu Fong,” I said. “He’s all about heat and fire. Fire and trees don’t play well together.”

“And someone left a wolf print on her desk. Wolves are the natural enemies of sheep,” Barka said.

“Someone was trying to terrorize her.” Brook dropped into the chair, as if suddenly exhausted. “And none of us ever paid attention long enough to see it.”

“It was Lisa.” I scanned the entry for the dryad. Shy, reclusive, blah-blah-blah . . . No natural enemies. No mention of any mythological wolves.

“How do you know?”

“She has a wolf inside her. I saw it. That’s why her powers are stronger. I think she made a deal with something and I think that something wants Ashlyn.”

They looked at each other.

“Just what kind of magic do you have, exactly?” Barka asked.

“The right kind.” I pulled a chair out and sat down next to Brook. “If Lisa had made a deal with a three-headed demon or some sort of chimera, I could narrow it down, but a wolf, that could be . . .”

“Anything,” Brook finished. “Almost any mythology with a forest has a canid. It could be French or Celtic or English or Russian or anything.”

“Can any of you remember her saying anything about a wolf? Maybe there’s a record of books she checked out?”

“I’ll find out.” Brook got up and made a beeline to the library desk.

I flipped through the book some more. Dryads weren’t too well-known. They were just supposed to be these flighty creatures, easily spooked, pretty. Basically sex objects. I guess Ancient Greeks didn’t really have a lot of access to porn so it must’ve been fun to imagine that every tree hid a meek girl with big boobies.

Somehow I had to untangle Ashlyn, and not just from that apple tree, but from this entire situation. I didn’t know for sure if Lisa had made some sort of deal with the creature. I could be wrong—it could be forcing her. The only thing I knew for sure was that I alone didn’t have the strength to take it on in a fight. My magic wasn’t the combat kind and that thing . . . well, from the intensity of the wolf’s magic, it would give even the Pack’s fighters a pause.

Sometimes I wished I had been born a shapeshifter. If I was Curran, I’d just bite that wolf’s head off.

Curran. Hmm. Now there was a smart thought. I pulled a piece of scratch paper from the stack on the library desk, wrote a note, and read it. He would do it. After I pointed out all of his shortcomings, he would do it just to prove me wrong. I felt all happy with myself.

Brook came back with a disgusted expression on her face. “Apple trees. She checked out books on apple trees.”

“That’s okay. Barka, can you take this note to Yu Fong?”

He shrugged. “Sure. I like to live dangerously.” He took the note out of my fingers. “Later!” He winked at Brook and took off.

“You’re going to fight the wolf,” Brook said. “You are the stupidest person I’ve ever met. We need to take this to adults now.”

“I think Gendun already knows what’s going on. He wouldn’t have missed the tree coming to life. He didn’t seem frantic about Ashlyn’s disappearance and he said that the locating spell indicated she was on the grounds. I think that I’m meant to solve this one myself.”

“He would be putting your life in danger.” Brook shoved her glasses back up her nose. “And Ashlyn’s.”

“I can’t explain it. I just know that I’m trusted to do this on my own.” Maybe it was something only I could do. Maybe Ashlyn would trust another girl her age, but not an adult. Maybe Gendun was just clueless. I had no idea. I just had to get Ashlyn out of that tree.

When I was stuck in my old school, there were times I would’ve hid in a tree if I could have. I knew Kate and Curran and even Derek, the dimwit, would come to rescue me. But I knew none of my school friends would. Sometimes you just want a kid like you to care. Well, I was that kid.

“I’m coming with you,” Brook announced.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I told her.

She pushed her glasses up at me.

“Fine.” I grinned. “Get yourself killed.”

I waited in the courtyard on one of the little benches on the edge of the wards, reading my little book in plain view. I’d borrowed it from Brook. It was explaining how the universe started with a giant explosion. I understood about two words in it, and those were the and and.

The day was dying down. Most students were long gone and those who lived in the dormitory had left campus, too. Strangely, no teachers came up and interrogated me or demanded to know when I was planning on leaving. That only confirmed my suspicion that Gendun knew all along what I was up to. Maybe he had some sort of secret adult reason for handling this problem through me. Maybe it was a test. I didn’t really care. I just waited and hoped the magic would hold.

The dusk had arrived on the wings of a night moth, silent and soft. The sky above me darkened to a deep, beautiful purple. Stars glowed high above, and below them, as if inspired by their light, tiny fireflies awoke and crawled from their shelter in the leaves. Late enough.

I put my book on the bench and started toward the wards. The magic still held, and when I focused, using my sensate vision, the glowing walls of the wards shimmered slightly. I walked along the first gap and paused. I was pretty sure I’d be followed. Lisa alone might not be capable of remembering all the gaps in the invisible fence, but a wolf would follow his nose and my scent.

I’d have to ask people in the Pack how to make my scent signature stronger. If I had had dandruff, I’d scratch my head, but I didn’t. I dragged my hand through my blond hair anyway and moved on, walking along the next ward to the narrow gap.

I weaved my way through the rings of defensive spells, taking my time, pausing at the gaps, until finally I emerged in the clear space around the tree. Blossoms sheathed the branches. Delicate flowers with white petals blushing with faint pink bloomed between tiny pink buds.

I hoped I was doing the right thing. Sometimes it’s really hard to figure out what the right thing is. You do something, and you wish you could go back in time for five seconds and undo it or unsay it, but life doesn’t work that way.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I pulled a Red Delicious apple from my pocket. The skin of the fruit was so red, it was almost purple. I crouched and rolled the apple gently to the tree’s roots. It came to rest against the trunk.

The bark of the tree shifted, crawled. . . . A bark-sheathed leg separated from the trunk and stepped into the grass around the tree. The toes touched the grass and the bark melted into human skin. A moment, and a short petite girl crouched in the grass. I caught my breath. Ashlyn’s hair had gone completely white. Not just blond or platinum. White.

She picked up the apple. “Red Delicious.”

“Hi, Ashlyn.”

She glanced at me with green eyes. “Hi. So you found me.”

“It wasn’t very hard.”

A spark of magic flared beyond the wards. Ashlyn cringed, her eyes wide. “It’s coming!”

“It will be okay.”

“No, you don’t understand! The wolf is coming.”

Lisa walked up to the outer ward.

“She’s here!” Ashlyn squeaked. “Go away! You’ll get hurt.”

“Trust me.”

Lisa dashed through the wards, running fast, following my trail. I stepped in front of Ashlyn.

Lisa burst out of the ward maze and stopped. “Thank you for showing me the way.”

I kept myself between her and Ashlyn. As long as Lisa concentrated on me, she wouldn’t look behind her to see who was following her through the ward. “What is the wolf?”

“You saw him?”

“Yep.”

Lisa sighed. “It’s a forest spirit. It’s called Leshii.”

“It’s a creature of the forest?” Ashlyn gripped my arm. “But why does it want to hurt me? It’s like me.”

“It wants your blood,” Lisa said. “It’s weak, and your blood would make it stronger.”

“It wants to eat me?” Ashlyn whispered.

“Pretty much. Look, I never had a problem with you. I’m just tired of being Lisa the Dud.”

“How did you make the deal?” I asked her.

“I let it out of the Mage Academy,” Lisa said. “My dad showed it to me. The mages trapped it during the last magic wave and gave it some trees, to keep it alive while they studied it, but the trees weren’t enough. It wants a forest and I want people to take me seriously. It’s a win-win.”

“Except for Ashlyn, who will be eaten alive. No biggie,” I said. Bitch.

“What am I supposed to do?” Lisa’s voice went up really high and I saw that same fear I glimpsed earlier. Except now it was in her eyes and written all over her face. “I didn’t know what it wanted when I took it out. The deal was, I carry it out inside me and it gives me powers. I didn’t know it was going to kill her!”

“Are you a total moron? That’s the first thing they teach you in any school,” I growled. “Never make deals with magic creatures. It’s a spirit of the damn forest! Do you know how powerful it is? What the fuck did you think would happen?”

“I’m tired of listening to you,” Lisa snarled. “This is over. Nobody asked you to stick your nose where it didn’t belong. I told you to leave and you didn’t listen. You can’t fight it. And now you’re both going to die, so who is a moron now, huh?”

“You’re a terrible person,” Ashlyn told her.

“Whatever . . .” Lisa’s arms snapped up and out, as if she was trying to keep from falling. A scream filled with pain and terror ripped out of her. A phantom wolf burst out of her chest, huge, shaggy, glowing with green magic. It landed on the grass, towering over us. Its fur turned gray. The wolf’s cavernous mouth gaped open, suddenly solid. Monstrous fangs rent the air.

“Now!” I yelled.

Yu Fong stepped through the ward into the clearing. His irises glowed with orange and in their depth I saw tiny spirals of flames.

The wolf spun to face him.

Magic unfurled from Yu Fong like petals of a fiery flower. It shone with scarlet and beautiful gold and shaped itself into an outline on a translucent beast. It stood on four muscular, strong legs, arms with huge claws rippling with flames. Scales covered its body. Its head belonged to a meld of Chinese dragon and lion, and long whiskers of pure red streamed on both sides of its jaws. Spikes bristled among its crimson mane and its eyes were pure molten lava. Within this beast Yu Fong smiled, a magic wind tugging at his hair.

Wow. He was a dragon.

The wolf charged, aiming for Lisa. Yu Fong stepped into its path, knocking Lisa out of the way. She fell on the grass. The dragon opened its mouth. Flame burst with a roar, like a tornado. The fire engulfed the wolf, and the shaggy beast screamed, opening its mouth, but no sound came.

The wolf lunged at Yu Fong, biting at the dragon with its enormous teeth. Yu Fong clenched his fists. A wall of towering flames shot out from the dragon and wrapped itself around the wolf.

Heat burned my skin.

The wolf writhed in the cocoon of flame, biting and clawing to get free. Yu Fong’s face was serene. He leaned back, laughed softly within the beast, and the fire exploded with pure white heat, singeing my hair.

Ashlyn hid her face in her hands.

The wolf burned, crackling and sparking. I watched it burn until nothing was left except for a pile of ashes.

The dragon melted back into Yu Fong. He stepped to the pile of flames and passed his hand over it, so elegant and beautiful, he seemed unreal. The ashes rose in a flurry of sparks, up into the sky, and rained on the courtyard beyond the wards, settling to the ground like beautiful fireflies.

“Well, that’s that,” Brook said, at the outer ward. “Ashlyn, I have this blanket here for you.”

Yu Fong stepped toward us, and Ashlyn took a step toward the tree.

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice soothing. “Come, let’s get you dressed.”

Around us, the world clenched. The magic vanished, abruptly, like a flame of the candle being blown out by a sudden draft. The wards disappeared. The garden seemed suddenly mundane.

Well. How about that?

Yu Fong escorted Ashlyn away from the tree, guiding her toward Brook.

Lisa got up. Her legs shook. She shuddered and limped away, into the courtyard. I didn’t chase her. What was the point?

Brook draped the blanket over Ashlyn’s shoulders and gently led her away. I sat down on the grass and leaned against the trunk of the apple tree. I was suddenly very tired.

Yu Fong walked over and looked at me. “Happy, Julie Lennart?”

“It’s Olsen,” I told him. “I only pull Lennart out of my pocket for special occasions.”

“I see.”

“Thank you for saving Ashlyn.”

Yu Fong reached for the nearest apple branch and gently pulled it down, studying the fragile blossoms, his inhumanly beautiful face framed by the blooms. Somebody should have taken a picture. It was too pretty.

“Of course, now you owe me a favor,” he said.

Jerk. No, you know what, forget it. He wasn’t pretty. In fact, I’ve never seen an uglier guy in my whole life.

“The satisfaction of knowing you saved Ashlyn’s life should be enough.”

“But I didn’t just save her life. I saved yours, too,” Yu Fong said.

“I would’ve handled it.”

The look he gave me said loud and clear that he thought I was full of it. “I expect to collect this favor one day.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“I imagine I’ll have plenty of opportunities, since you will be spending a lot of time here,” he said.

“What makes you think I’ll be studying here?”

“You’ve made friends,” he said. “You will be worried about them.” He let go of the branch and walked away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Julie Olsen.”

“Maybe!” I called. “I haven’t decided yet!”

He kept walking.

I sat under the apple tree. Somehow leaving Ashlyn and Brook to his tender mercy didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

I was pretty sure I could get admitted into this school. It wouldn’t be that hard.

I was right. Kate had set me up.

But then again, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.