ou’re not focusing.”

“I am too.”

“Really? Because if you were focusing you would be glowing, not arguing.”

I opened my eyes and glared at Liza’s reflection in my Mark Two. I’d been sitting on my bed in the same meditation pose for half an hour and felt no closer to accomplishing the task at hand—bringing something to life temporarily. Liza and I had been stuck on this lesson for two weeks now and I was having trouble progressing. Maybe it was because my mind wasn’t clear. Until a couple days ago, the crevices in my brain not occupied with thoughts of schoolwork and antagonists had dwelled on upcoming Twenty-Three Skidd tryouts and TA potions sessions. Now that headspace was churning over my vision of Jason’s death, my reluctance about telling him and Blue, and Daniel’s decision to push me away.

“Can we take a break?” I asked, frustrated. “I know I need to learn how to do this, but is it really so urgent?”

“I don’t know,” Liza said. “Why don’t you ask the vines Lady Agnue tore down? Or that piece of wood that almost decapitated SJ a few weeks ago?”

I huffed, knowing she was right.

When Mauvrey had almost killed me with the poisoned corset, I’d been too weak to get help. Doing the only thing I could think of at the time, I’d brought a portion of our bedroom’s wooden floor to life to fly me to the infirmary.

Since then the chunk of floorboard had stayed alive like everything else I enchanted. However, unlike Lucky who I kept as a pet, the vines that Lady Agnue had removed, or other objects like that tree in the forest, which I never saw again, this wooden slab had been giving us a bit of trouble.

After rescuing me, I stowed the wooden slab in our room for a while. It slept under my bed at first, but unless I kept giving it commands it went a little wild, flying around the room like an out of control Frisbee. When it started getting out of our room and zipping across the grounds at night—smacking into towers and trees and turrets—Lady Agnue intervened. She locked the wooden slab in the school’s old dungeons, which hadn’t been used since the concept of tower detention was thought up.

None of the other students or teachers would ever find the wooden slab in the dungeons, and it would not damage any more school property. But I felt bad that it was trapped down there. I had given it life, so it was my responsibility. Shoving it away seemed like a cop out.

I sighed and tried to fight my tiredness. Liza was right to insist I learn this lesson and I was wrong to complain about it. There were clearly repercussions to my bringing things to life.

“Come on, try again,” Liza encouraged. “When you focus on that alarm clock, concentrate solely on the action you want it to take. Picture the clock doing just that and then going inactive immediately after. Your magic responds to your will—your train of thought. If you give that train a sole track with a set destination, it will run its course and then stop.”

I tucked my hair behind my ears, sat up straighter, and focused. Closing my eyes, I clasped the clock that normally sat on Blue’s nightstand. I felt its cool, metallic surface on my fingertips as I summoned my magic.

“Walk across the room and go back to where you belong,” I commanded aloud. As I said this, I visualized the action. I pictured the little red clock using its four silver legs to journey to the other side of the room. Then I imagined the clock using the open drawers on Blue’s nightstand to hop to the top before reverting back to an inanimate state.

I felt the magic energy pulse through me, but this time more gently. Suddenly the clock leaped from my hand. I opened my eyes and watched in amazement as it replicated the exact path I’d seen in my head. It waddled across the floor to Blue’s bedside, jumped from drawer to drawer up her nightstand, settled itself on top, and then it just stopped. It wasn’t alive anymore; it had finished its duty and was an ordinary clock once more.

I’d done it! After many hours of fruitless practice, I’d finally been able to give life to something temporarily! An immense sense of satisfaction rushed through me.

“Excellent work,” Liza declared. “You finally got it, Crisa. You should be proud. This is a very important part of learning to control your powers. When my Pure Magic first developed into the power of teleportation, every time I tried to teleport something or someone they would go where I wanted, but then they would continue teleporting uncontrollably based on whatever I was thinking next.

“Once I learned to control the connection I had to my powers, the problem was resolved and managing my abilities became easier. Just like it will be for you. With a lot more practice, this level of control will eventually help you handle your magic telepathically, allowing you to bring things to life to a much greater degree without burning yourself out or exhausting yourself so quickly. That will still require a great deal of training, mind you. But for now, at least this means you won’t have to worry about leaving so many miscellaneous objects alive in your wake, like that wooden slab. From now on, whenever you enchant anything be sure to employ this new skill. All right, Crisa?”

“Hold on,” I said, getting an idea. “If I can project my magic into something temporarily—essentially giving it life and then taking it away—why not just do the latter part to resolve the problem of the wooden slab altogether? Couldn’t I directly focus my powers on that set destination you were talking about and bring an end to the life I originally gave it?”

In my mind this was a brilliant, natural notion. However, the expression that appeared on Liza’s face was sour and stern, making me feel like I’d made a terrible suggestion.

“No, Crisa,” she replied. “You couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” I asked. “It makes perfect sense. If I can do that trick on the clock—provide life and take it back—why couldn’t I do the second half of the process and—”

“Crisa,” Liza interrupted. “Who here has had Pure Magic for longer?”

I exhaled in frustration. “You.”

“And who has managed to avoid having that Pure Magic turn them dark for over a hundred and fifty years?”

“You.”

“So then,” Liza replied. “Wouldn’t you say that I might know a bit more about the situation than you?”

I thought about the wooden slab flying around downstairs. “Yeah, I guess. But I still don’t see why I—”

“Crisa.”

“All right, all right,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. “I trust you. I’ll leave Woody be. Happy?”

“The word is relieved,” Liza replied. “If you want me to be happy, keep listening to me and fighting your rebellious instinct to do otherwise, and we’ll see if we can’t work up to that.”

I looked at the very clock I’d enchanted and disenchanted a minute ago. Lunch period was nearly up. “I have to head to Princess First Aid class,” I told Liza as I grabbed my book bag. “Any final words of wisdom before I go, oh great magical mentor?”

“For you?” she replied. “Just the same ones as always: try and stay out of trouble.”

I winked at her before closing my Mark Two. “I’ll do my best.”

After an extensive morning of class, training with Liza, and more class, I eventually made it to the end of the school day. Alas, my reward was not a Monday afternoon nap, or a plate of cookies, or any other form of peace I so desperately craved: it was, as always, more work.

I headed to my potions classroom to meet Madame Alexanders. As I approached, I heard yelling. Hurriedly I opened the door to see what was the matter.

“You hooligans! Go and practice somewhere else! There are dangerous substances in here!”

Madame Alexanders had her pudgy face pressed against one of the two large, floor-to-ceiling windows next to her desk. She was staring down at the grounds below, rapping a fist against the glass.

“Professor?”

Madame Alexanders whirled around. “Crisanta, dear, come in.”

“What was all that about?” I asked, nodding toward the window.

“Oh, some of your classmates are running Twenty-Three Skidd drills on the lawn. Their ball has hit my windows three times now and I am terribly worried that it is only a matter of time before they break one.”

“They’re five floors down, professor,” I said, reassuringly. “I think we’re safe.”

“Very well,” she said. “But we must keep an eye on them and those lacrosse swords they’re wielding. I sense mischief afoot.”

I turned to put my bag down. A second later, I was startled to discover Madame Alexanders hovering over me—way too close to my personal space.

“So?” she prodded.

I sighed, well aware of what she wanted. “Congratulations, professor. The potion was a total success. I had the worst nightmares of my life on Friday night. And that’s saying something.”

“Really? Oh, that is wonderful news!” She clapped her hands together and opened up her notebook to scribble something down. Then she went over to her trusty lab cases and began unpacking ingredients.

I tried to distract myself from the awful memories of my nightmare about Jason and strode over to her desk. “What kind of sleeping potion is on the agenda today?” I asked.

“For a change of pace, today we are making a sweet dreams sleeping potion,” she responded. “We’ll need lavender, ginger root, eucalyptus, sand, and . . . oh, fiddlewotts!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot to get the fresh honeycomb from the beehives on the roof this morning.”

“We have beehives on the roof?” I asked. “Is that allowed?”

“Would you think less of me if I told you it wasn’t?”

I smirked. “Actually, I think it would promote you to being my favorite teacher.”

“Very good then,” Madame Alexanders responded. “I must go and collect the honeycomb if we are to proceed with today’s experiment. Be a dear and please prepare the other ingredients while I am gone. The instructions are on the table.” She pointed to a piece of purple parchment with a hastily written list of bullet points then gathered her keys from her desk.

“Wait, what if I have questions?” I asked.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to find answers,” my professor said as she headed for the door. “I have faith in you, Crisanta,” she called back. “Just try not to blow up the laboratory before I return.” Madame Alexanders exited the room and I reluctantly picked up the instructions.

All right, Crisa. You can do this.

I began by taking out the lavender oil and pouring it into one of the beakers over the burner, slowly bringing it to a boil. I thinly grated the ginger root into a small cauldron and added sand. Next I dropped twelve eucalyptus leaves into the lavender oil every thirty-seven seconds on the dot like the directions indicated.

With those tasks complete, I poured the contents of the beaker into the cauldron. A light pink cloud exuded from the brew. It smelled sweet, but not overbearing. I breathed it in and discovered the brew emanated a happy sort of feeling, like a cross between how you felt when you took a hot bath and ate ice cream with hot fudge.

I picked up the parchment to read the next instruction. All that was left before the honeycomb was adding an entire Poppy.

Carefully, I removed the jar containing the flowers from one of Madame Alexanders’s lab cases. I held it up to the light. The jar was fogged up, but I could see six Poppies crammed inside. They were bright red with black spots. The flowers seemed so small and docile-looking that I had trouble believing that even the slightest touch would cause a person to fall into a long, deep slumber that sucked out their life force like a Stiltdegarth or a Shadow.

Hmm. Why does our realm have so many things that can do that?

I uncorked the jar. A light mist came out of it when I did. It seemed like the Poppies were producing it. I used a pair of forceps to pluck out a flower then closed the jar. Holding the forceps slightly away from my body, I moved slowly toward the cauldron.

Almost there . . . almost there . . . Just hold it steady.

CRASH!

A Twenty-Three Skidd ball came spiraling through one of the windows. It smacked into the cauldron, causing its boiling contents to splash onto my arm. The burn was so intense that I tossed the forceps, along with the Poppy, into the air.

My reflexes worked involuntarily then. I didn’t mean to reach out for the Poppy; it just happened. My hand caught the blossom in midair before my brain could prevent me from doing so. And then . . .

Then nothing.

I expected to hit the floor and fall unconscious immediately due to the flower’s potent, sleep-inducing powers. But I didn’t. Somehow, I remained awake. I remained unharmed.

What in the—?

Hesitantly, I held up the Poppy. A glowing purple color was spreading up the veins in my hands and arms, but I didn’t feel any different.

I swiftly put the Poppy back in the jar and examined my arm more carefully. The instant I stopped touching the flower the purple discoloration ceased its progression. A faint golden glow began to emanate from my veins—outshining the purple hue. The glow increased in brightness for a moment like a flash, then my arms returned to normal.

I took a step back and took stock of my vitals. My pulse was regular, my stomach and throat seemed unaffected, and my head was clear. Overall I felt unchanged, which was rather disconcerting.

I stared at the jar of Poppies. I didn’t understand. Simply touching the flower should have knocked me out. My veins should still be that awful shade of purple. And the energy should have been sucked out of me. This didn’t make any sense.

“Yoo-hoo!”

I spun around.

“Sorry it took me so long, the bees were a bit perturbed,” Madame Alexanders said as she came through the door—arms wrapped around a big, white bucket of honeycomb, which partially blocked her view.

She was all smiles at first, but when she caught a glance at the panicked expression on my face, she stopped short. “Are you all right, dear?”

My eyes darted to the jar of Poppies. “Um, yeah, I just . . .” Then I pointed to the broken window. “Those darn hooligans busted your window.”

Madame Alexanders set her bucket onto a lab desk and her eyebrows shot up. “Good gracious! They did!”

She hustled over to the shattered window and started yelling, but I severely doubted that the kids who’d broken it were still in the vicinity. They’d probably gotten the heck out of there as soon as they realized what they’d done.

After Madame Alexanders finished with her rant and the school janitor had come to clean up the broken glass, she and I completed the day’s experiment. I let her add the Poppy to the concoction this time. And I kept my mouth shut about what had transpired in her absence.

We successfully brewed the sweet dreams potion and each chugged it down to test its outcome like we had with the nightmare potion.

On drinking the potion, I experienced the same symptoms as Friday: icy stomach, a hot throat, hastened pulse, and purple veins. However, I wasn’t sure what to expect as a result of the potion’s effects. Would they actually work on my dreams the way they were supposed to?

I thought the nightmare Poppy Potion had worked just fine. I’d certainly had nightmares last Friday night. But what if those dreams hadn’t been the result of the potion? I mean, technically I already had nightmares with relative frequency. So what if my visions of the pirate ship, and the flying monkeys, and Jason were only normal visions—completely unrelated to the Poppy Potion that Madame Alexanders and I had consumed?

It was an outlandish theory, but given what had just gone down in the potions lab, not an implausible one. Touching the Poppy barely had any effect on me. I’d held the toxic flower in my hand and nothing drastic had happened.

I didn’t know how that was possible. But it was grounds to believe that the first potion, and possibly this new one too, might not affect me.

When Madame Alexanders and I finally finished, I couldn’t make it to my room fast enough. I collapsed on my bed with a sigh. In an effort to keep my thoughts from running away with me, I reached beneath my mattress and pulled out the book I kept hidden there: Shadow Guardians—Origins, Dangers, & Weaknesses by Aimee Durant.

Ever since Daniel had procured the text for me last semester from the Capitol Building’s library, I’d tried to read it whenever I had a spare minute. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of those, so my progress through the thick book had been extremely slow. Especially since the font was an ant-sized, single-spaced, non-indented print formatted on old, weathered pages. Oh, and it was written in Mountain Troll.

SJ and Blue had helped me figure that out. But since none of us spoke the language—I’d studied Nymph for my language course last year and the pair of them had taken Spanish—I’d been borrowing books from the school library to translate the text line by line.

The work was exhausting, but I kept at it nonetheless. It was my hope that the book would eventually provide me with some information I could use to get an edge on Arian, Mauvrey, and any of the other antagonists who wielded Shadows. So no matter how long it took, I was not giving up. The answers were here. I felt sure of it.

My translated notes were sandwiched inside the book’s front cover. I grabbed the Mountain Troll dictionary I’d found most useful—Mountain Troll Words and Phrases by Dennis McWorth—which I’d checked out of the library in the normal way, hopped back on my bed, and got to work, continuing from the page where I’d left off.

I actually seemed to be getting somewhere today. After about thirty minutes I finished translating a full page and read it from the start.

“As Shadows draw their power from darkness (both the literal kind and figurative kind associated with human nature), they can be weakened by light in the same sense. Some circumstances such as aversion to literal light are easily overcome when the Shadows exist within a host. However, the more figurative interpretations of this law are harder to compensate for. Their essence is more complex.

“What research has proven is that Shadows and Shadow Guardians stay away from items that embody human symbols of light, such as selflessness, kindness, hope, and faith. Some examples include family mementos and items of deep sentimental value to the human host. More commonplace examples include four-leaf clovers and spare coins. Such objects are commonly associated with wishing—a sentiment of light which embodies true, vulnerable moments of hope and faith. As a result, they are toxic to both Shadows and their Guardians.”

I put the book down as I processed the information.

Holy bananas! That makes total sense!

It explained Mauvrey’s weird phobia of coins. She’d been scared of them this whole time because the Shadow inside her made them toxic to touch. But geez, she’d had that fear for as long as we’d been at Lady Agnue’s. How many years had one of those things been living inside of her?

I lay back on my bed, my head full and my body tired from such an odd afternoon. As I exhaled with exhaustion, SJ came in.

“Long day?” she asked.

“The longest,” I responded without sitting up. “I think I just learned something pretty important from the Shadow Guardians book, but that was far from the most of it. During our TA session, Madame Alexanders left me alone to brew a potion and there were some . . . issues.”

“Hmm, shocking.”

That made me sit up. SJ seemed to be looking for something on her desk so she didn’t notice that I was staring at her in surprise.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.

SJ shrugged. “Nothing. Just, what did you expect when you accepted the position? You are not talented at potions, Crisa.”

“Yeah, I know. But you don’t have to point it out. I get it. I suck.”

“Well, take comfort in the fact that you at least suck less than I do.” SJ stopped rummaging around her desk. She stood frozen with her back to me so I couldn’t see her face.

Oh, crud. This is what I’d been afraid of since I accepted the TA position.

“SJ,” I said, watching her steadily. “You know what happened with Madame Alexanders is not something you should stress out about, right? I can’t explain why she didn’t pick you. You’re a natural and it should have been you. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that. The fact that you weren’t selected doesn’t make any sense.”

“No,” she sighed. “But I suppose it would not be the first time.”

“First time for what?”

“First time that my not being selected for something did not make any sense.”

Oh boy. I had a feeling this conversation was coming. Logical, sensible, and rational as SJ was, I knew not having a protagonist book had to be getting to her. I’d long suspected that it was only a matter of time before her insecurity about the matter reared its ugly head.

“SJ,” I responded slowly as I made my way over to her. “You know the Author’s protagonist selection isn’t what we thought it was. You can’t let not having a book get to you. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“That is easy for you to say. You were chosen,” SJ replied.

“Yes, and look what it’s gotten me. Because of that stupid book Liza wrote, I have my own personal war to wage against a kingdom full of antagonists who’ve made it a point to hunt me down because my prologue prophecy told them they have to. The rest of us—Blue, Jason, Daniel—aren’t any better off for having books and being ‘selected’ as protagonists. You should be thankful that you—”

“That I what?” SJ interrupted, finally turning to face me. “That I am not important enough to be considered a threat to the antagonists? Not special enough to be considered anything to anyone?”

“SJ, you’re plenty important and plenty special, book or no book. You know that.”

“I am sorry, Crisa, but I do not. At least not anymore. I am not like you or Blue or Jason or Daniel. I am not strong, or brave, or bold. I am not a naturally formidable fighter. And I am not a hero. But the thing is, I have always accepted that. Those were attributes that I saw in the four of you, and I had things of my own that I was proud of, being an exemplary princess and potionist most of all. But now I do not even have those to call mine.”

She took a deep breath and gave me a vulnerable look. “Do you know why the friendship between you, me, and Blue has worked so well over the years, Crisa? It was not because we were the same; it was because we were different. Blue was our scrappy, fearless hero with a talent for combat. I was the model princess with an affinity for potions. And you had a bit of each archetype, but not enough to overstep your place.”

“I’m sorry, my place?” I repeated in surprise. “What are you talking about? What happened to the girl who used to tell me that she was just as unhappy living in a world with assigned roles as I was? The girl who fought her way across the realm with the rest of us to reach the Author to change that? Now you’re acting like places and roles still matter.”

“I was all for trying to achieve more with my life than what I was assigned when I thought that I had a role in my own book,” SJ countered. “But meeting the Author was a wake-up call and now I know the truth. I cannot hope to be more because I was never intended to be anything at all. Not like you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Book or no book, as you say, Crisa, you are changing. Every day you are finding your own as a hero, as a princess, and as this girl that everyone in school is suddenly looking up to. It is ridiculous and unfair. You are moving into the light while I am moving into the shadows because some Fairy Godmother with a magic disease wrote your name down in a book. You have become this annoyingly special, magical ‘chosen one’ and, as if you were not already the constant center of attention, you had to take away the only two things that were mine—being a perfect princess and my potions.”

I had never felt this angry toward SJ before. We’d had our disagreements, but they never ran so deep. This was something new. I couldn’t believe what she was accusing me of. The spite and condemnation in her tone offended me even more. Her words sent a tremor of ire up my spine.

“I haven’t taken anything from you, SJ,” I responded sternly. “You’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion. The reality is that me getting a bit more respect from the other protagonists has nothing to do with you. It’s probably just a fluke that will be over with soon. But even if it isn’t, it shouldn’t matter to you because you are a great protagonist. As to the potions, I asked you if you wanted me to turn the job down and you told me not to. Blue and I have assured you a hundred times over that our professor was off her rocker in not picking you. Any sane person in this school knows that you’re the best. For goodness’ sake, look at the portable potions you invented. That’s brilliance, SJ, and creativity, and resourcefulness, and protagonist potential at its finest. If you don’t see that, then I don’t know what to tell you except that you can’t blame me for stealing your thunder. Because if anyone is taking away your spot in the light, it’s not me; it’s you in your own stupid refusal to step into it.”

SJ and I had a silent staring stand-off. After a tense moment, she seized her bag off her desk and headed for the exit to our room without saying another word. She didn’t even look back. She just left with a loud slam of the door—leaving me feeling a whirlwind of rage and disappointment, all directed at her.