I push the heavy lunchroom door open. Alice, Mary, and Susannah sit at their usual table near the window, and I head straight for them.

“I heard Sam had a total meltdown this morning about Jaxon dating Niki,” Blair says loud enough for me to hear as I pass. I know I shouldn’t, but I look at her.

The girls sitting with Blair laugh. I catch Matt watching us from the next table.

Blair soaks up the encouragement. “Apparently, she showed up at Niki’s house today all weepy and—”

“You know what’s a good story, Blair?” Matt interrupts. “The one from last weekend when you got drunk, broke your high heel, and face-plan’ed right in a pile of—”

“Shut up, Matt!” Blair snaps, turning instantly red.

“Oh, I thought we were tellin’ stories? I guess we’re not,” he says.

I smile my thanks to him, and he nods.

I sit down at the table with the Descendants.

“Dude, if this day gets to be too much, just say the word and we’ll cruise out of here and eat donuts in my soundproofed room until we pop,” Alice says.

I laugh. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s all hearts and rainbows over here.” I open up my lunch bag. “How likely do you think it is that Niki and Blair will just drop this whole rivalry?”

“Not very,” Mary says. “As far as I can tell, Niki makes it her personal mission to spread gossip.”

“You’re telling me. There’s been an abnormal amount of whispers and looks today. I never thought I would say this, but I actually prefer getting questions about dead people.” I unload my enormous Meriwether lunch onto the table.

“So…I have a theory about what happened—”

“Suze,” Alice warns.

“With Jaxon this morning,” Susannah continues.

“Susannah. Seriously?” Alice’s voice is rough.

Susannah and Alice stare at each other.

“Mary, what’s going on?” I ask.

“Susannah thinks Jaxon’s under a spell,” Mary says. “But Alice wasn’t convinced and wanted to check it out before we said anything to you. She worries that you’ll get upset if we’re right. Or if we’re wrong.”

I look at Susannah, my heart beating a little faster. “Wait. Really?”

“She’s having one of her feelings, which aren’t always right,” Alice says pointedly to Susannah.

“I do have a feeling,” Susannah says. “And I’ve had a feeling that something wasn’t adding up for a while now. I’ve known Jaxon since we were in kindergarten, and the Jaxon I know would never, under any circumstances, leave you stranded on the sidewalk. It’s just not who he is. Plus, something doesn’t feel right about him. I talked to him today. He seems…cloudy, I guess is the best way to describe it.”

Could that really be what’s going on with Jaxon? Please let that be it. Wait, that’s terrible that I’m hoping he’s under a spell.

“You’ve said a couple of times that Jaxon wasn’t acting like himself,” Susannah says to me. “I saw him at breakfast that morning at your house. And yeah, he was overly straightforward, but not unbelievably so. But then there was that bracelet thing with Niki….”

My stomach flip-flops. “Spells in objects. You don’t think that’s how he wound up under a spell, do you?”

“We’ve gone to school with Jaxon all our lives, and we’ve seen him date girls before,” Susannah says. “He’s calm and casual about it. Then all of a sudden, in a matter of a few days, he’s head over heels for Niki, buying her a dance bracelet and blowing you off? We’ve never seen him like this. I spoke to Dillon.”

“More like cornered him,” Mary says with a smile.

“And even he agreed that Jaxon’s Niki obsession is over the top,” Susannah says.

“Actually, Mrs. Meriwether said almost the same thing at breakfast this morning,” I say.

Susannah nods like I’m confirming what she already knows. “One of these things alone wouldn’t be so strange, but all together they paint a really distorted version of Jaxon. And when someone changes their personality overnight like that, I don’t see another explanation except for a spell.”

“Two things,” I say. “First, how do we confirm if he’s under a spell or not? Second, what does it mean if he is?”

“If he’s under a spell,” Mary says, “my two cents is that it’s some kind of love spell. And the bracelet gives us a place to start from.”

“I’m not following,” I say.

“We might need to destroy the bracelet,” Mary says. “Preferably burn it.”

“So we need to steal it from him?” I ask.

“No,” Alice says. “From everything we’ve read, he’ll have to give it to us willingly. For love spells to work well, some part of you has to want to participate. And until you choose to stop participating, the spell can’t be broken. However, if he’s under a spell, it’s going to be hard to convince him to give us that bracelet.”