THE WHOLE OF WAYWARD SCHOOL WAS STILL desperate to get a glimpse of the Foretold, so Dr Bane decided that it would be best for Cas to start his lessons the following day, meaning Warrior was granted a free pass out of classes to give Cas a private – but discreet – tour of the grounds.

Delighted, Warrior led Cas down narrow passageways, forgotten, cobwebby corridors and at one point even over a low roof to avoid the other students. The fortified stately mansion that was Wayward School just seemed to grow bigger the more they explored it. Even Warrior got lost a few times and they ended up walking in circles or retracing their steps.

Yet despite being shown everything from the Wavebreakers’ creaky boathouse (and the “seaweed monster” who allegedly lurked in the impossibly deep boating lake) to the Earthshapers’ homely woodland cabins, Cas couldn’t shake the chill that the register had given him for the rest of the day.

Perhaps choosing the same name as the Master of All was a coincidence.

But what if it wasn’t?

Only when Cas and Warrior collapsed into the squashy comfort of the library’s armchairs at the end of the day, too tired to explore another inch, did Cas cease dwelling on it. It was nice to seek refuge amongst the bookshelves – until people quickly figured out where they were.

Thankfully, Mrs Crane was prepared.

Armed with a firefly lantern and feather duster, she chased away any prying eyes that she caught squinting through the doors’ cracks.

Cas had to stifle his laughter each time as Mrs Crane was a particularly unusual-looking lady. She had large, gleaming eyes that loomed behind a ginormous pair of jam-jar spectacles, and curly, sandy-blonde, salt-and-pepper-speckled hair that stuck out in every direction. However, her clothes were undoubtedly the oddest thing about her. She wore an awful lot of tweed. From her tweed pinafore to the little tweed pompoms on her shoes, each item was a different clashing colour. It looked like she had been eaten and spat out again by some great tweedy monster.

Mrs Crane let them stay in the library until everyone had gone home for the day. They ate dinner together, sipped steaming hot tea and gorged themselves silly on custard creams, whilst she regaled them with wondrous tales about her time spent in the Normie world.

“My first job after graduating from Wayward was working for the Grand Council,” she told them. “Not doing anything important and life-saving like the secret Order squadrons, just a small job transporting the occasional valuable artefact or document. Then I spent six months travelling, trying to find the wackiest souvenirs possible. I like collecting things, you see.”

“What sort of things?” said Cas.

Mrs Crane smiled. “Well, there was the bicycle wheel from the time I hitchhiked from Prague to Edinburgh solely on the back of tandem bikes. And Harry the Hippopotamus” – she fished out a dusty blue porcelain animal figure from under her desk – “from the week I spent posing as an art expert at the Louvre. Paris is Dr Bane’s favourite city and I came this close to stealing the ‘Mona Lisa’ for him, if only that pesky bumblebee and mouldy baguette hadn’t ruined my heist.”

Cas made a mental note to ask Mrs Crane about that later.

“Then I suppose you could count the restraining order I got from the Sydney Opera House as a souvenir too. I was wrongly banned for life after a choirmaster described my singing voice as ‘a caterwauling bag of screaming foxes being banged against a brick wall’. Obviously, he must’ve been tone-deaf. Oh, and there was the time I bought out an entire Marrakech bazaar by exchanging trinkets I’d brought with me from the Balance Lands.”

“Hang on,” said Cas slowly, realization dawning on him midway through a mouthful of buttery biscuits. “Curious Mrs Crane’s Shop of Even Curiouser Curiosities. It was your shop I was found outside!”

Mrs Crane gave a secretive wink. “Shh.” She pressed a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell the Grand Council about my side hobby. They don’t mind Others visiting the Normie world occasionally, but you’re not supposed to put down roots there.”

“Is that why someone else looks after it for you?”

“Why yes, you must’ve met Will!” Mrs Crane clapped her hands in delight. “He’s a lovely lad.”

“Is he an Other too?”

The exceptionally ordinary shopkeeper seemed completely at odds with Cas’s idea of someone with incredible, otherworldly powers.

“Hm-mm,” said Mrs Crane vaguely, chugging her tea and quickly starting to tidy up the teacups.

Before Cas could ask anything else, Mrs Crane clucked her tongue and ushered them off to bed.

Sleepy and content, Cas and Warrior reluctantly lugged their biscuit-laden bodies away from the library’s roaring fire. For once, Cas wasn’t dreading sleep. He couldn’t wait to lie down and wake up tomorrow with all the memories of today fresh in his head.

Warrior, though, had other ideas. “There’s a couple of people I want you to meet first.”

Following her up the spiral staircase to the Attic, Cas shivered at the brisk autumnal chill clinging to the air. He wished he had an Order cloak of his own to wrap around himself for warmth. Suddenly, something occurred to him for the second time that day.

“You still haven’t told me which Order you’re in, Warrior?”

Warrior opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, the Attic’s door at the top of the stairs swung open and the most hideous-looking creature Cas had ever seen came bounding out.

“YIKES!” he shrieked, scooting across the landing.

“Yip-yap. Yip-yap,” the creature half barked, half squeaked.

Chasing its tail on the landing in front of them was an animal about the size and build of a small dog, but different in several very peculiar ways. It had big, hairy, pointed ears, a long, narrow muzzle, large paws, bulging violet eyes and furry, scaled legs.

“Meet Hobdogglin,” said Warrior proudly, slapping her knees so the creature ran to her affectionately. She stroked the weird animal like it was her most beloved pet. “He’s my creation. I’m an Illusionist.”

“A what?” said Cas, puzzled. He stumbled past them into the Attic, unable to take his eyes off the creature.

“An Illusionist. It means—”

Warrior’s words were drowned out by Hobdogglin growling at Cas, revealing two rows of razor-sharp, pinprick teeth. The creature let out another yip-yap and lunged. Cas cringed and threw up his arms, but the funny creature passed straight through him. It landed on the other side, re-formed, and then turned around to trot back and rub itself against Cas’s legs. Cas cautiously knelt down and patted the creature; it felt very real and solid again.

“An Illusionist,” repeated Warrior. “It means I can create realistic, touchable illusions – at least sometimes. It’s an odd ability to have. It falls outside of the five Orders, that’s why everyone thinks I’m a freak—”

“But not us,” a voice piped up. Cas turned to see a girl in a wheelchair rolling towards them from the far side of the room. “People might call us Abnormies, but it’s just because they don’t understand our powers. We’re not like most Others. Come here, Hobdogglin!”

At the sight of the girl, Hobdogglin neglected Cas and leapt into the girl’s lap – but passed right through again. She giggled.

“You’re way too nice about other people,” said Warrior, groaning and rolling her eyes.

The girl ignored her, staring fixedly at Cas. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“Cas, this is Paws,” said Warrior. “Paws, this is Cas. The Foretold.”

The girl rolled her wheelchair closer, smiling. Cas shook her outstretched hand.

“I know,” she said, her voice feather-soft and dreamy. “Everyone’s buzzing about it. I’m Amalia, by the way. Amalia Grover-Rosales. But everybody calls me Paws.”

Paws had kind, muddy-brown eyes and matching hair, with a plait running across the front, framing her dark, olive-skinned face. She wore a tatty green Earthshaper cloak embroidered with colourful patterns that she had clearly hand-stitched herself, and a scruffy scarf was slung around her neck. Except, Cas realized when it opened its mouth and yawned, it wasn’t a scarf at all. It was a scabby ragdoll cat with mangy fur and half of its teeth missing.

“This is Mogget,” said Paws, nudging her shoulder to wake the cat again, but it had fallen back into a sleep so deep it barely looked alive.

“Um, hi, Mogget,” mumbled Cas, reaching out to stroke the cat. The animal felt stiff and cold as ice beneath his touch.

“Feels dead, doesn’t she?” said a fourth voice, chuckling.

A boy with fiery red-orange hair leapt off one of the Attic’s beds and came to join them. His face was splattered with freckles beneath his crooked glasses and a single orange curl hung in the middle of his forehead. The strand of hair skimmed a puckered burn scar running from his eyebrow to his knobbly chin. As he approached, Cas was hit by a whiff of burnt coals and smoke. The boy’s bed was scattered with bits of wire and bundles of string from where he had clearly been tinkering with something, and when he stuck out his oil-covered hand, Cas wondered if the boy had been soldering.

“That’s why we call her Mogget,” he continued, “because she looks like a maggoty corpse most of the time.”

“Don’t be mean,” scolded Paws, covering Mogget’s ears so she couldn’t hear.

“There’s no use doing that,” said Warrior. “She’s definitely deaf.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult her…” said the boy sheepishly, his ears flushing as red as his hair. “Anyway, it’s good to meet you, Cas. I’m—”

Cas reached out to shake the boy’s hand, but the minute he did so, the boy’s whole arm went up in flames. Instinctively, Cas snatched his hand back. The boy was literally on fire in front of him.

The boy rapidly clutched his own hand to his chest and the fire died.

“Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry, did I hurt you…?” he stammered nervously, his eyes wide with concern. “I – I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry … drat, I already said that didn’t I… I’m just so nervous…”

But Cas wasn’t interested in the boy’s apology.

“Woah,” he breathed. “That’s so cool. You’re a Firetamer, aren’t you?”

The boy nodded stiffly. That explained the scent.

“Can all Firetamers do that?”

The boy chuckled half-heartedly, rubbing the back of his neck. “No, erm, not exactly,” he stammered. “I’m a bit different. My name’s Felix Embershade, but people call me Fenix… You know, a cross between Felix and Phoenix, for obvious reasons.”

“Of course,” said Cas. Then, realizing that might’ve sounded a little rude, he hastily added, “I wish I had your power.”

Sadly, his words didn’t have the desired effect.

“Um, thanks, but you probably don’t…” Fenix flickered his gaze from Cas’s knees to the ground. “Yours is much cooler, being the Foretold… No, sorry, that was really insensitive to say, you have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. I just mean, well, my power’s not so awesome when you end up … doing … doing this to yourself.” He tapped the burn scar taking up a good portion of his face. “I lost control quite badly once.”

Cas didn’t know what to say. Sorry didn’t feel right for something that had clearly happened so long ago, but he didn’t want to steer away from the subject like it unsettled him either.

“Well, I think it looks badass,” said Cas.

It was simply another difference about Fenix. Everyone had them.

“So, let me get this right,” Cas summarised, pointing at them each in turn. “Warrior, you can create illusions that aren’t real, but which can physically touch things. Fenix, you’re a Firetamer who can set himself alight. And, Paws, you’re an Earthshaper who…”

Paws gave a coy smile. “Let’s just say I have a special knack with animals,” she said, tapping her nose.

Cas didn’t know what she meant, but he was sure he would soon find out.

“And you all live up here together?”

Warrior nodded. “Originally, Wayward was a boarding school, but most students choose to stay with their families now. I suppose having an evil tyrant like the Master on the loose does that to people. I live up here because I don’t have anywhere else to go. Dr Bane took me in, and since he lives at the school, I do too – but the quarters above his office are too small for the both of us. Seeing as I don’t belong in an Order, I’m not allowed to use the old, abandoned Order dorms. Traditions and customs … yada, yada … some old, stuffy nonsense like that. So, even though Paws could stay with her parents in town, or Fenix could sleep in the Firetamers’ dorm—”

“We choose to stay up here to keep each other company,” Paws butted in.

Warrior smirked. “It’s much more fun this way.”

“Cool.” Cas beamed. “I can’t wait—”

“Can’t wait to what?” an ice-cold voice sliced across the room.

They felt the intruder’s frosty presence before they saw them.

“Good evening, Mademoiselle Bane, Monsieur Darkbloom,” said Madame Aster, stepping out of the shadows, her dreadful, melodic voice ringing out like a funeral bell.

Warrior’s hair grew a deep and dangerous shade of red. “What are you doing here?”

Outside the windows, the sky had turned the velvety purple of twilight and twinkling silver stars were beginning to peek through the clouds. But inside, it felt like a storm was brewing. An invisible charge crackled through the air, in the same way it always did whenever Warrior and her least favourite teacher were in the same room.

“Trust me, I take no pleasure in venturing to this … place,” said Madame Aster, wrinkling her nose and dragging a long finger through the layer of dust clinging to the Attic’s door frame. “But Dr Bane asked me to find and inform you that the old Deathmaker dormitories have been prepared for Monsieur Darkbloom. I would think he would want to get settled into his new lodgings early after such a long day, non?”

“Non,” mimicked Warrior. “It’s only seven o’clock. Besides, I was thinking Cas could sleep here with us in the Attic.”

“Ha,” cawed Madame Aster, flicking her dark hair gracefully over her shoulder, “you do not make the rules. This place is for people who do not belong to an Order … or those who take pity on them. Monsieur Darkbloom, on the other hand, does. In fact, he will have the whole mausoleum to himself.”

The whole mausoleum?

“Downstairs. Two minutes, Darkbloom,” Madame Aster commanded, striding out of the room.

Cas blanched.

“The mausoleum? Why do I have to sleep in the mausoleum?”

Paws and Fenix winced.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” said Paws gently.

“Yeah, there’ll only be a couple of dead bodies in the room below.”

“There will be dead bodies beneath me?” said Cas, his eyes almost bulging out of his head.

“What else do you think mausoleums are for?” said Warrior. “Don’t worry. It’s only a few rotting headmasters and headmistresses. The rest are buried in the graveyard outside.”

“I’d like to see you sleep soundly in a place like that!”

“Look, it’s not great, I know—”

“Not great?!”

“But we don’t have much choice,” Warrior spoke over him. “You heard Aster. It’s what Dr Bane has ordered. Usually, I’d fight tooth and nail over something like this, but I don’t think we can risk upsetting the teachers any more. I was lucky not to get expelled for sneaking you into the Order Trials earlier, even if I was right. And there’s always the chance that if we don’t behave, they’ll separate you from us completely – they’ll say it’s for your own protection as the Foretold. You’ll just have to sleep in the mausoleum’s dorms, at least for tonight. Maybe in the future you could move to the old Lifemaker dorms above the Nurse’s Quarters, but there’s a nasty whatsit infestation up there right now.”

Cas clenched his jaw and crossed his arms. There was no way he was sleeping in a building full of dead bodies.

NO. WAY.

“Please.” Warrior put on her best pleading puppy-dog eyes.

However much Cas didn’t want to share a dorm with a bunch of corpses, his mind was changed. He owed her this much.

“Fine,” Cas huffed in defeat, making a show of dragging his feet as he trudged towards the door. “But if I die when those dead bodies come back to life and eat me, I’m going to murder you, Warrior.”

Darkness fell fast as Madame Aster escorted Cas and his only belongings – the oversized pair of pyjamas he had worn the night before – across the rolling lawns down to Wayward School’s cemetery.

During the day, the small graveyard with its cluster of tombstones wasn’t scary at all. But set against the canvas of night, the gravestones shone stark and menacing against the silvery gloom that illuminated the three mausoleums where the dorms were housed, waiting to welcome Cas to his doom. He cast a longing glance back towards the warmly lit school, where the tiny specks of Warrior and the Abnormies watched him from the Attic’s faraway window. Yet despite his apprehension, Cas couldn’t deny that a small part of him felt morbidly drawn to the cemetery. Its Deathmaker magic seemed to spill out of every crack, calling to his powers within.

The darkness only deepened when Cas shut the mausoleum’s door and ventured up to the dorm. The thick, black nothing skulked in the corners, immune to his firefly lantern, and the whole place reeked of wet, muddy grave dirt and the stale smell of decay. Crawling into one of the beds, Cas tried to get settled. But portraits of dead headteachers lined the walls, their chilling gazes following him as he tossed this way and that.

Rain beat against the mausoleum’s walls. The cold autumn breeze whistled through the gaps in the windowpanes and curled around Cas’s body as he slipped into a light and fitful sleep.

Either moments or minutes later, he awoke to a loud and terrifying crash as a nightjar bird smashed through the window, shattering glass across the floor. It shook its bulbous head before flying off again, but Cas couldn’t go back to sleep after that.

Creaks and groans continued to echo through the room. Cas tried to convince himself that he was imagining the sounds, but the noises only grew louder.

And louder.

Closer.

And closer.

BANG!

Something boomed against the dormitory’s door.

Cas leapt to his feet. He spun around wildly, searching for a weapon to defend himself with.

“Who is it?” he called out, gathering the sheets together from his bed.

Stupid. An intruder wasn’t exactly about to announce themselves.

BANG!

“I’m armed with a blanky and I’m not afraid to use it!” Cas yelled.

He tiptoed towards the door, reached out and curled his hand around the rusty doorknob. Readying the bed sheets in a ball in his hand, Cas took a deep breath, pulled open the door and…

“ARGH!” Cas screamed.

“ARGH!” the person on the other side of the door wailed.

Cas blinked in the blackness. “Warrior?”

She stood in front of him wearing a fluffy, mud-splattered dressing-gown and wellington boots.

“What are you doing here?” Cas gulped in air to catch his breath.

Warrior squinted blearily, her eyes shining like a cat’s. She kicked off her wellingtons and pushed past him into the room.

“What are you doing is more like it,” she said. “I’m armed with a blanky and I’m not afraid to use it?! By the threads, you scare easily. First the raven, then Hobdogglin, and now this.”

Cas threw his blanket on the floor moodily. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m alone, in a strange new world, sleeping in a haunted crypt. I have every right to be afraid!”

“Alright, wussy-pants,” said Warrior, shooting him a wink. “That’s why I’m here, to protect you.” She held up a biscuit tin and rattled it. “I brought cookies.”

Cas felt his anger ebbing away as his stomach took control. “Well, erm, thanks, but you didn’t need to frighten the life out of me.”

Warrior waved him away. “Oh, you’re fine. I’ve been outside ever since Aster left. I only came in because I’m cold.”

She jumped onto one of the beds, screwing her face up when she saw the haunting portraits. “Gosh, I forgot about these. They’re quite … creepy … aren’t they?”

Cas nodded, his gaze flickering from the painted faces to Warrior’s. “Hang on, you’ve stayed here before?”

“Once,” she said, wriggling under the covers and closing her eyes. “When I was little, Dr Bane locked me in here overnight. I practically screamed the place down until they found me curled up in a ball the next morning.”

“Locked you in here by accident?”

“No, um…” Warrior’s voice grew unexpectedly quiet. “Not exactly.” She drew the bed sheets so high over her head that they muffled her words. “He did it to try to bring out my powers.”

Instantly, Cas’s mind flashed back to the Oracle’s question at the Order Trials.

Have you ever been Gleaned?

“Isn’t that…”

“Gleaning, yeah,” said Warrior, quickly and stiffly. “But it’s not as bad as you think.”

Cas didn’t know what he thought.

“On the same day I was born, the Oracle made the prediction about the Foretold. Clearly, we know it was talking about you now, but at the time after hearing it, Dr Bane returned to Wayward School to find me dumped on his doorstep. All I had to my name was a letter from my mother and this.” She poked her wrist out from under the covers. “A smudgy birthmark. Dr Bane thought that if you squinted hard enough it looked like an ancient symbol meaning soldier or warrior. He didn’t think the two were related at first. But after a few years, when the Grand Council still hadn’t found the Foretold and was growing desperate, Dr Bane tried to pull the loose threads together. On the off chance that the prophecy and me showing up might be related, Bane locked me in here one night to see if the old Deathmaker dorms would coax any life or death magic out of me. It obviously didn’t work. I was too young for my powers to have manifested yet and all I ended up producing was a wet pair of pants. But I got through it by pretending I had an imaginary friend who kept me company. My illusion abilities appeared shortly after that. And I’m glad. I’ve never wanted to be the Foretold.”

Cas was lost for what to say.

When Warrior put it like that, Bane’s actions almost seemed sensible. Logical. But the Oracle had made Gleaning sound like something unnatural, something wrong. Not to mention the idea of being trapped in the crypts, young, alone and helpless…

Silently, they both settled down in their beds.

But even with Warrior close by, sleep didn’t come easily to Cas. He rolled one way and then the other, pulling the covers over himself and then kicking them off again, lolling one leg off the bed, then imagining a skeletal hand reaching out from under it to grab him, and swiftly retracting it.

In the early hours of the morning, his fidgeting finally got the better of Warrior.

“What are you doing?” she groaned, yanking the covers free from her head.

“I can’t sleep,” whispered Cas.

“Try counting whatsits.”

“What are whatsits?”

“These gnarly little pests we get.”

“I can’t count. I’m thinking.”

“About what?” she hissed.

“Anything other than the rotting bodies in the room below. Right now, I’m thinking about how weird it is that our noses run but our feet smell. Before that, I was thinking about how our bellies think all potatoes are mashed and wondering whether I would rather control one hundred mouse-sized lions or one lion-sized mouse.”

Warrior snorted. “One hundred mouse-sized lions,” she said, burying her face under her pillow, “so I could set them all on you.”