“What?” said Van Stavern. “Why have you stopped?”
“The police are here,” answered Hazel. “They look like detectives. They’re talking to the guidance counselor.”
“Do you think they found your apartment?” asked Emrys. His heart beat faster. “Do you think they’re here for us?”
“Absolutely not,” said Van Stavern. “I told you, there were … contingencies in place. No one will come looking for me.” The spell book chuckled. “If the police came sniffing around every time a member of the Order went missing under mysterious circumstances, we’d have been exposed eons ago.”
Hazel scowled. “Is that supposed to make us feel better?” she asked. “We’re in the Order now.”
Van Stavern sniffed. “I’m sure you’ll do fine,” he said. “You have me to guide you. Just act natural. You aren’t guilty of anything, after all.”
Emrys tried to take the sorcerer’s words to heart. But he couldn’t help thinking how they’d left their fingerprints all over Van Stavern’s apartment. Emrys had ripped a hole in the floor! What had he been thinking?
Back in his room, Emrys had plied Van Stavern for details about what had happened late into the night, but Van Stavern had a gift for vague answers and cryptic mutterings that discouraged continued questioning. The interaction had done little to put Emrys’s fears to rest.
As they passed the detectives, Emrys’s palms began to sweat. He suddenly remembered every time he’d ever broken a rule in his entire life. And the spell book on his shoulder (technically stolen while trespassing in a crime scene, he remembered) felt conspicuous and heavy. He fiddled with the strap unconsciously.
One of the detectives—a tall, reedy man with sallow skin—looked up from his notepad as they passed. Emrys could feel the man’s eyes on him, but he resisted the urge to look back. He willed himself to act natural. Whatever that looked like.
When they’d crossed the threshold into the school, he finally risked a look over his shoulder. The detective was writing something in his notebook. He didn’t seem to have noticed Emrys at all.
Their first-period teacher, Ms. Joanna, opened the school day with an announcement. “A student has gone missing,” she said. “An eighth grader, Brian Skupp. He was last seen on school grounds earlier this week. The police believe that he ran away.”
That explained the detectives. Emrys felt a momentary rush of relief—they weren’t there for him—then a stab of guilt for thinking of himself first. He looked across the aisle to Hazel, who appeared somber, but not especially troubled. The name didn’t seem to mean any more to her than it did to him.
“If you have any information, please speak to the school’s student success coordinator, Mr. Maple—or any adult.” Ms. Joanna smiled, her pale white face beaming. Ms. Joanna was always smiling, even when it was inappropriate—as was often the case when discussing American history. It seemed calculated to put her students at ease, but it often had the opposite effect on Emrys. “And Mr. Maple has asked me to remind you that his door remains open should you experience any negative emotions or feel otherwise triggered as a result of this situation. Now, if you’ll open your textbooks to page eighty-two …”
Emrys felt a disorienting sense of vertigo, as he did whenever he was pulled from a macabre or weighty subject. He tried to shake it off—willed himself not to spiral over thoughts of Brian Skupp or the Yellow Court or whether Van Stavern could breathe okay in that tote bag, if he needed to breathe at all—and as he dug through his backpack for his history textbook, he saw his phone’s screen was lit.
Emrys took the phone from his bag and saw he’d missed several texts from Serena. He tried to read them surreptitiously, but he was too slow.
“Emrys! Is that a phone I see?” said the teacher, smiling even as she admonished him. She shook her head as if amused. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take that off your hands, young man.”
Someone across the room said, “Ooooh, new kid’s in trouble,” and Hazel grimaced in sympathy while the rest of the class laughed. Emrys’s face burned as he looked up at Ms. Joanna, who stood above his desk, hand outstretched.
“Uh, sorry,” he said, handing over his phone.
Ms. Joanna only smiled harder. This close, Emrys could see it failed to reach her eyes.
“I can’t believe she took my phone,” said Emrys. “Now I have to go all the way back to the portables after school.”
“If it makes you feel better, she’s a more competent disciplinarian than history teacher,” Van Stavern told him. “Her grasp of the Civil War seems rudimentary, at best.”
“How do you know that? Wait.” Emrys gasped. “Were you there?”
“Of course not!” snapped Van Stavern. “Just how old do you think I am?”
It was lunch period, and Hazel had decided to visit the media center to brush up on the periodic table. She hadn’t managed to tap into her relic’s transmutation abilities yet and seemed to think that studying chemistry would help. Emrys confessed he would rather do anything but that, so Van Stavern had suggested Emrys find a private spot where they could speak freely. Emrys had settled on the third-floor boys’ room. Nobody used this restroom if they could help it, and those who did avoided the far mirror, which was broken. It had been fixed at least twice, only to immediately break in the same spiderweb pattern. The custodial staff suspected students were to blame. The students had their own suspicions.
“You take me to the nicest places,” said Van Stavern, the spell book’s disguise abandoned as Emrys lifted it from his tote. “But this will do. With our Order diminished, the Yellow Court is sure to be emboldened—and they weren’t exactly meek before. We’d best begin your education here and now.”
Emrys’s eyes bugged out. “You mean magic?” he said. “Are you going to teach me a spell?”
“Of a sort,” answered the book. “Most spell work involves specific components and a bit of light math—”
“Aw, math?!” complained Emrys.
“But!” continued Van Stavern. “We’ll begin with a simple invocation. Something any initiate in the Order can achieve, whether or not they have any inclination for the profane geometries. Set me down, would you? If you can find a suitable surface …”
Emrys balanced the book on the edge of a sink. As he watched, awestruck, the Atlas opened of its own accord. Its pages turned as if caught in a stiff wind, quickly at first, then slowing to a stop, presumably on the page Van Stavern wanted him to see.
“Look here,” said the book. “The incantation you’ll need is right near the center of the verso page, set apart from the rest of the text.”
“Verso?” echoed Emrys.
“The left,” said Van Stavern.
“That … doesn’t even look like it’s in English.”
“It isn’t,” the book scoffed. “The forces with which the Order concerns itself are a far sight older than the English language. But you needn’t worry, I’ll guide you through it. First, set your hands upon the door over there. That’s a janitorial closet, correct? You may touch the handle or the door itself; it doesn’t matter.”
“Like this?” asked Emrys, gripping the door handle.
“Now, repeat after me,” said Van Stavern. “Ostiarius.”
