I honestly wasn’t expecting to get into much trouble over the altercation with Julia, but the start of the next day saw me dragged into the principal’s office before the first bell had rung. I knew something was up, seeing as how I’d spoken to my father about the circumstances after getting home that evening, and he’d agreed to call the school and talk to them about it.

Surely enough, as soon as I opened the door to the principal’s office, a tiny, cramped room in the back of the administration area, I was treated to the sight of Julia and one of her lackies sitting in front of the principal’s desk. There was one vacant seat, and the principal gestured toward it, a frown on his pale, thin face.

“I’ll stand,” I said coolly. I could see the sly confidence on Julia’s face, and could only imagine what manner of tale she’d spun him in the time before my arrival. “I’m getting the feeling that justice is first come, first served on this one.”

Principal Arden’s frown deepened, and he looked at me sternly over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses. “There’s no need to be standoffish, Emily. Julia has voiced some concerns about you and your behavior, and I must admit I’m inclined to agree with her. Unless you would like to present some side of the issue I’m unaware of?”

I chewed on that for a moment. Claims of verbal harassment were really hard to substantiate without witnesses, and Julia had the only ones for this particular incident eating out of her hand. Principal Arden was still staring at me, waiting for my reply, so he didn’t see Julia’s coy eyebrow-quirk, as though daring me to make my complaint. I was already so far behind, if I were to actually try to get to the heart of it, I’d have to argue my way through everything Julia had already said. The only way we could get to the truth would be by disproving all of the lies, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that without a witness.

“I don’t think I could add anything that would matter,” I said eventually.

The principal sighed. “I’m disappointed to hear that, Emily. You’re a model student, and I’m honestly appalled that something as trivial as Ms. Karalis’ popularity would encourage you to act this way, especially knowing how things are between our peoples.”

Ah. So it was jealousy, then? I glanced sidelong at Julia’s smug face before sighing and shaking my head.

“Well,” I began, “if that doesn’t make you suspicious at all, then I don’t suppose anything will. What’s my sentence?”

Principal Arden seemed taken aback by my attitude, but he plodded forward all the same, following whatever conflict resolution checklist he’d been using for the last thirty years.

“Would you be willing to apologize to Julia?”

“No way in hell,” I answered. I was honestly surprised at the vitriol in my tone, but I wasn’t backing down on that. If she did this maneuvering, social manipulation bullshit for the satisfaction of these little moments, I’d choke and die before I gave her that victory. I took a deep breath, trying to slow down my heart before I gave the principal the kind of response he deserved, nominally if not personally. “Sorry. I’m a little upset. But irrespective of my inability to prove my innocence to you, I know I’ve done nothing wrong. I won’t be apologizing.”

If I felt a little anxious about the incoming punishment, it was made fully worth it just by glimpsing the flicker of disappointment that flashed over Julia’s face. She seemed accustomed to people giving her whatever she wanted, such so that even a minor loss like this irked her. What I wouldn’t give to stand up, reach over her flunkie, and shatter that glass jaw. Just the thought almost put a smile on my face.

“Considering that this is the first time you’ve been in my office in all four years of high school, and your record shows no prior disciplinary issues to speak of, I was thinking after-school detention for today.”

Julia opened her mouth like she was going to protest, but Principal Arden raised one finger at her. She begrudgingly fell silent, but looked like she was seething.

“That being said,” he continued, “your general lack of remorse for making one of our esteemed guests feel unwelcome makes the transgression worth a little more punishment, in my book.”

He held up three fingers, pausing for what I gathered was dramatic effect. “Three detentions.”

It took a lot of self-control to not laugh, both at the mild principal’s idea of a harsher punishment and at the look of outrage on Julia’s face. It was kind of irritating to have to miss out on three days of training, or at least the early parts of them, but in that moment I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t have cut off a finger to ensure Julia felt like she’d lost.

“I understand, Mr. Arden,” I said, bowing my head just in case my composure slipped and I cracked a smile. I turned to glance at Julia as I stood to leave, and-

“Pause it there.”

Tyler leaned over and tapped the spacebar on the laptop, pausing the playback. The whole Tryhard Club was gathered in the clubhouse, Jay being the only person not at some position in the cushion pit. Marika and Roman booed and hissed at the projector screen, upon which Julia’s beautiful face was frozen, the two of them beginning to hurl cushions and popcorn as Tyler, Jay and I turned our attention to Cheri.

The girl had taken to her role like a fish to water. When Jay had proposed that she stay at the clubhouse, free of charge, in exchange for teaching us about magic and how to get back at the visiting wizards, Cheri had lit up like a Christmas tree. One might have thought it was just the notion of spending her nights indoors instead of hunting down another shelter in the cold, but Cheri had an enthusiastic glow about her when she got down to showing us the particulars.

“Anyone notice anything?” Cheri asked the group. The footage from the modified camera was shaky at times --being attached to my head meant it was subject to the occasional wobbling as my point of view turned-- but it stayed true enough to my head’s orientation that it was close enough to a true rendition of the scene as I’d experienced it.

I swept my gaze over Julia’s body and contenance, looking for anything that stood out. She had her hands folded neatly in her lap, so there weren’t any weird out-of-place gestures I could see. I guess the expression she wore, surprised and confused and a little angry, was out of place. It was hard to imagine a situation that a girl like Julia would wear in an ugly way, she was just that inherently attractive, but the still-frame wasn’t particularly flattering. Her eyelids were flaring right as Tyler paused the playback, and you could see the whites of her eyes all around tawny, amber irises. It made her look somewhat crazed, but something about it nagged at me...

Jay got to it a second before I did.

“Her eyes,” Jay said. “Didn’t Julia have blue eyes?”

He was right. Julia’s eyes were normally a really pale blue, lending her an unusually piercing stare, but in this frame of the recording, they were a gold color, so bright it was almost yellow.

“That’s exactly right!” Cheri exclaimed, pointing at Jay. “This is one of the things you need to look for. Most wizards have a tell, when they begin activating their magic, and the most common one is a change in the eyes.”

It reminded me of the day before, when I’d been fighting Cheri. The girl’s eyes had gone through no fewer than four color changes. It stood at odds with my understanding that wizards only had one magic power each, but at least what we were learning about tells stood up to my limited experience.

“But what does it mean?” Roman asked. Marika was still throwing popcorn at Julia’s face, but the spiky-haired freshman boy was paying more attention now that we were getting into the thick of it. “How does that help us at all?”

“Well,” Cheri began, “When the magic manifests as a color, like with the eyes or with nimbuses or flashes or whatever, that color can give you a pretty reliable insight into what sort of magic you’re dealing with.”

Roman only looked more confused. “But aren’t there like a million kinds of magic?”

“Sort of,” Cheri answered, drawing the first word out. “If one wizard can clap his hands and make anyone who hears the sound sit down, and another can make you freeze in place if she makes eye contact with you, the magics are different…”

She trailed off, but I could see where she was going with it.

“But they’re the same type of magic,” I finished for her. “You’re making people do things against their will, with conditions.”

“You guys are making this really easy,” Cheri said, smiling from ear to ear. “So, at a base, there are only seven different types of magic.”

“So which kind is this?” Jay asked, his eyes locked on Julia’s. “From what Emily told us about yesterday, Julia has that same kind of magic?”

Cheri nodded. “Yellow magic is what we call Compulsion. Magic that takes some kind of control from a person. It’s a powerful branch of magic, though it’s rare and occasionally easy to circumvent because it almost always has a condition for its activation.”

My mind went back to yesterday, in the hallway with Julia. She’d whispered in my ear, and I’d started spilling my guts, unable to keep my mouth from moving. Power like that was horrifying, and based on how I knew the scene continued, I was ninety percent sure that Julia was using magic just like what we were discussing.

“Bearing that in mind, let’s keep watching,” Cheri said, gesturing to Tyler. My younger brother had been practically glued to Cheri’s side ever since we’d introduced them. I had no issue with him being friendly, but anyone with an ounce of awareness could see it was something more. I’d need to have a conversation with him, but it would be a difficult topic to walk around, announcing my concerns without seeming prejudiced. I just didn’t want him to get hurt.

My younger brother had inherited my father’s dirty blond hair, his narrow face and hawkish expression. He hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, so he seemed diminutive compared to the girl in the room that was his age. It made the attachment he was developing to Cheri seem even more hopeless, especially considering how often he put himself on the line just to get shot down by the other girls in his grade. He had a lot of heart, and a seemingly unflappable amount of perseverance, but I saw the side of him that no one else got to. The side that cried quietly in the room next to mine, not knowing I could hear him through the walls.

I was supposed to protect him.

Tyler started the recording playing again, which shook me out of my reverie. The scene snapped back into movement, Julia leaving the camera’s perspective as I turned to the door. It was hard to hear, a combination of the camera’s microphone pointing away and sound quality that was normally a little less than stellar, but you could just barely make out Julia whispering.

“She deserves a harsher punishment.”

I remember, in that moment, feeling the strange draw I’d felt the previous day in the hallway. That odd resonance, like the words were echoing within a deep emptiness inside me. Even secondhand, through the speakers set at either side of the projector screen, I could sense an unseen ripple move through the Tryhard Club. They shifted in their seats, looking uncomfortable, anxious.

“Whoa,” Jay murmured from his vantage point on the walkway behind me. I was inclined to agree with him. It wasn’t easy to forget about it when you were the target of the compulsion, but feeling it secondhand was a different kind of startling.

My hand was on the doorknob when Principal Arden spoke again.

“Ms. Browman, a moment if you would.”

The view panned back around. I recalled the confusion I had at the time, though I had a much better idea now as to what was going on.

“On second thought, I believe a harsher punishment might be in order. Your display of aggression towards Ms. Karalis could easily be interpreted as xenophobia, and at the very least is the type of anti-wizard sentiment that I, as a representative of the administration, need to come down on harshly. I think three days of suspension is appropriate.”

Given my previous experience with Julia’s underhanded tactics, I had been less taken aback by the cruelty and flagrant abuse of power she was displaying, but it was still hard to swallow. My record was immaculate, not so much as a single report of misconduct. Seeing it all disappear because some arrogant rich kid couldn’t handle the notion of someone standing up to them was a bitter pill. Jay clicked his tongue behind me, but Tyler seemed incapable of containing his umbrage.

“That’s stupid!” He proclaimed, looking between Jay and me. “There’s no way she can get away with that, can she? We have video evidence!”

“Doesn’t work that way,” Cheri said softly, as I shook my head. “It’s almost impossible to prove the presence of a mental compulsion. She could just deny having used her magic on him at all, claim he had the change of heart organically. The more subtle the touch, the more willing the target of the Compulsion, the more likely it is that they won’t even remember being affected.”

“Would it be worth getting the wizard police involved?” Roman asked. “Don’t they probably have a good way of telling if someone’s been…um...compulsed?”

“Compelled,” Cheri murmured absently, a distant look on her face as she gazed at the projector screen. She had a weird tendency to get distracted when someone mentioned Avalon or the way the Rainbow Nations worked. I got the feeling that she didn’t want to talk about it. Bad memories, maybe?

“The Cabals won’t be of any help in this,” she said after a moment. “Even if they’re not too busy trying to keep tabs on the really bad ones, to do something so obviously harmful to the integration effort would almost certainly cost them a job.”

Roman muttered something that sounded like, “That figures,” and I decided to move the conversation forward before anyone could fall into the trap that I had, faulting wizardkind for the transgressions of their worst.

“So what are the countermeasures?” I asked. There was no way a society as advanced as Avalon’s could function if there wasn’t some system in place for controlling people like Julia, or at least some generally applicable way to thwart this type of mental domination. I mean, what would stop someone like Julia from walking into the office of...whoever ran the Rainbow Nations and chaining them to her whims?

“It’s mostly just discipline and awareness,” Cheri mused, tapping her lips with one finger. “You have to be really familiar with who you are, who your allies are, how they act, stuff like that.”

“How does that help us, in this case?” Jay asked.

“It...really doesn’t. You’d need to have control over the organization for it to matter, so you could dismiss affected staff or order quarantines or whatever. I know there are a lot of groups that have passcodes and protocols in place to catch when people are being mind-controlled, but most of them practice those protocols so consistently that they’re almost second nature. I’m not sure anything half-hearted would work for us here. But there’s still one more thing we can do.”

Cheri rose from the couch, clambering up out of the pit and over to where a whiteboard had been set up next to the projector screen. In large, flowing letters that struck me as the type that had to have been practiced, Cheri wrote the words “Yellow Ledger”.

“In the Rainbow Nations, people’s magics are catalogued and categorized as soon as they manifest. There’s almost no way to get away with crimes involving magic. It’s really easy to tell who the culprit is when there’s only one person in the country that could freeze a bank vault’s door off, or if there’s only a handful of possible suspects in a case involving hydras.”

I was beginning to feel sorry for the people of the Rainbow Nations.

“But mesmers are more complicated,” Cheri continued. “When the result of the magic is so similar, it can get really messy when you’re trying to bring the right person to justice. If there are two hundred people in the country with full-control class Compulsions, what do you do when someone assassinates a diplomat, then shows up full of mind control magic?”

Her question was met with a room full of blank looks. I hadn’t ever really considered it. By appearances, magic was a fantastic, unimaginable wonder. But logistically? It must have been a nightmare trying to get any semblance of order in a world where people were capable of literally anything, totally at random. Then again, it stood to reason that there would be just as much random potential for order on the side of the law.

“Well,” Cheri said, and if she was disgruntled by her students’ inability to answer her question, she didn’t show it, “the leader of a recent reform among wizards instituted something they call the Yellow Ledger. The long of it is really technical, but it’s more or less a law that requires people with mental control to log their daily interactions with people as well as all compulsions they apply for any reason. If any discrepancies appear during an investigation...Well, let’s just say it’s a really bad look for a Yellow Ledger to be found falsifying its owner’s conduct.”

“So if she used her power on the principal and Emily,” Tyler began, speaking slowly like he did when he was having a hard time keeping up, “we could find it in her Ledger? And then show it to someone?”

“Yes and no,” Cheri answered. “The punishment for someone outside of the Cabal of Justice found tampering with a Yellow Ledger is almost as severe as the one for tampering with your own, and if we stole it and went to the authorities, Julia could just claim we’d messed with it. It would probably be worse for us, in that situation.”

I frowned. “So what good does it do us?”

“Mesmers have to keep very close track of their Ledgers,” Cheri explained. “Even outside of the obvious issues with being under investigation for potentially defrauding your ledger, very few people are enthusiastic about being compelled at all. It’s up to each mesmer to both keep their ledger accurate in case the authorities ever need to check it, and keep it secret from the people they play their little games with.”

Cheri’s lip curled a bit at the end of her sentence. I agreed with the sentiment. Having power like this, and using it to amass hordes of followers, to chase something as fleeting as popularity highlighted one of the most aggravating traits of wizardry: the power imbalance. Most of us had to walk the line between doing what we wanted and making sacrifices for the sake of decency, to fit in with a society of other people doing the same. Julia could just do whatever she wanted, act any way she wanted, and reap social currency all the same. It was a pretty childish thought, but it felt like cheating.

Jay was ahead of the rest of us. “So you’re saying if we can get access to her Ledger, we can show the people she’s been messing with proof of what she’s doing. Turn her allies on her.”

Cheri nodded, looking a bit relieved. To be fair, it had taken us a long time to understand what she was getting at. “I’d bet anything that she’s even been compelling the other members of the exchange. That’s just how mesmers are. Did we get any footage of the other wizards?”

At Cheri’s request, we swapped out the footage of my incident in the principal’s office with something that one of the other members gathered. Now that the footage wasn’t from my perspective, I felt it would be okay for me to move away from the center of things, to see how the Club handled itself when its two most responsible members were at the fringe. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was Tyler and Roman who had interactions with the other exchange students on the day we all brought cameras, though Tyler was unlikely to have video. Jay and I had originally made the modified cameras to record routes through the obstacle course and training material without having the odd bulk of a normal helmet-mounted rig, so we only had two.

I climbed up out of the pit as Tyler pulled out his phone, plugging it into the laptop. Jay bumped me with his shoulder as I leaned against the wall next to him, and I allowed the small contact to knock me briefly away before I rocked back towards him, returning the gesture.

“This was a good idea,” I mused, watching Tyler do his best to explain some technical difficulty he was currently fighting through. Cheri had an amused look on her face, where she’d taken a seat at the edge of the cushion pit near Tyler. I was glad she was feeling more comfortable. It had been kind of awkward during introductions, but it probably wouldn’t take her very long to get acclimated.

“Only kind I have,” Jay answered, smiling slightly. “Sorry about the suspension.”

I shrugged. The fact that Julia was getting away with orchestrating it was a lot more upsetting than the punishment itself. I’d already spoken about it to my father. It had taken some work, convincing him not to march into the principal’s office and raise hell. I hadn’t thought it would make a difference before.

Now, something like a plan was beginning to form.

On the projector screen, Tyler was tiling the display with a number of different photos he’d taken over the course of the day. Many of them were pretty low-res, zoomed snapshots from longer distances, which I appreciated. No sense in putting him at any unnecessary risk just for the sake of a higher quality photo and, judging by what was on these photos, getting much closer would have been exactly that.

Augustus Karalis, elder brother of my favorite mind-controlling teenager. Where Julia was feminine in all the most traditionally appealing ways, her brother took those same delicate features, that same feathery brown hair, and wore it over a lean, muscular frame. He was built a lot like Jay; a similar weight and muscle tone, only stretched almost six inches taller.

Unlike Julia, who’d managed to keep the details of her magic hidden from me until the previous day, Augustus flaunted his power ostentatiously and often. Even now, in the first of Tyler’s ten pictures, the wizard had his arm wrapped around the shoulder of a terrified freshman boy, his other arm wreathed in flames from elbow to fingertip. In broad daylight, at a school.

“What was he even doing?” I asked.

“Being an asshole,” Tyler responded, prompting a “Ha!” from Marika. “From what I could gather, he’s just doing a standard shakedown, only he’s got them so scared that they seek him out on their own.”

“Can’t even be bothered to do his own bullying,” Marika said, voice dripping with scorn.

“Plus, it keeps him from having to be subtle. The kids he’s picking on know they have to find him someplace the teachers won’t see. The little alcove by the side entrance, beneath the bleachers, the locker room…”

“What if they don’t?” Jay’s voice was quieter than usual, a sign that he was holding back anger. Marika and I exchanged glances.

“He burns them,” Tyler answered. “Willy Holkins showed me. It looks like a fingertip, just a little thing, on the small of his back. Said it hurt for weeks before it finally scarred over.”

He cycled through a few more photos, each depicting the same scene, at various stages of the same interaction. Augustus, alone with some harmless kid who barely reached his shoulders. There was always fire in the photo, either on Augustus’s body or on some object he was immolating to make a point. A bit of homework or a bagged lunch, sometimes an entire article of clothing.

“What a prick,” I muttered.

“Hear, hear,” Marika said, and the Tryhard Club echoed her a moment later, tapping a fist or a foot against the nearest surface in time with the words. Cheri cocked an eyebrow at our odd tradition, but didn’t comment.

“So we’ve got a pyromancer on our hands,” Cheri said, crossing back over to the whiteboard. “Fire control, seems close range. He might be able to manage projectiles, but I’d honestly be surprised if he could do it well. What do we think, team? How do we fight fire?”

It spoke to how much the photos had dampened the mood, that neither Tyler or Roman chimed in, “With fire!” The two were usually hard to keep away from that sort of impulsive, obvious joke, but even their normally insurmountable levity was grimly focused on the task.

“Well, first we’d need to know how he manifests the fire,” Jay said. “Is it just heat? Does he use some kind of internal fuel that ignites the flame at his skin? If he just heated up to the point of combustion then we could probably interfere with it using a fire extinguisher or a hose, but if it’s some unknown, internal magical source, it could put us into a bad position to try something like that.”

Cheri gave him an approving look. “You’re thinking the right way, for dealing with wizards. Magic can surprise you, it can come at you from angles you’re not expecting, so it’s always best to set up as many countermeasures as possible. If you have the time, that is.”

There was something odd to the cadence of Cheri’s words. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed oddly rehearsed, like she was reciting something from memory. I made a mental note to ask her about it later. If she’d read a book on strategy or anti-magic, it would be cool to get a copy and look it over myself.

“One minor misconception, though,” Cheri continued. “Nothing about magic really works off of some mystical, unknowable source. For the most part, if it operates using a known physical force, all of the same rules apply to it. Augustus would have a harder time ramping up the heat on his skin to the point where he can create flames if he’s wet, or cold, or muddy.”

I frowned. “What about things like telekinesis? What physical laws govern moving something without touching it?”

“It’s just force,” Cheri said. “Invisible, controlled at a range, sure, but still force. A person who’s strong enough to pick up a building would have a really hard time picking up an egg without breaking it. Telekinetics have to work with and against all other aspects of kinetic movement, like gravity and acceleration and all that fun stuff.”

Roman groaned. “I knew I should have paid better attention in science.”

That got a laugh from the room. Roman was good at puncturing heavy situations with random humor. It was self-deprecating more often than not, which I wasn’t sure I liked, but the mood felt a little lighter with the contribution. Cheri flashed Roman a radiant smile before continuing.

“The only thing you have to be on the lookout for is the magic that interacts with the rules in unique ways. I’ve seen one pyromancer whose flames burned on water. There’s a famous wizard in Avalon who can free things from gravity with a touch. But they all have rules, and learning those rules, finding them out before you engage with them or figuring them out on the run, that’s the skill you need to learn to deal with magic.”

Cheri climbed back up out of the pit, over to the whiteboard. Beneath the words “Yellow Ledger” she wrote “Learn the rules”.

My thoughts were dark. Julia had crossed just about the only line I had, a line I didn’t even know a person could cross. Augustus was threatening anyone he wanted with fire and pain, free from the fear of repercussions. It seemed like it was second nature to them, so automatically did they trample over our normal, peaceful lives. And for what? A little adoration, popularity, fear, contraband?

It had to stop.

Roman swapped out Tyler’s phone with his own, plopping down on the couch next to him, and started his replay without any delay. 

It took me a moment to realize where Roman was. At first I thought it must be the high school library, but closer examination suggested I was wrong. Our school’s library was a sad affair, more tables than bookshelves, with all the shelves spaced around the room, the aisles kept wide to give the illusion of size to a depressingly limited collection of books.

No, Roman was at the public library, just two blocks from the front gate.

“Why are you at the public library, Rome?” Jay asked curiously. “Did you skip out?”

Roman shook his head. “Nah, I’ve been going there recently during lunch breaks. To...study.”

That was a shock. Roman wasn’t exactly the academic type. He struggled with a lot of classes, usually relying on my or Jay’s help to get through testing periods. Roman possessed an extremely deep well of restless energy, and the library was the last place I’d expect him to be, especially during a time he was supposed to be eating or goofing off.

Jay seemed to agree with my assessment. “Studying what?” he asked incredulously.

Roman was in the basement floor of the library, where a few sparse lights left the packed rows of shelves looking a little gloomy. People went down there occasionally for the extra quiet and solitude, for extended studying, or just for the people who were so introverted that the middle level of a library was still too public for them. His hands skimmed the spines of the books on the shelf in front of him, though the print was too small and the area too dark for me to see which books he was looking at. After a few moments of listless study, he leaned out into the aisle, peeking past the end of the bookshelf to where the private tables were set into the basement floor’s quiet corners.

Marika let out a wicked cackle. “Studying who, maybe.”

Sure enough, sitting alone at the table furthest from the stairs to the ground floor was a pretty girl with olive skin, waist length black hair tied back in a ponytail. She was reading a heavy-looking book through large, wide glasses, turning the pages with an arm in a plaster cast.

Roman, for his part, was bright red at this point. Marika had him by both shoulders and was shaking him back and forth, chanting “Roman’s got a crush” in a teasing sing-song.

“Who is that?” I asked him. I recognized most of the kids in town, at least the ones close enough to go to our school. “I don’t remember seeing her before.”

“Adela Delgado,” Tyler answered. He laughed as Roman gave him a surprised look. “You didn’t even know her name, man? She moved here right at the start of the school year, so she doesn’t really know anybody.”

“And why are you stalking her?” Marika asked Roman, still shaking him by the shoulders.

Roman tugged out of her grasp, an annoyed look on his face. “I’m not stalking her, Mari. She’s just...always alone. And if she’s not alone, she’s getting picked on. In the halls, in the parking lot, even here. I just wanted to help her.”

“But?”

“But she’s sort of unapproachable,” Roman admitted with a sigh. “She never talks to anyone, she’s pretty cold, and she’s elusive. I want to invite her to the club, give her a place where she can feel like she belongs, but it’s hard to get her to talk to you, and even harder to keep track of where she is, even after classes. She just disappears. The library’s the only place I’ve ever seen her twice.”

I heard a deep exhalation, like the Roman in the footage was psyching himself up for something, and he left the shadows of the bookshelf with purpose, striding toward where Adela was seated. He was within earshot of her when he suddenly ducked back into another row of shelves.

As soon as he was back in the darkness, someone appeared near Adela’s table, slapping the stained wood with one hand. From the angle we were at, I could see irritation flicker on Adela’s profile.

Xander Xalaster, third of the four wizards who had joined us for the exchange program, was just as unpleasant as the brother and sister pair, but he was a little more subtle about it. He seemed content to just hang out with the other “bad boy” types, smoking pot at the underpass that all the burnouts usually haunted. He was popular in the crowds that he frequented, apparently just the right combination of subversive and apathetic to appeal to the less savory elements of Haden High.

His short black hair was a little greasy, the neat, close-fitting style of Avalon garb discarded in favor of the type of all-black, chain-heavy pants and coat common among the goth kids. His face was a little too weasel-like to be called traditionally handsome, but I honestly appreciated that. Good to see that wizards weren’t attractive by default.

“Could have sworn I asked you to leave me alone,” Adela said, pointedly keeping her attention on the pages in front of her.

Xander shrugged, noisily dragging one of the chairs at a neighbouring table over and sitting down in it. “You’ll warm up to me. Maybe you already would have, if your head wasn’t always stuffed in some old book.”

“Ah, but then I’d have to actually look at you,” Adela answered, turning another page. “That definitely wouldn’t help.”

Anger showed briefly on Xander’s face. Without saying anything, he leaned forward and tore the book out of Adela’s hands, ignoring the girl’s cry of protest. He closed the book and looked at the front cover. Xander had his back to the camera, and over his shoulder I could just barely make out the title. A History of Haden, the cover said in simple block letters. It had a picture of the city center downtown, the original point around which the entire city had sprung up in later years. It was a pretty odd choice for hobby reading. Maybe she had an assignment she was using it for?

“Seriously,” Xander sighed, “I don’t know what I see in you. Makes me certain you’ve never actually had any fun in your life.”

Adela had the wizard fixed with a level, intense stare. “Give it back.”

Xander paused, then held the book out to her. As Adela reached out to take it, Xander pulled it away, hurling it backhand into the shelves behind him, almost directly at the camera. It flew with such force that it blasted the books off the shelf as it struck, drawing a surprised yelp from Roman.

Without turning around, Xander called out, “Quit sneaking around back there. You’re making too much noise to be serious about whatever you’re trying.”

That was surprising. Admittedly, I had been focusing on listening to the conversation, but it didn’t really seem like Roman had been making any noise at all. After a moment of hesitation, Roman emerged from the shelves and slowly approached the table.

“What?” Xander asked as he got there. Adela looked Roman over once before going back to glaring at the wizard.

“You’re bothering her,” Roman said, his voice somewhat subdued.

“And you’re bothering me,” Xander answered.

Xander and Roman stared at each other for a long moment. Suddenly, Xander surged upright, sending the chair flying with the force of the movement. Roman took a few steps backward as the wizard approached him, but Xander was taller, his strides longer. The camera shook as Xander slammed him up against the shelf he’d just hurled a book through.

The two boys stood at the edge of one of the sparse, dim lights that kept the basement level from total darkness. Xander let out a growl that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, bestial and low, more unnatural than any sound I’d ever heard a human produce. For a second I thought he was crouching, but as Xander slid down toward the bottom of the viewpoint I realized that the wizard was lifting Roman by his grip on the front of the smaller boy’s shirt.

“Pause it.”

Tyler did as instructed, and the footage froze on a truly chilling sight.

Xander’s face was separated into two halves, one illuminated by the overhead light and the other just out of its reach, in the shadows. The half in the light was angry, lip curled up in a snarl, brow furrowed, eye glittering. The other half had...changed. The flesh was dark, far darker than it should be, even beyond the direct reach of the light. Sleek obsidian skin, angular and sharp, framed a jaw that had twisted and widened. The teeth in that side of his mouth were jagged, far more numerous than any human’s. A curling horn sprouted from the upper left corner of his face, near his temple, and in an odd contrast, the hair that was touched by darkness had turned a stark white.

“Is that...normal?” Tyler asked, fear creeping into his tone.

“Believe it or not, that’s pretty tame,” Cheri said, looking wholly unimpressed. “I imagine he gets more monstrous the darker the environment is.”

Marika snorted in derision. “Compared to the other two, this guy seems like a cakewalk. Keep a flashlight on him, no problem.”

“You’re probably right about that,” Cheri said, “though I wouldn’t underestimate it. It’s the people who have obvious counter-measures that you have to worry about the most, because they’ll probably have spent more time thinking of ways to counter the counter-measures.”

She nodded to Tyler, who resumed the playback. The screen shook as Xander pulled Roman away from the wall, then slammed him back into the bookshelf.

“Butt out, loser,” Xander whispered to him, his distorted face filling the camera, what had to be inches from Roman’s face. “You don’t belong here.”

The wizard dropped Roman without warning, stepping back into the light as a severe-looking middle-aged woman rounded the corner of the shelf.

“What is going on here?” she hissed, gesturing at the mess of scattered books on the floor and the other side of the shelf.

“This kid was running around like this is some kind of playground,” Xander said placidly. “Nearly broke his neck after he tripped into the bookshelf. I was helping him up. Right?”

Xander held one hand down and to his left, out of sight of the librarian. It crossed the boundary into the darkness, and the fingers thickened and elongated, each digit tipped with a three-inch-long claw.

There was an audible gulp.

“That’s right, ma’am,” Roman said, his voice a little shaky.

The woman frowned, looking back and forth between Xander and Roman. I doubted she was thick enough to not truly understand what was going on, but she didn’t seem to care either way.

“Just clean up this mess,” she said. “I’ll be down to check that the books are put away properly later.”

The librarian left, and the two boys remained where they were until her retreating footsteps had made it to the staircase. Once it seemed like she was out of earshot, Xander stepped forward and swept another armful of books onto the floor.

“Those too,” he said, a nasty smile on his face as he strode away.

Something tugged at the corner of my mind as Roman stooped to begin gathering up the books. Like there was something important I missed, some detail I’d overlooked or forgotten.

“That’s pretty much all there was to it,” Roman said, stretching his arms over his head with a yawn. As Tyler stopped the video, I glanced at my phone and saw that it was getting pretty late. There weren’t any exterior windows in the clubhouse that we could see from the central room, so it was hard to judge the passage of time when we were caught up in activities like this.

“What about the girl?” Cheri asked, frowning.

Roman blinked at her confusedly for a moment, then laughed. “Adela! I’d totally forgotten! Sorry, it was kind of surreal seeing that from the outside again. In the moment I was half convinced that I’d imagined it.”

Tyler moved to start the footage again, but Roman stopped him with a wave of his hand. “Nah, don’t bother. I figure she left as soon as Xander grabbed me. She wasn’t there when I finished cleaning up the books.”

“Awful kind of her,” Marika said. “You went through all that trouble to help her and she just outs?”

“She’s a loner,” Roman protested, “but that doesn’t mean she likes being alone. No one could like having no one to turn to, getting picked on all the time. Getting haunted by creeps like that guy.”

I personally felt like Marika was right. Adela hadn’t really sent any signals to suggest that she wanted or even needed help. It sucked that she was getting picked on, but there was an awful lot of that going around at the moment. If she asked for help, I’d be all for it, but until then...it didn’t seem like it was worth the effort to convince a girl who wanted to be alone to come join us.

“Either way,” I said, cutting through the brewing argument. “We’ve got a pretty good grasp on what these guys can do, now. We can start brainstorming a game plan.”

“Aren’t there four wizards in the exchange program?” Cheri asked curiously.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes, there are. How did you know that?”

The girl flushed, looking away. “I...think Tyler must have told me.”

Definitely not suspicious.

“Heinrich Sommer is the fourth member of the Haden exchange,” I explained. “But he’s more or less a model student. He’s got some kind of super strength and speed, he showed it to everyone at the welcome assembly, but he hasn’t been up to anything in particular. Good grades, helping students with classwork, perfect attendance. Apparently a really standup guy.”

Cheri nodded, but she looked kind of disgruntled. “Well, one out of four’s not bad, I guess.”

Jay stood up and turned the lights on as Tyler and Roman tag-teamed the giant projector screen. Once the theater environment had been completely disassembled, everyone gathered back in the cushion pit to discuss the events of the meeting.

“So how does everyone feel?” Jay asked once everyone was settled. He typically started meetings like that, in an open way that invited some of our meeker members to voice their thoughts aloud.

“It’s still a little scary,” Tyler said. I felt a flash of guilt that I wasn’t down there sitting next to him, close enough to put an arm around his shoulders. After a moment of silence, he continued, his voice a little stronger. “But I’m less scared now than I was. Now that we’re all together on this. We’re strongest this way.”

“Hear, hear!” Marika said, and the Club echoed her. I noticed for the second time that Cheri had that distant, sad look on her face as she refrained from joining in.

“I’m not scared in the slightest,” Roman said, flexing both arms. “I’d put any of us against any one of them, now that we’re in the know, and we outnumber them seven to four!”

I smiled as Cheri blushed. Roman had a natural gregariousness to him that made inclusion almost automatic. It seemed like it was exactly what Cheri needed to get her revved up.

“I’m glad you guys are feeling better about this,” she said, “and I hope I’ve helped a little bit, but I’m not sure you guys are actually ready to take them on, however you choose to go about it.”

I cleared my throat. I typically liked to let everyone run things the way they wanted to, only stepping in when things looked like they might get out of control, but the gang was running towards a fundamental misunderstanding.

“As we at the Tryhard Club know all too well,” I began, “knowing how to do something and doing it are incredibly different things. If we rush into this, we could get into serious trouble. We could get hurt very badly.”

I paused there, to let the message sink in. Tyler still looked a little scared, but determination was shining through the fear. Roman looked like he was raring to go, as usual, and I was pretty sure Marika was pretending to be asleep.

“On my authority as president of the Tryhard Club,” I announced, affecting the faux-official voice I used when making proclamations, “I hereby suspend all practices and training. The Tryhard Club now has one official focus, until these three wizards have been brought to justice: Learning to fight against magic.”

A round of cheering erupted in the room as I sat back down. It felt a little over the top, but I wasn’t about to be a stick in the mud. I had a feeling that we’d need to hold onto these lighthearted moments in the days to come.