In wars, magical and nonmagical, Lizy had always wondered what it would feel like to be hauled in front of a judge, a king, or a general whenever one was an enemy soldier, facing torture and execution for being on the wrong side. She figured now she was getting a taste of what that was like, but she'd never realized the judge was going to be her father and she'd be escorted by the headmaster.
"Humphrey, a minute of your time," Headmaster Folks said, pushing open her father's office door. Her father was neck-deep in grading papers and looked like he'd been doing so for hours. His glasses had rubbed the bridge of his nose raw, his eyes were red-rimmed, his hair askew and his clothes were filthy. It was apparent that he'd been there all weekend. Lizy swallowed. Maybe she should make more of an effort to visit him more often, at least to make sure he was wearing clean clothes. Her mother had asked her to watch over him, knowing he tended to let himself go when he was at work. She hadn't been doing a good job at that.
"What is it, Jeremy?" Her father said, taking off his glasses.
"Just a little problem I think we need to discuss," the headmaster said, pushing Lizy into the room and closing the door.
"Yes?" Her father said, looking at Folks and not at his daughter.
"I caught her going through things in my office without my permission," Folks said. "I don't know how she even got inside, but I found a place she'd been hiding behind the tapestry. I think it goes without saying that this is a serious punishable offense." Now her father looked at her and when he did, Lizy wanted the floor to open and swallow her. There could be huge, gnashing teeth involved, poison, acid, all of it. Anything would be better than the look he gave her just then.
"But you said it anyway," Lizy said, and then regretted opening her mouth.
"Lizy," her father said as a warning.
"Indeed." Folks said, glaring at Lizy. Then he looked back to Humphrey Mallowbourne. "This has not been her first offense."
"Really?" Her father said, raising his eyebrows.
"It had better be her last." Folks gave a stern look to Lizy again. It was a look that said 'I know you know. I know it was you. Tread carefully or I will end you.' He looked back at Lizy's father. "Furthermore, I have been getting a string of reports from other students who claim Lizy has targeted them with unprovoked jinxing and hexing. I suggest you address those infarctions as well." The emphasis on the "suggest" made any possible bravado evaporate from her father. His form slumped.
"Yes, sir. I'll take care of it." Folks turned and left, slamming the door behind him. Lizy had turned to watch him leave, and when she turned back, her father was rubbing his face with his hands and groaning.
"Lizy, what is going on with you?" He said, throwing his hands down on the desk. "Snooping? Jinxing? What is all this about?"
"I was trying to find—"
"Let me stop you there," her father said, waving his hand. "I don't care if plans to kill President Begay was on Folks's desk, that gave you no right to go through his things, and some made-up conspiracy is definitely not a reason!" He was raising his voice. He was raising his voice! He'd never yelled at her, not in her entire life! She had started to think he was maybe physically incapable of yelling.
"Your job, though, the school—"
"I don't know where it says rules don't apply to you, Elizabeth," he said, standing. His normally sallow face was flushed. His eyes had a gleam in them. Lizy bit her lip. Where was this going to go? She'd never been afraid of her father's punishments, because he was as predictable as sunrise and sunset. Now she wasn't sure what was going to happen. "I have let you go on carousing for far too long. Now Folks has got his eye on me, thanks to you."
"Why? You do your work, and everyone else's," she said, gesturing to the desk. She could see he was grading History of Magic papers. He wasn't even the best qualified because he was from England, but apparently, in true Humphrey Mallowbourne style, he had agreed to the extra work without question. He was a doormat.
"I mind my business, you mind yours," he said, turning around. "Is that what this is about? Is this a cry for attention?"
"No!" Lizy said. "I just—"
"You just what?" Her father said, turning and putting his hands on his hips. "You go digging through Folks's office, you jinx other students, you sneak and snoop around, getting into trouble and danger. What is it you think you're doing, Lizy?" He threw his hands up. "Folks wants to cut faculty positions. Did you know that? Of course you don't. But my daughter—ugh!" He threw a fist into the air. Lizy's eyes widened. Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, she believed her doughy, pushover father just imagined her face up there in the air and punched it in his frustration. She had never thought about treading lightly around him, but the idea was processing in her mind now.
"I jinxed other students who were being nasty about you behind your back," she mumbled, looking at her hands in her lap, limp as dead flowers. "I—I was trying to defend you." He was pacing back and forth, running a hand through his thinning hair. Then he stopped and sighed.
"I don't need you to defend me, Lizy." Lizy pursed her lips. So that was it, then? His defense was to play dead, like an opossum? How inspiring.
"I dunno about that," she said under her breath. He dropped his head and sighed, his temper flaring again.
"I have let you run about like a wild thing for far too long," he said. "Folks is right—I need to do something about it or he will. I would eventually like to retire and read books all day without worrying what you're getting into and what it will cost me, so I would like you to finish school." He stopped, popped his knuckles, and then walked over to her.
"So here is what I want to do," he said, crossing his arms. "We'll try the grounding thing. From today on until I feel you can be trusted with being responsible again, you are not to go to Dawntown, you are not to go the dance, or the Quidditch game next week. You are not to sit at any other table but Horned Serpent at mealtimes—" Her head shot up.
"But—!" He waved an irritated, dismissive hand.
"Or else you will have to sit up at the faculty table with me. Would you prefer that?" It would be social doom. Lizy gulped.
"Horned Serpent is fine," she said, her voice just above a whisper.
"Furthermore, I want you in my office every night after dinner, except when you have class, to do your homework and quiet activities. Every night, no exceptions. I will not sign any permission slips, and you are not to attend extra activities or satellite campuses. At all." Her head shot up again, her mouth open. He made a cutting motion with his hand. "None of them. Is that understood?" Tears stung Lizy's eyes.
"You can't do—"
"If you think you can tell me what I can and can't do as your father in a situation like this, then a grounding is far, far overdue," her father said. "I can continue to tighten down, if you'd like. I could pull you out of school and send you to your aunt in Detroit and let you sample the no-maj world a bit, perhaps?" Her aunt had been disgraced when she attempted to embezzle from the First National Wizarding Bank and her wand had been snapped and she had been sent packing into the no-maj world.
Tears were streaming down Lizy's cheeks. To this moment, she had prided herself on understanding her father. She believed she knew him, through and through. He was doughy and shy and squeamish due to a sensitive disposition. He was a sweet man who just wanted to study and let words pass beneath his eyes and to conduct magical experimentation and have a black lab and take it for walks. He even indulged in the odd game of chess now and then, but always defaulted. His chess pieces hated him. So did his students, who ran up one side of him and back down the other and didn't like his grades, his teaching style, or anything about him. Lizy stood up for him, Lizy punished students when her father couldn't or wouldn't for their disrespect.
And now this?
"Yes, sir, that's understood," she said.
Lizy left his office and cried herself to sleep, angry at herself for losing her dad's trust and for getting herself into this stupid, knotted situation at all.
***
"Harsh," Sterling had said as she bit into her apple. Lizy nodded. Bridgette was toying with her food, building an igloo of raviolis and then scraping sauce onto the top like red snow. She never ate much but seemed to like playing with her food.
"My parents grounded me once," Bridgette said. "After I broke the fish tank to try to teach the fish to fly. But I liked being home doing chores too much so they ended the punishment early."
"You liked being home and doing chores?" Claire said with a frown. Bridgette shrugged but didn't say anything else.
Lizy rested her chin on her hands and looked up at the faculty table. Her father sat alone, eating his lunch and reading the newspaper. Lizy looked back at her tray of untouched chicken nuggets and salad. The one consolation to all of this was that her father hadn't forbade Lizy from sitting with any of her friends, so long as they all sat together at the Horned Serpent table. She hadn't seen Thalia in what felt like weeks, already over her weirdness, and Isadora was still manning her chocolate booth.
"So," Sterling said, picking the stem out of her apple. "You got caught snooping. Did you find anything?"
"Oh, that's what started all of this?" Claire said with a crooked smile. "You snooped in Folks's office and you got caught?" Lizy rolled her eyes and sighed.
"Yeah, and it's what my dad's most angry about," she said. "And it was all for nothing, really. I mean, there was a letter from Chet Gadgow on the All-Stars team, saying the camp would be a great idea and he knew a good place in Florida to have it. But we knew about that already."
"So, he's feeling good, confident," Claire said. She shook her head.
"Where in Florida?" Bridgette asked.
"Next to your grammie's house," Sterling said. She leaned in. "But that's not important. Did you see anything with Society symbols?"
"No! I already told you, I didn't see anything. I also sat behind the tapestry for like thirty minutes, and nothing happened. Except Folks picked his nose once." The girls all made faces. Lizy threw up her hands. "This is all just so stupid. So dumb. And everyone gets to go have fun this weekend and I am stuck doing nothing to help with this or even anything fun!"
"What are you going to do?" Claire said after a sip of juice.
"Well, the last thing I want to do is sit in my dad's office, so I signed up to go tend the nogtails that day," Lizy said. "There weren't many people who signed up, and it's a pen-cleaning day."
"Lucky you," Claire said, wrinkling her nose.
"But you'll get to see the re'em," Sterling said. Lizy shook her head.
"No, they moved it. It's been sick."
"Ooh, yum," Claire said. "Cleaning up after nogtails and a sick re'em. Have fun with that."
"Better than sitting with my dad in his office all day," Lizy said, spearing her fork through a now cold stack of chicken nuggets.
***
While people were rising and shining and laughing and bubbling with their fancy new clothes and getting hair and makeup products ready, Lizy rolled out of bed, put on an old Ilvermorny T-shirt with a large, wildly looped Gordian knot on the front and jeans, strapped her arm holster on, put on her open robe and piled her brownish-red hair on her head. The fountain that ran along the wall in the common room seemed to splash her out of spite as she passed. Her infarction had cost the house some points.
She didn't even bother with breakfast. There was no point, as puking was a normal part of cleaning up after nogtails, especially after a full moon. Marching straight toward the door, she sighed when a shy girl with large green eyes and thick dark hair met her gaze.
"Are you Lizy?" The girl said in a quiet yet musical voice.
"Hi, Zoey," Lizy said. Zoey had been petrified by lurks the previous year and Lizy had sort of met her in the belly of the mother lurk. She was no-maj born, Lizy's age, but just now starting her first year since she was out of commission pretty much all the previous year. The one exception had been made on her behalf was that she could take Care of Magical Creatures as part of her core, if she kept up in all her other classes.
"Have you done this before? I've never done this before," Zoey said, her eyes widening.
"Yeah, it's easy," Lizy said, leading the way around the school toward the back of the herbology greenhouse where a shed stood that held some of the tools they'd need. "It just takes forever to get it done."
The walk out to the stables was on the longish side and Lizy wasn't in a talkative mood. She loved working with animals, even the nogtails, and she would so much rather be out under the sun in the chilly morning going to muck out pens and stables than sitting next to her father and his whistly breathing, but it still didn't mean she was thrilled. Zoey, for her part, seemed rather introverted. However, after finding out how far they had to go, she pulled out a little flute and began to play it. At first, Lizy thought it was annoying, but Zoey had some real skill on the instrument and wasn't half-bad to listen to.
"How long have you been playing?" Lizy said after a while. Zoey removed the flute from her lips.
"Oh, I think like ten minutes—"
"No, I mean like ever, in your life," Lizy said. "I'm trying to make conversation."
"Oh! Well, um—ever since I was little. That's how I found out I'm magical, I guess. I can pick up any instrument and play it." Lizy nodded with approval.
"Well, that's pretty cool," she said. It seemed like no-maj borns tended to have cool and sometimes dramatic ways of finding out about their magical abilities. Purebloods, or partbloods, like her, tended to just sort of—already know they were magical, which was not as fun. Sterling, for instance, had learned of her magical talent because she woke up one morning and her black hair had turned lavender. Her mother had buzzed her head but her hair grew back purple. Black dye would be purple by the next day, and Sterling's color was purple forever.
"Yeah. It's kind of how I made money for a long time," Zoey said. Her tone was almost wistful.
"I bet. What else do you play?"
"My favorite right now is the uke," Zoey said. "But I can play just about anything." Lizy wracked her brains, trying to think of a stumper.
"Spoons?"
"Yeah."
"Jawharp?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Um—digiderdoo?"
"Is that the nose thing? Because I can play that." Lizy made a face and laughed despite herself. Zoey didn't seem to know how to respond, because she stayed quiet. Lizy fell quiet too, and the two kept walking.
A few moments later, the pens came in sight, as well as the snuffling, snorting sounds of the nogtails. The smell hit too, right around then. Lizy had come prepared with a bandana she worked up around her nose, but poor Zoey hadn't known what to expect and had to deal with the smell full-force.
"Ugh, what is this?" She said.
"Demon pigs, and some regular pigs," Lizy said, approaching the gate where the animals were going to have to be shooed into so the girls could clean out the pens without having to climb over the huge sows. She tapped a barrel with her wand and scraps from the school came gushing out the bottom. The sows, knowing what that meant, kicked away the nogtails nursing at their teats and tottered into the holding pen to slurp up the mess. The nogtails, for their part, looked at one another and the girls with sullen expressions.
"Just for a bit and we'll be out of your hair," Lizy said to the creatures.
"The hair of your demon chinny-chin-chins," Zoey said, and then gagged a little.
The nogtails meandered toward one end of the pen to watch the girls scrape up the dung, which had magical properties, and smooth out the earth again, rendering it soft and comfortable for the sows.
It was disgusting, backbreaking work. The one consolation, well, two, were that Zoey was humming as she worked, in between gags, and she had great songs inside of her with haunting melodies Lizy enjoyed listening to, to her surprise. The other consolation was that, despite the nogtails' penchant for cursing the farms where they nursed, they were curious. They were intelligent as well and seemed interested in watching the girls work. They liked scratches along their snouts and nipping at the girls' legs, which stopped when Lizy conjured up an image of a snarling white dog put a quick end to the biting.
After they had been at it for a while, Zoey stopped humming.
"Did you hear that?" She whispered, her eyes huge. Lizy had been tackling a difficult mound of refuse, half-convinced there might be a dead sow in all that muck, and she was sinking back into her terrible mood. She stopped and wiped her forehead.
"Hear what?" She said.
"It sounded like a footstep, over there." Zoey pointed. Lizy squinted into the woods and saw nothing.
"Ooh, scary," she said after a moment. "We'll probably wake up in some monster's cave somewhere." Zoey made a little squeaking noise and Lizy laughed, wishing Zoey weren't so literal. "Come on, it was probably a squirrel. We're perfectly safe here."
***
Lizy's head was pounding and coming out of her swoon was difficult, like swimming through peanut butter. She'd open her eyes and, convinced that she was dreaming, closed them again and swooned some more before she'd open them once more.
"Lizy?" Zoey said in a shaking, echoing voice. "Are you awake?"
"Mf," Lizy said. Zoey's voice helped cut through the clutter and she shook her head, which made it hurt, but helped bring her back.
She was suspended in the air in what looked like a trashed-out cave, wrapped in a tarp so tightly she could barely move her limbs. Her head felt like pretty much all the blood in her body was pooled there and her breath was coming in short, light gasps. How long had they been there?
"What happened?" Lizy said with a moan.
"I don't know," Zoey said. She was crying. Lizy was spinning around and when she came back around to face Zoey, she could see the girl was wrapped up as tight as Lizy was, but was shaking like a leaf and was leaning against the wall of the cave. Just above her was a crude symbol, a triangle with a circle above it. Lizy looked all around the cave. There were more symbols on the wall, one that looked like a circle with something snaking out of the middle. Another one looked like antlers. Another looked like a pyramid. There was also a pile of clothes, and other trash scattered around. There were bones too, too many to count, and they looked—Lizy squeezed her eyes shut. They could be something else, but the skulls looked awfully human.
There was no sign, though, of the cave's usual live inhabitant, whatever it was.
"Can you move?" Lizy asked. Zoey sniffled and shook her head.
"I didn't bring my wand either," Zoey sobbed.
"What?" Lizy said, spinning around. "Why didn't you bring your wa—what were you thinking?"
"I didn't want it to get dirty," Zoey said. Lizy rolled her eyes. She was freaking out, inside, but pretending she was calm on the outside. She was starting to believe herself.
"Okay. Weird, but okay," Lizy said. She could wiggle her arms, just a little. She remembered slipping her wand into her back pocket after conjuring the image of the white dog for the nogtails, and if she could just scoot her hand along her back, which she could do half an inch or so at a time, then given enough time, she could reach it.
Their host hopefully wouldn't return before then. And if the wand was still there.
After a little while, Lizy took a break from trying to wiggle her hand. Her muscles were exhausted, working against her tight bonds. Her head was killing her. Snot was working its way down from her sinuses and dripping onto the rocks and junk below her.
"That's so gross," Zoey said from the floor. She sounded more calm.
"Well, you know," Lizy said. Near where the snot was dripping, she could see a purple envelope. It looked a lot like what Claire had been getting from April all semester. In fact, now Lizy noticed it, she could swear she could see some kind of big sticker on the envelope—a hamburger, perhaps. It looked just like a letter April might have sent. From her height, with her head being about twelve feet from the ground and her vision being fuzzy from hanging upside down, Lizy couldn't tell if the envelope had been opened. Did that mean April was here? Or maybe the owl carrying the letter. That seemed more likely. There was so much crap on the ground and strewn around the cave, an owl body didn't seem out of the question.
The light coming from the mouth of the cave was bright. It was still daylight out, and judging from the hue, it was later in the day. But Lizy realized she didn't even know what day it was.
"Zoey?" Her companion didn't respond, just stared straight ahead. "Zoey!"
"Hm?" Zoey said, seeming to come out of a faraway place.
"How long have we been here?"
"I don't know. I woke up like, I don't know, an hour ago, maybe."
"And me?"
"I don't know, like fifteen minutes ago."
"And?"
"And what?"
"Have you seen anything?"
"No, nothing's come back." Lizy thought hard. Her best class was care of magical creatures, mostly because she'd spent a great deal of time studying the book. Well, books. She'd read up through fourth level, which was getting into magical creature care apprenticeship. If the—whatever—had taken them and hadn't returned in the past hour, it was still Halloween day, just later. She didn't want to think about predatory food storage behaviors. They ran the gamut of weird, but no matter what weird habits existed out in the magical fauna world, it didn't bode well for she and Zoey.
For one thing, the clear drops of snot had turned pink and then red as her nose started bleeding.
"Can you reach your feet?" Zoey asked. Lizy looked at her, and then curled up to try to reach her feet, which were jammed into the rocks. Something sharp dug into her belly and she cried out and slung back down. Her head, momentarily relieved of the pressure, screamed in pain as the pressure returned.
"There's something tied in here with me!" Lizy said. Her belly throbbed. She couldn't tell if whatever it was had pierced her skin or not, but it sure hurt. "I think something got wrapped in so I couldn't do that."
"Oh my gosh," Zoey said, her voice thick with tears. "My brother—no one will even know I was here except for him!"
"Calm down, we're getting out of this," Lizy said, worming her hand again toward her back pocket. She couldn't remember if it was in the left or right side, but her left hand was on her right hip, inches away from her right back pocket. Luckily her left arm was beneath her right arm, but if it was in the left pocket, that was going to be a different struggle.
"They wanted him, you know," Zoey said, staring straight ahead, speaking in almost a monotone, interrupted by hiccups. "Not me, though. No one wants a thirteen-year-old girl. No one wants me."
"Stop talking that way," Lizy said, pushing her hand deeper around her back, grateful for her narrow and slender body type. Her mom had used to tease her for being like a grasshopper. She'd started developing hips this year, but they weren't too wide yet. "We'll get out, I almost have my wand."
"It's always boys who get it better, huh? They get more love," Zoey said.
"Zoey, for the love of magical hearts everywhere," Lizy said, gritting her teeth and jamming her hand into her back pocket, "Seriously? Stop talking like that. We're getting out of here. We're going to be okay. You'll see your brother again and I'll blast acne so deep into whoever you're thinking of that they'll never see clear skin as long as they live. I'll lock them into a dancing curse for so long they'll waste away. Just stop. Stop talking."
There was a snuffle from the mouth of the cave and both girls froze as the light coming from the mouth was blackened out.
"Okay, Zoey," Lizy whispered as dragging steps echoed from the entrance. Zoey's eyes widened. "Stay still and quiet. Just be still. I'll get us out of this. Don't make a fuss. Just stay quiet."
***
The light emerged back into the cave just as the creature did and Lizy had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out. The creature was horrendous, around six feet tall with drooping, mottled pale skin, sloped shoulders, bipedal but only just. Red-rimmed eyes slanted down a drooping face framed by stringy dark hair sitting atop the head like seaweed. The nose was squashed up like a bat's, and the mouth hung open and slack, bright red gums surrounding rows upon rows of sharp teeth, about the size of nails. The arms were thin at the shoulder but as they came to the ends, they widened into huge paws about a foot and a half across, ending in wicked-looking claws.
Lizy had heard of something like this, but had never heard of a creature fitting this description. The blasted look reminded her of some of the more disturbing illustrations she had seen of skinwalkers, but the wide claws at the end—then it came to her. This was a rake. They were rare, and it was a good thing. Rakes were thought to be created by dark magic gone terribly wrong. Rakes didn't occur on their own. This creature seemed to have been created from a wizard playing in things he shouldn't have touched.
The trivia was fascinating and everything, but it didn't help their situation.
The rake ignored the girls, for the time being. It dropped a pile of debris it was carrying; some branches and leaves and half an eaten deer. The smell was awful. Bile slid into Lizy's mouth and she became afraid that releasing it would draw attention to herself.
The rake neglected the dead deer and reached into a large pile of clothes near what she realized was a rusted cauldron and pulled out a bloody lump of meat and began tearing into it. Lizy lost what little control she had of her vomit when she recognized the bloody stump being a human leg.
The rake glanced up at her and Lizy shrank into her wrappings. Her hand grasped at nothing. Her wand wasn't in her pocket. The rake snuffed and stood. Tears fell from Lizy's eyes and she opened her mouth to scream.
A lovely sound trilled out from Zoey and the rake looked her way. Zoey was singing, and her voice was indeed a gift. The rake scooted close to her, its mouth open, blood dribbling down between its teeth. Zoey was staring straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with the rake, singing some aria in Italian. Lizy took the break to gain control of herself again, breathing deeply a few times as her left hand searched her back pocket. Her wand was not there. She moved her shoulder blades around, searching for the tell-tale stick. Nothing.
The rake settled on its haunches near Zoey, listening to her sing. Lizy guessed the rake might tire of the music and could attack Zoey at any second, so she needed to think of something. She looked up at her feet again. She couldn't move them, but she could try to reach them again.
She curled up again, more slow this time. The jabbing happened again at her belly, but she grit her teeth and touched her toes. She could feel a blade cutting her, and after a moment the pain was too much and she fell back again, but as she did so, she felt something at her left hip. Her wand was inside her shirt, on the left side.
Her belly was wet, and Lizy tried not to think about the pain or the wetness, but an advantage it afforded her was that she could move a little more. She pulled her left arm back and grunted and struggled to switch arms so that her right arm would be on bottom and reach around farther.
The rake stood and Zoey's song jumped up a few octaves in surprise. It snuffed around her, then raised its head in the air, sniffing. It probably smells my blood, Lizy thought with some urgency.
"Lizy," Zoey sang. "What is going on?" The rake moved away from Zoey but more toward Lizy. Blood dripped from Lizy's nose and the rake zeroed in on it, leaning over and touching the little puddle underneath Lizy with a claw and raising it to its long, snakey, shredded tongue. Lizy's right fingers wriggled underneath her shirt. She could feel the wand now, pressing against her back. Her shirt and the robe were bunched up, creating a much tighter space. The rake leaned over farther and licked up more blood. Zoey coughed, getting sick. The rake growled and looked up at her.
"Lizy!" Zoey said, spitting past the sick. "Lizy!" Lizy grit her teeth. Her consciousness was beginning to ebb in and out, her hands faltered. The rake moved back toward Zoey, growling and strutting. Zoey was wriggling, trying to move away. "LIZY!" The rake raised a paw. Lizy's hand closed on the hilt of her wand.
"Dirumpo!" Lizy cried and the rocks around her feet erupted into white light and blew apart. Lizy dropped straight down, curling again to try to land on her back and not her head.
Stone fell from the ceiling with deafening crashes. Lizy hit the ground and was stunned for a moment, raising a hand to her head as she came back around. Then she realized her arms were free and she kicked away her bonds. Her entire front was covered in blood and she raised her shirt. A shard of yellowed bone was protruding from her belly, but it wasn't in deep. Lizy pulled it out and took off her robe to wrap tight around her middle. The rake roared and she spun around.
Zoey was on her side, trying to wriggle away. The rake had been nailed by falling rock and was disoriented, roaring, swinging its wicked claws in wide arcs. Lizy took a deep breath, ignoring the pain in her belly for the moment and ducked beneath the claws to make it to poor Zoey. She took the bone shard and cut into the cloth surrounding her classmate, freeing her arm.
"Oh my gosh, oh my—" Zoey was saying, her eyes nearly white with panic.
"Let's go!" Lizy cried, grabbing Zoey's hand and dragging her out of the cave. The rake swiped at them, but Lizy grabbed a handful of rubble and threw it into the air with a burst of guttural language and the rubble pelted the monster in the face. Lizy had left her wand amidst her wrappings, but it was on the way. She ran toward the tarp and kicked it open, finding her wand, slick with blood. She was about to take off but saw the purple envelope and snatched it as well.
"Come on!" she cried, grabbing Zoey's sleeve again. The girls dashed out of the cave, bursting out into a golden late afternoon. The rake screamed after them. Zoey took Lizy's wand from her and pointed it at the mouth of the cave.
"Occillo!" The mouth of the cave crumbled.
"Good thinking," Lizy said. She looked ahead of them. Dense forest and bracken barred their way, but she could tell they were in the bottom of a dip in the land. She couldn't tell if they were still on Mount Greylock or not, but the forest looked similar to what was around the school, so they couldn't be too far.
The rake was raging behind them, and rock was moving, falling over and shifting like ants digging out after their anthill was destroyed.
"We need to get out of here," Zoey said. "Let's go!" She took Lizy's arm this time and charged forward into the forest.
They stumbled and ran up the slope for a time and then the land leveled out. A small stream trickled next to them and would have been pretty but for the poisonous mushrooms growing near it, and the bodies of dead animals, dragged there and left by the rake.
Pain erupted in Lizy's belly, taking her to her knees. Zoey knelt beside her.
"Come on! It'll be out soon!"
"I—I can't—" Zoey pulled Lizy's hand out from the area where the knot in the sleeves of Lizy's robe pressed. Her hand was slick with new blood. Zoey swallowed hard.
"I hope this isn't going to be a bad idea," she said, taking Lizy's wand again and laying Lizy down. Lizy untied the robe and raised up her shirt. The wound was about two inches across on the right side of Lizy's abdomen. Congealed blood was piled around the wound and new blood was seeping out. Lizy swooned a little. When she came to, it was to another searing pain at her wound. Zoey swallowed hard and gave Lizy a watery smile.
"Well, it shouldn't bleed anymore," she said. "But it might sting for a while." Lizy looked at her belly. Smoke was rising from the shiny skin where Zoey had cauterized the wound and somehow sealed it together. It hurt like crap, but Lizy was relieved she wasn't bleeding anymore.
"How did you do that?" Lizy said. Zoey opened her mouth to answer but a roar from the rake, very uncomfortably close, made both girls leap to their feet and take off into the woods. Lizy wasn't as fast and was panting hard to keep up. Zoey took her arm from time to time to help Lizy keep up. They left the robe behind.
"What was that thing?" Zoey said as they huffed up the rise.
"I think—it's a rake," Lizy explained. The entry on them in her book had been scarce but she conveyed everything she knew about them. "They aren't born naturally, they are created when a wizard desecrates magically sealed graves, especially of children. They are takers of life, blasted, cursed forever. The only way to defeat one is to know its true name, because then you have power over the monster."
"The true name of the wizard it was?"
"Yeah," Lizy said. "But there's a zillion wizards in the world. Who knows who that one used to be?"
The sun was setting, which was helpful in telling them which direction was west, but they didn't know anything else. Mount Greylock was surrounded by hills and forest. It was impossible to know where the school was and orient them to where they were.
"Well, at least we know where California is," Zoey said at the top of a rise.
"Big deal," Lizy coughed, sinking to the ground. As the golden light of evening sank into the blue of twilight, Lizy became nervous about more things: hide-behinds. Lizy had no alcohol on her and with the night would come the creatures. And then the rake was a constant threat. Her belly hurt. Her legs hurt. Her head was a mess. Her body ached from landing on rock and being pelted by them. She could feel dried blood all up on her face and arms. Her shirt was stained with it. She was sure she looked terrible. She was tired, hungry, and feeling more and more despair.
"If we can just find a house, or a town," Zoey said, shielding her eyes and looking around. "I don't see anything."
There came a roar from the south. Both girls jumped.
"On the other hand, maybe we just keep moving," Zoey said, helping Lizy up and taking off.
Night fell and so did the noises of the night. The girls ran up and down rises, which Lizy realized were foothills to larger mountains. However, the stars came out and the moon did not, and so their light was limited.
They couldn't hear the rake anymore. Lizy had been working to wipe as much blood off as she could, trying to lessen the scent of it. They came through a boggy area and Lizy leapt in, covering herself head to toe in mud to try to camoflauge her scent. Now she was wet and cold, on top of everything else.
After another hour or so of running, the girls were leaning against a large oak, panting and not saying much. Both were thinking though. Lizy could tell by Zoey's drooped shoulders and her tight lips that she had all but given up hope.
"Don't worry," Lizy said, feeling a little stronger now. Zoey had pulled her along for so long, it allowed Lizy to emotionally recover some. Now it was her turn to pull.
She led the girls away from the tree and she lit her wand. She didn't want the light to be noticeable, but they had to navigate somehow.
It almost seemed too good to be true, but Lizy found a path. It was narrow and meandering, but it was a path. She nearly cried with relief.
"Come on," she said, tugging on Zoey's arm. "There's a path. It should lead us to people." Zoey stumbled along after Lizy as the girls picked up their pace down the path.
"My brother isn't magical," Zoey said after a while. "Just me. He's the only one who knows I have powers. But his foster family didn't want me anyway."
"Foster family?" Lizy said, surprised that Zoey began talking this way but also sensing that talking was a good way to cope.
"Yeah. My mum came from Scotland, my dad left, then mum died. Ethan and me were on the streets, but I played music and made us money," Zoey said. "Or I sang. It kept us mostly out of kids homes for a bit, but then we got caught up. Ethan—he's a cute kid. Wide face, dark eyes, dark hair, like me. Talented, funny. He makes friends everywhere. The family that took him in loved him instantly, wanted to adopt him. Already have, actually. But—they didn't want me. They never told me they would take me too."
"I'm sorry, Zoey," Lizy said, feeling bad for being kind of rude to the girl earlier in the day.
"The magic people found me, sent me here. Told them I was accepted to some government school and would be out of their hair. They told me they were still trying to make something happen where they could take me too, but Ethan told me they really weren't. That was the last time I saw him."
"Before last year?" Lizy said. Zoey was quiet, and remained quiet for a long time.
After a while, Lizy thought the path was making some odd decisions. It looped and ducked and twisted with the land, but it was getting narrower and harder to pick out. They crossed the stream a few times. Lizy didn't want to think about it, but the path was sure behaving like a deer might, randomly wandering the forest, going through low-cropped areas of grass and crossing the stream—
"I don't think this is a real path," Zoey said behind her, sounding almost as tired as Lizy felt. "I think it's a—what are they—"
"A game trail," Lizy said, feeling miserable. She flopped down on a log. "What are we going to do?"
"The school has to be somewhere," Zoey said, pulling out her flute.
"No kidding," Lizy said, shivering and tucking her body into itself. Her belly was a dull ache. Tears slid down her cheeks. This was the worst. Nothing else in her life had even come close. Being teamed with such a miserable girl with such a sad past wasn't helping her own morale either, but that wasn't Zoey's fault.
"Hey, is it kind of quiet to you?" Zoey said. The flute was at her lips but she hadn't blown a note on it yet. Lizy listened, despite herself. Yes, the forest had grown quiet. "It's creepy. Today is the worst Halloween ever," Zoey said.
"Oh yeah, it is Halloween," Lizy said.
"Yeah. It's creepy out here, but I keep thinking we're the scariest things here. We are actual witches," Zoey said with a nervous laugh.
"Oh, trust me," Lizy said, the hair on the back of her neck rising. "We are not the scariest things out here."
"Yeah, I know," Zoey said with a shudder. "I saw the bodies in the cave."
"Bodies?"
"Yeah. Pieces of—"
"Shh!" Lizy smacked Zoey's hands. The girls listened. Yes! A slithering sound. Lizy gulped and held her wand. There was a large tree in front of them. It had to be a hide-behind.
"Zoey," she whispered. "Play your flute, but really quietly." Zoey gulped too and put the instrument to her lips and began to blow a light, mellow tune. Lizy strained her eyes and could see a hairy leg on the other side of the tree. It slid a little, and then slipped back behind the tree. She waited for a while, wishing she'd kept the bone shard from the rake's cave. Nothing happened.
"Okay, keep playing," Lizy said, slowly rising, keeping her wand aloft. Zoey was shaking. She stopped playing.
"What is—"
The hide-behind howled. Lizy motioned to Zoey to put the flute back in her mouth.
"Do not stop playing!" She said. Zoey's breath was uneven and the notes warbled some, but she kept playing. "Okay, get up, slow, and let's go." Zoey lifted a hand to ask where. Lizy shrugged. "Away from here. Come on, let's go." She started to step away. Zoey was half a step behind her. The slithering sound followed them through the forest, but the hide-behind did nothing.
After a while, Zoey tapped Lizy's shoulder. Lizy whirled around. Zoey was crossing her legs. She had to pee.
"Are you kidding me?!" Lizy said. Zoey shrugged. Lizy screwed up her face. Today was the worst day of her life. "Do you want me to pull down your pants or something?" Zoey looked about as thrilled about it as Lizy, but she nodded. Lizy groaned, reached around Zoey's waist, and loosened her pants. Then she turned around so Zoey could shimmy them down on her own and figure out the squatting thing. When she was done, Lizy turned around to help her. Zoey was trilling with one hand on the flute and reaching into her pocket, pulling out a little bottle of clear liquid. She handed it to Lizy and motioned to pour some in Zoey's hand. Lizy popped off the cap and the smell of alcohol hit her nostrils. There was the slithering sound again.
"What is this? Is this—" Lizy sniffed the liquid. Hand sanitizer, full of alcohol. She saw red, and turned around and slugged Zoey in the shoulder.
"Ow!" Zoey cried, pantsless, pulling the flute away. She jammed it back in her mouth.
"You had this the whole time!" Lizy said, squirting the hand sanitizer onto Zoey.
"Hey, quit it!" Zoey said, fighting her off. Lizy danced away, smearing some on herself.
"This stuff repels hide-behinds! Magical Creatures day one, Zoey!" She was irritated, but she was more relieved. Zoey, however, was not amused.
"I forgot!" She growled, reaching for the bottle. It popped out of Lizy's hand and skittered away through the bracken. The girls looked at each other and launched after it. Lizy hit the ground first and stinging erupted on her cheek.
"Ow!" She cried, and again as Zoey landed on her. Then she opened her eyes and looked at the pile of spiky green leaves she'd landed in.
"Sorry," Zoey said.
"Shhhh!" Lizy said again.
"I swear if something else comes out after us, I am going to die right here," Zoey said. "Aw geez, you broke my flute!"
"No, do you know what this is?" Lizy said, nudging her wand at the leaves.
"Weeds!" Zoey cried. "Ow! Oh my gosh, are they biting?!"
"No, well, yes. They're stinging nettles! That means there's people close by," Lizy said, pushing herself onto her hands and knees. The nettle plant swayed and then curled over, pushed itself hard against the ground, and pulled itself up by the roots. It raised a few stinging leaves, shaped like a mouth full of teeth, and charged at the girls. Lizy blasted it with a spell and it flew backwards into the dark forest.
"What the—" Zoey said, her eyes wide. She had seen too much for one day.
"And, since the nettles are trying to walk," Lizy said, grabbing Zoey's wrist and tugging her into a run as more of the plants curled down and began to tug themselves out by the roots, "we're close to a magical town."
***
The girls found renewed energy as they raced through the forest. Lizy questioned her thoughts for a few moments until she saw a chip bag and a few beer bottles along the way. Then she was sure.
***
The girls burst out of the forest onto a road. It was an old-looking road with no one on it. It was a footpath, not intended for vehicles. To their right they could see lights, and so they made for them. After a few minutes, they began to see buildings, small dark ones.
"This looks sketchy," Zoey said.
"Do you want to go back into the forest? Or maybe back to the cave?" Lizy said. "Who cares if it looks sketchy!" Zoey held her peace.
The road led to the center of the town. A sign called the place "Midnight City" and Lizy thought it was a little spot-on. There were few lights, and what lights there were stayed dim and secretive. There was also a disturbing trend of lights going off behind them as they went.
In the square at the center of the town was a small spit of park. It was small and housed a single statue of a man in a flowing robe, holding a wand. So it was a magical town. Well, that was obvious from the snarls of the Scottish terriers in front of a few homes. They were crups, warning off anyone who wasn't family.
A few forms lingered in the shadows. Across the way was a run-down looking motel. A few cars were parked near a bar and grille. The spit of park had skeletal oak trees reaching up into the dark sky and a form or two lay beneath the trees like sacrifices left for old and dead gods.
"I do not like this," Zoey said, over and over like a mantra. "I do not like this!"
"I get it," Lizy hissed. "It's sketchy! Let's find someone to help us figure out where the heck we are and how we can get back to the school!"
They tried the motel first, as it seemed the least threatening but no one was in the office. The lobby was dimly lit, a forlorn and squeaking ceiling fan was the only moving thing in the entire place. Just as they were about to leave they heard a snort. Behind the desk was a grizzled house elf, fast asleep. In fact, so fast asleep Lizy might have thought she was dead if she hadn't just heard the elf snort. A few bottles of strong wizarding whiskey lay near her sleeping form. She wore a forlorn hankie as a dress with an old, broken shoelace as the belt. For mischief's sake, Lizy wanted to take her shoelace. Zoey stopped her.
"What are you doing?" Zoey said, her eyes wide.
"Just—fine. Let's try the bar next store," Lizy said. Under the light of the lobby, Lizy took a good look at Zoey. She was covered in grime and dirt. Her hair was filled with dead leaves and dust and her eyes looked sunken and hollow, like she'd seen hell. Well, the girls pretty much had.
They stepped back out into the cold, dark night and walked into the bar. As soon as they did, Lizy wanted to walk right back out again. It was dim in there, even more dim than the motel had been. Ugly neon signs with bar girls with jugs as big as Lizy's head scooted around the walls and cooed at patrons. A few half-rotted jack o'lanterns hung in the air, lit by fire fairies who were the only ones having any fun—they were swaying from pumpkin to pumpkin with bottle caps full of beer and laughing, their glows fading and brightening in pulses. The few patrons in the bar were shadowy, lurking in the corners. Two were sitting at the bar. One was passed out, and the other was a man in a purple jacket. Lizy almost cried with relief when she recognized his MACUSA badge on his lapel.
She marched into the bar. Zoey was holding onto the back of Lizy's shirt and sticking close. Zoey was an okay kid, in Lizy's opinion, but she was shy of magical culture. It was sort of nice, though, because it gave Lizy an excuse to pretend to be brave when what she wanted to do was start screaming for her dad.
The bartender, a tall, lanky fellow with wide ears leaned over the bar and looked at them.
"I think you're in the wrong place, girls," he said, looking them over with one eye. The other one lazily rolled toward the ceiling.
"You bet," Lizy said, putting her elbows on the bar. "We need help."
"I can see that," the bartender said. "You girls look like you've seen war." Zoey and Lizy looked at each other. "You from the school?"
"Yes!" They both said, looking back at the bartender. "Where is it? Which way?"
"Keep your shirts on, both of you. It's about twenty miles to the northeast of here." He leaned back and motioned at a couple of splotched glasses to float over in front of the two of them. "You girls hungry?"
"I might eat your bar," Lizy said, glaring at the wood. He chuckled.
"Okay, okay, cool it, here you go." He reached under the bar and produced a jar of cream and poured it into the glasses and slid a bowl of pretzels toward them. "Ain't got anything else, so you'll have to—okay then." Both girls grabbed their disgusting glasses and chugged the cream and grabbed fistfuls of the pretzels before he even finished his sentence. As they stuffed their faces with the bar's meager offerings, the bartender moved down toward the MACUSA agent, who was staring into his beer and doing a good job of ignoring everything around him. "Joe, I think this is your jurisdiction." He walked into the back room. One or two people in the shadows shifted toward the back door. The MACUSA agent glanced up and down the bar with bleary eyes, and then spotted the girls.
"Hey!" He said, his voice a little grainy and slurred. "No underagers in here!" They ignored him. He slid off his stool and made his way toward them. "Hey, boys, this ain't—oh, sorry, girls, this ain't the place for kids like you..."
"Are you really with MACUSA?" Lizy asked around a mouthful of pretzels. The bartender returned with a barrel full of pretzels and scooped up the bowl to refill it.
"Putting this on your tab, Joe," he said.
"Like gab you are," Joe said, turning to give the bartender a nasty look. Then he looked back at the girls. "Sure I am, but s'my night off, mkay? Just get going."
"No," Lizy said, planting her feet. Her head was spinning. Never before in her whole life would she think drinking straight cream and eating pretzels would feel like paradise, but here she was in a fat-bomb salt-death heaven, dealing with a stupid MACUSA agent's attitude with a little more aplomb than she might have ten minutes prior.
"There's a monster out there," Zoey said around her mouth full of creamy, pretzel mush. The agent looked like he was trying to decide between physically ejecting the girls from the bar or—doing something else. He didn't appear to be sure, but he wasn't expecting these answers from these bedraggled girls.
"Ain't no monsters, not really. Only the holiday, and fugitives and they ain't wanting to get their hands dirty on two girls. Wait a minnit," he swayed a little and held a finger up at the girls. "You ain't from here, are you? Students?"
"Congratulations, Sherlock, exactly!" Zoey said. The bartender seemed to be out of cream but filled the girls' glasses up with water, muttering something about kids being bottomless pits. Now that some of Lizy's better senses were returning, she was starting to wonder how many muddy, bloodied kids came through this town that no one seemed to notice the shape the girls were in.
"Mm," Joe said, taking another drink of his beer. Then Lizy realized it: it was Halloween, and the two men probably thought she and Zoey were wearing costumes. "What are you doing all the way over here, then?"
"Well, it had something to do with being chased by a rake," Lizy said.
"Right," the bartender said. "My brother had the same thing happen to him, with a shovel. Or that's what he said for years and years." Joe broke into a loud belly laugh that irritated the girls. The bartender grinned, showing a few missing teeth. Lizy drew a sharp inhale.
"It's a monster, a creature, like a skinwalker," she said. "It's in a cave, somewhere in the forest. We got kidnapped by it and barely escaped. We need to get back to the school."
"Them garden tools are bad news," the bartender said, trying to push the joke onward. Joe, however, had taken a different attitude when Lizy mentioned skinwalkers.
"What?" He said. "Kidnapped you?"
"Yes," Zoey said. "It's close to the school—it got us by the nogtail pen."
"And the trowels dance around—"
"Shut up, Tan," Joe said. He pulled a couple of gold dragots out of his pocket and dropped them on the bar. "Go find something productive to do." Tan the bartender shrugged, pocketed the money, and went on his spindly way, muttering. Joe turned back to the girls. "Okay, maybe explain yourselves from the beginning."
***
Joe had a MACUSA-issued trike that made about thirty miles an hour with just one person on it. Now it had three: two pissed-off tween girls and a drunk magical sanitation inspector. It turned out that Joe lived in Midnight City, but it was his roommate who was the policeman, and he was in Vermont for the weekend. Joe had borrowed his roommate's jacket to go drinking that night because all of his uniforms had been burned after an ill-fated attempt to remove a blockage in the Midnight City sewers that turned out to be a bear wintering down. Joe's uniform was somewhat clean on the outside when he emerged, but his embarrassment at the inside led to the inferno that consumed it. And then all the rest of his uniforms. His owl had yet to reach MACUSA headquarters with his resignation, effective immediately.
After the girls had told their story and had described the rake's cave in horrendous, gory detail, Joe had frowned, and then threw open his communicator and told someone he had a couple of runaways from Ilvermrony and he was going to return them.
Lizy and Zoey sat together on the back of the trike, glaring at Joe's back. The trike skimmed the trees and Joe cursed, kicking the accelerator to make the trike arc back upwards.
"Why would we make it up?" Zoey muttered.
"Trick or treat," Lizy said. Zoey snorted.
"Maybe it's just me," she said. "But if two girls wandered into a bar, ate their weight in pretzels and were covered in mud and blood and telling stories about horrendous, demon monsters, I might put down my beer and listen to them!"
"Yeah, well, I guess you had to be there," Lizy said.
"Shaddup back there!" Joe said. "I need to concentrate!" The trike was veering from side to side as well as up and down. If Joe didn't get sick over the side, Lizy felt pretty sure she might.
"So, what's that letter?" Zoey asked. Lizy had pulled it out at the bar as evidence something weird was going on. It was a letter from April to Claire. Lizy didn't open it, but the contents felt sparse. Just a single panel of a card, maybe.
"It's—a letter from a friend to a friend," Lizy said.
"Why was it in the cave?"
"I—I don't know." Lizy frowned. "You said you saw a body?"
"Yeah. A woman. Half—" Zoey shivered.
"Was she—was she blonde?" Lizy asked. Zoey shrugged, and then shuddered. Lizy sighed and looked up at the stars. "Well, I guess we can hope."
Lights from the towers of Ilvermorny were coming into focus. They were still a good eight miles off from the school and Joe was cursing under his breath.
"Such a waste, and out of my paycheck too. Hope Folks or Greg or whatever the idiot's name is will repay me. This thing ain't cheap to run, and paying that crook Tan for your food, when you ran away like a couple of guilty prisoners...what was that?" Zoey squeaked and grabbed Lizy's arm, pointing down into the trees. Lizy looked over the side. Something was moving through the trees, something underneath them. Something big. Lizy and Zoey looked at each other.
"Can this go faster?" Zoey said. Joe was looking over the side of the trike, trying to get a look at what was moving beneath them.
"Eh?" He said. The trike began to list to the side and the girls screamed. Zoey threw her weight to the left, dragging Lizy with her.
"It's the rake!" Lizy cried.
"And the shovels. Probably just a hide-behind in heat," Joe said. He was trying to scoot back over to right the trike, dipping down toward the trees. Zoey grabbed his collar to help him right the bike. The rake was getting ahead of them, heading right for the school. Lizy watched its progress as the trike bobbed and dipped and eventually was righted.
"Seriously, speed up!" She cried right in Joe's ear. Joe stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it around.
"One more word out of you and I swear I'll make you walk—what in the Sam hill—" he said, unable to finish his question because his mouth wagged open. The rake had just burst into a clearing and roared. Though the night was dim, the form of the thing was visible, thanks to a ghostly phosphorescence that emitted from the monster's knotted, scarred skin. That little detail made it a bit more horrible.
"Speed up, speed up! It's going toward the school!" Lizy cried.
"Yes, ma'am," Joe said, his voice sounding far away as he revved the engine of the trike.