Page 65 of Magical Mission

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer right away.

He just reached me, face flushed, hat askew, and opened his mouth to speak.

Chapter Sixteen

“Maeve!” Twobble gasped, eyes wide, breath shallow.

He skidded to a stop in front of me, panting like he’d sprinted the entire length of the west wing and back again. His sparse green hair stood in every direction, his cloak had come unfastened at the shoulder, and his entire expression screamedurgency.

I reached for his shoulder to steady him. “What is it? What did you find?”

But before he could answer, before even a single word made it past his lips, the air shifted.

I felt it first in my chest. A flicker. A sudden tension, like the entire room inhaled and forgot how to exhale.

Twobble’s head jerked toward the ceiling.

“What was—”

The sound cut him off.

Apop,sharp and unnatural, echoed through the grand foyer.

Not a small magical spark. Not one of the usual student mishaps.

This was deeper.

Thicker. Like the crack of pressure against stone.

A magical earthquake.

The floor beneath usrippled.Not visibly, but I felt it in the arches of my feet, the tremble of energy threading upward through the polished stone. A few of the students nearby froze mid-laugh. Several turned, their faces pinched with confusion.

The air was changing.

Then—bang.

A pulse of light flickered near the high archway that led to the corridor between the Maple and Library wings. Pale, silvery, and cold.

Twobble backed up into my side.

“Maeve,” he whispered, grabbing my arm.

The laughing stopped.

All across the foyer, students fell into a hush that only came when every instinct, magical and mortal, went suddenly alert.

“Did someone just cast something?” one girl asked, voice trembling.

“I didn’t…no, I didn’t do anything…” another stammered.

“No one cast anything,” I said firmly, loud enough to carry. “Everyone, stay calm.”

But the magic in the room wasn’t listening to me.

Bang—again.