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“Can’t have you dropping the F-bomb every two minutes. Tarquinius has an issue with bad language.”

“Son of a boot licker!” My jaw dropped and I tried again. “Kiss my asterisk! Fricky dicky doo da! You’re such a donkeyhole!”

I was panting hard, filled with horror at this newest twist. They could have just asked me to tone it down. Instead, he’d stripped me of control. One more chain binding me, trapping me.

I hated it.

His eyes didn’t so much as flicker as he held out his hand.

What was this now? An olive branch? With some serious trepidation I put my hand in his, and something flashed in his eyes as he jerked away like I’d burned him.

“Your bag , Ms. Daygon. Give me your bag.”

Ms. Daygon now? Okay . . .

“When do I get to see Opie?” I demanded as I handed over my bag.

“Tonight, at dinner,” he replied as he looked me over. “You will need your uniform.”

Before I could ask for my bag back, his fingers flickered through a series of shapes glowing with magic and the material on my body shifted from street clothes to school uniform.

I shot a glance down at my uniform then gaped at him. Yet another violation.

“You swapped my clothes?”

“You could do a rune like that to swap your own clothes if you hadn’t quit school,” he said, apparently taking my words as a compliment.

Bastard. At least he’d left me my knee-high boots.

The massive clock that hung on the octagonal brick wall of the main entrance hall ticked softly.

One minute to the top of the hour. The floors were tiled, solid white marble, the walls were paneled in a deep rich wood.

Banners for each of the houses hung on the walls in an array of colors, except for the wall against which the clock stood.

I couldn’t help it, my eyes went straight to House Phoenix.

The banner was new, and shiny, with gold and red embossing across the lettering.

One more soft tick, and the clock let out a boom as the hour struck. It rumbled like thunder as I stood there, and I found myself moving on instinct.

One second, I was alone. The next, a crush of students flooded the halls as they left their dorms and headed to class, but hardly anyone spared me a look.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I got a couple good side-eyes from some of the older kids.

In particular there was a nice little gang of boys that all tried to stare me down, as if glaring at me would somehow scare me off.

A quick glance at their cuffs confirmed their behavior – Draconell.

“Fresh meat,” the biggest of the boys growled as he went by.

Apparently, despite my new house, school wasn’t going to be any different than the first time around.

Great.

I made my way to the set of stairs to the left, the main set that branched off on each floor.

I stopped on the first floor. This was where a first year’s classes would be. A first-year student like Opie. It had been only yesterday that I’d seen her, but my anxiety spiked. What if they’d used her as bait to get me to come and she wasn’t even here? I needed to see her with my own eyes.

“I’ll be late anyway,” I muttered to myself as I hurried down the hall to my left, pausing at each door until I found her.

“I was in Rio, with my sister.” Opie’s voice filtered out through the doorway.

“Your sister Nilda?”

I swallowed hard and peeked into the classroom. Opie was turned away from me, facing two girls. One was smiling, the other had her head tipped to the side like she was inspecting a bug.

“No, Nilda doesn’t ... Nilda and I aren’t close. I was with Harlow. My ... I guess she’s my adopted sister.” Her shoulders curled in, like a protective cloak.

There was a long pause, then the smiling girl shrugged. “Cool, you want to sit with us?”

And just like that, Opie lit up, and followed the two girls to seats near the back of the room.

I lifted a hand to her back, a bittersweet sense of acceptance settling in my chest. We were here, and that wasn’t likely to change in the immediate future.

I fingered the note in my pocket with a sigh.

I’d written it for Opie on the plane ride over and had stuck it in my boot in the hopes of giving it to her as soon as I got here.

Just a bunch of random thoughts about Neverthorn, the other houses, and how to keep your head above water in a place like this when you didn’t belong. Clearly, it would have to wait.

“See you later, kiddo,” I whispered, turned and jogged toward my own class.

The third floor was nearly empty, with only a few students roving the halls. I hadn’t been up this high during my first run at Neverthorn. All my classes and my House Felinita rooms had been on the first floor, near to the kitchens.

I sighed as I slowly made my way to room 308. A voice was echoing past the door, into the hallway.

I leaned against the wall to listen before I let myself in.

“There are eight of you now, but by the end of the year, several will have gone home, if not more. We are looking for the best of the best, the one who can take Heronius’s place. Although I must admit, I can’t imagine that person is here ...”

That voice was vaguely familiar, though I didn’t remember a Doyenne Elmwood.

“Agree,” a male voice chimed in. “Heronius is dead, and he was supposed to be the best of the best. It seems like a suicide mission to me.”

“Luckily, no one asked for your opinion, Mr. Weatherby.”

That voice . . .

Suddenly, a memory hit me so hard, I actually stumbled backward, my chest clenching.

“You hide your cruelty behind all that makeup, but I see you,” I snapped at Nikita. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything, I knew I should have just kept my head down, but she was picking on one of the littles in the lunchroom again.

Her fake red hair swung to the side, and brilliant blue-green eyes narrowed as the bane of my existence wove a rune rapidly, sending me flying.

“And you have a lot of opinions for someone who can’t do even half of what they should be able to by this point in the year. Why is that?” Her fingers flew through the runes again, and I was lifted from my chair and propelled toward the door, which I hit hard enough to knock the wind out of me.

Nikita stood over me, smirking. “Is it because you didn’t have a daddy to teach you?

Or is it because every time something gets hard, you freak out, cover your ears, and start sweating like a racehorse?

Maybe you should do us all a favor and use that bag they give you to breathe into and put it over your head instead. ”

I shook off the memory, and shoved the door open, stepping into room 308.

I already knew what I’d see, but it was still a shock to my system.

“Ahhh ... welcome, Ms. Daygon. Many thanks for gracing us with your presence today. I see you are one step behind the rest of the class, per usual.”

Nikita Pendergast, my former schoolmate and nemesis. She still looked the same, if a little older.

I forced a grin as I eyeballed her copper hair, and the fake smile painted on her crimson lips.

“And I see you’re still a raging bully with a god complex and a bad dye job. Good to know that things haven’t changed around here.”

And that’s how I ended up with detention not fifteen minutes into my first day back in Neverthorn Academy.