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“There’s only five people left in her classroom now, and one of them is Phyllis!

” A girl with curly black hair, and skin a few shades lighter than Ross, was shaking her head in disbelief as she gravitated toward us.

“I don’t remember Elmwood being a teacher when I went here the first time.

And there is no way I am letting some chick who’s maybe five years older than me talk to me like I’m a child now that I’m grown.

It’s just not going to happen, and I had to explain that to her.

” She wiggled her fingers at me. “Name’s Marina. ”

“Harlow,” I replied with a wave in return. “Who’s Phyllis?”

“Phyllis is the sixty-five-year-old lady that was sitting in the corner of the classroom,” Fable said, adjusting her glasses.

“Apparently, because House Phoenix was a late addition to this semester, they had no one available to oversee us. She’ll be acting as our house mother but will also be coming to classes with the rest of us. To make sure we behave.”

Strange. All of it was so very strange.

“And who else is left?” I asked, my brain trying to follow this turn of events.

“There’s Gary the one with the bright red hair, two girls, one named Ellie and the other Caterina, and a guy named Zeed Sorn. He’s super smart,” Marina said.

“Agree,” Fable chimed in with a nod. “He was two years ahead of me, but we were friendly, and there’s no question that he was one of the smartest kids at Neverthorn.”

“The rest of us are probably wasting our time,” Marina said.

“What makes you say that?”

Fable shot a glance at Ross and then Marina before shrugging.

“I did really well on all the book stuff ... same as Zeed, but from what we’ve been able to gather it seems like none of us exactly graduated at the top of our classes as far as rune crafting is concerned ... unless you did?” Fable asked, looking at me.

“Oh, god no,” I snorted. “I wasn’t even bottom of my class. I spent less than four months in this place, and my traditional rune-crafting skills are trash.”

The sudden hush that had fallen over the room was eerie, even for a library.

“If we all sucked then what the fruck are we doing here? Why us?” Marina murmured. “Gods, I hate this gag!”

“No clue, but I agree with Marina,” Ross said with a slow nod. “I bet Zeed’s got this locked down. We should all just let him have the job and walk away.”

“No one has this job “locked down”,” a crusty female voice chimed in, “as is evidenced by all you ingrates being in detention at once. Ellie, Caterina, and Gary are barely holding on in that class.”

I looked up to find an older woman entering the room. A frown deepened the already very deep lines in her face. She might have been sixty-five, but she’d clearly had a rough run of it. I noted with surprise that she was wearing what looked like all-black widow’s weeds from the Victorian era.

Phyllis, if I was a guessing girl.

A tall, lean guy around the age of twenty with the face of a Michelangelo painting, swept into the room behind her, mouth puckered like he’d just eaten a lemon. Green eyes, thick straight black hair…I wasn’t sure but if I were to guess, I’d say he was of Asian descent.

Ross chuckled. “Zeed, not you too, my man? What, was she upset that you’re prettier than her?”

“Elmwood is loathsome. Positively loathsome. All I was trying to do was explain to her why her logic was flawed, and she kicked me out,” Zeed snapped, shooting Ross a dirty look.

“I’ll not have you badmouthing the teachers here. She’s under a great deal of stress, as are we all,” Phyllis said in her pack-a-day voice. “You have the rest of Doyenne Elmwood’s class period to utilize the library and finish your five-thousand-word reports.”

“Five thousand words ... That’s the only option?” Zeed asked, frowning.

“Apparently now it is. You can thank your classmate Harlow here for that since she tried the sonnet option and ruined it for the rest of you,” Phyllis said, shaking her head at me sternly.

“I’ll be back at noon on the dot. Then we will go to Politics, followed by Weather Manipulation to close out the day. ”

It was only when she tapped it hard on the stone floor that I realized she was carrying a walking cane.

“You can get on the right foot again if you just accept the fact that you’re all back in school and need to behave as such.

It’s not because Tarquinius wants to be mean.

It’s because there’s a chance that some of us .

.. or you lot, at least, will be facing situations with life-or-death consequences.

So, let’s show our Sage that we can be good and obedient students this time “round, shall we?”

She scanned the back of the room, locking eyes with each of us in turn, but seeming to linger on me the longest. She’d already clocked me as trouble. She might be older than the rest of us, but her mind was sharp as a tack. No wonder they’d put her in charge of us.

Okay, Phyll. I see you.

“Off you go!”

Hecate only knew why I cared if this lady was disappointed in me or not, but I found myself standing quickly to join the others.

As Marina, Zeed, and Ross exited the room as a group, all grumbling under their breath, Fable hung back, eyeing me in question.

“Want to work together? If you want to gather sources, I can start writing,” she said, her cheeks going pink. “I know a fair bit about both Naomi Gonzalez and Artemis Norcroft already.”

I’d heard of both in passing, so I nodded.

“Plus, I’m great at research,” she added.

I doubted I’d be here long enough to make friends, but it beat trying to do this thing alone. Besides, she was House Felinita first too ... we had that in common.

For the next hour, I scoured the library for everything I could find on the dark witch and wizard we’d selected. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot. Four full biographies, two for each, and countless mentions of them in various Dwimmer encyclopedias and textbooks.

“Perfect,” Fable said with a delighted smile as I set yet another tome down on the table with a thunk .

“Now if you can check the microfilm and see if we can get something a little more personal about each of them. It was over a hundred years ago, so there won’t be any video clips, but you might find some archived black and white photos from when they were kids or something like that.

It adds a nice touch to see how they started out so innocent and then .

..” she curled her hands into claws and narrowed her eyes menacingly, “went bad.”

I found the closest bank of laptops and took a seat. Fingers crossed, I clicked on the little wizard, and this time he took me to an intranet. It took some poking around, but eventually I found what Fable was looking for. Video clips of hundreds of witches and wizards, archived alphabetically.

I went for Naomi first, typing in her last name, and found three images. I clicked on the last, and a faded sepia-toned image opened on the screen. It featured a child holding a half-eaten wedge of watermelon, the other half of which she wore on her shirt and face.

Naomi was a real cutie, with a wide smile and chubby cheeks. She didn’t look like she’d grow into the woman who had later started an underground movement to kill all the human Dims and create an entirely magical world.

Sounded familiar. It was like every dark wizard’s greatest wish, to wipe out the Unlit world and everyone in it.

I scrolled to the previous image and opened it to find an engagement photo from an old newspaper.

She was married in December of 1936, and the joy that had been brimming from her in the previous picture had drained away.

She looked ... defeated. Like someone had put a lampshade on her light.

It made me feel weird and maudlin, so I exited out.

The most recent image was dated a year after that, and I didn’t bother to open it.

“Let’s show them the good old days, before you went to the dark side, how about that, Naomi?” I murmured, sending the image to a nearby printer.

I scrolled to the Ns and found Norcroft next. Over a dozen images popped up. Figured. Men got all the glory back then.

I had just finished printing the last of three images I’d selected for old Arty and was about to shut down the wizard when I stopped myself.

It was probably a bad idea.

For all I knew, it might even send some alarm bells blaring.

Then again, no one had said I couldn’t ...

My fingers twitched as I scrolled upward.

Norcroft.

Nopler.

Nolan.

I froze as I stared at the name on the screen in front of me, which seemed somehow larger than all the others even though I knew it wasn’t.

Nocta.

Did I really need to know more about him right now? Maybe I could scare myself even more sheetless another day, after I’d gotten over the shock of even being here.

To click or not to click. That was the –

Click .

A dozen image files appeared, newspaper clippings appeared, and I scanned the headlines.

Car Accident Kills Treasurer Wenton and Two Young Children Found to be the Work of Nocta.

Near Miss as Nocta Reaches the Shores of Dark Island Before Being Stopped by Heronius.

End of an Era ... Heronius Slain, Nocta declares open war.

I sucked in a breath through my nose and let it out slowly.

Nope. I didn’t need to read any of this sheet. Not right now. Not when I’d met the ragtag crew of second-rate runecrafters slated to defeat him.

Then again, to know thine enemy was to know thyself. Wasn’t that the saying?

I just still wasn’t sure whether Nocta was my enemy yet or not.

The chances of me having to face him at all were slim to none.

In fact, none of my new housemates exactly inspired confidence.

I had to assume there was something we hadn’t been told yet.

Something that made Tarquinius think one of us was capable of more than just getting kicked out of class on day one.

What made House Phoenix different? That was maybe the real question here.

I was about to close the last of the clippings when I saw the link. A single video file at the bottom of the screen, dated just weeks ago. I tried to open it, but my hand seemed frozen. In fact, my whole body was suddenly icy with fear.

He’s not going to leap through the screen, dummy.

I sucked in a deep breath and let it out through my nose, and then I opened it. A pretty newscaster with a megawatt smile popped up.

“And that’s it for a list of this month’s centenarian wizards and witches. May all of you make it to your bicentennial!”

Her smile dimmed, and a frown skated across her face as she held one finger to her nearly invisible earpiece.

“And this just in, a Dwimmercraft Digest exclusive. Witches and wizards ... for the first time in nearly fifty years, we have what we believe is an image of Nicodemus Oliphant ... otherwise known as the infamous wizard, Nocta.”

The woman disappeared and a picture materialized in her place. I stared at it for a long moment as the cold fingers of dread trailed down the back of my neck.

The image was a screen grab of a video, so the pixelation was not great.

The man staring back at me had distinguished salt and pepper hair and an angular face that most would call handsome.

But it was his eyes that held me captive.

It had been decades since I’d seen those eyes, and it had been only the once, but they were just as I remembered.

Full of rage, and pain, and a touch of madness.

Purple, with silvery irises, just like mine.

“Who’s that?” Fable whispered from over my shoulder.

But I couldn’t even make my throat work to reply.

Because the man in that picture – Nocta, the greatest evil in our world. The big bad wolf lurking around every corner. The reason I was here at Neverthorn ...

Was my father.