Like maybe now? The acidy oatmeal-OJ-hot-chocolate combo was rising in her throat again. She had to get her anxiety level down, fast. She wouldn’t do anything dramatic—just an itsy, bitsy, under-the-radar spell from Callixta Crowe’s confidential witchcraft manual (a printout of which she’d accidentally stumbled upon in her old public library, hidden under a boring book jacket with the title The History of the Finnish War 1808–1809).
She peered around to make sure no one was looking. A sea of pastel-clad girls swept by. Argh. Why had she settled on all-black after the multiple outfit changes? She looked like a lump of coal in a basketful of Easter eggs. Black had been the go-to in New York, but obviously not here.
The pastelly girls disappeared around the corner. The coast was clear. Iris reached into her backpack, pulled out her phone, and pretended to check it. With her free hand, she touched her smiley-face moonstone pendant.
“Cessabit,” she whispered. “I am peaceful. I am confident.”
The moonstone warmed. It sparked against her skin—tiny electric sparks like the fizzy emanations from a firecracker.
Nothing.
“Oh, come on. Cessabit! I am peaceful! I am confident!” she hissed through clenched teeth.
Seconds later, the nausea began to diminish. The pounding in her ears stopped. Her heartbeat slowed to normal. Her whole body calmed.
Yes!
Buoyed by her success, she impulsively added another incantation.
Underneath her lump-of-coal sweater, her faded black 1984 tee—WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE—morphed imperceptibly into a cute, stylish pink top.
“With ruffles,” Iris whispered.
The neckline blossomed into a semicircle of rose-colored ruffles. Nice! She wriggled out of her sweater and stuffed it into her backpack.
Someone bumped into her from behind, hard. Her backpack tumbled to the floor, spilling its contents.
Startled, Iris spun around. A guy stood there, glaring at her. He wore black jeans, black boots, and a black shirt with a shoulder patch. (So some people here did dress in all-black.) His dark hair was super-short and streaked with blue.
“Oh! I’m sorry!” Iris blurted out, although why was she apologizing? He’d bumped into her.
The guy didn’t reply, just continued glaring at her. His shoulder patch had a stark, almost geometric design of what looked like a birdcage suspended over a bonfire. It seemed familiar—and it was definitely creepy. Flustered, Iris dropped to her knees and grabbed at her belongings: her sweater, pens, notebooks, phone, and a tube of Pretty in Pomegranate! lip gloss. (Fortunately, she’d left her wand at home.) Her panic and nausea were seeping back. Had the guy seen her perform the calming spell?
As she reached for the lip gloss tube, the guy stepped on it. The sole of his boot just missed her fingers as he kicked it and stalked off. It skidded across the checkerboard floor and pinged against a locker.
Iris rose to her feet unsteadily. She realized that her hands were shaking, and that she had stopped breathing.
She remembered where she’d seen that shoulder patch before.
On TV. The story about the Texas witch. The Antima members the reporters had interviewed were wearing that same patch.
“Hey, are you okay?”
A tall, cute guy picked up her lip gloss and handed it to her.
“Um…” Iris’s throat felt dry.
He bent down and scooped up the rest of her stuff. “Are you new here? I don’t remember you from last year.”
“I…”
Iris took her backpack from him and made herself do more therapy-breathing—six in, six hold, six out. She was safe. The scary guy was gone. This guy seemed nice. And he wasn’t wearing an Antima shoulder patch—just a plain white polo shirt and khakis.
“Yup, I’m definitely a big ol’ newb. And thanks. Um, so, I think I’m supposed to go to my homeroom now. Can you tell me where—” She pulled her schedule out of the side pocket of her backpack, scanned it quickly, and flipped it around. “Sorry, upside down! Can you tell me where Room 125 is?”
“I can show you. By the way, I’m Colter. Colter Jessup.”
“Bond. James Bond,” Iris joked in a British accent. Yeah, could she be more awkward? “JK, I’m Gooding. Iris Gooding.”
“What year are you, Iris?”
“I’m a sophomore.”
“Me too. Hey, did you get Cram for algebra?”
“Cram? Hmm, let me see.…”
Iris adjusted her glasses and looked over her schedule as Colter gave her the lowdown on teachers—who was easy, who was difficult, who had perpetual bad coffee breath. As they rounded the corner and passed what appeared to be the library, Iris closed her eyes briefly, touched her moonstone pendant, and mouthed the word cessabit. Everything was fine. The Antima guy probably hadn’t seen her perform the spell; and if he had, she could always track him down and do a memory-erase.
Still, the fact that he’d been wearing that shoulder patch upended her rosy assumptions about Sorrow Point being a witch-friendly (or at least not a witch-hostile) town. There were Antima members here.
“Sanchez talks way too much about his cats in class,” Colter was saying.
Something grazed the back of Iris’s neck.
She slapped a hand against the spot. What the hex? She turned—but there was no one, nothing there. Except for a couple of students up ahead, this section of the hallway seemed to be deserted.
Or not? Iris turned the other way and spotted three girls in the doorway of the library. A girl in a Juilliard hoodie, a girl with pink hair and a Hello Kitty backpack, and a girl in a green boho dress with soft auburn curls down to her waist.
They were staring at her.
“You’ll totally get A’s, though, if you do the extra-credit labs,” Colter was saying. He paused and reached into his pocket. “Sorry, someone’s texting me.”
Iris inched closer to him as he checked his phone. She pulled out her own phone and typed a gibberish text while side-eyeing the three girls. Why were they looking at her?
Wait… could they be Antima, too? There were female Antima members apparently,
