The real trouble began in November.

Everything had been as it was: the routine Mira and Magic had in the morning continued as it did every day and Magic was far more receptive to Mira’s advice than he had been at the start of school and after his week-long absence. They sat with Mabel in the alley before school, feeding her leftovers and scraps that Mira collected from her own dinner the night before, since Magic didn’t have any of those to give.

As each day passed, the tabby appeared in the alleyway earlier and earlier, almost as if she were waiting for their arrival. It was odd, Mira noted, for Mabel to show agency like that (though she attributed it to the consistency of being fed a grand feast every morning). Odder still was the stray’s preference of sitting with Magic over her.

Mira grew used to stewing in her own frustration on those mornings. It was a stupid thing for her to be annoyed about. The cat did wonders for her brother’s anxiety and excelled in keeping him calm. She knew this. For all intents and purposes, this should have been a good thing. But it upset Mira that the kitten she had essentially raised preferred someone else over her and her demands for affection slowly dwindled over time.

It didn’t take long for Magic to catch on.

“You’re staring,” he said one morning while they were crouched in the alleyway. Mabel was on his lap, sitting on her haunches so that her back was pressed against him, pawing at the air. Occasionally she batted at Magic’s chin, leaving playful red streaks along his olive skin.

Mira didn’t even realize she was staring until he pointed it out. “I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

“About?”

“Nothing particularly important.”

Magic blinked. “It’s important enough for you to zone out.”

“Since when do you ask questions?” Mira kicked out one of her legs, propping an arm on her knee. “I thought asking a bunch of questions was my job.”

“I ask questions, too,” Magic replied, sounding childishly offended. “But you look … far.”

“What do you mean ‘far’? What are you talking about?”

“You’re frowning and zoning out and rubbing your hands together—which you only do when you want to say something. But you aren’t.”

Mira took a breath through her nose, tipping her head back until it met the brick wall behind her. “I didn’t know I had a tell.”

“You have a lot of tells, Mira.” Magic was looking at her now, eyes bright, a golden forest in the early morning sun. “I’ve learned a few of them. I know that you always take a really big breath before you go on a tangent, and that you talk about an adventure with your hands behind your back.”

“Interesting.”

“What?”

Mira shook her head. “Nothing. I just … I didn’t realize how much you knew. Or what you saw.”

Her brother shrugged with the lazy motion of letting a coat fall off his shoulders. “I see everything. Besides, people are patterns. Just…sometimes they’re easy to read and sometimes they … shift.” Magic ran a hand through his hair, tucking loose strands behind his ears, ignoring Mabel as she prodded at the headphones ringed around his neck. “And when that happens, it gets hard. I still don’t know what to do when the pattern changes; words don’t come easily in my head like they do for you. But it doesn’t mean I don’t notice them, I just … I don’t know what to do about it.”

A small smile tugged at her face, complete with a low chuckle. Mira could at least give him credit for that explanation. “Can I give you a suggestion, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I hold Mabel for a bit? I just want to have some time with her before we head in.”

He returned the smile—it didn’t last long; Mira was almost certain she’d imagined it—and without a word, lifted Mabel from beneath her forearms and handed the tabby over. It wasn’t a complete resolution since the cat had gotten up and walked back over to him not long after, but for each day since, they implemented this small change into their routine.

Even in school things seemed to be working well.

And they had been, until the 20th of November.

Mira left her fourth period class early, expecting to find Magic waiting for her in the hall like he had been since October. When she stepped out of view from the doorframe, her brother was nowhere to be found. He was not lounging by the lockers, nor was he sitting on the ground beside them. The hallway was empty.

It was strange for Magic to abandon a routine. Mira knew he wasn’t a fan of having to rely on her, but she didn’t think he’d go so far as to abandon her there by her classroom. Torn between wandering the halls to search for him and waiting for him to arrive, Mira settled for standing awkwardly in the hallway just outside of her classroom. So badly, she wanted to give her brother the benefit of the doubt, but that hope dwindled when the bell rang and the halls flooded with kids.

She weaved her way through the crowd, skittering down the steps to the lunchroom in the hopes that maybe Magic had simply beaten her there. Sometimes he liked to do things on his own. What if he just decided to go ahead today?

A nagging voice in Mira’s head told her it was wrong, but she wanted to hope. She had to hope to keep her rising pulse at bay.

But the hope died as she lingered in the doorway to the cafeteria on the first floor, bracing the shoves and bumps from other students as they went past into the room. Mira clutched the doorframe to keep herself stable.

Her usual table was overrun with seniors, identifiable by the purple lanyards around their necks, and juniors, mint green like a collar at their throats. Intuition rose the hair on the back of Mira’s neck, filling her stomach with nausea. She took a breath.

Magic was nowhere to be found.

Panic rose in her nerves, but she played it off as much as she could, getting in line for lunch to grab a bag for her and Magic if he decided to show up late.

He should be here already. There’s no reason for him not to be.

She loitered around the doorway and tapped her foot restlessly, unwilling to take her bags and sit at another table. The clock across the room ticked endlessly, seconds giving way to minutes that made her brother’s lack of an appearance all the more worrying.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

After ten minutes, she scanned the room again, gaze settling reluctantly on Callie and the Peppers. The girls were whispering to each other, some tilting their heads back in laughter. Anger was a clamp in her throat that made breathing difficult, discomfort weaving webs in her lungs. As much as it would knock Mira’s pride down a peg to waltz over and ask Callie for information, she didn’t have many options.

She needed answers.

And she was going to get them.

“Callie,” Mira said, the girl’s name a wavering breath as she approached—it was not lost on her that the conversation died when she arrived—and tapped her shoulder. “I need to talk to you.”

“What you need can wait, Mirabel,” Callie replied, skimming through her notebook with a shaky hand.

“No, I need to talk to you,” she repeated.

“It can wait—”

“It’s urgent, Callie.”

Callie dropped the page she was turning with an aggravated sigh before turning to the other girls and placating them as she got up—It won’t be long. It’s just about a Geography test—and followed Mira outside of the cafeteria. Callie leaned against a bulletin board just to the left of the double doors while Mira stood in front of her, arms crossed over her chest. “Start talking.”

Callie squinted, her blue eyes hard, accentuated by the rim of brown in her right iris. Her posture was slumped, as though she had better things to do with her time. She copied Mira and crossed her arms, holding them just above her stomach. “What are you talking about?”

“Where is my brother?”

“I don’t know where the Gh—where your brother is.”

At least she had the decency to correct herself. “I don’t believe you. Not when your posse over there is laughing like they’d just heard the funniest joke in the world and the table I usually sit at with Magic is overrun with jocks!”

Now Callie stood straighter. “I don’t like the insinuation that I have something to do with this.”

It was in moments like this where she wished she had gotten her father’s height instead of—supposedly—her mother’s. Callie was a few inches taller than her and, while she hadn’t noticed it before, standing with her now, alone, in the hallway, made Mira feel small. Not belittled—she could handle Callie any day of the week. Just tiny.

Maybe a pair of heels can make it easier.

How so?

You can’t kiss me from where you’re standing.

Fine by me. I love a good challenge.

Mira blinked, shoving the memory away. Focus. “Why?” she taunted. “Because then you’d have to take responsibility? Because then you’d have to deal with the truth that these girls just trample over you and everyone else they damn well please?”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Stop bullshitting me, Callie. You were nervous when I came up to you, so either you explain what your fucking group of lowlives did to my brother or you’re going to walk back into that lunchroom with a broken bone.”

Callie glared at her. “You wouldn’t—”

Mira didn’t waste a second. She dropped the lunches, seized Callie’s wrist, and pushed her back into the wall, twisting it to one side as she clapped her other hand on the girl’s mouth as she whimpered. The sadistic thing in her wanted to keep going, wanted to lean into the punishment, make it so, so much worse. Mira restrained herself. Another day, she promised silently.

“Let’s not say things we know aren’t true,” she whispered sweetly. “I’m gonna let you go, but if you lie to me again, I will snap it.”

The girl nodded and Mira released her, watching painfully as Callie rubbed at her twisted wrist, leaning back against the wall with a shuddering breath that broke Mira’s heart. “I don’t know where he is—and that is the honest truth before you think about twisting my arm again. I don’t have classes with him—not even in my joint-grade ones. I wouldn't know where he is.”

The dismissive tone made Mira unbearably angry. She paced back and forth, snatching up the lunch bags from the floor, desperate to release the energy raging through her. She could’ve punched something. Her heart was pounding and this was getting her nowhere. Mira didn’t know how much time she had left or how much time she had wasted questioning Callie, but she was running out of it and every worst case scenario buzzed through her mind like a swarm of unwelcome flies.

“Callie,” Mira said, trying to keep desperation out of her voice, “I need you to please, please be honest with me. Fuck the Peppers. Fuck everyone. What did they do to my brother?”

Callie bit her lip and, though she looked physically pained by the action, like she was going to regret ever doing this, motioned for Mira to approach. “I don’t know what they did. But I know a little bit about September. There were those rumors going around about something in the lockers and some of the Shuffle players took that as an opportunity to throw some of the younger freshmen into the lockers.

“Most of the targets were quiet about it,” she went on, keeping her voice a low whisper. “But one of them flipped out—a girl in Grade 8 saw part of it and snitched on one of the guys. Got him suspended for a week. One of the Peppers has a sister that shares a morning and afternoon class with your brother. He never made it to his afternoon classes that third week of September.”

Mira stepped back, shock and realization hitting her like a slap to the face.

That was what he refused to tell her.

Callie twirled a strand of blonde hair around her index finger. “I don’t know where he is,” she repeated, “but if I had to take a guess—based on who took over your table—I know it won’t be anything good. They know who he is, Mirabel. They know his schedule and his fears—the headphones make that obvious. But they won’t stop here.”

Untamed aggression reared its head again and Mira lifted her hands, halfway to grabbing Callie by the shoulders, but she had enough sense to rethink her actions. Berating Callie’s complacency wouldn’t do anything and Magic’s fate had already been sealed nearly a half hour ago.

Mira walked back into the cafeteria and stared at the clock.

10:47. Ten minutes left.

She took a breath, transferring both lunch bags to one hand. “Calliope, I need you to do me a favor.”

Callie frowned. “Why me?”

“Because you’re one of the few people in this school with enough common sense to not cross me when I’m pissed. I need you to go to Miss Barrister’s office to warn her about what’s going to walk through her door.”

“What for?”

If she hadn’t been so irritated, Mira might have forgiven the genuine curiosity in the girl’s tone. “Because. Your group of friends is what got me—and you—into this mess. You’re going to clean it up and tell the nurse to expect a visitor in her room. And for the record, it won’t be a pretty sight. Just in case you had your doubts as to what people like them do to people like my brother.”

Callie’s mouth twisted into something that might have been a grimace. She lifted her hands in a defeated shrug before kicking herself off the wall, making it a few steps away before she paused, bouncing a little on her toes. “Y’know,” Callie said, glancing over her shoulder, “if the girls weren’t going to blackmail me with my grades and my mother’s job, I would’ve come to you sooner.”

“All vipers have fangs, Callie. Even if they hide them from you. Just do this one favor for me and I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the year.”

The taller girl hesitated, nodded once and whispered, “Aye-aye, Captain,” before making a quick jog in the direction of the nurse’s office.

Mira found herself taken aback. Since when had Callie known the little code she, Janie, and Thalia had made for themselves? Or had her friends been trying to court Callie onto their side as much as Mira?

Her head spun with unanswered questions, but now was not the time to be focusing on school alliances. She had a little less than fifteen minutes to find Magic and she intended to find him before that bell rang.

Silently, Mira thanked Callie for the information before forcing her legs up three flights of stairs.