Max readied himself as Malik dove across the table toward him.

But Malik’s large hands grasped only emptiness. Max, already vanishing into the table’s shadow, had evaded capture.

This showdown with Gene’s bullies was Max’s chance to test new strategies he had formulated while reflecting on his earlier run-in with Sheriff Barker. Max had been mulling over the fact shadow hopping wasn’t simply vanishing in one shadow and reappearing in another. It was more like sinking into a shadow, and then being forcibly ejected from another, like a jack-in-the-box.

He had realized he could use this quirk of his power to his advantage.

Across the table, Ollie and Carlos blinked at where Max had disappeared. Rocketing out of the shadow stretching from the back of Ollie’s leg, Max seized the Brit’s ankles on the way up. Max’s momentum, driven by his forceful expulsion from the shadow realm, did the rest.

Ollie, heavier than Max but caught unawares, toppled over, banging his head hard against the table. Max released his hold and the Brit slumped to the floor, out cold.

Carlos reacted quickly to Max’s unexpected appearance near him, launching a fist at Max’s head.

But Carlos’ punch zoomed through empty air, throwing him off-balance, nearly making him fall. Max had already shadow hopped away.

He sprang from the shadow of a servitor a safe distance away. Carlos spun toward him as Max yanked a blaster from the inactive servitor’s holster. He fumbled with it, praying it was easy to use.

A switch was labeled Off—Stun—Maximum. Other than that, point and shoot. Simple. Max had fired guns back home more complicated.

Max flicked the switch to stun and aimed the blaster at Carlos, who was rushing toward him. Seeing the blaster, Carlos began glowing as he barreled toward Max.

“Move!” Max screamed at some students, holding his fire. Unfortunately, he had to wait for them to dive out of the way before pulling the trigger.

An energy pulse rippled from Carlos. The barely visible energy wave passed through the gun right as Max pulled the trigger.

Crap!

Max frantically pulled the trigger again and again, yet the blaster still didn’t fire. Carlos had clearly neutralized the weapon, possibly by employing an energy-draining electromagnetic pulse, just as he had with the servitors.

Carlos tackled Max before he could shadow hop to safety, knocking him over, falling on top of him. Max’s head bounced off the stone floor, and he saw stars. The blaster clattered out of his hands, skittering out of reach.

Straddling him, Carlos pinned Max down by his throat. Max tried to wriggle free, but Carlos was much too big and strong.

Carlos’ free hand rose, closing into a fist. Max got the sudden mental image—a premonition?—of his jaw sailing clean off his face.

“This one’s for Ollie!” Carlos snarled.

His fist plunged like a guillotine. It smacked into Max’s face, colliding like . . .

. . . a bag of marshmallows?

The impact didn’t even hurt much. It was like being punched by a water balloon.

Carlos, shocked, held up his fist. It and his upper arm wobbled like a bowlful of jelly.

“What the hell?” he cried.

“Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle,” Gene sang, stepping into Max’s view, standing over both him and Carlos. “It’s like that old Jell-O commercial,” the plus-sized girl added gaily.

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Then she clouted Carlos upside the head with a metal serving tray. A sound like a gong being struck echoed. Gene was strapping, and there was considerable force behind her swing.

With a pained cry, Carlos collapsed like a felled tree, falling next to Max. Free of the bigger boy’s weight, Max scrambled to his feet.

“Thanks,” he gasped at Gene.

She grinned at him, showing dimples. “No, thank you. You helped me when no one else did. One good turn deserves . . . ghaaaak!”

Max spun toward where Gene was gawking. Malik was charging toward them like an enraged bull.

Max’s instinct was to shadow hop away, but that would leave Gene alone in Malik’s path. In his anger, the muscle-bound student might forget his scruples about hitting women.

Though his sense of self-preservation screamed at him to flee, Max assumed a fighting stance. Or what he thought was a fighting stance from watching television. He knew he was about to get the beating of his life.

In a blur of motion, Damian appeared seemingly out of nowhere, his movements swift but precise. He grabbed Malik’s arm and spun, using the bully’s forward momentum against him. In what seemed an almost balletic display of martial arts, Damian twisted, flipping the far heavier student through the air.

Malik sailed toward a nearby table, crashed on top of it with a thunderous clatter, then tumbled off and hit the stone floor. Plates, glasses, and cutlery flew in his wake, smashing and shattering on the floor. Food and drink splattered in every direction, a chaotic spray of colors and textures, painting the floor and the nearest spectators Jackson Pollock-style.

“I thought you were staying out of this,” Max panted at Damian. “Tall poppies getting clipped, and all that.”

“If you’re someone’s friend, you back his play,” Damian replied. He kept his eyes on where Malik had fallen, completely calm and composed, like a fight breaking out was a normal part of his meals. Maybe where he was raised, a sumo attack was served for dessert instead of pound cake. “Even if the play is foolish.”

It was a good thing Damian hadn’t taken his eyes off of Malik, because the student in the Anarchy Division was far from defeated. Malik rose from the wreckage, his body dripping food and drink.

Then, his bulky form underwent a startling transformation.

His entire body turned pitch black, becoming void-like, as if he were a human-shaped hole instead of a person.

Two creatures shot out of Malik’s shadowy form, landing atop the table before him. They were humanoid, the size of small children, but with grotesque and distorted features. Instead of hands and feet, long claws that looked as sharp as razors were on the ends of their misshapen arms and legs. The creatures chittered loudly at a high pitch, sounding like they were simultaneously giggling and wailing. The inhuman sound set Max’s teeth on edge. Other students screamed.

The monsters’ beady black eyes fixed malevolently on Damian, Gene, and Max.

The creatures leaped into the air. They bounced from table to table like kangaroos, closing in on where the three students were clustered.

What the actual f—

But Max was too busy reacting to finish the thought. He snatched up a metal tray from a table, and swung it like a bat at the chittering ball of nastiness that was swooping down on him with its claws extended.

Thump!

Max’s swing was true, and the monster caromed through the air like a line drive. It smacked hard into a stone wall, disintegrating into a fetid cloud of black smoke.

A roundhouse kick from Damian served the second creature similarly. It too disintegrated when it slammed into a table.

“What in the bloody name of all that’s holy are those things?” Damian demanded, wild-eyed. It was the first time Max had seen Damian’s self-assurance dislodged.

“You mean you don’t know?” Max cried. “I was about to ask you!”

Two more monsters popped out of Malik. They oriented themselves on the table, then launched toward Max and his companions.

“If Malik has an inexhaustible supply of these creatures,” Damian said grimly, grabbing a steak knife, “we might have a real problem.”

“You think?” Max got his tray ready to swing again.

Gene’s hand was stretched toward Malik, her brow furrowed in concentration. Maybe it was the Dining Hall’s lighting, but her amber eyes suddenly seemed to have a metallic sheen.

“I think I see how he changed his body to this new form,” she panted. “I believe I can force him back to normal and stop him from spawning those things. Almost positive. Pretty sure. Uh . . . more like fifty percent sure. Forty if I’m being totally honest.”

Max creamed one monster with his tray. Evading the other’s claws, Damian stabbed it in its grotesque head with his knife. It poofed out of existence, leaving a smoky stench behind. Damian said to Gene, “If you’re not certain, maybe you shouldn’t—”

But his admonishment was too late. Gene dropped her hand with a triumphant cry, as if she had finally managed to pick a difficult lock.

Malik suddenly wailed. His pitch-black body compressed like an accordion, then sprang back out to three times its normal size.

“Something’s wrong!” he screeched in an otherworldly voice. “I can’t control it!”

His body collapsed in on itself like a building being demolished. As he collapsed, he liquified. A huge black puddle spread across the floor like hot tar, obscuring the stone beneath.

Clawed monsters, more than Max could count, boiled out of Malik’s tar body like angry ants from a disturbed nest. The Dining Hall roared with their terrifying chittering and the screams of the first years.

“Oh dear.” Wide-eyed, her hands over her mouth, Gene spoke in a very small voice. “That didn’t work like I thought it would.”

All hell broke loose.