Cam’s brain was angry at himself at this point. It didn’t help that Amity’s words kept him up last night but the fact that him and Dalia had failed to talk to any of the three was infuriating. This was the last day they had before people began wondering where the two of them were. The fact that the excuse that they had let Bright go ahead a day early to find them a campsite made it all the flimsier. No one had called them out on it at the time though.

Then again, if people called him out on everytime he lied, he wouldn’t ever have time to work on his projects. Maybe he was being trusted with finding Bright? Maybe they knew but thought Dalia and him could do it without fucking things up? Yeah, right. He was born to fuck things up if his ancestry was anything to go off of. Even the parts his parents didn’t want him to know about…

“Focus Cam. You can do this.” Everything would turn out alright. He just had to manage to not freak out for once. The fact that he knew where Boscha should come from helped him with that. She should be coming to the changing rooms any minute now. Then if he had to resort to it, he knew one way to make sure she gave him at least a little bit of time to convince her to help him.

He tapped his pocket one more time before looking up and spotting her. Seeing her like this was… weird. He knew what he needed and wanted to say but he could feel his skin getting goosebumps at what might happen. After all, everything he knew about Boscha wasn’t exactly promising for this working.

But he wouldn’t back down. He straightened his tie, patted down his pants, waited for her to narrow her eyes at him, and then finally said, “MeandmyfriendOdalianeedyourhelp.She’snice,you’dlikeher,notlikethat,notagain,butalsodoesn’tmatter.Notwhilewe’relookingfor-”

And, just as he expected, Boscha grabbed his lips as she glared at him. “Okay, I will give you a minute for whatever it is you want if you never talk like that again.”

He nodded furiously and stepped a bit away from the locker rooms with Boscha before he began talking. “I’m Cam. Me and a friend of mine named Odalia have been looking for another one of our friends by the name of Bright. She’s hard to miss. Either she has a cat hoodie on, or,” he said as he clapped and summoned a small orb of light, “like her head is this or brighter.”

Boscha narrowed her eyes before crossing her arms. She didn’t know how to feel about this. On the one hand, he was some stranger who appeared out of nowhere, asking her for something, and claiming he knew some girl who glowed like one of Luz’s stupid light spells. On the other hand, “I know who you are. Amity told me about you yesterday.”

Cam paled at the statement before slipping his hands behind him so he could curl them into fists. “So I’m assuming she told you that I’m just some lazy loser?”

“Nope.”

Cam blinked a few times as Boscha slipped her hands into her letterman jacket. “She said she brushed off a guy who might have actually had a reason to be looking for her and that if I saw him that I should hear him out. Now I have.” She then turned on her heel and began walking away as she snarked, “And now I can go to practice.”

Cam ran in front of her before reaching into his pocket and holding up a small, golden potion. “The berserker potion. Guaranteed to make your body ignore all possible harm that’s been done to it and work at peak performance until it’s been hurt again.”

Boscha stopped dead in her tracks. She then snatched the potion out of Cam’s hand and popped it open. A sniff gave her confirmation that it smelled like death and slamming it down gave her the same exact sort of energy she would get when she needed to correct when she’d ‘relaxed’ herself too much. She hadn’t needed it for weeks once she stopped getting withdrawals and had considered tearing up the recipe so it couldn’t be made again. Get rid of any trace of that part of her. “Where the fuck did you get this?”

Cam took in a deep breath before saying, “I can’t say. I can only promise that they made me promise that I would never use it unless I absolutely had to. No excuses, no compromises. It had to be my last option, just as it is now to try and get your help. Please.”

Boscha looked at the vial in her hand. She’d been desperate when she first made it so it usually came with some pretty bad side effects. She had been refining it before she wanted to throw it to the side but the fact that she’d only been a little tired beforehand should be making it go wild inside of her. It didn’t have enough to suppress. But she was fine.

She looked up at the boy one more time before sighing. “Give me one good reason I should help you.”

Give me one good reason. Cam wanted to laugh but he knew better than to do so, especially now. He knew it was a bluff, but that was what he thought he knew. He thought he knew a lot of things but instead kept screwing up. So back to basics. Back to what he’d been taught when faced with something like this.

“Bright going missing is her mother’s greatest nightmare and I’m trying to get her back to her.”

Boscha smiled a little before saying, “You know, that’s a pretty good reason.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Cam sighed as he let his shoulders slump. Finally, a win. Now it was up to Odalia to get Amity on their side and Luz would join them just to help her friends out.

======+++++======

How? How!? Oh, she was so screwed. Dalia had problems talking to her Amity without needing to ask her for something. Worse yet, Cam mentioned that Amity had almost seemed like she’d recognized him somehow. Would she recognize her? After all, Cam skipping class was weird. Her…

Dalia sighed as she summoned a fireball to one of her hands. Unlike most witches though, it was effortless in spite of being almost the size of her head. She then tossed it into the air before summoning another. And another. And another. And at about seven she finally caught the first one and began juggling the burning, flickering flames. It was something she should be proud of. So powerful that she could do this sort of thing without thinking about it. Or she could summon a dozen tiny abominations to play checkers against an illusionary version of herself.

But that was part of the problem. She’d been trying to learn from Willow how to better control it but she didn’t have the same problem. Willow simply didn’t hold back when she got upset and lost control. Dalia was a wholly different problem. After all, she had to not think about her magic. If she actually thought about forming a fireball and empowering it-

She stopped only as she felt her left hand freeze. Her head snapped to the side and saw… Well, she suspected she might have seen Luz or Amity but instead she was looking at how her thoughts had made the fireballs coalesce into a ball so large that it had been threatening to eclipse Dalia and another second or two would have had it casually begin to burn the school down.

The cold on her hand helped her relax though and focus on the other side of the problem. She could cast magic easily but getting it to go away, to dismiss it… She panted as began working on bringing it down. The burden suddenly became much lighter as a purple clad arm extended itself and managed to get into Dalia’s peripherals before it cast a wide circle. It then made the rest of Dalia cold as Amity said, “A basic spell made larger is still a basic spell. Still,” she said as she snapped and the counter spell finished up, “it’s impressive you were able to make something like that.

Dalia swallowed hard as she tried to yank her hand free from the ice. “Um, uh, thanks. Think you can let me g-”

“I remember you from when you talked to Boscha.”

Why? Why did this have to happen to her? Dalia tugged on her trapped arm with her free hand but she didn’t dare risk another fire spell to melt the ice, not when she was beginning to panic. She told Cam he should come alone. That he would find a way into the Conformatorium if he had to on his own.

She then calmed as Amity placed both of her hands on her arm. She then looked up at Dalia and the shy girl gasped. She looked tired. So incredibly tired. Had she been staying up? Why would she have been? Dalia acted without thinking as she tapped the side of Amity’s neck with a crackling mote of energy at the end of it. For a second, the tired girl looked like she got a second wind, just as Dalia had hoped. It quickly faded though and, unfortunately, the shy girl was too focused on Amity’s eyes to see the black lines on the serious girl’s neck pulse and stretch before disappearing again.

Amity groaned as she touched her neck before saying, “Thanks, but I’ve tried potions and what not. I’m just happy that my professors are willing to let me do makeups on Monday since they could tell I was so tired that I could barely function. In fact,” she said as she looked at the ice pillar beside her, “I’m a little surprised I didn’t freeze you solid on accident.”

Dalia fidgeted as she looked back at Amity’s hands. They were so small but soothing nonetheless. “That would have been awful…”

Amity smirked for a second as she let out a hard exhale from her nose. She then looked back at Dalia and said, “Now, before I snap out of the sleep spell I cast myself and throw you off the banister, I suggest telling me why you’re here.”

Dalia turned white as a ghost at the threat. She had unfortunately, for Amity, been waiting for the serious girl near the library. Cam thought that since he couldn’t find her yesterday that maybe she was being allowed to study on her own or the like. If she didn’t show up, they’d regroup during lunch and figure out a different plan but if she did, Dalia was supposed to have been able to be ready for her. Instead, she’d distracted herself and neither could have known that Amity was desperate to take a nap for once, even if she failed every time she had tried yesterday.

Though, Amity was getting afraid of sleep at this point. The nightmares were getting worse, with the newest set having had every spell she cast seem to cost her someone in her life. Even a light spell had meant saying bye to Luz… It had led to the funny moment of casting a sleep spell on herself mostly making herself just zone out because her brain still somehow refused to shut off so she could get some rest.

As such, a small part of her was happy for the distraction as Dalia finally spoke. The shy girl had to take the chance after all. It’s not like she was going anywhere anyways. “Look, you met Cam yesterday, right? Well, he was genuinely looking for you. See, we have a friend named Bright who’s gone missing.”

At the mention of the name, Amity’s eyes became pinpricks before she looked over, “What?”

Oh. Dalia knew that voice. “It’s not our fault. She just ran away from home one night and we decided we would get her back. We’ve been trying to check with people to see if they’ve seen her and, uh,” she fidgeted for a second at how weird this would sound, “hoping you, Luz and Boscha would help us look…”

“That makes sense.”

“It does!?”

Amity blinked a few times before rubbing at her eyes before dismissing it. “Okay, not… too much effort.” She sighed as her shoulders slumped. “Is there a reason for only the three of us? If I talked to my mother, we could have all of the Blight family abominations begin scouring the Isle and have her probably found in a matter of hours.”

Dalia frantically shook her head. “No!” She then flinched and covered her mouth. Why was this so hard? Then again, she did the same thing with her friends so it was really why was it always this hard. She then swallowed hard and said more evenly, “No. Bright… We know you three won’t question what’s up with Bright. She can’t make noises after all and her hair is in part a giant light bulb. We’re worried that if the wrong people find them-”

“Then Belos would likely have her locked up and ‘examined’.”

Dalia sighed in relief that she didn’t have to say it. “We also don’t think she would have run off too far from this part of the Isles. She wants to explore but never on her own. If all six of us search for her, we should be able to stop her from just running off to another hiding spot. Or, that’s what Cam said. But he promised a ninety three percent chance so I think he’s right…” She smiled a little as she thought about Cam’s predictions. They were wrong most of the time but she never stopped believing him. Not when he usually didn’t take too long to identify what he had missed so he could move on. At least, when he was okay.

Amity did a small circle and dismissed the ice pillar before crossing her arms. “Okay. I don’t need sleep anyways,” her voice was sour enough to dry out a lake, “so I’ll see about getting Luz and Boscha to meet us…”

Where had Cam told her would be a good starting spot? “On the beach near the Owl House. She always really liked the sea.”

Amity nodded before pointing towards one of the exits. “Now, get out of here before Principle Bunk sees you and locks down the school.”

Dalia nodded before taking off, more than happy to get away from Amity. The serious girl watched her go before coughing into one of her hands. If she was getting sick… Her vision blurred for a second as she swore she saw blood, or something close to it, on her hand. When it cleared though, whatever it was was gone, absorbed into her skin or having never been there in the first place.

But one of the shadows was much, much darker than it should have been and, once alone, extended itself to the ceiling before the shade disappeared entirely. It had gotten what information it needed.