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I barely got the words out before more screams came. Ahead of us, students raced across the hallway, running from one open doorway to another. Professor Warbright scrambled out of the doorway behind them, looking like he was running from something. His hair was disheveled, and his pocket watch dangled out of his coat. They looked to be running from someone.
“We have to stop the Executors,” I said, racing forward.
What I found wasn’t Executors at all. I gazed through double doors into the cafeteria, where Professor Leto stood in the center of the room, laughing maniacally while he raised his hands into the air. He was loving this—all this death, all this trauma. It was a demon’s playground here.
“This is all your doing!” I accused.
Leto’s laughter died, and his amused gaze roamed over me. “I appreciate the faith you have in me, but I’m merely taking advantage of the situation. You’d do the same.”
“Go to hell,” Priestess Charlotte sneered, pushing past me and into the room. She clutched her injured chest, but she found the strength to conjure magic in her hand and aim it at him.
Leto noticed her, and his laughter died abruptly. “Priestess, we had a deal,” he said coolly.
“Not anymore,” Charlotte sneered. “I withdraw my consent, and I banish you to the Abyss!”
She flung her spell at him, and it hit Leto square in the chest. Magic sizzled across his form, but he just laughed, like it merely tickled. Charlotte’s spell hadn’t worked. He quickly blasted his own spell back at her.
“Priestess!” Chloe screamed. She and Miles ran into the room and caught Charlotte just in time to dodge the attack. Their cats screeched as they narrowly missed the spell. The spell hit the wall, and Leto ducked through the doors near the kitchen.
“I’m not strong enough. We have to banish him together!” Charlotte cried.
Nadine and I ran forward. The moment we passed through the doorway, Chloe and Miles disappeared, along with Charlotte. Instead of stepping into the cafeteria, we’d entered another hallway. The space-bending spell must’ve shifted the same time we walked through the door.
Talia and Grant had followed us, and they glanced around the hall in confusion. Cats screeched, but when I looked down at the four of ours, they were perfectly fine.
We whirled around to see cats flooding out of the door we’d come through. Beyond the doorway sat the Cat-fé, but the walls were shrinking again—the doors, too! Dozens of cats scurried out of the room to find safety, until the doorway shrank so small they couldn’t fit through anymore. Two cats ended up side-by-side, struggling to get through. Nadine and I rushed to help them, and we yanked the cats out of the tiny doorway.
My heart leapt, and I scrambled backward. Nadine screamed. There’d been a gray cat and an orange cat, but they’d melded into one. The front half was two cats—two heads, two sets of front paws. They were connected at the middle, leaving only one set of back legs and a single tail. The back half was mottled with gray and orange fur.
The poor cats yowled, like they were in pain. All the cats from the Cat-fé had fled, but our four cats approached the orange and gray ones and lay next to them, licking their fur and offering comfort.
My heart shattered into a million pieces. Even our cats knew these two wouldn’t make it. It defied all logic and reality—their bodies couldn’t occupy the same space at once. The cats let out one final, collective yowl, then went silent as they collapsed. Nadine shook as she backed away from them.
“What just happened?” Grant asked carefully.
Nadine swallowed. “The spell’s chaotic. It’s like it’s trying to correct itself, but it doesn’t know where each room belongs. It’s shifting at random.”
“And… that could happen to us?” Talia questioned.
Nadine nodded solemnly.
“What about my brother!?” Grant demanded. “Chloe? Charlotte?”
“If the rooms are shifting, then we entered the room at the wrong time. They’re still out there,” I said.
“Then we have to keep moving and find them,” Grant demanded. “There’s only four of us, so even if we found the Crystallary, we’re still fucked. We need to find them.”
“We will,” Nadine promised. She had a way of assuring people even when she wasn’t sure herself. “Mother Miriam didn’t save Lucas and me from execution for nothing. Let’s see if any of these rooms lead us back to the cafeteria.”
We started down the hall again, and I felt relief when I saw Headmistress Verla walking toward us, her cat following close at her heels. She wore a look of determination, like she was going to help us all out of here. She had to know more about this space-bending spell that we did. We could work together to correct it.
We raced toward Headmistress Verla, and another group of students ran up behind her. We met up with Verla at the same time… but something was off. The students behind her slowed at the same time, in the same rhythm.
It was us again, but this time, it wasn’t a spatial anomaly. It was our reflection; we were looking into a mirror.
Nadine drew a sharp breath. “She’s trapped.”
Slowly, Nadine approached the mirror, her reflection mirroring her movements perfectly. She placed her hand to the glass, as if to test if it was solid. I half expected her hand to go through it, like she could just walk straight through the mirror and join Verla on the other side. But the glass was solid.
