“And I’ll go to Madame Valentin to see if she can add anything to her prophecy,” said Maximilian. “Wolf, do you want to come with me?”

“Yes, sure,” said Wolf, getting up to follow Maximilian.

There was a strange little flash in the air. There it was again. It was a shard of sunlight that had come through the stained-glass window and was hitting the ring hanging around Wolf’s neck.

“What’s that?” asked Pelham Longfellow, noticing the ring for the first time. “Lapis lazuli? Are you a cleric?”

“Yeah,” said Wolf. “Well, a warrior cleric. Why?”

“Actually,” Pelham said to Maximilian, “Wolf’s going to stay here. You can go and see Madame Valentin on your own, can’t you?”

“Sure,” said Maximilian. “Although I’m very fascinated about why you want him to stay here.”

“I’ll explain later,” said Pelham Longfellow. “Leander, you stay too. I can use two clerics.”

“Well, I’m going to work some more on the counterspell,” said Mrs. Beathag Hide. “Mr. Grimm has offered to assist me. We’ve borrowed Dr. Cloudburst’s laboratory at the school.”

“And we’re going back to the Creative Writing common room to see what we can find out,” said Laurel Wilde. Dora Wright got up to leave with her.

Soon, everyone except Pelham Longfellow, Leander, Wolf and Effie had left the chapel.

“Right,” said Pelham Longfellow to Wolf. “What level are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“How powerful a cleric are you?”

“I only found out yesterday,” said Wolf. “So I’m guessing not very.”

“But you’ve been in the Flow,” said Pelham. “And Effie. At long last. We’ve been waiting for you to discover the Flow for so long now. Leander, you know what I’m talking about.”

Leander nodded in a pale, vampiric sort of way. It seemed as if his mind was elsewhere entirely. He kept looking down at his hands and sighing.

“The what?” said Wolf.

“What do you mean?” said Effie.

“The Flow? You’re not allowed to mention the Flow to anyone who hasn’t been in it. Because then the first time doesn’t work. . . . But after that you can always tell when someone has been in. Why do you both look so blank?”

Effie suddenly went from looking blank to looking like someone who’s solved a difficult crossword clue.

“Hang on,” said Effie. “The Flow. That’s the thing that’s been bugging me. That’s what was different about the older translation of the poem . . . The one I put in the Great Library yesterday.”

“What?” said Pelham sharply. “I thought you said you put the history of the Diberi back in the Great Library?”