What’s happening to my magic sight? I’m not purposefully using it. I stumble away from the group, trying to pull my focus off the magic in the room. Nothing happens. My magic flows churn and shake inside me, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. I try again to pull my focus from the magic, but the threads just shine brighter as if to taunt me.

It’s the energy potion. I must have taken too much.

“Shay?” Mikey whispers.

Shit. I’m supposed to be moving right now. The music kicks up again, and I run to my spot at the back of the stage. My hands shake, and my heart beats too fast. I focus on what I have to do next in the dance, trying to shut out the blinding magic around me.

Ed does a stage slide past me, and I want to wring his scrawny neck for giving me this horrifying potion. Okay, Shay. Breathe. Dancing requires breathing. I sing a bit of my part quietly and go for my stage slide.

As I do the run-up to the slide, I reach for the magic in the floor. It’s right there for me, closer and easier to tap into than it’s ever been before. I can feel the brown-green coils of magic rotating around each other so slowly that it’s like they’re not moving. With the smallest nudge, I flatten a few of the coils and step onto the smooth floor in front of me. My hair whips out behind me as I glide across the runway I’ve created.

Then everything goes incredibly wrong.

What I thought was the smallest magical adjustment ripples outward, flattening the magical coils in the entire stage floor. Ana is the first to go down. In any other situation, I would derive some sort of pleasure from that, but all I feel is horror.

“ ‘Gabriela, can I have’—hngk!” Ed hits the floor mid-lyric. Other people fall around him, crying out in pain and confusion as they slip on the smooth floor.

I hurtle across the stage toward the wings. When I try to stop myself, I trip full force into the black curtain at the side of the stage.

“What the hell?” Brittany shouts from the audience.

How am I going to explain this? I scramble farther offstage on my hands and knees, panic pounding in my chest. Brown-green magic threads shine under my palms in smooth waves. I’m too afraid to try to fix them. Who knows what would happen?