“Just taking these two back to campus.”

Sel is already walking down the road, his attention withdrawn. “On your way.”

On your way. Not a request. Not a suggestion. An order.

Any ounce of security I could have felt in this car is erased in three words. Whatever higher power Deputy Norris answers to, these two teenagers outrank him.

Norris salutes Tor before she follows Sel; then he shifts the car into drive to continue down the road toward UNC. After a minute, he turns the radio back up and hums under his breath. I gather my courage and twist, as subtly as possible, to peer out the rear windshield.

Tor and Sel are gone.

Beside me, Alice slumps back against the seat. I don’t attempt to talk to her again. If I didn’t know what to say before, then I definitely don’t now that I’ve seen the way law enforcement interacts with these so-called Legendborn. I spend the rest of the drive reviewing my earlier words to Alice and end up both relieved and terrified. Relieved, because I said nothing in Norris’s presence to indicate that I knew what really happened at the Quarry. Terrified, because I witnessed something that I was not meant to see, and if Selwyn Kane had wanted to do something about that, Deputy Norris would not have stopped him.

Three thoughts chase one another the entire ride to campus until they bleed into a single stream of words: Magic. Real. Here.

Norris drops us off in front of Old East, the historic building that houses Early College students. We take the stairs up to our dorm on the third floor in silence. Once inside, Alice changes into her pajamas and climbs into bed without saying good night. I find myself standing adrift in the middle of our floor.

On her side of the room, Alice has a row of framed photos of her brother and sisters and parents on vacation in Taiwan on the shelf above her desk. Her parents declared early on that they would pick her up from the dorms every Friday so that she could spend the weekend at home in Bentonville, but that didn’t stop her from decorating like she’d live here full-time. Earlier today, she’d hung a few rom-com movie posters on the wall and draped a six-foot string of Christmas lights over her bed.

On my side, there are no pictures. No posters. Nothing decorative at all, really. Back home, it hurt beyond tolerance to walk the halls of my childhood home and see photos of my mother alive and smiling. I even hid her knickknacks. Any sign of her existence cut into my heart, so when it came time to move to Chapel Hill, I packed light. All I have here are a few plastic bins of books and stationery, a suitcase of clothes, my favorite sneakers, my laptop and phone, and a small box of toiletries.