“Sorry, Ms. Taylor,” I said, shrugging off my backpack and heading for my seat. Eli had the same first period as Tisha Thomas and Gail Galanis, but Zeran and Frankie were already at our table. Frankie was arranging her notepad next to a copy of The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman. To her left, Zeran leaned back in his chair, twirling his pencil between his fingers.

“The so-called guardian of the veil just walked in,” Winston whispered to Candace and Tay, who unfortunately sat one row over from us. He had one of his hands under the table, where little blue flames danced on his fingertips. “More like the guardian of the forever losers club.”

Usually, I would have had a comeback, but I didn’t have the energy to deal with Winston and his cronies this morning. How could any of the celestials think they would ever lift a finger to help save our world from the Lord of Shadows?

Tay laughed at Winston’s very unfunny joke, and their table shook slightly. His godling power was to control seismic waves, but he didn’t quite seem to have it under control.

“Will you cut that out?” Candace said, her nose in a chess book. “I can’t think.”

“You know there’s such a thing as overpreparing,” Tay said, dismissing her.

Winston slapped Candace on the back. “Chess queen of the Midwest.”

Candace smiled, but she didn’t stop looking in her book until Ms. Taylor announced, “Good morning, class! Don’t forget that this week, we’ll start voting for our winter break book club read. Get your picks in by Wednesday. I’ll announce the winner on Friday.”

I sank into the seat next to Frankie and tried and failed not to look at Zeran. He quirked an eyebrow as if to ask why I was staring at him, and I quickly turned away.

Zeran let out a frustrated sigh. “Are you still being weird?”

“No,” I blurted out so quickly that it was obvious that I was, in fact, still being weird.

I attempted to focus as our English teacher dove into her lesson, but there was so much on my mind. Captain Nulan’s appearance at the garbage dump. The arrival of Yemoja from the edges of the universe. Not to mention that she had disbanded the orisha council. Tisha Thomas’s vision of Zeran delivering an unconscious me to the darkbringers. Oh, and Gail Galanis could not only see magic, she was immune to it. Add all that to the fact that the veil was failing and the Lord of Shadows despised everything to do with the human world.