“You think—” Toivo stops midsentence, his eyes wide with shock before his forehead creases with… Is that hurt? No way. But the expression is gone, hidden by a fresh coat of anger. His eyes narrow and his lips press into that tight just-like-Mom line.

“I’m not the one doing this,” Toivo says. “Really, Taika? Did I go to Svalbard and break into the vault too?”

“But you had the book!”

“Use some common sense.” His words sting.

“Your brother has been trying to figure out who’s behind all this,” Aoife says. “The book isn’t about chaos magic.” She swings my backpack off her shoulder and pulls out the tome. “It’s a battle mage handbook.”

“What?” I stare at the chaos star on the cover. “But the symbol, Morgan’s allergies—”

“The symbol is completely different,” Toivo adds with his usual smugness.

It’s not that different. Sure, the points are equal length and evenly distributed about the circle, but it still looks an awful lot like a chaos star.

“The reason it’s off-limits to most people is because battle and chaos magic are different sides of the same coin,” Aoife says. “Look, I’ve read it. There’s a lot in here about chaos magic but it isn’t a how-to on anything forbidden.”

“It literally is,” Morgan says quietly. “Unless you’re secretly a battle mage?”

Aoife stares at her brother, biting at her lip as if she wants to say something but can’t think of a comeback.

“How did you get it?” I direct my question at Toivo.

“Sorin snuck it out of MacCrone’s cottage,” he says. “Turns out vampires make pretty good thieves what with shape-shifting and all.”

“The bogle.” I give myself a mental kick for not realizing it sooner. “That was you, wasn’t it? You needed to create a distraction.”

“Had to make sure MacCrone wouldn’t be around when Sorin went to get the book,” Toivo admits, looking irritatingly pleased with himself.

“But why?” Morgan teeters beside me, earning a concerned look from Aoife.

“You think you’re the only one who noticed things were weird at school? You’re not the only one with a missing friend, and I wasn’t going to rely on some geriatric battle mage to protect us,” Toivo fires back.

“Risto, right?” I ask.

“He was the first to go missing.”

How many kids went missing between Risto and Natalie? I was so busy worrying about Messenger articles, about not being good enough for Natalie and hating Sini & Co., I completely failed to notice something that should’ve been super obvious. A true journalist would’ve seen what was happening long before being found by a liekkiö. I should’ve done better from the start, but it’s not too late for Natalie and Hannah. There’s still time to save them all.

“Where’s Sorin now?” I ask, my head aching from the sudden deluge of information.