“It’s someone at the school, isn’t it?” I ask.

Mom presses her palms flat against the table, fingers splayed across the sigils. “This is why I don’t want you involved. Why you can’t be involved. What Morgan did,” Mom continues, “accessing the tonttukivi like that—”

“We were trying to help. They’re running out of time.”

“We’ll find them,” Mom says. “We, the adults.” She quickly clarifies.

“With your crows? With the Zeiger counters?”

“Taika, please.”

“I want to help.”

“You can’t,” Mom says.

“Because I don’t have any magic?” I fling at her with an unexpected bitterness.

Mom hesitates.

“Come on! I spoke to a hiisi, and to the forest. I’ve been beyond the stones, I—”

“No!” Mom slams her fist against the table, making me jump. “Accessing the tonttukivi could’ve killed Morgan. And now? Toivo, Aoife, and Morgan are trapped who knows where because you thought you knew better.”

This is all your fault, the voice hisses, the words sweeping through my thoughts like a wrecking ball.

“But spells don’t work the same on me, surely I can—”

“You don’t have magic, and so you cannot possibly help! Not with this.” Mom’s words are a shower of splinters, each piercing my skin and working their way in deeper.

“Because I’m useless,” I say out loud what the voice in my head has been saying all along.

“You’re vulnerable!” Mom throws her hands in the air. “And we have missing children to find and a chaos mage to subdue. I can’t be worrying about you as well. I’m sorry you don’t have magic and feel left out. I know you want to help, but this time, you really, truly can’t.”

Tears drip down my cheeks and I don’t even try to stop them. She tries to hug me, but I feel numb, my body turned to stone.

“Please try to understand, I want to keep you safe.” Mom ushers me up the stairs and deposits me in my bedroom. “You need to stay here, safe behind the wards. When this is all over, then…”

“Then what?” I stand paralyzed while Mom carves sigils in the air. “Then we’ll go back to pretending I’m not Taika the Talentless?”

“Oh, kulta.” Mom’s scowl shatters and I can see the disappointment in her eyes, can see her wondering how the hell a tietäjä of her pedigree ended up with a kid like me. “Please, just—please don’t leave this house. Not until I lift this spell. I love you and the last thing I need is to have to worry about you too,” Mom says, her voice choked by emotion.

By the time I lift my head to tell her I understand, Mom has already whirled out of my bedroom.