“I’ve no doubt Miss Khumalo is quite fine, so best you two be on your way.” MacCrone steps out of the elevator. “Or should we pay a visit to the principal?”

“We were just leaving, Sergeant.” Morgan nudges forward.

Fiona stands belligerently blocking the hallway, her hulking body forcing us to squeeze along the wall into the elevator to avoid her blueberry-stained fangs.

“That was weird,” he says once the doors are closed and we’re both breathing a little easier. He’s still rubbing at his nose and eyes.

“I’ll bet Natalie doesn’t have noro.” A bad feeling cinches around my insides. This would’ve been easier if Natalie didn’t care about me anymore, but the photo on her wall makes me think maybe she doesn’t hate me as much as I thought.

“But where the hell is she then?” he asks as we step out of Pilvitalo.

“And why am I the only one who seems to care?”

“Me too, now,” he says between another set of sneezes. “Dammit.”

He rests his hands on his knees for a minute, recovering. My crows circle above us, croaking from the eaves to let me know they’ve got their eyes on me. It’s not much comfort. They didn’t do much when the liekkiö showed up, and now Nat’s missing. I need a bloodhound, not a mangy murder of crows.

Missing—the word hisses through my mind. That happens to other children in other places. Not in Finland, and certainly not in Myrskyjärvi.

“Who else supposedly has noro?” A dark suspicion scratches at the back of my mind.

“I know Manami in Hannah’s class has been sick for a while,” Morgan says. “She and Hannah are pretty close. And Elijah has been absent. He missed our test with Joakim last Friday.”

I don’t know Manami well since she’s in House Akvo, but Elijah is in Tero with me. He’s a powerful earth wielder from the US, capable of complex transmutations like turning coal into diamond with a snap of his fingers.

“There’s supposed to be a lot of kids sick. You’d think we’d have noticed more people absent.”

“It’s a big school.” Morgan flicks the curls out of his eyes.

“Not that big.”

“What are you thinking?” he asks between sniffs.

“I don’t know, but something isn’t right. If what I saw this morning was a liekkiö then, something really awful might’ve happened. And with what’s going on in Svalbard, I just don’t know.”

“You mean the break-in thing?” He scuffs his toe across the gravel pathway.

“Yeah, I overheard my parents talking.” I give him a quick summary of what went down. “Worst of all, I think my parents know who did it, but they’re not saying.”

“Didn’t think anyone but a chaos mage could take on a battle mage.” He swallows hard.

“Scary, right?”