He’s right, but I don’t have to like it.

***

The others rock up a few minutes later. Aysha looks like she stepped off the cover of Teen Vogue, immaculately dressed in another designer outfit made that little bit edgy with silver buckles and studs.

Ekaterina arrives bleary-eyed in jeans and a black hoodie featuring a violently jagged word I assume is the name of a band who does more screaming than singing.

“Where’s Sini?” I ask.

“Horse riding,” Ekaterina answers. “She’ll only be back this evening. It’s a whole day thing,” she adds, as if she can’t understand why anyone would get up early on the weekend and head outside with smelly animals.

Quickly, I fill them in about everything. Aysha immediately gives Morgan a hug and unexpected jealousy licks like flames at me when I see him hug her back. It’s not like I’m into Morgan, but I don’t want him to like her more than me, which of course he will.

Because there’s nothing to like about you, the little voice says.

Whatever. Right now, my feelings don’t matter half as much as finding Natalie and Hannah.

Ekaterina perches backward on Aoife’s desk chair and combs her fingers through her dark-red hair. “This just gets better and better.” She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes.

“Did you find out anything about MacCrone?” I ask.

“Some of us needed sleep after that summoning spell. Channeling that much magic is like running a marathon,” Ekaterina snaps. “Not that you would know.”

“Katya, really.” Aysha tsks from where she sits beside Morgan, the pale denim of her knee rubbing against the tattered rift of his. “More like doing too much high-intensity interval training, so yeah, we’re tired and no, we haven’t found out anything we didn’t already know,” she continues. “As for other teachers or students with tattoos, we made a list of the ones we know.” She pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket, the list written in her perfect cursive.

“That’s a lot of names,” I say.

“And who knows how many more are keeping their ink hidden. I didn’t know about yours until yesterday,” Ekaterina says to Morgan with something like respect.

“Yes well, what do we do now?” Aysha asks.

“We go to the tonttukivi,” I say. “Are you coming with us?”

“I know I’d feel better going to these stones if we had some backup,” Morgan adds, and I grit my teeth.

He means magical backup. A hollowness opens up inside me as the jerk inside my head yells Taika the Talentless, Taika the Useless. I’m not enough. I’ll never be enough.

Aysha glances at Ekaterina, who looks less than enthusiastic about the idea.