“Egregore. Isn’t that an old Enochian thing?” Morgan types the word into his phone and pulls up the definition. “Oh damn.” His brow furrows as he starts reading. “‘An autonomous psychic entity. A manifested thought form that can influence the collective minds of a group.’”

“Um…”

“Like the Easter Bunny or bogeyman, except in the magical context it implies an ability to take something from the spirit realm and make it corporeal.”

“Corporeal? Like a corpse?” I ask.

“More like—fleshy, or something physical. Give it a body.” He jiggles his arm.

“Okay, so definitely a chaos magic thing.” My nausea gets a little worse. “What about Tumultua?”

Morgan starts typing again. “Not a lot of results, and this comes from a site called the Secrets of Kaos, which they’ve spelled with a k,” he says, incredulous. “Might not be the most reliable source, but apparently there’s a league of chaos mages called the Order of Louhi—that would make a sick band name.”

“Order of Louhi?” I barely get the words out.

“Yeah, apparently the leader was someone called Tumultua.” He shows me his screen and the familiar symbol of the chaos star with fiery wings. “Says here she’s been held in some sort of secret prison for years.”

“Sounds like nonsense.” Except it really doesn’t.

I don’t want to believe an entire group of chaos mages could be practicing forbidden magic given the tight restrictions imposed by the UCMW, but six battle mages were defeated at Svalbard, and someone is using chaos magic at school.

Fear turns my body into a giant castanet, my teeth actually clacking together as I shudder. What chance do two ninth graders stand against a chaos mage let alone an entire league of them? Oh gods, what were we thinking?

“This is a little scary, isn’t it?” I say out loud.

“Yeah, it is.” Morgan’s more serious than I’ve ever seen him. “But at least we have each other.” He cracks a grin. “Just think, this could be the story of your career.”

“If we survive.”

“We will.” He bumps my shoulder. “Gotta stay positive.”

“If we do, you could write a song about it.”

His smile vanishes and he leans his head back, closing his eyes. “Don’t think I’ll be writing songs ever again.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not in the Big Plan,” he says, making me think the concept deserves capital letters.

“Whose plan?”

“My parents’. The one they have for me definitely does not involve drums or music.”

“Is that what you meant the other day when you said you don’t want to do magic?” I try to make my words gentle.

He doesn’t answer right away, turning to look out the window and tracing a smudge of grime with his finger before looking back at me.

“Sometimes I envy you, you know,” he says. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have any magic at all.”