They knew that Colchester needed a lot of deaths to open the door to the Other Side. The Followers would provide the raw fuel for the magic spell by attacking someplace with a lot of people. And the place with the most people on New Year’s Eve was the Middleton High gym. The whole school would be there for the Party Like It’s 1999 dance. Hundreds of kids in one spot. A massive human sacrifice. Colchester would have to drop all of the magical protection that kept him safe and untouchable when the spell began. He had to lower his wards to gorge on all the power that would come from the ritual.

They’d show up, stop the sacrifice, save the people, and kill the bad guy. Everyone would live happily ever after.

They thought it would work because their plans had always worked. They always saved the day. They assumed gifted-child solutions worked for all real-world problems. They were extraordinary, but they had also always been extraordinarily lucky. And they made the fundamental mistake that lucky people always make: they assumed that because everything had always worked out for them, it always would. They’d always won before. They were seventeen.

At the end of the day, they thought this was just another adventure.

Still. They should have known better.

Eric could have levitated himself up Snake Hill. He could have brought Alana with him, in fact. It was one of the easiest tricks he knew these days.

But he worried that using his magic would warn Colchester they were coming. This was the only time he’d be vulnerable. When he’d drop his shields and wards long enough to let them take their shot. They couldn’t risk giving him any warning.

So they were walking up the trail to the snake’s head, the top of the hill, as quietly as they could manage.

Alana moved like liquid, flowing along the path without looking, completely silent.

Eric kept tripping over rocks. It was hard to look cool when you couldn’t see where you were going.

“You okay back there?” Alana said.

“I’m fine,” Eric whispered back, annoyed. “I’ve been doing this for a while, you know.”

“Just checking,” Alana said. Was she laughing at him? He couldn’t tell. He had a lot on his mind. He was supposed to die tonight, and sure, that should have been his biggest worry. But he’d been the Chosen One for a while now, and he’d nearly died a lot of times. He was getting used to that.