So he’d need to get through another week or so of school, with Colonel Charles and Dr. Opps both now on high alert from what they probably thought of as Sierra’s attack. Not to mention that he was seen by the guards and the security cameras with Dr. Opps after Colonel Charles had been knocked out, so they’d for sure be questioning him soon.

He’d just have to tell Colonel Charles that Sierra had taken over his mind again, like she had at the last school, but now he had no memory of it. It’d be a pretty terrible excuse anywhere else but here, but it wasn’t like they could call his bluff.

Either way, he just had to last a week, and then he’d be on to the next spell, which had to be something interdimensional. The anger he felt at finding the wrong spell returned, and he clenched his fists, knowing he could have had his father back home by now if whoever wrote the book had just put the magic in the right order.

And then there was the matter of lying to his friends. They would have understood, if everything had gone to plan, and he brought his dad back right away. But now things were just going to fester, making everything worse.

But he couldn’t let them risk themselves. He just couldn’t, not for him. Not again. He couldn’t be to blame again for anyone getting hurt, not after failing his dad on the National Mall.

Fort sighed quietly and rolled over onto his side. Sleep was going to be impossible, that was one thing he knew for sure. His mind was just too wound up to let him—

Lighting erupted all around him, like a thunderstorm had struck his bedroom.

“Whoa!” he shouted as the energy sizzled just a few feet from him. He leaped off his bed in surprise, and the bed disappeared behind him, as did Gabriel and the rest of the bedroom. Instead of the school’s ugly green walls, Fort now found himself surrounded by crystal tubes with bolts of lightning passing through them at random, illuminating the area as they passed.

The tubes were built in and around a carefully carved stone cave, pushing in and out of the stone, flowing off in all different directions. Without meaning to, Fort slowly floated along one row of tubes, leading toward what looked like a sort of gate made out of lightning.

As he drew closer, Fort realized that whatever had ahold of him wasn’t going to stop, and he threw up his arms to protect himself from the lightning… only for a hand from behind him to reach out, palm facing the lightning. The electrical energy seemed to part in midstream, turning back on itself, and opening a path through the gate.