Only one play to make.

With a gasp, Agatha turned towards the thorn. Just as it hit her heart, she skirted its edge and leapt onto its side, like a hapless Tarzan, as the thorn reared up in surprise over the school gates. Agatha clung to the leathery purple thorn stem for dear life, swinging her legs through the air as she glanced down at the knife-edged gate spikes beneath her. The thorn coiled and flapped higher, about to shake her off. This was her last chance—

Agatha dug her nails into the stem, kicked her legs for momentum and flung herself off the thorn, over the gates, and shielded her head before she landed hard on her tailbone in a pine shrub. Any elation at being alive was scrubbed out by her throbbing backside. She lumbered to her feet to chase Sophie once more—

Agatha froze.

Sophie glared back at her from the shores of Halfway Bay.

Before Agatha could move, a pink spell slammed into her chest, flattening her to the ground.

The shock of being attacked with a stun spell by her best friend gave way to an onslaught of pain. It was as if she’d been stomped on by an elephant or bashed in the chest by a streaking comet. For a second, she forgot who and where she was. All she could think about was air and finding a way to get it inside of her, but her lungs were paralyzed, rejecting her breaths. She tried to inhale through her mouth, but her ears were ringing with a tone so shrill and piercing that she clenched her teeth and closed her eyes, waiting for it to end. It only got louder, compounded by crippling nausea. Every second brought a new surprise, like a house of horrors, until she realized the biggest, most obvious problem of all: she couldn’t move.

She tried to crack open her eyes and see what was behind her, but her head felt like it’d been hacked open with an axe. Her field of vision was upside-down and shaky, her eyes watering too much to see any more than a dim, blurry fog. All she could make out through the quaking darkness was a blur of green coming off Halfway Bay—

And a black shadow, upside-down, running through it towards the old Evil castle.

Agatha could feel her heart trying in vain to pump blood to her muscles. Sophie . . . she had to follow Sophie. . . .

Only she was still nailed to the dirt.

How long do stun spells last?

She’d seen students recover from them easily in Yuba’s class and during the past two Trials. That’s why the teachers never taught a counterspell: stunning was so innocuous that even the most belligerent first year couldn’t wreak havoc with it. So what had Sophie possibly done to make this spell so noxious and hateful . . .

Magic follows emotion.

Agatha’s breaths shallowed. Sophie had hit her with everything raging inside of her: fury, frustration, revenge . . . she’d turned an ordinary spell into a missile of hate.