by H. K. Varian
“Isn’t it obvious?” the first girl asked.
“Not to us,” Gabriella answered with an edge to her voice. She thought she’d left mean girls behind when she became a Changer, but apparently Wyndemere had its own share of them.
“Oh, sorry,” the girl said quickly. “I forgot you were younglings and haven’t sat through all the Changer history courses we have.”
One of the other girls stepped up to explain. “All the Shadow Fox has to do is steal the happy memories you have of your friends to turn you against them. That’s what she did last time. The Changer nation was on the edge of a civil war when the First Four brought her and her followers down.”
Gabriella shook her head. “So what? How is taking him going to start a civil war?”
Fiona felt the color draining from her face as she put the pieces together. “If Mack is destined to be one of the new First Four, then people will follow him. Maybe even into Sakura’s army.”
“And if she’s able to eat our memories too—” Darren continued.
“Then she could brainwash us into doing whatever she wanted. Even destroying the Changer nation that we’ve been charged to protect,” Fiona finished.
“So she doesn’t want to hurt Mack—she wants to use him to start a war?” Gabriella asked, turning back to the group.
The kids around her all nodded. “That’s what she did last time,” they said.
Fiona eyed her friends uneasily. If Sakura got her hands on Mack, she’d turn him against them. Could she fight her friend if she had to? Fiona didn’t think she could.
She motioned for Gabriella and Darren to join her in a quieter corner.
“Mack has no idea what he’s up against,” she said. “He thinks he’s looking for answers, but he’s walking into a trap. And even if the guards or First Four find Mack, Sakura could just eat their memories too. There’s no other way. . . . I’m going to try to find him.”
“It’s too risky,” Darren said. “You’ll be in just as much danger as Mack is. Maybe even more. She’ll keep Mack safe to get at his grandfather, but who knows what she might do to you!”
“I have to try,” Fiona answered. She scanned the room, looking for an exit that wasn’t as heavily guarded as the others.
“We’re coming with you,” Gabriella said. “You can’t go alone.”
“No!” Fiona said in a fierce whisper.
She looked around to make sure no one was listening. The last thing she needed right now was for people to find out her mother was queen of the selkies. They were already scared. Fiona was sure they’d turn on her just as Jess and Mindy had in the cafeteria. “I can protect myself with the Queen’s Song, remember? It’s a defense against mind control spells, which—I’m guessing—includes memory eating. But I don’t know if I can protect you, too. You have to stay here.”
Gabriella started to argue, but Fiona cut her off. “You know I’m right,” she insisted.
Grudgingly, Gabriella and Darren agreed.
Gabriella squeezed her friend’s shoulder. “Please be supercareful,” she said. “And come back with Mack, safe and sound.”
“I’ll do my best. Now distract that student monitor so I can slip out.”
Moments later, while Gabriella and Darren quizzed the monitor about the history of the school, Fiona darted behind them and slipped out the doorway seemingly unnoticed.
The hall was dark and empty. Luckily, Fiona’s selkie eyes could see pretty well in the darkness, even when she was in human form.
She had a pretty good idea where Mack would have gone to confront the Shadow Fox. The woods and the castle would be full of guards seeking the evil kitsune. But there was one place on campus that would be empty, the one place they were told not to go: the northeast tower of the castle.
Fiona set out in search of it.
Chapter 11
The Northeast Tower
Mack sat in the stands and watched as a seven-tailed kitsune raced with Gabriella. He saw the kitsune as golden, with orange and yellow flames licking at her paws, but he could tell by the screams around him that everyone else saw the Shadow Fox.
According to the book they’d read, the fact that Mack saw her as golden meant he was being hunted, but his interaction with Sakura didn’t seem that way. She said that she wanted to talk—she had something she needed to tell him.
I know it would be smarter to hide, he thought. But this is my only chance to find out what she has to say. I’ll never get her message unless I go after her now.
Mack was halfway up the stadium, in the middle of a huge crowd, and yet Sakura seemed to know exactly where he was. As the race came to a stop, she turned to look at him square in the face before turning her eyes back on Gabriella with a sly grin.
Gabriella held the kitsune’s stare. She didn’t look frightened. She looked fierce.
As if in a trance, Mack started to make his way down the bleachers, Changing so that he could move faster. He saw Fiona make her way toward Gabriella and then saw Sefu Change and jump between them and the Shadow Fox. Sakura flicked her eyes at Mack and disappeared.
Sefu stared after her, but she had already vanished in a fog of golden smoke.
Sakura was signaling him to follow. Mack could feel it. Well, he was going to turn the tables on her. He set off in the same direction he thought she had taken across the lawn.
The hunted was about to become the hunter.
In the chaos and confusion of the arena, Mack was able to slip out before anyone saw him. He was at the gates when he heard the announcement that the games were suspended and that everyone had to report to the castle’s basement. He had to be fast, or he’d be surrounded by a stampede of frightened kids. And he had to avoid the student monitors that would be making sure everyone did as they were told.
He sped across the campus. His first instinct was to search in the forest, where he had seen Sakura before. He stepped into the woods and saw guards everywhere. If Sakura was really hiding out in the forest, there was no way Mack would be able to get to her before being stopped by security.
She was too smart for that. She wanted Mack to find her, and she wanted to make sure they could talk alone. But where could that be? The entire campus was filled with guards.
Then he remembered—the northeast tower!
The northeast tower was the one place they were told to stay away from, which made it the very best place to hide. There would be fewer guards patrolling that area since the entries were blocked off and no one was supposed to be there.
The first floor of the castle was empty except for a few student monitors. It seemed everyone else had already made their way to the basement for safety. Mack quickly crept down the hall toward the northeast tower, staying as close to the wall as he could. Halfway there, he had to slip into the game room and hide behind the door as a panicked monitor dashed down the hall, yelling to the kitchen staff to begin lockdown procedures.
I wish I knew a good illusion spell, he thought. Illusion was a kitsune power that Mack hadn’t yet mastered. He made a mental note to start working on it when they got back to Willow Cove.
Mack crept up the stairs to the second floor. The hall leading to the tower was dark and deserted, littered with ladders and power tools. He raced to a door at the end of the corridor, which was hanging slightly ajar, the chain across it unlocked. From the doorway, Mack thought he could smell char.
She’s inside!
He transformed back into his human form as a gesture of peace. Sakura might immediately go into battle mode if she saw him as a kitsune, but two people could talk to each other, right?
He stepped through the doorway, closing the door behind him quietly so no one would think to search there. The entranceway to the tower was dark and dusty. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet. A few areas were roped off with construction tape, but behind the tape he could see that this tower was mostly used for storage. He crept from room to room, finding strange, enchanted objects. Most were covered in plastic sheets
to protect them from the construction dust and paint, and he didn’t recognize those that weren’t. But they all shimmered with magic.
Mack summoned a fireball to help light the way. It had grown dark outside, and there were no lights that Mack could find in the tower. A full moon shone through the narrow windows, giving all the sheet-covered objects an eerie glow—except in the next room.
It was as if the room itself swallowed light. Mack could barely make out the shape of the objects inside, but he guessed that they had been used for dark magic. Instead of a magical shimmer, a kind of shadow swirled around them.
He peered around the edges of the room to make sure that Sakura wasn’t hiding in there with him and then made his way up a spiral staircase to the tower’s next level. Each level he explored had rooms filled with dusty objects, but none showed signs of the Shadow Fox.
Slowly and carefully, checking the room on each level, he made his way to the top. He was about to give up on finding her when he pushed his way through a trapdoor to climb into the room at the very top of the tower. He left the trapdoor open, in case he had to make a quick getaway. Then he turned in a circle, searching for Sakura, but the room was empty. He was both relieved and angry.
It must have been guards patrolling the tower who unlocked the chain, not Sakura. I should have stayed in the forest, he thought. I’ve wasted all this time, and now I won’t be able to find her.
He had just started to walk back to the trapdoor when a shadow began to pulse around it, like the dark magic that surrounded the objects he found in that one room.
The shadow of a cloaked figure loomed larger as it filled the opening and reached the room’s ceiling.
The trapdoor closed with a bang, and the shadow moved toward him.
Mack backed into the wall and took a defensive position that the nykur professor had taught him just yesterday. His eyes darted from window to window. Each was nothing more than a narrow slit, but he’d be able to slip through if he had to. But there was one big problem—he was hundreds of feet in the air, and he’d fall straight to his death. Some kitsunes like his grandfather had the ability to fly, but Mack hadn’t developed that particular power yet. He realized in an instant how woefully unprepared he was to face his grandfather’s enemy—how much training still lay ahead of him.
Mack was about to be swallowed up by whatever this dark shadow was. He felt young and small—how foolish he had been to think he could confront his grandfather’s strongest enemy on his own and emerge unscathed.
A sob caught in his throat.
Jiichan, he thought. I was wrong. I’m so sorry.
Chapter 12
Sakura
Mack’s whole body trembled as the shadow reached out and began to engulf him. He closed his eyes tight. He didn’t want to see what was coming toward him. But then he felt the darkness pulsing around him. It wasn’t swallowing him up. It was embracing him.
Mack opened his eyes.
The shadow drew back and swirled before turning into a human. A beautiful woman wearing a long hooded cloak stood before him. “Please don’t be afraid,” she said.
The woman’s voice immediately put Mack at ease. In fact, everything about her made him feel safe.
Mack almost laughed at how scared he had been a minute before. This woman couldn’t be evil. She was enchantingly beautiful, and her warm air had a calming effect on him. Like Mack, she had pale skin and dark eyes. Her black hair, straight like his, cascaded to her waist.
“I’m glad to finally meet you, Mack. I’m Sakura.” She sat on a window ledge and patted the ledge next to her. “Come. Sit beside me so we can get to know each other.”
A whisper of worry entered Mack’s heart. Beautiful or not, she’s supposed to be dangerous. He shook his head. “I’ll stay where I am,” he said.
Though, Mack thought, I have no idea if I’m any safer standing across the room. The book from the library never explained how her powers work; could she get my memories from all the way over here?
Sakura smiled, as if she could hear his anxious thoughts. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I only want to talk. You can leave any time you want,” she said, waving toward the trapdoor.
Mack half expected it to open with the wave of her hand, but it remained closed.
“There is something I want to talk to you about,” she said. “I hope you’ll give me a chance.”
“Go on,” Mack said. “But I’m not coming any closer.”
She nodded. “As you wish.”
“So what is it? What have you been trying to tell me?” he asked, pretending to be braver than he felt.
“War is coming,” she said, gazing out the window to the grounds below. “One that will divide the Changer nation.” Her voice didn’t match her message. She might have been telling him that she was about to serve cake and ice cream; it was so sweet and soothing.
Mack didn’t say anything. And he didn’t take his eyes off her face.
“You will be one of the new leaders,” she said. “You’ll have to choose between a life looking backward, as your grandfather and the rest of First Four do, or one that looks forward, as I have.”
“My grandfather and the rest of the First Four don’t trust you. In fact, my grandfather is so freaked out about what happened when you were his student that he won’t even talk to me about it.”
She shook her head with a sad smile. “They’ve misled you. I frightened them because I was willing to face the future. They are rooted in the past.”
“The book in the library said you were dangerous and power hungry. That you tried to start a war.”
“More lies,” she said. “Every book has a writer, and writers choose sides. I don’t want war—no one wants that. But if the Changers are going to survive, we need a revolution. It’s looming over us, can’t you feel it?”
“I haven’t heard anything about a war or a revolution,” Mack said.
“Each and every day, the Changers grow increasingly tired of the First Four’s rule. It’s just a matter of time before all this”—she gestured toward the rest of castle—“comes tumbling down.”
“Are you trying to tell me that there are a bunch of Changers—your followers—who are plotting against the First Four?” Mack asked. “Why haven’t we seen them?”
“They are hidden right in your midst. Like me, they’re done with the First Four’s world of duty and responsibility.” She said the words as if they were curses. “They’ve become so wrapped up in protecting humans that they’ve forgotten about where their first loyalty lies. Why did Circe awaken this magic in us if we’re not to use it?”
“They do use it,” Mack said defensively. “They use it to help people.”
Sakura snickered. Her voice cracked and became less soothing—just for a second. “I don’t want to hurt people,” she said. “But enough of this blending in with normal humans, hiding our magic. Auden Ironbound saw what was wrong with that, though his logic was flawed. We have to embrace our future. It’s time for the Changers to come out of hiding, to show the world who we truly are, and if a few humans are frightened in the process, that’s a small price to pay.
“Don’t you want to be free, Makoto?” she continued. “Free to stop hiding. Free to use your gifts. Free to live a life filled with magic?”
Mack had to admit to himself that what Sakura said made sense, but that whisper of worry in his heart didn’t disappear. In fact, it grew. He thought about his non-magical friends, especially his best friend, Joel. He didn’t want Joel to be hurt or scared. That wouldn’t be a small price to pay.
“Join us, Mack. Help me lead the Changer nation into the light. Shake off the chains of your grandfather. Aren’t you tired of being treated like a child?”
Sakura’s question struck him more than anything she’d said thus far, but he still wasn’t ready to drop his guard. “Why me?” Mack asked. “Why not Fiona or Gabriella or Darren?”
“You’re the real leader of the group,” she crooned. “You’re
the strongest and the bravest. You have to know that. Make your decision to join us, and your friends will follow. They’ll do whatever you tell them to do.
“Come,” she said, reaching out to him. “Join me.”
For a moment, Mack felt strong and confident in her praise. His hand rose, almost on its own, to clasp hers. Sakura’s hands were pale in the moonlight, but her fingernails were long and sharp. They looked like weapons.
At the last minute, Mack drew his hand back and thought about Jiichan. He shook his head. “I have to hear all the facts—not just your side of the story, but the First Four’s, too.”
Sakura’s laugh was light and tinkling. “If your grandfather wasn’t so intent on keeping his students in the dark, you’d already have all the facts.”
Mack grimaced, thinking about how impatient he often grew when the First Four wouldn’t answer his questions.
“I know all about your grandfather’s love for secrets,” she said. “I was his student too, you know, once upon a time. Why do you think he keeps so many secrets?”
Mack shrugged. He had often wondered the same thing. “He says I’m not ready to know them yet.”
Sakura’s voice suddenly became harsh and angry. “He wants to control you,” she said.
Mack shook his head again. Jiichan always said he would reveal his secrets when Mack was ready. And true to his word, he did reveal some, though not quite as quickly as Mack wanted. . . . Could Sakura be right? Did his grandfather want to control him?
“How do you like being controlled?” Sakura taunted.
Mack remained silent.
“Would you like to know who your beloved grandfather really is?”
“What do you mean?” Mack asked. Of course he knew who his grandfather was. Still, he didn’t stop Sakura from continuing. He didn’t take a step toward the trapdoor.
“When I became your grandfather’s student, he was new to teaching. He was arrogant and foolish. He wanted me to master the arts and earn my kitsune tails faster than any other. He didn’t want that for my benefit,” she said. “He wanted it because it would bring fame and glory to him.”
