Willow's Perfect Storm

by D J DuMont

  Sylvie gave Kent a tight smile. “I’ve met him already. I actually showed up to Algebra II yesterday, and he’s in our class.”

  Willow shrugged sheepishly. “Oh, right. Well anyway, I can’t believe all the adventures he’s had!”

  “I’m sure they were great,” Sylvie said, then shot an apologetic glance at Kent before looking back at Willow. “Can I talk to you for a moment? Privately?”

  Willow wanted to protest. She was having so much fun, and she felt like she never had fun these days. But Kent laughed and held his hands up in a gesture of surrender, already backing away.

  “I won’t get in the way of girl time,” he said in an amused tone. “I’ve learned that lesson well. See you around, Willow.”

  He winked at Willow, and she felt herself melting again. She stared after him as he walked off, until Sylvie let out a long sigh and pulled her toward a quiet corner of the room.

  “This had better be good, Sylvie,” she grumbled. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s good chemistry between Kent and me.”

  Sylvie turned to Willow and lowered her voice to barely more than a whisper. “I had noticed, and that’s the problem. You shouldn’t be flirting with him.”

  Willow frowned, the happy glow she’d been basking in starting to dissipate. “Why not?”

  Sylvie chewed her lower lip for a moment before speaking. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to get involved with a non-wizard? Especially with all the other balls you’ve got up in the air right now? How are you going to explain all your random absences to him? You can’t tell him where you go every afternoon after Birch Point classes. You can’t tell him what you’re studying when you hole yourself up in the library for days at a time trying to find a way to help your dad.”

  Willow instantly felt defensive. Even though she herself had had all these same concerns just over an hour ago, all sense of reason had been lost when she locked eyes with Kent. “You think I don’t know all of that? You think I don’t understand the difficulties of dating a non-wizard? My own father and mother are a wizard and non-wizard pair. I get it. But I should be able to have a little fun if I want to. I just wanted to feel like a normal teenager for one brief moment, and then you came and—”

  Before Willow could finish her sentence, she felt herself slamming against the wall. The force of the impact nearly knocked the breath out of her, and she looked around in confused anger. She hadn’t felt anyone pushing her, but she had hit the wall so hard that someone must have.

  But then, she was knocked the other way, and stumbled onto the floor. She saw Sylvie stumble down beside her, and suddenly realized what was going on.

  “Earthquake!” a terrified voice called out from somewhere across the room.

  More shouts of terror followed, and Willow looked up to see the lights above her swaying. She looked over at Sylvie, who was glaring at her.

  “Did you set off another Terraemotus spell?” Sylvie hissed.

  Willow felt her heart drop as she looked down at her magic ring. Last year, she’d accidentally used mental magic to set off a powerful earthquake spell in the middle of the Birch Point campus. Even though she was working to master her mental magic, she still sometimes set off spells accidentally when she was upset. She’d definitely been upset a moment ago as she tried to defend herself to Sylvie, but she didn’t think she’d been upset enough to set off an earthquake. Not to mention, her magic ring wasn’t glowing at all. Usually, when she set off a spell, it glowed purple.

  “Do something!” Sylvie hissed.

  Frantic, Willow cried out “Terraemotus deleo.” Those were the words to cancel a Terraemotus spell, but nothing happened when Willow spoke them. For good measure, she tried once more. But still, the shaking continued.

  “I didn’t set off this earthquake,” Willow yelled. The sound of students screaming in the room was so loud now that Willow had to shout to be heard. Normally, she would have worried that someone would hear her talking about magic and get suspicious, but no one was paying attention to her at the moment. Everyone was too caught up in their own frightened attempts to find somewhere safe from the earthquake’s wrath.

  “What do you mean you didn’t set it off?” Sylvie yelled back. “Then who did?”

  Willow had no answer. She was the only wizard on campus with mental magic abilities, which meant she was the only one who could have accidentally set off a Terraemotus spell. Anyone else who was setting off this spell would have to have done it on purpose. Her stomach turned at the thought. Who would purposefully set off an earthquake in the middle of campus? Students could die!

  “We have to do something!” Willow yelled, crawling across the shaking floor to grab Sylvie’s arm. “Help me do a stabilizing spell.”

  Sylvie nodded, looking a bit shell-shocked. She and Willow began chanting a stabilizing spell together. The spell could not cancel out the Terraemotus spell completely, but it lessened the shaking by about half. What had been an urgent, life-or-death situation soon became merely annoying but manageable shaking. Students huddled around the room in tears, but Willow paid them no mind. She had to concentrate on keeping the earth stable. She couldn’t worry about whether anyone was injured right now, and she definitely couldn’t worry about whether anyone was paying attention to the weird words she and Sylvie were speaking, or to the fact that the rings on their right hands were glowing.

  Magic was strictly forbidden on the Birch Point side of campus unless there was an emergency, but this definitely counted as an emergency.

  Willow and Sylvie continued the stabilizing spell until the shaking had completely stopped. Only then did they sit up, trembling with fear, to look around and assess the damage. The lights had gone out, but several students had turned on the flashlight function on their phones, and little beams of light were dancing around the room. Willow looked frantically around for signs that anyone was hurt—especially any of her friends. She saw a few students moaning and looking like they had sprains or minor broken bones, but thankfully, no one appeared to be in critical condition. Her eyes landed on Marcus and Kent, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that they both looked unharmed.

  Her relief didn’t last long, though. Marcus was standing up, waving his phone’s flashlight around wildly and calling out Alexis’ name. Willow felt her heart clench in her throat as she scanned the room but could not see Alexis anywhere. She stood to get a better look, but no matter how many times her eyes roved back and forth, she couldn’t spot her friend.

  “Where’s Alexis?” she asked Sylvie in a desperate tone. Sylvie wouldn’t have any way of knowing any better than Willow where Alexis was, but asking the question helped Willow feel like she was doing something.

  “I don’t know,” Sylvie said slowly, doing a lousy job of hiding the fear in her voice. “Maybe she ran outside when the earthquake started.”

  Willow felt panic rising in her chest. This whole situation was wrong. Who had started that earthquake? Was it the same traitor who had been leaking information to Stein? But why were they attacking Birch Point Academy?

  Willow didn’t have much time to ponder these questions before she saw the door to the rec room being thrown open, and several figures dressed in black rushing in. The Birch Point students screamed, startled by the sudden appearance of what must have looked like some sort of SWAT team.

  But Willow didn’t scream. She’d caught sight of the golden dragon emblem embroidered into the black uniforms, and she knew exactly who these people were.

  Dragon Heart Agents.

  The Agents didn’t look happy, and they were coming directly for her.

  “Willow Ember, come with us,” one of them ordered as he grabbed her firmly by the arm and started dragging her toward the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Hey!” Willow screeched, rage rising fast and furious in her chest. “I’m not responsible for this earthquake!”

  She couldn’t believe this. Were they really blaming her again? She knew without t
he tiniest bit of doubt that she had not been the one to set off that earthquake. She couldn’t afford to be blamed for something she didn’t do. Not when she was already in so much trouble with the Agency.

  On instinct, she struggled to wrench her arm away from the Agent who held her. But he was much too strong for her to escape his grasp, and he only tightened his grip as she fought.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he snarled. “You need to come with me.”

  Willow opened her mouth to protest again, planning to give him an earful about how the earthquake had not been her doing. But before she could get any words out, one of the other Agents was grabbing for Sylvie.

  “Sylvie Asher, come with us.”

  Sylvie’s eyes widened in surprise as she realized that the Agents were taking her, too. Before Willow or Sylvie could say another word, the Agents were dragging them through the door and down the hallway. Willow gasped when she saw the large cracks in the wall that the earthquake had left behind. This quake had been longer than the one she’d accidentally set off last school year, and it looked like it had done quite a bit more damage. Willow swallowed back a lump of fear as she wondered whether anyone on campus had been severely injured—or worse.

  Willow glanced over at Sylvie, who was staring straight ahead and not looking in her direction. The expression on Sylvie’s face was one of pure fury, and Willow swallowed back another lump rising in her throat, this one of frustration. Surely, Sylvie couldn’t blame her for the fact that the Agents were dragging them away. Willow hadn’t been the one to cause the earthquake, and she hadn’t said anything accusing Sylvie of being a part of all of this. It wasn’t Willow’s fault if the Agents were making assumptions.

  Willow felt a growing sense of dread as the Agents dragged her toward the building which housed the tunnel that led to the Dragon Heart Campus. She couldn’t deny that she’d made her share of mistakes over the last several days. But she hadn’t set off that earthquake, and she didn’t deserve to be dragged across campus like some sort of delinquent Agent.

  The Agents dragging Willow and Sylvie didn’t seem interested in her concerns, however, and so Willow decided to keep her mouth shut. She wouldn’t waste any more words on them. She’d wait until she had to face down whichever senior Agent waited for her over on the Dragon Heart Campus, and then she would make her case.

  To her surprise, she saw that more Agents were waiting at the entrance to the tunnel, and these Agents had Locke and Cara in their grasp. Cara looked frightened and bewildered, but Locke looked angry. When he saw Willow, he lunged toward her. Thankfully, the Agent holding his arm held him back—but barely. Willow had seen Locke angry plenty of times, but she had never seen him looking quite this furious. She half-expected to see smoke literally coming out of his ears.

  “Why are we all being escorted around like common criminals?” he spat out. “She’s the one you should be treating like dirt. She’s the one responsible for this earthquake. She can’t be bothered to get her mental magic under control.”

  Willow felt her blood boiling, but she forced herself to take deep breaths and try to calm down. The last thing she needed right now was to accidentally set off a mental magic attack spell at Locke again. As much as she would have liked to send him bouncing across the room under the force of a Ventus spell, that wouldn’t help her case any when she tried to tell the Agency’s senior Agents that she was not the one responsible for the Terraemotus spell.

  The Agents largely ignored the students and the tension simmering between them. One of them held up a radio chip on his sleeve and spoke into it. “All targets are safe and uninjured. We’re heading to location B, estimated arrival time five minutes.”

  Willow frowned and glanced over at Sylvie. “Targets? Location B?”

  A prickle of worry filled her mind. Were these really Dragon Heart Agents? Or, perhaps a better question: were they loyal Dragon Heart Agents? Had Willow and her fellow students been captured by a group of traitors?

  But just as Willow began to truly worry, and to prepare herself to fight, she heard Anjali’s familiar voice crackling over the Agent’s radio chip.

  “Oh, thank heavens they’re safe. Get them over as quickly as you can. I’ll meet them at location B.”

  Willow instantly breathed a sigh of relief, and even the Agent’s rough arm pushing her forward couldn’t annoy her in that moment. If Anjali was involved in this, then she was safe. There was no way Anjali would be involved in treason. For as long as Willow had known her, Anjali had never demonstrated anything less than fierce loyalty to the Agency and to the Dragon Heart Students. If she had sent these Agents, then Willow could trust them.

  The Agents pushed the students at a rapid pace through the tunnel that led to the Dragon Heart Campus. Although they acted tough and confident, Willow could detect an underlying note of concern in their faces. Something was very wrong, and Willow could only hope that no one seriously believed that she was part of that something wrong.

  When the group arrived on the Dragon Heart campus, in the familiar conference room that the tunnel led to, several more Agents joined them. The Agents were all on high alert, and surrounded the students protectively as the group moved toward the conference room door. Willow, Sylvie and Cara all followed quietly, but Locke was not so agreeable.

  “Where are we going?” he demanded.

  The Agents ignored him, which only made him angrier.

  “I demand to know where you’re taking me! I have a right to know. You can’t just herd me around like cattle! Do you know who my parents are?”

  “Quiet!” one of the Agents finally ordered. “You’ll find out where you’re going when we get there. This is for your own protection.”

  Locke made a face, but didn’t say anything else. The anger in the Agent’s voice had been enough for even someone as stubborn as Locke to realize that he was better off keeping silent.

  The group didn’t have long to wait to see where they were going, anyway. After leaving the conference room, the Agents walked down the hallway to the last door before the building’s eastern exit. There, one of the Agents stepped up to the door, held up his magic ring, and spoke out the words “Transire, transire, transire.”

  Willow had no idea what spell he was speaking. She’d never heard it before, and it didn’t sound remotely similar to anything she’d learned. Locke, however, gasped. The spell must have meant something to him, which didn’t surprise Willow all that much. He was always studying ahead, and studying each magical subject much deeper than just what was taught in class. The fact that he’d gasped when the spell was spoken only made Willow more eager to know where these Agents were taking them, and why. She leaned forward, trying to see what the Agent was doing.

  As soon as she started leaning forward, however, a blast of cold air hit her so hard that she was pushed backward a few steps. She yelped in surprise, as did Sylvie beside her. If it hadn’t been for the steadying hands of the Agents, who had clearly been expecting the blast, Willow and Sylvie both might have fallen completely backward.

  As soon as Willow had steadied herself again, she looked up to see that the door in front of them no longer looked like a normal, wooden door. Instead, it was glowing purple, and soon that purple, glowing light began to swirl. After a few moments of watching the swirling, glowing light, Willow felt the Agent beside her tightening his grip on her arm.

  “Hold on,” he said gruffly. “It’s going to be a bit of a wild ride.”

  Before Willow could react, she felt herself being pulled toward the swirling glow by an invisible, irresistible force. The next thing she knew, she couldn’t see anything except a blinding, purple light. She felt herself being tossed around, like she was drowning in a purple ocean. She tried to fight the waves, but they weren’t like normal waves. They were magical waves, and she was helpless against their force. Luckily, the Agent who had been holding onto her arm since they left the rec room continued to hold on. Knowing that she wasn’t alone in this swirling mess—whatever t
his swirling mess actually was—helped her keep somewhat of a steady head.

  Mercifully, the swirling didn’t last long. Less than thirty seconds after the swirling began, Willow found herself being spit out into a dark, windowless room that looked like a giant concrete box. The only light in the room came from the glowing magic rings of the Agents who were escorting the Dragon Heart students, and Willow strained to see. There were shadows that looked like boxes, and perhaps furniture, but she couldn’t quite be sure. The low light combined with the fact that she still felt dizzy from whatever weird trip she’d just taken made it hard to properly take in her surroundings.

  “Lux!” A familiar voice called out, breaking the tense silence in the room. Suddenly, a beam of light shot from a magic ring only a few feet away from Willow, instantly illuminating Anjali’s face. Willow was so relieved to see their beloved professor that she almost threw herself forward for a hug. She caught herself before she could act on the impulse, however, and held back. She didn’t want to appear unprofessional in front of all of these Agents.

  Locke didn’t share Willow’s joy, or her restraint. He immediately stomped his foot and took a step toward Anjali. “What’s all of this about?” he demanded. “I’m not happy about being placed in a lockdown room because Willow can’t stay in control of her mental magic.”

  Anjali pointed at a nearby chair, lighting it up with the ray of light emanating from her magic ring. “Sit down, Locke. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Despite the fact that this was clearly a serious moment, filled with danger, Willow couldn’t help feeling smugly satisfied by the shocked look crossing Locke’s face. Anjali often reprimanded him, but never this sharply. And never in front of a room full of senior Agents. His cheeks reddened, and Willow figured he must be dying of embarrassment.

  Served him right. He was tossing accusations at her that were completely false. She hadn’t set off that earthquake, and she was starting to feel hopeful that Anjali understood that. Anjali had been so irritated with Willow lately that Willow had expected to be taken to task for causing the earthquake the moment the professor saw her. But Anjali hadn’t looked at Willow with anger. If anything, the expression in her eyes had been relief.