The carvings on the face say they find it hard

And the engine's failed again, all limits of disguise.

THE MASK WEIGHED heavy in Storm's hands. She watched Steve and Toby, under the cover of trees, wondering how the hell this situation would de-escalate. And how long before she needed to pee.

Steve yanked Toby up. "You're not so tough without your protector, huh?"

Toby's hands shook, eyes glossing over. His voice wavered. "I can take care of myself."

It was almost cruel, seeing him so defeated. She'd been watching Toby for months. He was constantly a pillar of support for any person who gave even half a damn about him. Jim had put full faith in Toby from the very beginning, and as much as his voice and fashion sense and overall presence annoyed her, it wasn't that hard to see why. He was an anchor; everyone relied on him. In the past two weeks, Toby had been rocky. Getting angry, terrified, hopeless. Despite all that he was still incredibly brave, and incredibly determined. (His argyle sweater-vests, on the other hand, were still incredibly ugly.)

She knew there was a part of Toby born to be a hero. Nobody in the world had any right to paint him as a coward. Especially not Steve. He got spooked by the shadow of a stuffed animal yesterday.

"Aw, you gonna cry now?" Steve jeered, and this was the first time in her entire life that she felt a biting, consuming anger towards him. Partly because he was being an ass. Partly because he could be better. "Big ol' punching bag Dumbzalski, all by himself."

Toby was floundering for words like a fish out of water. The portal still wasn't opening. A familiar shift took over her gut again, and she raised the glamour mask higher. Something was wrong.

"He's not by himself. I'm right here."

Well. No going back now.

When Toby heard his best friend's voice again, it looked like he was going to shit himself. The grip Steve had on him loosened. Impossibly, he was met with a crystal-clear image of Jim Lake Junior standing in the clearing, hand on his hip and brows raised.

But Jim wasn't here. He couldn't be here. So Toby just . . . stood there, jaw hung open in spite of all the hunks of metal connecting numerous parts of his mouth. "Whaaa—uh—"

"Let him go, Steve," Maybe-Jim-Question-Mark said tersely. There was a familiar edge to his voice, but it wasn't Jim's.

Toby looked down to where the glamour mask had tumbled into the foliage. It wasn't there. His stomach tensed. Someone else was pretending to be Jim right now. But who?

Storm hated this already. Her body still felt like her body, but being stuck inside a Jim skinsuit made her feel gangly and obtrusive, and sweaty around the pits. Why did he wear a tracksuit in the middle of spring? Why was she even doing this?

"There you are, plebe," Steve seethed, shoving Toby away. "I have some very choice words for you."

Jim-Storm just sighed. "Okay."

Steve looked like a poacher on the most idiotic hunt ever as he stalked up to her and grabbed her by the collar. Real original. "I'm gonna punch you into next week, Lake, then I'm gonna post that embarrassing video of you all over the internet, and then I'm gonna ask you about this little disappearing act the two of you are in on!"

Storm knew she should have acted like Jim. She should have put on a deeply convincing performance to make Steve less suspicious. But she had a feeling Jim had a lot of things to say to Steve he would never dare to act on, so she decided to fulfill his dream and do it for him. It's what he would've wanted.

She sniffed the air. "Your breath smells weird."

The angry lines on Steve's face faltered, and so did his grip. "Wh—it does not! You take that back!"

"It does. You have motor oil for dinner or something?"

Steve had not in fact eaten motor oil for dinner. Storm knew that because she'd eaten dinner with him. Boxed mac and cheese with an energy drink, if anyone was wondering.

He seemed momentarily stuck in place, glaring at her, and in the back of her mind a thought rooted itself: What if he can see through me? What if he knows what I am?

No, glamour masks were sturdy. She was psyching herself out. Toby snorted helplessly in the background. That was enough to yank Steve back into his original mission—which had been so lost she assumed that Operation: Jim Fake Jr., Sub-operation: King of Speed and Finding Things and also Being the Best had been greatly shortened.

"What's so funny, pinhead?" He seethed, setting himself on Toby again. Toby seemed more sure of himself now that someone else was here, but he was looking anxiously between Steve and Jim-Storm like he was trying to figure out the lesser of two evils.

She liked thinking that the answer to the last one was debatable, but right now there was no way she was letting Steve out of here scot-free. There was also no way she was letting Claire die, because the portal appeared again behind Steve, more fierce and desperate than ever. Toby's eyes widened and flicked over to hers. It washed his apprehension away in an instant. He'd trust anyone at this point for a bit of help.

She crossed her hands behind her back, unfurling them out of fists, praying Toby was too caught up with Steve to watch her. The portal flickered above her head and she closed her eyes. She could feel it pulsing, scraping to pool out. All it needed was a little push.

Whenever Storm cast spells, she never knew what she was saying. She couldn't tell you what language, what era, what book she'd gotten them from. All she knew was that everything had been lodged somewhere in the back of her brain, compressed into a tight wad, and a few stray pieces fluttered out when she needed them most. She murmured something old, probably ancient, and it felt good on the tongue. Not like the spell she tried to cast on Steve earlier. No. This one was right.

The portal flickered again and she held onto it in her mind, her hands clenched to fists. She muttered again, eyes pressed tight together, and tried to pry that portal open. It took a moment but finally, finally after widening it just a little bit, it ripped open like a whirlpool. That was all Claire. No way she could command a portal as big as that. Damn, that was impressive.

Water flooded down from the portal and drove into the earth. It smattered all over her. Now she was in Jim's awkward body and had muddy shoes. Awesome!

Even worse was when Steve turned around and saw the shadow-portal in all its glory, spewing gallons of water from nowhere. He looked like he was about to pee.

"You know what?" Toby panted, "Claire's right. You're not worth it. Steve, have you ever heard of the expression 'heads up?'"

"Wha—AH!"

A box fell from the mystical abyss and knocked him out cold.

Storm would've laughed, if not for the fact that another box spilled out of the portal and hurtled towards her. She jerked out of the way just enough for it to pin her down, but not enough to keep the glamour mask on. It slid off her face and into the dirt, and if anyone even glanced her way, she was exposed. It killed her just to think it.

Maybe it's time I let this go. Maybe the jig is up. Maybe that's okay.

But it wasn't okay, and she knew that, because she was, at her core, a destroyer with no real history or home, a poison to anyone she got close to. It had happened to her old school friends. It had happened to Meg. If she'd let her guard down, it would've happened to Steve, too. She wasn't a good person. She wasn't a team player.

Despite that, she couldn't seem to gather herself enough to leave. To save herself any way she could. She wanted to stay here, out of options and soaking wet, to tear down everything she'd worked to build until it crushed her. Perhaps it was her self-destructive tendencies. Maybe it was vertigo.

She had an opening to escape, too. Toby had rushed right over to Claire who lay sprawled in the middle of the muggy clearing, coughing. NotEnrique was next to her. He wasn't moving.

"Ah! Toby, he's not breathing!" Claire sputtered, trying to shake her fake brother to life.

"Oh no, oh no, NotEnrique!" Toby tried to wake the changeling too. Nothing.

The fear in their voice clawed at a deep part in her soul. It made her wince. Sure, she hated the little shit, but he was an ally to the Trollhunters. A friend, even. She didn't know how much loss Claire and Toby could take. She didn't want to find out.

She slid her way out from underneath the box as Claire and Toby panicked. Toby performed chest compressions, and Claire was begging for him to wake up, tears wetting her face even with the drought from the portal long gone. It was gutting.

Storm prided herself as a morally dubious person. She always picked the neutral zone, played the apathy card, used ignorance as a weapon. That habit was tugging at her now, telling her to run, just walk away, their business is their business.

The startling realization was that she didn't like that thought. She didn't like that it was their business. She wanted it to be hers.

"Toby, it's not working!" Claire gulped. Her palpable anxiety cracked against her voice like a twig.

"I don't—I don't know, I'm trying!" He kept pressing on NotEnrique's chest, but the changeling stayed dormant. "He's still not breathing!"

Apathy drowned under a tirade of something stronger. Storm didn't know what it was. It swelled up in a thundering fog, and she was moving, moving, preservation nothing but a second thought.

"Let me help."

Claire looked up through streaky lashes, and her face turned from despair to shock. "St—Storm?"

Every part of her had steeled save for her heart, quivering in the cold of her body. "Let me help."

Claire did a double-take. "What are you doing here?"

Toby turned around so he could see her, too, and the colour drained from his cheeks. She towered over them, clumps of eyeliner smeared around her eyes. Her platinum hair was stubbornly glued down her neck, as if each strand was the bone of a skeleton, failing to tear away from her. The moon reflected the water on her skin in blinding whites and blues. She looked like a harsh marble sculpture, features sharpened by rain and weather and misfortune. Toby and Claire were very confused about why she was here, but seeing her like this made one thing clear: they had never seen anyone, human or not, look like that before.

Storm avoided eye contact with Toby, but she could see the way he froze. His eyes had darted to the glamour mask abandoned only a few feet away. "Wait, were you just—"

"Move." She plowed past him. He barely had a chance to scramble to the side before she sat herself down, pressing her trembling fingertips into the soft earth near NotEnrique's body. She could feel their eyes scathing her. It was strangely cold, like she was a cat without fur. This was a horrible idea.

Toby was hunched beside her, and Claire was across from them. "Close your eyes," she said as firmly she could manage. Her breath felt freezing. She hoped they couldn't feel it.

She didn't miss the hesitant looks they gave each other. Her blood was burning every second NotEnrique laid motionless. Fruitlessly, she added, "Trust me."

It would've been funny in any other situation. Storm Revette was perhaps the least trustworthy-looking person you've ever seen. Half the time she looked like she was planning your murder. She was notorious for being rough around the edges, being bitter, but never enough for her to solidify a permanent place in your mind. You would always forget about her the next day, but whenever you saw her again chills would pinch your neck. Trusting her was a ridiculous request she knew nobody could take in good conscience.

So when they both, albeit reluctantly, shut their eyes, Storm felt like she was not the same person she thought she was. That she'd been mistaken for somebody else. The past life in her body that did not belong to her filtered a warmth through her joints, a memory, obscured by something she could not name.

She looked down at NotEnrique. His skin had turned a sickly green. Okay, she thought again, or maybe said it out loud. I can fix this.

Looking back up at Claire and Toby, she was met with the unsettling urge to do nothing but watch them to see if they peeked. But for all the seconds she waited, neither of them moved an inch.

Her hand pressed into NotEnrique's chest like a spider web over a coffin. A dead thing against a dying thing. She took a deep breath, and for the first time in her life, she thought she could trust these people enough to close her eyes, too.

The changeling's body mapped itself out before her—a network of veins and organs. Through tendrils of tissue and muscle, she found the water, shallowing in and out of his lungs. It gleamed blue in her mind, brightly unnatural. A clear anomaly.

She concentrated slowly, carefully, taking hold of the water in her vision and dragging it out of his lungs. On the outside, her finger followed a similar pattern; thoughtless, but not mindless. As the water rose in NotEnrique's throat, it rose in hers too, tightening a knot in her heart. I am really doing this, she thought, I am really really doing this. It was nausea-inducing.

Just as the bile on her tongue was about to spill, just as the water reached the cusp of the changeling's mouth, it flew out of him, and he sputtered so loud it took her out of the vision instantly. Eyes open, she watched the little gremlin hack himself back to life.

"Oh, thank fuck," she sighed, falling back onto her heels. Kind of worried myself there for a second. Claire and Toby had their eyes open now too, smothering NotEnrique in hugs and grateful squeals he did not seem to be reciprocating.

"I told ya. I can't . . . swim," he wheezed, lying limp in Claire's arms. By then, Storm was already rising, hoping to disappear into the night and trick them into thinking she was just a figment of their imagination. Or a collective delusion.

"Wait," Claire called. "Storm."

She turned around.

Claire's eyes glistened, wide as saucers, and when they looked at her with such honesty it untwisted the knot in Storm's heart. "Thank you," she breathed.

"How did you do that?" Toby asked, still catching his breath. "And I thought I was good at CPR. Did Coach Lawrence teach you a different kind or something?"

Storm didn't say anything. Her mind went blank except for fuck fuck fuck you're really in it now. Glancing back to Claire, her gratefulness had evaporated, and she was staring disarmingly. Fuck. She wasn't going to be able to get out of this, was she?

"Yeah," Claire mused, "how did you do that?"

She swallowed. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. The humid air rising from the ground was especially frigid. Toby, too, was looking at her funny.

She tried to shrug nonchalantly, but she felt her fingers shaking in their fists, and her shoulders were as stiff as a board. "Just . . . yeah. A thing I picked up. Don't worry about it."

Without gaging their reactions, she whirled to leave again. Her shoes sank into the damp grass, but she needed to get out of there without so much as a goodbye. It was like every part of her was on autopilot. Frozen inside. She couldn't really think of anything.

A thickness of trees waited for her at the edge of the clearing, but after a few measly steps, the view was swallowed by a long, black vortex. Her stride stopped. "Hold on a second," Claire's voice came first, then her body, out from the portal in front of her with her staff in hand. "Coach barely knows how to make an ice pack, let alone teach different kinds of CPR." As Claire's shoe hit the soft earth, Storm took a step back. "What did you do back there?"

Storm tried desperately to come up with something, anything, but her reliable well of lies had dried up. Everything inside her felt like it was cracking. She felt nervous in a way she didn't think was possible anymore. "What—what are you talking about, I was just trying to help—"

"It was you, wasn't it," Toby piped behind her, dangerously blunt. When she turned around, he, too, was apprehensive. "It was you pretending to be Jim. In the glamour mask."

"What?" Claire exclaimed. "I'm sorry, what happened?"

"How long have you been following us?" Toby shuffled away from her, still on the ground. "Have you been here this whole time?"

Storm looked him in the eye, and feared, that for all her incredible talents, she could not lie like this. "Steve got carried away," she said slowly, words faster than her nerves. "I just . . . I followed him to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. And he did, obviously, so I just didn't want things to get any worse." She gestured to Steve, who was still lying ass-up underneath a crate with a dopey look on his face.

Toby still looked uncertain, and she felt Claire shooting daggers into the back of her neck. "And then I saw that mask, and I just—I dunno, I just reached for it, and suddenly I was . . . Jim."

"How much did you hear?" Toby sputtered, suddenly in an accusing, defensive frenzy. "How much do you know? Oh my God, oh my God!"

Storm pulled a few words out of her ass as quick as she could. "I don't—I have no idea—"

"All of it," Claire's voice cut through hers, a steel knife. "She knows all of it."

Storm turned to her again, and something dark had washed over Claire's face. "You do, don't you?" She said, softer. Took another step towards Storm. "You're the one that's been messing with us."

This was the moment Storm knew she was officially past the point of no return. Officially beyond salvation. Plausible deniability had crumbed forever.

"Uhh . . . what?" Toby said. "I'm confused."

"You've been following us! On missions! At school! Ooh, I knew something wasn't right, I knew we were being watched!" Claire glared at her. She blew right past Storm and went up to Toby, who was now warily rising to his feet. "Toby, don't you remember that time in Trollmarket when Jim told us he thought something was following us? Weird things happening? Flashes of white in bushes and stuff? It was her! She's been stalking us!"

Toby's face morphed slowly as Claire spoke, foggy and unreadable, until he finally settled on something that looked . . . pissed. He looked to Storm, who hadn't been able to move a muscle. For the first time in a very long time, she felt fucking mortified. If she was a lesser person she would've been crying out of sheer stupidity. And oddly, terror.

Thankfully, she'd spent years understanding masks. She masked her face in the mirror, masked her soul in wet cement, and let it dry until the next morning. She knew how to make her face look how she wanted it to. "Okay, what the fuck are you talking about?" She said ludicrously.

"What did you just do with NotEnrique? Just now?" Claire asked, hands on her hips. "What? Tell us!"

Storm looked between them, pushing out a laugh. "What, are you gonna, like, hold me hostage or something?"

"Weird things keep happening to us, Storm! And you're always either suspiciously absent or present at the scene of the crime!"

"Those are the only two fucking ways to be anywhere!"

"Could y'guys stop yelling, please?" NotEnrique mumbled from the floor, still curled in a ball. "I'm gettin' a headache."

"Okay, okay," Storm said, backing up. Maybe if she slowly inched away, Claire wouldn't be able to catch her? Hopefully? "What exactly are you accusing me of right now? Third-degree life-saving? Breaking and entering? Because one of those is true and it has nothing to do with you."

Toby piped, "Do you know magic? We've seen a lot of weird stuff, Storm, you can tell us if you know magic."

It was like she'd been electrocuted. She scoffed in a way she hoped looked convincing. "What the hell are you talking about?"

This sparked something for Claire. Her mouth fell open. "I kept feeling like I was crazy because I thought something was messing with my portals—they'd, like, change a bit even when I was controlling them, but it was so subtle I thought I was delusional. But just now it opened a little on its own when I was trying to get the bridge pieces out!"

"Maybe it was just the staff helping you?" Toby offered, but he didn't sound convinced about that either.

"Don't you remember when we talked about all that weird stuff before Jim left? The near-misses, the close calls—when he said Angor Rot's punches just . . . missed him sometimes?" Claire was getting so worked up her cheeks were getting red, drops of water still crawling down her face. "The books! Jim said a stack of books just hit Angor Rot in the face. And when you lost your hammer, and it just appeared in Jim's backyard after you swore you checked there?"

Toby's eyes narrowed even further. She could see the cogs in his brain turning, scraping together. "Yeah . . . how did you know how to use the glamor mask, Storm?"

"For the last time, I do not know what that is. It flew near me and it has a fucking face painted on it. Doesn't take a genius to figure it out."

Claire's furrowed forehead caved a bit. Yes! She was winning them over. "Either way, you know more than you should," Claire said, fingers curling tighter around her staff. "I'm sorry. Just—just tell us what you heard, and don't tell anyone, and we promise we'll leave you alone. We're not crazy, we swear."

Claire's face had opened up a bit—desperation was now a possibility for her. She was almost back in the palm of Storm's hand. Exactly what she needed.

But, like, why? Why did it even matter? If Storm kept lying to them, what would happen after this? She'd go home, soaking wet with a hole in her chest, alone. Alone, alone, alone. She couldn't follow them anymore; it would blow her cover completely if she made one misstep, and at that point it would just be embarrassing. She couldn't spy on them at school—they'd be hyper-aware of her. She couldn't protect them, couldn't listen to their slews of awful jokes, couldn't contribute to any greater good. She would be useless again. Erased. A ghost.

It sometimes felt like this "interfering" was the only thing keeping her alive. The reason her body fueled her each day, the reason it pushed her out the door. Go, go, go. Lazy, petulant, unneeded. Make yourself useful somewhere. Make yourself useful with them. If she wasn't good for this, what was she good for? If she wasn't able to do this, could she really do anything? Was she just destined to do this to herself over and over; vanish from every valuable experience she could ever have, gorged on guilt and regret, until she released something horrible and wiped out her old life? She wondered sometimes if the time before Arcadia was not her only life—that maybe she's been alive for thousands, millions of years, and had started over every single time. Doomed to repeat it over and over because she never managed to erase the one thing she wanted to. The rotten consciousness. The putrid heart. Her name, her soul. Risking everything to change, but not knowing what for, or who she'd be out the other end.

She felt the moon put hands of light on her shoulders, and it almost spoke. It doesn't have to end this way. It can be different.

It can be different, can't it?

"Oh my God, what the—?"

Screams and curses lurched her back to reality. Claire and Toby had reeled away from her and the shadow-staff was raised. Storm looked between them. She hadn't said anything, had she? "What?" she asked impatiently, "What?"

"What is going on with your cheeks!" Toby yelled.

"Oh, I knew it!"

Storm clapped her hands to her face. There, she felt them, her daggered scars. They'd released themselves somehow, boring their way to the surface. When she looked down, she could see their pale glow on her fingers. Everything inside her strained—how could her own body betray her like this? She had to be the worst fucking witch in the world to secretly, accidentally undo her own spell.

"I—uh, okay wait, let me explain—"

"Wait," Toby said. His jaw was so wide it could've swept the floor. "I saw you. On Spring Fling. I saw you."

Dread washed over her. Claire lowered the staff. Storm noticed even NotEnrique was getting in on the show, sitting up from the ground.

Eyeing all of them, but especially Storm, Toby continued, "When we were fighting on the roof with Angor Rot, when he took your bag, remember? You were so focused on him but I thought for a second I saw—I saw—," he gulped, "this thing in the dark behind him. Two glowing things that looked like fangs. And then he cut the bag and he fell but I swear I saw something like, purple hit him and he left the edge of the roof right before we hit the ground!"

Storm flashed back to that night. Cold, tense, impossible to predict. She'd been tailing Claire and Toby, hoping to slow Angor Rot in the process, but no such luck. On the roof at the school dance, when he had them at his mercy, every second she waited was a knife in her skin. Both a second too early and a second too late, she struck him as hard as she could, unsheathed her blades, and waited for the reaper to face her.

His laugh was deep, grating. More amused than she expected. He looked her up and down. "In every fight, there's an enemy you know, and an enemy you don't," he grinned.

"Yeah, I've also heard that," she thrust a blade at him. "Surprise, I guess."

He laughed again, "Well it's nice to meet you, moongirl."

An ache exploded in her stomach as he tackled her to the floor, pinning her by the arms. She writhed, bile building in her throat. "Get—off!" She spat in his face.

His splitting smile smelled of sulfur and something long forgotten. A murky feeling flashed through her. "I know you've been following, you know; I see you in the dark. Shame I thought you'd be smarter than this." Baring his fangs, a curious look came over him. "But I figured you'd show up eventually."

Her struggle faltered for the most insignificant amount of time. His smile was even wider, his eyes so close they were painfully blinding. A very old kind of pain.

She opened her mouth, but couldn't speak. A question. She wanted to ask this awful monster a question. Thrashing wasn't getting her anywhere, her arms were starting to bruise, her mind was muddled. His eyes. Staring.

"Do you know—"

He flung her into the concrete and let her go. Rings of shock clouded her. The gravel beneath her felt warped to her body. Everything, everywhere, throbbed. Whatever was in her throat had ripped away.

"Sorry, but I'm in a rush. I'm sure I'll see you again, moongirl. Try not to die before then." She heard him leap off the roof, leaving her immobile.

She'd ultimately been useless that night. She was stuck spiraling on that roof until her vision cleared and she vomited—such a human thing to do. She'd been weak. Confused.

Right now, a similar foreign feeling invaded.

Claire looked appalled. "I didn't see that! Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"Because I was scared! You know how many weird things people see when they're scared? One time I almost got run over by a car and I thought Madonna was in the driver's seat!" He scowled at Storm. "It was you. I know it was!"

Yeah, this wasn't making her look great.

"You have been following us the whole time! Why didn't you tell us?" Claire glowered, back in attack mode.

"Oh, I think I know why," Toby sneered. "Think about it, Claire. Shifty, hiding in the shadows, following us for intel . . . I know something that fits that bill to a T."

Storm had to admit, she was impressed. If you told her that Toby would be the one to nail her identity, she would've kicked herself laughing. Even Claire was waiting in anticipation.

"I know exactly what you are, Storm." Now a few steps away from her, Toby smiled so she could see his dental work, gums, braces, and all.

"You're a changeling."

Tensions were high. Storm had been in a state of pure survival for ten minutes now. Her bones felt so rigid she thought they would ice over. So the absurdity, the stupidity, the stress of this scenario, bubbled up in one fatal burst.

She could not. Stop. Laughing.

It seized her before she could hold it, so violently it stung her ribs and wrought tears. She couldn't say anything for a long, long time. "What? What is it?" Toby and Claire asked, and Storm doubled over, holding her stomach, a farcical tangle of every emotion on the spectrum. A changeling? God, that's RICH!

She realized, amidst her hacking laughter, that NotEnrique was laughing too, clutching his belly and rolling in circles on the floor. The other two looked increasingly disoriented the longer this went on.

NotEnrique's laughter sobered Storm enough to wipe excess tears from her eyes, and push the mess of snorts back down her throat. "You guys—are so—dumb!" The little creature wheezed, so pleased with himself. "Thinkin' she's one of us! Now that's a joke!"

That fully tarnished her amusement. She glared. "What's that supposed to mean, pipsqueak?"

"Wait, so you're not a . . ." Toby dared not to say the word again.

"No, she's not a changeling, you ninnys! Can't you see it! She's a witch!" He burst into giggles again, spinning in the dirt.

An eruptive spite flared in her stomach. She pictured wringing that little creature's neck with a passion.

When she looked at him with her whole face blown up, she knew it was over. His smile was so big you could fit a toilet in it. "Yeah, you idiot, of course I knew. You're as subtle as smoke out a chimney once you know where to look!"

"Okay grandpa, nice analogy," she shot back.

"You're a what?" Toby exclaimed. "She's a what?!"

"A witch! You guys never met a witch before?"

"Like . . . the ones with pointy hats and broomsticks?" Claire asked.

"Now that's just offensive," Storm muttered.

NotEnrique chortled, "No, like Merlin, the Pale Lady, that stuffy lot. The ones that do magic."

All eyes were on her. "Merlin made Jim's amulet," Claire said, slowly inching her defenses back up. "Blinky told us he hasn't seen a wizard in years."

Storm paled. She felt like she was about to be burned at the stake. Fitting, she supposed. Fuck this. Fuck everything. This was miserable.

"You are one, aren't you?" Claire tensed. "You've been interfering with magic this whole time!"

A brief fantasy played in Storm's head of her crashing violently into the moon. This was not supposed to happen. This was just . . . exhausting. Lying turned out to be just as taxing as running away, and doing both put a serious toll on her. She didn't want this. She didn't know what she wanted. Ugh, why was living as a human so confusing? She was so sick of this! Waking up with a body not fully hers, a life she couldn't live, a fatal, forgotten sin eating away at her. She was nothing. She would never exist anywhere, and nothing she did mattered. Not in the long run. Not to her.

Maybe it could to them.

She closed her eyes. Opened them. The tingling on her cheeks faded. "I wasn't interfering. I was helping you jerks. And you do know there's like, a good handful of wizards in Arcadia, right? There's a Heartstone right under here—it's like catnip for us."

"Agh! She is a witch!" Toby squealed, jumping into Claire's arms. It sent them both to the floor. "Are you going to eat our eyeballs?"

"Yes, Toby. I've been following you for your eyeballs."

He whimpered.

She barely drew another breath before Claire's shadow-staff suddenly pierced her throat. "Okay, you're not funny. Tell us everything. Right. Now."

Looking down at the staff, and then back up at Claire's deadly stare, she really didn't have any other choice. Unless she just vaporized into the shadows behind her and disappeared forever. That would kind of be a dick move.

She cleared her throat. It quivered against the pincers of the staff. All the breath inside her body had been heightened tenfold, every movement a potential threat. "Maybe stop looking like you want to remake the Salem Witch Trials, and then I'll talk."

Claire didn't relent. She scanned Storm's face a thousand times over. "Look. I'm not going to hurt you," Storm said firmly. "I . . . I have an explanation. I'm on your side."

Claire scoffed, "I find that hard to believe."

Storm bit the inside of her cheek. Oh well. Time to do it the hard way.

She swept a leg at Claire's knees, sending her toppling forward. Storm got out of the way and took the staff into her waiting hand, pointing the back of it at Claire's neck. Claire froze, but her labored breath resonated through the clearing.

After a good, long second, Storm tossed the staff aside. "See how easy that was?" As Claire turned, her back now leaning against a tree trunk, Storm did something she almost never did—she offered her hand. "If I wanted to kill you, I would have."

Claire looked at Storm's bony hand. Then at her. Without taking it, Claire stood up and stomped past, butting Storm's shoulder. She yanked back her staff, and things came to a standstill.

"So you've been . . . helping us?" Toby said after a lapse, sitting down on the damp grass. "I am so overstimulated right now."

She nodded weakly. "Since the day the pixies came to our school. But I didn't do it on purpose, it was just—Jim looked like he was about to die, and I was the only one there, so I hit him with a stack of books. And then Jim kept almost dying, and then you guys kept almost dying, and then all of you kept almost dying so I did my best to make the almost a little less almost-y."

It didn't seem to translate. "What?"

Storm sighed, wringing out her tense forearms. There were so many things she could say; how was she supposed to find the right way to say them? How was she supposed to articulate this? Language had always been elusive to her. She could never find the words to make things connect. It all got lost somewhere, inside her head. Or perhaps everything she needed was outside her knowledge. A dictionary all of humanity had but her.

"I didn't mean to," she decided to say. "Trust me, I haaaate getting involved in anything. You know this."

"I do remember you dropping out of the spring play because you had too many lines," Claire mused.

"Exactly!"

"You were a tree. You didn't have any lines."

"And you always skip school," Toby commented.

"And forget to hand in your assignments."

"And fall asleep in class."

"And spray-paint Mrs. Janeth's car."

She was a little surprised at just how many things they could list off about her. "Okay, that one is just to express my artistry. I always use the wash-off kind!" She stepped closer to them, and nobody raised their weapons for the first time. "The point is, I did not get involved on purpose, okay? I thought you guys just . . . needed the help."

"Aww, you care about our safety and well-being?" NotEnrique grinned.

"I can put that water back in your lungs, you know."

"It would've been more helpful if you actually told us," Claire said. "You know, be an active member of the team."

The word team felt strange with the context of her in it. Made her insides squeamish. "I didn't want to interfere with your, uh, chemistry?" They stared blankly at her, and she heaved a sigh. "Look, you guys had a good thing going, and I'm not great with people or like, anything. It wasn't personal. You guys . . . didn't need me that much."

The words had a sourness to them, hanging in the air. The moonlight felt cold against her back.

"Clearly we did if you've been saving our butts half the time," Toby huffed. "How did you even figure out Jim was the Trollhunter in the first place?"

She shrugged. "I dunno, I could just feel something different about him. Like I recognized something. Then he came to school that day with the Grit Chaka around his neck so I knew something was up. Seeing him in his armor just kind of confirmed things for me."

"So you can find magic the same way dogs can find drugs and stuff?" Toby remarked, rubbing his chin. "Interesting."

"Let me get this straight: you've known about us for months. And the trolls, and Killahead, and everything? And you just let it happen?" Claire bristled, "You could've—you could've helped us, you could've made things so much easier, but you never said anything!"

"I didn't let anything happen, okay? I did everything I could!" Her body moved of its own volition, a lump growing in her throat. "I'm not a strong witch. I barely know anything. Half my spells are ineffective or don't work or backfire. I don't even know where I'm . . . where I'm from." She looked between the Trollhunters, something begging inside her. Please, just see something I don't. "I'm going to be perfectly honest: I have no fucking idea why I wanted to do this in the first place. I don't like doing anything! But every morning when I woke up, my stomach was in knots. I got headaches all the time but I was really feeling things again. Sensing things. Something is calling me, and I don't know how to make it shut up."

Layers deep within her mind, below the earth, beyond memory, a reckoning had unearthed. After this there was no more going back. After this, whatever she felt was coming, would undeniably pass.

She breathed in. "I think something very, very bad is going to happen to Arcadia. I can feel it every day. And as far as I know, you're the only people capable of stopping it."

Unfortunately, Claire and Toby were entirely apprehensive after her rousing speech. An itchy sort of adrenaline picked under her skin as they stared at each other, taking their sweet fucking time to communicate through arches of brows and eye rolls.

Eventually, Claire sighed, put a hand on her hip, and dropped her weapon. "Okay. But first—" she pointed to Steve, still lying limp underneath some boxes, mumbling incoherently, "can you do something about him?"

She took note of her idiotic boyfriend. Technically, this was all his fault. She scoffed, "Yeah, I can do something about him."

"Good," Claire said. "Then we'll talk. And then we'll assemble this stupid bridge."

✧ CATS OUT OF THE BAG LET'S GO TEAM!!!!! I love you Storm. Sorry babe

✧ Anyways. Sorry this chapter was so long (I literally cut down 400+ words very proud of myself) but may the Trollhunter banter begin🙏🙏 So very excited to explore Storm's dynamic with Toby & Claire (+ Jim later on) because they are my sillies and i love them!! Claire does not like Storm right now and Toby is apprehensive and NotEnrique is a lil freak but they are my family ok

✧ For future reference, and idk if i said this already, but if there's anything i want to say before the chapter begins, like trigger warnings, general disclaimers, etc., it will be found in the in-line comments at the top of the chapter!

✧ That said i'm so excited to continue this actually and i'm so excited to establish my own mythology & magic that i've set up for this story! There will be things mentioned in this book that have never been in the series because I MADE THEM UP!!!! Next chapter there will be more Trollhunters shenanigans and I am very curious to see how Storm settles in....hmm

✧ As always thank you so much for reading, commenting, and voting i love it! Hope to see u back next chapter :) and let me know any fun predictions you may have

—perrie <3