Lilly never made it to breakfast the next morning. 

She was in the middle of an intense argument with Wyx about whether or not bears had tails as they made the trek to Treasurer's Place. Wyx swore that bears most definitely did not have tails, and Lilly responded by rolled her eyes and telling him he was out of his mind. They were about to enter the cafeteria when Instructor Stevia's stern voice cut like an electric jolt through the rotunda.

"Private Ci!"

Lilly wondered if her stomach would ever stop somersaulting when Stevia called her name as she turned around. Wyx jumped down from Lilly's shoulder and hid behind her ankles.

"Good morning," Lilly replied. Much to Wyx's disappointment, she'd been practicing her manners with the instructors. One sassy sentence and she was terrified she'd get sent sprinting suicides for an hour—it had happened to Max plenty of times, and Lilly hated running.

From below, she heard Wyx mutter, "Zander and Kaitlynn must be rubbing off on you."

Lilly shoved him with her heel and moved out of the doorway of Treasurer's Place. The vibrant, fruity smell of acai berries and yogurt wafted out from the cafeteria, and her stomach gave an impulsive growl. Oh, she was so ready for breakfast.

"Melissa Stowe is your full-time guardian, correct?" Stevia asked, drawing uncomfortably close to Lilly. When it came to Stevia, anything more than two feet away was uncomfortably close. Her tall, muscular frame and her chiseled, austere facial features were reminiscent of boulders: hard, unmoving, despondent. This morning, Stevia's expression was severely grim—it was always severely grim, but with the instructor standing this close, Lilly felt the severity of Stevia's grimness chilling her bone marrow. 

It was a miracle how anyone with such a brooding face could be so strikingly beautiful. 

"She is," Lilly answered. "Yes ma'am."

"Ma'am!" Wyx hissed, clucking his tongue in disapproval.

Stevia looked down at him. "Come with me, and...don't bring your pet."

Wyx snapped, "She is my sidekick!" before dashing into Treasurer's Place.

Stevia led Lilly down a long corridor that stretched from behind the main stairwell to the Northern Wing, and Lilly's growling stomach grew queasy. Stevia was already intimidating with her consistent stormy mood, her long dark hair twisted into tight, scalp-searing braids, and her unnaturally stiff gait. 

They turned into yet another empty hall and paused in front of a small gilded door beside a spiral staircase. This hallway was quiet and bare compared to the other luxurious decorations in the rest of the facility—the navy walls housed oil paintings depicting several different species of dragons, each piece framed with elegantly carved metal. Several fairies loitered on the banister of the staircase, chittering in their tinkling little language. With a single steel look from Stevia, the fairies jumped with colorful bursts of light and fluttered up to the next floor. 

"What's happening?" Lilly asked slowly, trying to keep her nervous temper under control. She could feel it slipping, slipping, and she'd worked so hard to keep herself composed around the adults here. 

Stevia crossed her arms and leaned back against the gold-framed door, staring down at Lilly with the same hard gaze she'd given the fairies. "Centurie tried to get in touch with your cousin about what happened yesterday, but she didn't answer any of the letters he sent her last night. We asked Bloom Officials to go to her house in Earthens. She wasn't there." 

Heat spread through Lilly's stomach. 

Okay, that wasn't bad. Maybe she was out working late or getting dinner or going for a run. Maybe she was at the library, or the bookstore, or maybe she just needed to get out of Belle Village for a while. There were hundreds of perfectly mundane reasons why Melissa would not be at home. 

But then Stevia proceeded with, "The Officials smelled the residue of a gate made from inside the house. They traced it through their gatekeepers and found it led to the woods of Bria Hungary, about sixty miles north of Elliott Way." 

The heat spread to Lilly's face. 

Okay, okay. Still not terrible. There could be a hundred perfectly magical yet undangerous answers as to why Melissa would have gone to the Shifter World. 

Stevia finished with, "Officials investigated and found her and another man in a burned-down trailer. The man was wounded by an Earthens gun. Your cousin had bite marks all over her." 

The heat engulfed her like a suffocating flame. Lilly felt very weak in the knees. "Is she alive?" 

"She's—" Stevia paused, weighing words in her mouth. When she tried again, she spoke in a half-whisper and it was the most sentimental tone Lilly had ever heard from her. "I don't know. They were both unconscious when the Officials took them to the nearest hospital." 

Lilly wrapped her arms around herself. She couldn't believe this. She didn't care why Melissa went to the Shifter World or how she ended up unconscious in a burned-down trailer with bite marks all over her...she only cared about the outcome. She wanted Melissa to be alive. 

Something sour and acrid rose up in her mouth. She swallowed and pressed her hands into her hair, trying to process this. She remembered when she'd burst back through her house the morning after her birthday only months before, hoping to retrieve a lunch box and finding a broken battered cousin instead. Did Lydia have something to do with this?

Stevia cleared her throat and shifted her weight against the wall. "The Board Members are close to finding out who made that rip in Elliott Way's barrier—" 

Lilly's temper was officially gone. Sharply, she asked, "What does that have to do with anything?" At Stevia's narrow-eyed glare, she amended, "Sorry; I'll wait until you're done talking."

"There's a woman the Board Members have known for a long time. Her name is Lydia Cannassa. Amaranth called her in to examine the rip in Elliott Way's barrier, but Lydia says the only way she'll examine it is if she gets to talk to you in private." 

Lilly's heart throbbed in her throat. Not her. Not now. She choked, "Why?" 

"Tell me that." Stevia shifted her weight again so that she was no longer standing against the door. She looked down at Lilly, hawkish and brooding and beautiful, and asked, "Lydia's on the other side of this door, and I'm trying to wrap my head around why she wants to talk to you, of all people. The thirteen-year-old Private who can't keep her mouth under control. The girl caught on the roof with a monster and a comet." 

"This looks bad," Lilly said. 

"Very bad, Miss Ci. I'll be waiting on the other side of this door and I hope you have an answer for me when you come out."

"Do I have to go in there?"

"I was told to tell you that you have a choice but to imply that you really don't. I've never liked making people imply things, so I'll tell you bluntly: Go in there, give Lydia whatever she wants, come out, give me an answer, and we'll all go on about our business." 

Lilly seriously doubted that Stevia would "go on about her business" is she knew that Lilly could steal from space; Lilly also knew that she wouldn't have an answer but a lie instead. She didn't know what that lie was going to be, or how she was going to justify Lydia, or how she was going to process what had happened to Melissa, or how she was supposed to explain away the comet and the monster. Stevia opened the door for Lilly, and as Lilly passed through the threshold, Stevia said, "Secrets don't just poison you. They poison everyone involved." 

"It's just as much of a mystery to me as it is to you," Lilly lied quietly. Stevia made a little mm noise from behind pursed lips before shutting the door. 

The room was large, standard training room with round black walls and a glass ceiling. The steady patter of the rain echoed a macabre melody as it thrummed against the roof. On the far end of the room, facing a window overlooking fog-capped hills from Elliott Way's western side, stood a silhouette outlined in pearlescent silver light. The silhouette's dark hair was pulled back into a harsh bun at the base of her neck, her leather corset was cinched tight around a looser, white long-sleeved tunic beneath it, and her boots glinted all the way up her thighs with buckles.  

"You're angry," said Lydia, not turning from the window. 

Lilly wondered if that assumption was psychic clairvoyance or pure judgment. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear absentmindedly, hunched her shoulders forward, and waited for Lydia to continue because, oh yes, Lilly was very pissed off, and she didn't want to steal another comet as a result of her anger. 

Lydia continued, "I had a gun pointed at your cousin's head the other day. I made a deal with her. I told her I'd tell her why I blackmailed you into coming to Elliott Way if she let me shoot her in the head. I read from her vibrations that she was considering making the offer." 

Lilly's felt a scream rise up in her throat and skull. 

Lydia turned from the window. 

Those scarlet lips, that glittering diamond choker. She looked the exact same as she did the night of the incident at Khofie's. 

"Why are you here?" Lilly whispered. Her words were swallowed by the echoing hum of rain, so she tried again: "Why are you here?" 

"To tell the Board Members I made the rip in Elliott Way's magical barrier. To annoy you. Mostly I'm here because you're not the only one who's angry in this room and I need to take my anger out on somebody because your cousin is too stubborn to die." 

"So she's not dead? Wait—you made the rip in that barrier? You're working with Storm?" 

"I made a deal with him," Lydia replied, drawing closer. Lilly could now clearly discern the thing that was tangled between her fingers was a long swath of fabric. "I got bored sitting still in the Shifter World, so he gave me a job to turn imaginary monsters real. I got bored again, so he asked me to get you to Elliott Way. Melissa came 'round asking questions about who I made deals with. She and Nathan burned down my trailer instead. I take it the Board Members haven't figured out what you can do, yet?" 

Lilly shook her head, mind whirling. Lydia was working with Storm. That's how Storm knew Lilly was alive and that's how he knew to send monsters to Elliott Way. He wanted her magic, just like he had wanted her mother's all those years ago. 

The anger, the fear, the violent desperation...the feelings raged in her, clenching her stomach tight, sending tears to her eyes, blurring her vision, making her hands shake. 

Lilly spread her arms wide, and as she did, a ripple of pain went through her shoulders. In the uncomfortable heat of yesterday's agony and right now's anger, she could feel the magical current fluttering in her hands. She wanted to hurl Lydia into outer space. 

Lydia sighed a dramatic, noisy exhale and took another step towards Lilly. "I'm bored, Lilly. The world is slowly falling apart, people are getting massacred by the monsters, and I'm bored. That's pretty bad."

"You just helped Storm make eleven beasts with the sole intent of murdering people. How could you possibly be bored?"

Lydia shrugged, then said, "I want to play a game to curb my boredom. If you win, I'll tell you where your dad is. If I win, you have to come home with me. Ooh, Melissa would hate that." 

Truthfully, the offer made Lilly's heart lurch. She hadn't even thought about her dad since Jake came to her house and told her he had her father's journal. She did want to know why the journal ended up on her doorstep, why it was addressed to Melissa, and where he was. She wanted to know why he never came back for her. But was it worth it?  

And if she lost—where was home?

She wanted to know. She needed to know. He left her and she needed to know if it was because he really did try to find Emma or because he loved his pills more than her. The anxiety of it bubbled up within her in the way it had that night in Khofie's right before she'd stolen an ether atmosphere. 

"How do you know him?" Lilly asked. 

Lydia held out the fabric. "It's my job to know what everyone else wants to know, my dear." 

Lilly plucked the fabric from Lydia's fingers. My dear on Lydia's lips sounded like poisoned sugar. "And how do I know that if I win you'll actually tell me?"  

"I play off boredom, not sides." 

"What's the game?" 

"Tie that around your eyes," Lydia said, gesturing to the fabric. "You steal, I take abstract vibrations and turn them into concrete things, and whoever falls down first loses." 

"Why do I have to be blindfolded?" 

Lydia's mouth quirked at the corners. "Makes it less boring." 

"Why can't you be blindfolded?" 

"Your magic is more dangerous than mine. Granted, you don't know all the nuances of how to steal from space, but that's another game for another time." 

Lilly sighed, trembling, and tied the fabric around her eyes. She could do this. It was her chance to prove to Lydia and herself that she was just as much of a threat as any abstract thing made concrete. It was also her chance to learn about her father. She wasn't without a weapon, either, and she knew the training rooms were soundproof, so if Stevia was standing outside, the instructor wouldn't hear anything. That would help keep Lilly's magic a secret. 

She could also steal starlight, relatively minuscule amounts of fast-moving atoms that could burn someone's arm off if Lilly wasn't paying attention (it had almost happened to Wyx once, and there was a burned hole in her bedspread to show for it). 

The odds were kind of in her favor. 

Now completely blinded, Lilly wiggled her fingers in her attempts to feel the magical current. It murmured at her fingertips. Farther away, from somewhere to her left, she heard the shh shh shh of wind against stone, a clang, and finally, a wicked snicker. 

I take abstract vibrations and turn them into concrete things. 

What abstract vibration had Lydia turned concrete? 

Lilly didn't wait to find out. She closed both hands into fists and pulled them into her stomach, an action she found worked best for the discomforts of space-thieving. Wyx said she looked like she was punching herself in the gut when she did that, and Lilly had argued that it was a cool move space-thieving ninjas might do. 

Her arms tingled. Waves of heat rippled over goosebump-pebbled skin. The darkness behind Lilly's blindfold became bright, and Lydia gasped. There was an aggressive crackle, and suddenly Lilly's nostrils filled with the smell of burned brownies and acidic coffee. 

Lilly barely had time to think What did I just steal? before she found out what Lydia's weapon was. Something cold sliced through Lilly's right thigh. The pain shot through her leg, electric and white-hot. She staggered backward, yelping, then remembered that she was not going to fall down. She rolled her shoulders back instead, and instantly regretted it—pain rained down her back. The blood from the wound was hot and thick and pouring, pouring. 

Lilly backed up farther, hoping to put as much distance between she and Lydia as possible. She balled her hands into fists and brought them to her stomach again, this time letting her energy flow out into the magical current. She wanted to steal something bright and dangerous, something that would deform Lydia and send her slamming to the floor, sobbing. She wanted Lydia to know how furious she was for what she'd done to Melissa. 

"You know," Lydia growled, her voice coming from somewhere to Lilly's right. "You think Melissa's perfect. You think that I'm the bad guy." 

So Lydia was reading her thoughts. Lilly couldn't talk, concentrate on putting her energy into the magical current, and back away from Lydia at the same time. Her back hit a wall, and she gasped, still reeling from the pain in her thigh and back. Don't fall. Don't fall. She couldn't keep putting her weight on her leg, so she leaned back against the wall—

Suddenly, the air felt heavy. Suffocating. As if the molecules that made up air became ten times heavier within the span of a second. Lilly could feel it, but she didn't wasn't impacted by it. Her rapid breaths filled her lungs with just as much readily-available oxygen as before.

"Gravity," Lydia snarled. The word took her five seconds to speak.

Lilly had stolen a vast amount of gravity from another planet. 

She would have smiled if her shoulders and thigh weren't in so much pain. 

The heaviness of the air lifted, mostly because Lilly didn't know how to keep the gravity in the room. Lydia snickered, and Lilly heard her boots clicking across the room towards her. There was the ear-splitting screech of metal on stone.  

Lilly snapped her fingers; space was a dangerous, violent place. She refocused her energy on the magical current, the lifeline of the Shifter World. Something dangerous. Something violent. 

Long cold fingers snapped around Lilly's wrists, and Lydia whispered from behind her, "Too slow." 

Lilly felt something heavy slither over her shoes before circling through her ankles. Something else curled around her throat. 

Something else hissed. Scales scratched against the tender skin of her neck. Snakes. 

She held her breath. 

"Move," said Lydia, "and you'll be in for a very uncomfortable month of vomiting up black slime because of prae-snake venom. What a terrible story for the grandkids: 'A psychic turned my angry vibrations into poisonous snakes and used those snakes to make me vomit black slime for a month.'" 

Another serpentine body slid around Lilly's hurt thigh. She bit down on her lip to keep from crying out as the agony jolted her nerves. She would not fall, she would not fall, she would not fall. 

"Let me tell you a story before you lose our game." Lilly felt Lydia's lips right on her ear, all warm breath and vicious tones. "Once upon a time, Melissa and I were best friends. And then she shot the man I loved in the head. Ten years later, I held a gun to her head, but her friend shoved her aside. I shot him instead. Night-monsters flooded the trailer, I ran away and turned back in time to see the whole place catch on fire. She got lucky that time, but I'll be damned if I let her slip through my fingers again. You'd better hope she doesn't show her face near me again."

More than wanting to know about her father from a psychic with a grudge against her cousin, more than wanting not to go home with Lydia, wherever that was, she wanted so desperately to keep Melissa safe from this woman.  

Something dangerous. Lilly's hands shook. She could feel the steady throb of despair rising inside her, its drumbeat filling the space behind her eyes, her brain. She squeezed her eyes shut behind the blindfold, gulped in a breath. Bit down harder on her lip. Clenched her hands together. 

 The snakes circling her body hissed hissed hissed. Something violent. 

In the end, it was solar wind that blasted Lydia against the wall behind them, shed the snakes from Lilly's body, and sent the whole place smelling of hot sour smoke and acid. 

The only thing Lilly knew about solar wind was that it existed and it came from the sun; later, she would learn it was a pelting explosion of charged particles made of electrons, protons, and alpha particles. It was plasma, it was radiation. It was dangerous and violent and filled the room with flames. 

She would also learn later that, compared to the bursts of solar wind hurled towards planets, the amount she'd just stolen was minute. 

But it had a savage impact. 

Lilly tore off her blindfold and was met with the intense, horrible disaster that was stolen wind from the sun: flames rising in thousand-degree pillars that sent up grand plumes of black smoke and withered the floor and walls away. Snakes in ashes at her feet. Lydia in a small bleeding heap on the ground. Lilly's body completely unaffected. 

Lilly pressed her hands to her mouth. 

The doors to the training room flew open, and Stevia's silhouette stood at the threshold. "What did you do?"

Lilly shook her hands out. "Stop," she whispered to the solar wind, the flames. "Stop stop stop stop stop—please stop!" 

And the fire whisked out of existence. The solar wind disappeared, the air eased its hot charged tension.  

Lilly looked at Stevia, then back at Lydia, who wasn't moving. Her skin had bubbled and melted, red-black with burns. Her hair, once so thick and dark, was brittle and dull black. Her eyes were swollen shut, her lips were puckered and split open, and her nose was smashed flat against her face. 

The realization struck Lilly with gut-wrenching dizziness: She just murdered the woman of scarlet lips and diamond chokers.