Billy faces the clearing space behind the lanterns, his brow stitched in confusion. But he closes his eyes, whispers his words of power, and in the middle of the field, right behind the center lantern, a thick, white wooden door materializes against the night sky. It stands there, no walls, no support. It looks eerie, like a passageway to a nightmare. Or a gateway to hell.
“Consider the space behind that door your canvas,” Gunn says as he paces in front of us. “I want the eleven of you to enter that door and use your magic to create something out of nothing in the clearing behind it. There are no rules I’m going to set for this final trial—the only limits are those you and your allies conjure, and the ones in turn that your adversaries create. I don’t care what happens in that clearing, honestly, once you walk through that door. The only thing I care about is that only seven of you walk back out.” He stops walking. “You decide who that is, and what makes that happen.”
The clearing’s so quiet you can hear crickets squeak like faraway rocking chairs. My mind is racing, trying to process what Gunn is actually demanding—only seven walking out? What happens to the rest of us?—but before I can think it through, Gunn says in his flat, even tone, “Begin.”
And then it’s like a gauntlet’s been thrown down, a race to get to the door, to stake an advantage in an unknown trial, me just as hopped up with adrenaline and fear as the rest of them. Stock and Tommy barrel ahead of us, with Rose trailing behind. They reach the door first. Stock grabs the handle and pulls it open. His trio bursts through the entrance and closes the door with a snap behind them.
“Let’s go!” Ral grabs my forearm with one hand and Grace’s with his other. He starts to pull us forward, in an effort to get a jump on Gavin’s crowd. Billy falls in beside us, but the Carolina Boys are right on our heels.
“Better move fast, little girls,” their leader Gavin taunts, panting as he runs behind us. “We’re coming for you.”
“I don’t understand. What are the rules?” Grace sputters as we stop in front of the door and Ral twists its handle open. He ushers her and me inside.
“You heard Gunn, there aren’t any,” Ral quips.
“Then how the hell does he determine the winners?” Billy asks.
“He doesn’t. The winners are the seven who survive whatever happens in here and manage to walk back out,” Ral says. “No matter what, we stick together, all right?”
I take another step forward as Ral slams Billy’s conjured door behind us—
But the clearing is gone. The grass, the night sky hanging over it like a swollen lid, the shadowy trees of the forest sketched like a charcoal border around it, all gone. Instead the four of us stand at the beginning of a long hallway—white walls, white ceiling, white floor—that extends in front of us like a scroll, stretching on and on for as far as I can see.
“What the hell?” Billy whispers.
“It must be Tommy and Rose’s visual manipulation, a hallway to shield them and Stock as they move farther into the clearing,” Grace says.
Ral nods. “Come on, let’s move. Gavin’s boys were right behind us.”
“Don’t think they’re behind us anymore.” Billy points back the way we came. “The door’s gone.”
I turn around instinctively, and my heart starts to quicken. Sure enough, the door we entered through a moment before has disappeared, and the whitewashed hallway extends for what looks to be forever in the other direction too.
“Holy hell,” Grace whispers beside me.
“Gavin’s team must have pierced through this manipulation already.” I approach the right wall, study the mottled white plaster that looks and feels just like the wall of my cabin bedroom back home. “I bet Gavin will try to ally with Stock’s trio, just like we were planning to. It’s an even seven, easier. And once they shake hands, they’ll start circling in on us and trap us in here to finish us off.” I will my heart to stay inside my chest. “We need to find Stock’s team before Gavin gets to them.”
Billy says, “And how the hell do you expect us to do that, Kendrick?”
I take a deep breath. “One step at a time.” I put my hands on the plaster wall, whisper the words of power, “Out becomes in.” A dark perimeter of a door begins to carve itself into the wall, four long slashes that merge to form a rectangle. I hover my hand over the newly conjured door’s left side, and the white plaster balloons until it gives birth to a silver knob.
Grace sidesteps me and grasps the doorknob.
“Decide where we’re going first,” Ral orders.
“Conjure atrium.” And then Grace turns the doorknob and steps through my magic-made door.
I follow right on her heels, Ral on mine, Billy behind him, as we step through my door into a huge, circular, nearly three-story-high atrium. A glass ceiling above us shows the faraway stars. The rounded walls are decorated in thickly striped white-and-pink wallpaper. Burning candelabras are mounted around the atrium’s perimeter. A red marble floor runs under us like a foaming sea of blood. Ral looks at Grace curiously.
Grace shrugs. “Old habits die hard. Can’t help but care about details.”