“Petto wants to speak to you later,” Jesse commented, stuffing his burger into his mouth. He claimed it was his cheat day, and that he usually ate healthier. But the look Arry gave him suggested otherwise. I shifted scraps of tofu toast across my plate.

The dining room area was as much as I expected to be. Placed in the centre of the school, a series of stone arches reached up to support a glass roof that gave access to the morning sky above. The floor had been made of a deep blue tile, covered in streaks of black lines that shifted along with the gems that glistened, mirroring the stars of the night before.

There had been no one serving food to students, or even a line at the buffet table. Instead, small fairy-like creatures placed our dishes onto the dark oak desks in front of us. Somehow they knew exactly what we wanted – to my almond-based blueberry muffins that still sat on the side of my plate, uneaten.

The room was packed like any “ordinary” high-school cafeteria in a crappy high-school movie, targeted at preteens. Cliques stuck together – the music group, the preppy group, the rebels, etc – and to properly turn the scene into a real cliché, our desk was empty apart for the three of us.

“What does he want?” I asked, finally answering Jesse whilst fighting with the collar of the uniform that Arry borrowed to me earlier that morning. Of course, I was grateful to her, but being the only one dressed in a school uniform in the hall made me feel more out of place than I already was. Jesse promised to help get me a proper outfit after we ate.

“I don't know yet,” He swallowed. “We don't have magic owls that deliver messages for us, you know?”
“Pets against campus conduct?” I frowned at his Hogwarts reference, taking a bite of my muffin. Arry lowered her mask, taking small bites of her pita bread.

“No,” He shrugged. “No one wants to deal with cleaning up the crap they leave all over the place.”

“I heard Gepetto has a new toy!” A boy spoke in a British accent, slamming his hands so hard into the desk that I dropped my muffin. More cliché, I thought, looking up to him. His blonde hair swept to the side, curling down in an s at the end of his forehead. He spoke in a British accent, too.

“What do you want, Taylor?” Jesse asked, and Arry rose to her feet. Taylor flipped his chair around, sitting in it, locking his eyes onto mine.

“A freak and a mute, banning together with a human? Do they make you feel safe, Anny?” He spoke, stating my name with as much venom as he could muster.

“Back off, you idiot.” Another girl spoke, pulling him out of his seat by his ear. He flinched in confusion, then protested without struggling. The girl seemed familiar... Her dark hair was short and tucked behind her ears, her brown eyes highlighted with a line of kohl. She shoved him aside. “Look, I'm sorry about my friend.”

“It's fine,” I spoke, still trying to recognize where I've seen her before. Then, I saw a tattoo peak out from her neck – a feather. She must have been Emma's sister.

“Yeah, I guess he's kind of new to this,” She smiled. “He was meant to give you at least some hope before being a complete bitch.”

I narrowed my eyes, tightening my fist under the desk. I wasn't a stranger to fist fights – during my time in Arizona, I've gotten into my share. Don't stop until you see blood, I would tell my friends. But could I really afford to get into a fight here? Not when I had known nothing about magic. She could have turned me into a frog, for all I knew...

“I think you should leave, Erin.” Jesse stood up. The entire hall turned to face us no. Yet no one moved from their seats.

“Or what? You're going to tell your boyfriend?” She mocked, then grabbed onto his jacket, tugging him towards her so that he had no choice but to look directly into her eyes. “Now listen closely because I'm not going to let you get away with that shitty attitude ever again. Just because you've got special attention from Petto and that creep, it doesn't mean I can't turn your intestines inside out with a sideways glance.”

Jesse remained silent, barely blinking, but it was obvious he was more uncomfortable that he was willing to let on. Arry stabbed my fork into the wooden table, catching Eric's attention.
She grunted, then spat onto my plate before walking back to her friends three tables from us. Arry sat back down, placing her hand onto her friend's shoulder. Jesse shook his head.

“I think I lost my appetite,” He spoke, brushing her hand away from himself before leaving the room. I tried following, but Arry pulled me back into my seat, shaking her head.

Right. He needed space.

The entire hall had gone back to what they were previously doing. Or at least, that's how they wanted it to seem. I could still feel sets of gazes, drilling into the back of my skull as the crowd snickered, passing around the word human as if it was some kind of insult.

“Can you take me to Petto?” I asked, pushing the soiled plate as far as my arms would let me. Arry nodded, pulling her mask back over her face so that only her eyes peaked out from under her hood.

Petto's office was more of a study than an actual office. Dusty bookshelves lined the bare wooden walls that bloomed with moss, filled with studies in alchemy and grimoires – some of which being those my father searches for during our hunt for real magic. His desk was filled with paperwork, spells, symbols, and a small wooden doll that seemed hand-carved, judging by the scraps of wood that still clung onto the rug.

Petto himself hadn't noticed me and continued scrolling through the pages of the book of shadows placed in front of him. He had a ballpoint pen in hand.
“Hey,” I spoke, and he rose his gaze, shutting the book in front of him. He was dressed as impeccably as always – today, he sported a white shirt and purple waistcoat that glimmers nearly as brightly as the gold pocket watch that hung from it. “Jesse said you were meaning to talk to me about something?”

“How are things going so far?” He dug through one of his drawers, before pulling out a small box. I shrugged, wondering if I should tell him about what just happened, yet decided against it because he didn't really want to know.

The whole "how are you doing?" crap in the conversation had become more of a greeting than anything else. I said nothing. “I see.”

“Anyhow,” He continued, taking my silence as his cue to continue. “May I ask if it would be weird that I did my research on you before you and your father arrived?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. I was being honest, too. After all that happened, I still wasn't sure if I have strapped to a chair inside a mental asylum or something.

He forced a smile. “You and your father really loved the idea of magic, didn't you?”

“You could say.”

“May I ask why?”

“You already know, don't you?” I asked. “You knew her. My mother.”

He nodded, shutting his eyes as grief passed by him. I could tell that they were close just by the way he looked at me, why he looked at me that way, I couldn't understand. I wish I could say I looked like her, but she seemed to be this extremely elegant Phoenix, ready to take flight at any moment and I looked like a newt. He shifted uneasily.
“Those pictures you found in your room. They weren't placed there by magic or anything like that. They belonged to your mother.” He spoke, drawing a silver necklace from the box he pulled out the drawer. He hadn't it over to me. “She wanted you to have this.”

Wrapping my hands around it, my heart slowed down to a near flatline. I brought it to my chest, whispering the words thank you so softly that even I couldn't hear it clearly. I slipped the necklace over my head and brought the two halves together. A faint glow emitted from the cold steel, burning a string of words onto the back of the pendant.

You are my brightest flame.

“Why me?” I asked, looking at Petto. “Erin claimed us to be favoured by you and Morgan. I get why you favour Jesse and Arry, but why me? Why some girl who's magical knowledge only includes how to call bs in a three-card Monte? Is it just because of who my mother was?” I froze, reminding myself of my plan to save her. “Who my mother is?”

He laughed. “Jesse is nowhere close to my strongest student, and Arry has never cast a spell in her life. What you know about magic really doesn't matter. I choose you because I saw the potential.”

I stayed quiet as he moved from behind the table, taking my hand into his own. “Do you know where magic stems from?”

I shook my head.

“Tell me her name again, and focus on your memories of her.”

“Phoenix,” I spoke, and a bird burned into the air above my palms.