This was the sort of storm that shook entire school buildings and sent every outside surface weeping with fear. 

And this was the sort of heist that would get Lillian Arrid expelled if anyone found out. 

She crouched in the shadows of a dark, empty hallway in Eldnac Preparatory School—Home of the Most Boring Eagles in the History of Eagle Mascots—while an upbeat pop song oompahed out of the gymnasium to her left. The tiled floor vibrated beneath her feet with the sound, and the neon lights slithered over the trophy cases directly in front of the gym doors like bright serpents. There was the omniscient growl of rain and thunder beneath the dance music, and the smell of cheap punch and popcorn and Chic-Fil-A sandwiches, and the taste of fragrant early June twilight air as wind sifted through an open casement window on the far end of the hall. 

Lilly reached into her backpack and pulled out Manny, the gorgeous garter snake that hated dancing feet and loved scaring people half to death. The serpent was long and fat, and as Lilly released her through the gym doors, Manny spat an angry hiss. 

"Yeah, yeah," Lilly told her. "Most people hate snakes, so they're going to run away before they think twice about stepping on you." 

Manny slithered in. 

Lilly settled back into her place among the shadows and counted off the seconds: One. Two. Three. Four. 

The screams started right on time. 

Lilly shot to her feet, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and pressed herself against the wall while a wave of students in lace dresses and perfectly pressed suits flooded out of the gym, shrieking about a snake. Their presence made the hall thick with the fragrance of perfume and cologne, stuffy with the stench of drug store cosmetics, and unbearable with the sharp tang of sweat. 

The music in the gym abruptly cut off. 

Lilly slipped into the gym as chaperones filed out of the doors on the opposite side of the gym, where the tiny shadow of Manny was hissing at them. Lilly liked to imagine that Manny was shouting strings of profanity at them in her snake language.

Lightning flickered against the upper windows of the gym, followed by a peal of thunder that sent dust swirling down from the roof. Lilly suppressed a shudder—she had grown to hate storms—and scurried behind the bleachers. She pulled a flashlight out of her backpack to help her see through the shadows when her cell phone rang. 

Crap crap crap. She forgot to put it on silent. She yanked it out of her pocket and breathed an indignant sigh when she saw the collar ID: IDIOT #1. "Hello?" she hissed. 

"Lilly," Max said on the other end. "Where are you? I need your help." 

"I'm kind of in the middle of something." She flicked her flashlight across the small space between the bleachers and the wall. Everything was dust and Dorito bags and candy wrappers. Where was Grr? 

"Yeah, well. So am I. Melissa isn't here and I—" 

Movement flickered beneath the bleachers ten feet in front of her. Lilly swore under her breath and edged closer. 

"—What are you doing?" 

"I'm just—studying. At school. With my study group...that you never knew I had until just now." Lilly pressed her tongue against her cheek. She squatted down and clicked her flashlight off as another movement whisked out of the bleachers and darted against the wall. Lilly tapped the flashlight against her fingers. 

"Fine, don't tell me. Listen, you know that homework for Mr. Thomas's class? What did you get for problem three? About the apples and the mass of the sun?" 

"I haven't exactly done it yet, Max." 

"Look, I know you're terrible at math—" 

"—understatement of the year—" 

"But Mr. Thomas said that a problem like this will be on the exam on Monday and no one else in my study group is answering their phones, and Melissa said she wouldn't be home late, and I can't figure out the interweb-thingy." 

"So I'm your last resort?" 

"Um...yeah."  

"Bye, Max." Lilly hung up the phone, turned it on silent, and slid it back into her pocket. She then reached back into the side pocket of her bag and pulled out a pack of Ritz crackers she'd stolen from home. She tossed one of the crackers in front of her. 

A small, chubby shadow appeared at the side of the bleachers. Lilly placed another cracker just inches in front of her knees. The shadow drew closer, tottering forward on two wobbly, bird-like legs. The shadow paused when it came to the first cracker, bending its knees and beak to inspect it. 

The shadow gulped it down and waddled closer. 

"That'a'girl," Lilly whispered. Her heart pounded in her throat, and her hands shook with the discomfort of knowing that a horde of chaperones would come in any second to try and catch a snake and might find her and Grr behind the bleachers instead. 

Lilly had met Grr while on her way to school one morning. She'd forgotten her lunch box at home—as usual—and Max had already tromped ahead of her. As she was crossing the road that separated Eldnac from a row of indie shops and coffee joints, she'd spotted the pudgy fur ball rolling around in the muddy ditch. That was a week ago. 

Grr hobbled into a band of neon green light filtering through the bleachers. Lilly nudged her open backpack forward and said, "I have more crackers in here, I promise." 

Grr chittered, coming closer, closer, closer still. Her pale pink fur was sticking up, and her eyes glittered with feverish excitement. Finally, the little puffball entered Lilly's backpack with a chirp. Lilly muttered to her, "I bring you to school so you can't stow away. That's why you stay in my backpack; you can't leave it unless I take you out. Someone might catch you, and that would be horrible for the both of us."  

Lilly zipped her backpack and climbed to her feet as a gurgle of gravelly thunder shuddered overhead. She walked along the wall and slipped out from behind the bleachers just as chaperones were entering through either side of the gym. Lilly ducked out of one of the gym's side doors before they saw her. 

The rain was relentless. She gripped the rickety railing as she descended the stairs that led down to the back bus lot of Eldnac Prep, head bowed against the rain. The wind slapped her face with a ferocity that only belonged to pissed off thunderstorms, and Lilly dashed beneath an overhang that shaded the side of the school. She pressed her sopping back against the wall, shivering. She'd have to wait out the storm—there was no way she would be able to walk home without getting sick from the cold rain. 

The rain blew almost horizontally, misty in the golden glow of the street lights across the street. Lightning forked across the sky in four-second intervals, ripping white-blue down the eastern stratosphere with violent intensity. Ordinarily, Lilly would have stayed inside to watch the entire ordeal with Manny unfold: the terrified students, the aghast chaperones, a slightly irritated snake slithering around a nasty gym—but Lilly had learned last year that sticking around things for too long got you caught red-handed, so this time she had resolved to dash in and dash out as quickly as she could. 

She broke into a grin. She'd done it—she had retrieved Grr, hadn't gotten caught, and played an extravagant prank in the process. Her euphoria was nearly as bright as the lightning—

Something hard and hot slammed into her right arm. 

Lilly caught herself against the smooth granite wall, gasping for air. She flung her right arm around to the left side of her body, seething as heat flared up her shoulder, her neck, her face, her back, and trickled down her left shoulder. 

The heat was ferocious, all fire—last year, Lilly had been hit with a bolt of lightning by an angry man with the ability to create storms, and this feeling was similar. She felt like the heat was suffocating her, swallowing her whole. She pressed her temple against the wall and dropped to her knees. Her backpack crumpled to her side. She ground her teeth, bit out a scream. Starlight gathered in the spaces between her fingers. 

And suddenly, there were headlights to the right of her, and the distant sound of tires squelching against the drenched asphalt. Then there was a silhouette right in front of her, tall and slender and shadowed. Lilly shoved her hands out. Starlight shot out like miniature comets from the cracks between her fingers; the silhouette recoiled and hissed, "Damn it!" 

The hot sensation was retreating, receding up Lilly's left arm and down her face. She blinked, blinked, blinked, and sent out another wave of sparks. The silhouette—a woman—lunged, a string of obscenities spewing from her mouth. Lilly tumbled backwards, head snapping against concrete, limbs flailing. Lilly barely had time to see the woman's facial features, her wild mass of curly hair, before deciding to rip her head off with a wave of radiation stolen from space. She clenched her hands into fists—

The woman's cold, wet fingers snapped over Lilly's wrists and shoved them up behind Lilly's head. Lilly brought her knee up, but the woman's own knee found Lilly's throat and dug it in hard. Lilly choked. The woman didn't let up. 

"I've had training too, you know," hissed the woman. She had a voice that belonged to an army commander: sharp as blades, angry as wars. She kept one hand around Lilly's wrists and took the other to reach into her pocket, where she withdrew a small bottle and a rag. 

Lilly was too busy trying to catch her breath to find the magical current that allowed her to steal more dangerous things from space. She jerked, but the woman's grip was too strong. 

"Who—?" Lilly rasped. 

"I'm quite surprised you don't see the resemblance," the woman gasped softly, pressing the rag over Lilly's nose and mouth. It was wet and tasted foul; it smelled like rubbing alcohol. Lilly yanked her head from side to side and screamed, but the scream came out a muffled, pointless whimper against the rag, and for her all her efforts, she felt her muscles relaxing against their own will. Eventually, her strength slackened, and as Lilly's consciousness fled, the woman bent down and whispered in Lilly's ear, "I'm your mother."