How had everything fallen apart so quickly? What was supposed to be a little party with Sabrina's Speech and Debate friends had turned into a major rager, the kind that she'd always thought was more parody and artistic license on the part of the teen movies. Never had Lila thought she'd see one unfold in front of her very eyes.

  Now she was standing over the shards of Mrs. Hollestelle's favorite vase. The perpetrators, with their foam football, were already gone to destroy the rest of the house.

  Lila's head reeled as she stared at the broken vase.

  She couldn't find Sabrina. She hadn't seen her, not since they'd first opened the door on the front porch to the first rush of people. Not outside of glimpses in-between bodies, always surrounded by too many other students to possibly reach her.

  Then again, Lila wasn't sure she'd be able to reach Sabrina even if she was standing next to her right now.

  In one night, her best friend had become someone completely unrecognizable.

  Her body pulsed as she knelt down. Someone should clean it up after all. As she reached for the shards, something pierced through the haze of it all—leaving blood on her hand.

  Her own blood, she realized as she held it up to examine the cut. Must have been a sharp shard or something.

  But seeing it awakened something in her. Overwhelming, anger surged through her. Like fire, it threatened to consume her entirely. She stood up, curled her hands into fists. She needed to find Sabrina, demand to know why she'd done this, demand to know what she had done wrong that she wasn't enough for Sabrina anymore, why she was going to throw a party that her parents would almost certainly believe she'd have something to do with and tell Jinn about—

  Her march parted half-drunk high school students as she wandered through the house, eyes blazing as she searched the populace for the pink-tipped hair of the girl she'd once thought she'd known the best in the entire world.

  The pain in her hand grew—but it didn't come from the cut.

  She raised her hand again, pulling it away from the full skirts of her witch costume—only to see dragon claws emerge.

  Instantly she felt light-headed, and her stomach lurched.

  If she didn't get outside soon—

  Everyone was going to find out.

  She curled her fingers into her skirt to hide the claws and pushed through people with a new urgency, a franticness that no one respected as much as the frightening anger that had propelled her just moments before.

  "Excuse me—"

  She pushed someone aside with her shoulder, only for her eyes to lock onto denim blue—

  The very same eyes as the boy Kira had pointed out as a Paladin.

  He opened his mouth to speak: "Are you oka—"

  But Lila was already running down the stairs and out the back door, where she collapsed on the grass and the flames overtook her.

  "Is that a dragon?" The words tumbled out of Galileo's mouth as he accompanied Kira and Aideen out onto the back porch.

  "That's Lila," Kira said, as Aideen rushed past both of them to approach their friend.

  Without a care for the white feathers and tulle on her costume, she sank into the grass and touched Lila's horned dragon head in the center.

  "You keep getting stuck in this form, don't you?" Aideen murmured.

  Lila let out a disdainful snort that sent a few sparks over Aideen's shoulder.

  "Sorry, you're right, I shouldn't tease, not right now." Aideen leaned forward and closed her eyes. Golden fire emerged from her fingertips—Kira recognized the spell as the one that Aideen had used to help her.

  "You didn't answer my question," Galileo pointed out.

  "Right, sorry." Kira shook her head. She glanced behind them. Luckily, their hostess at least had the wherewithal to put up all black curtains on any window facing outside. She had a feeling it had more to do with preventing neighbors from seeing the chaos unfolding inside—but it was particularly helpful to them at the moment.

  She looked back to Galileo. "I'll tell you everything—but you have to promise to keep it a secret."

  "Of course!" He tilted his head, eyebrows quirked upward. "I would presume it would be, if dragons are real. Otherwise—"

  "Otherwise, we would have gotten rid of them a long time ago."

  Everyone turned their heads—through the side-gate, somehow a group of the Paladins had escaped the party and entered without them hearing. Kira decided to blame that on the overwhelming bass that gave the house a heartbeat of its own.

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  All clad in black and flannel and denim, the Paladins seemingly eschewed their Halloween costumes, and now wielding weapons that gleamed like lightning. Among them, Kira recognized the boy with denim-blue eyes and the girl with gray eyes and a dark braid. There were also others from the attack on the university she recognized.

  She moved to position herself in front of Galileo. She wouldn't let them hurt him—or any of hew new friends, for that matter.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aideen stiffen as she helped a newly human-again Lila to her feet.

  A protective fire burned in Kira's heart. She removed the bow from her costume and strung one of the fake arrows. She only hoped it looked at least half as convincing as their probably very-real ones.

  "Put down the bow," the girl with the dark hair and the gray eyes. "We don't need to make this any harder."

  "They're not real anyway," added the girl with shoulder-length blonde hair and a black leather jacket.

  Kira reluctantly sheathed her fake arrow. She supposed it was worth a try.

  "You're the ones who brought weapons," Lila pointed out as she stepped forward. "Seems a little aggressive, don't you think?"

  "The dragons were violent first." The gray-eyed girl's eyes turned on Kira and she thought of the fire she'd breathed.

  That was right—she could do it again—

  She felt a hand on her arm. She looked to see Galileo shake his head.

  Lila continued speaking. "Weren't you the ones who chased my friend down the university and tried to kill her?"

  "We don't have a quarrel with you, Lila Emery-Park," the gray-eyed girl said. "The Paladins respect our debts and she has done us a great favor."

  "What are you talking about?" Lila blinked—the crack had formed.

  "It doesn't matter." The gray-eyed girl turned back to Kira. "The dragons of old were tyrants against humans—and they cannot be allowed to ever regain power."

  "I don't believe you." Kira stormed forward. She could feel it again, tap into that power again. She didn't care if Galileo was afraid or not, as long as she could feel safe again, as long as they would finally leave her alone. "You hunted me since I was a baby!"

  She meant to punctuate it with the fiery breath of a dragon.

  But something stopped her.

  She was on the ground, she realized. Something warm was on her hands, something warm and wet. Suddenly she felt. . . like she was drifting on aimless tides, or winds. . .

  There was distant shouting—but Galileo was the one to drop beside her first.

  Wait, when had she fallen on the ground?

  "You need to leave, now—"

  Kira could have sworn she heard sirens in the distance, footsteps—

  Galileo held her head, bringing her back to reality.

  "Kira, stay with me, an ambulance—"

  Then she felt a different kind of fire.

  He knew.

  That was all Aideen could think as she watched him tug on the female Paladin's jacket. "It's not worth it—"

  "No, it's not."

  His eyes lingered her even in their retreat and she felt a sinking dread. She'd felt a connection, one where he didn't know her as the popular girl or the dragon princess. To him, she could have been just Aideen.

  Just Aideen had gone up in smoke right in front of her very eyes.

  "Kira, stay with me!" Galileo cried, drawing Aideen's attention. Just as she turned, his head swiveled to catch Aideen's eyes. "We need to call an ambulance—"

  "No, I know how to fix this." Aideen forced herself to leave Ansel's fleeing shadow behind and she returned to the grass, to her friends as she recalled the stolen moment in her grandmother's study. Ever since the Paladins had shown up, she'd taken it upon herself to sneak into the study when Lady Anagharad was away in Agartha to learn a few spells for her.

  Technically by the spirit of princess training and the competition of the Trials by Fire, it was cheating. But she was sure no one would mind if she kept one of their heirs from bleeding out in the middle of a human Halloween party.

  She knitted her eyebrows together in focus. "This is going to sting a little."

  She blew a small bit of fire out of her throat and cupped it in her hand. She twisted it to create a runic shape, like in the Tome of Flame. She then held it up to the wound in Kira's abdomen.

  "Take her hands away." Aideen looked to Lila.

  Her friend obeyed—giving Aideen the opening she needed. She plunged it into the wound. Fire burned away the arrow and Kira gasped, an agonizing sound. The flames raced over her skin, leaving away untouched skin exposed to the cool night air.

  "Careful." Aideen dusted off her hands as Galileo helped Kira sit up.

  "Are you sure—"

  "I am." Aideen nodded. "I've been studying."

  She caught Lila's look out of the corner of her vision—she knew that Lila of all people would recognize the significance.

  "Thank you."

  "I really hate to be that guy, but I think I'd like to know what's going on."

  Everyone turned back to Galileo, standing there in his onesie costume with blood on the black velour, his apple-red glasses a little crooked.

  "We're dragons, the three of us." Kira drew closer to him. "Dragon princesses, I guess. To make a really long story short, I guess all the dragons got cursed away to their realm, and one of us has to break the curse by getting on the throne to help them."

  "All three of you?" His voice cracked a little as he surveyed the three girls. "Who were those people? They came to my house—"

  "—They what?" Aideen and Lila interrupted, in perfect synch.

  "They're called the Paladins, dragon-hunters who killed the last person to become Pendragon, King of the Dragons," Kira continued.

  Galileo shook his head and screwed his eyes shut. "I don't know what to think—I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen—"

  "Me," Lila answered, softly.

  "All of it," he corrected her, his eyes open again.

  Aideen heard it again—the distant sound of sirens.

  "We should get out of here," she found herself saying.

  "Yeah." Lila shifted visibly, her dark red hair falling into her face. She gave one last look at the house. "I guess Sabrina's on her own, on this one."

  Aideen couldn't say she knew Sabrina Hollestelle all that well. But she did know what it was like, to have a connection dashed.

  A small part of her took comfort in that she wasn't the only one with a ruined relationship that night.

  "Come on," she said as she linked arms with Lila and Kira and smiled. "Let's go home."

  Aideen set down the plastic crown on her desk, threw her ruined tights in the trash before she let herself fall down onto the brightly-colored cushion as she turned on an old DVD of Fruits Basket. She drew her knees to her chest. Ansel now knew the truth, that she was his sworn enemy, a dragon princess. It had been so nice, while it had lasted. So short, yet so sweet.

  It had been a change to feel normal, to be Aideen, the Girl from the Bookshop. And now she would never be Aideen the Girl from the Bookshop again.

  Introspection had never been a specialty of Aideen's because of her strict schedule. But because of the more flexibility she was forcing, the more she made the hours and minutes stretch, the more she was beginning to realize she felt.

  It was like waking up. Her world had been filled with color, and she couldn't bear to see it all fade away again.