A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,118

the wall of the tub and blasting Reaper away from her. The assault of light paralyzed her brain and weighed on her chest, her lungs pinned under the force of a boulder. She couldn’t think anymore, as if she’d lost the top of her head and any thoughts were flying away before she could catch them. Her hands and feet seemed to move where her eyes and mouth were, her eyes and mouth now down by her knees. She didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there. She didn’t know her own name or if this was happening in past or present, in forward or reverse. Two other bodies flailed near her, but she didn’t know whose they were or if they were human or monster.

Touch the crystal, a voice echoed.

Crystal?

What crystal?

Touch the crystal.

Pummeled by the light, she stabbed out her hand, two other hands thrashing into hers at the same time, all of them finding nothing but water. Agatha tore herself off the wall, reaching further, further, running out of breath—

Her hand scraped glass.

Instantly her body shattered, like she was made of glass too, any last shreds of awareness shattering with it.

For a moment, there was nothing: just light inhaling her, then crumpling to darkness like a sheet of paper charring in at the edges.

Slowly, she reassembled, body, soul, self.

When she opened her eyes, Agatha was no longer in Gnomeland.

SHE WAS STANDING in a glass room, the transparent walls and floor glowing wintry blue, the inside of the room swirling with thin, silvery smoke. A faint ache throbbed at her temples, but her chest had gotten worse; every breath felt like it was packing her lungs with rocks.

“Where are we?” someone wheezed.

Agatha turned to Tedros and Sophie, their wet bodies framed by a rounded, luminous glass wall. Both looked shaky. Tedros rubbed at his bare chest.

“We’re inside the crystal ball,” said Agatha. “Look.”

She pointed at the wall behind them. Outside the glass, water rippled and foamed, contained by a blue-stone bathtub.

“I feel like I got clubbed by a troll,” Sophie choked, clutching at her flank. “No wonder Dovey was such a mess.”

“For once, I agree with Sophie,” Tedros said, still breathing hard. “Whatever we just went through beat the living hell out of me. How could Merlin survive it?”

“Merlin is a skilled enough wizard to defuse the power of the ball,” said a voice from the corner. “Most of it, at least.”

They turned to see Reaper stagger up, a gnarled, drippy mess, looking less like a cat and more a mashed banana. “And while cats don’t actually have nine lives, we are much hardier than humans. Now stay alert. Our time inside the crystal is limited. Twenty or thirty minutes at most. The sooner we find answers, the fewer trips we have to make. The fewer trips we make, the less chance we suffer the same fate as your Dean.”

Agatha’s neck smoldered red, her body’s sign that she was out of her depth. She gulped for air. “So what do we do now?”

The silvery smoke whooshed past her head from all sides, crystallizing into the same phantom mask she’d seen at school. The mask glitched again between the features of Professor Dovey and the face of someone familiar, someone Agatha was so sure that she knew. . . . But there was no time to study it further because the phantom was diving towards her, primed to ask her who she wanted to see—

Except this time, it blew right past her and pressed against the back of the glass, facing the empty bathwater as if Agatha was still outside the ball. Agatha watched from behind the mask as it spoke to no one, its voice echoing.

“Clear as crystal, hard as bone,

My wisdom is Clarissa’s and Clarissa’s alone.

But she named you her Second, so I’ll speak to you too.

So tell me dear Second, whose life shall I cue?

A friend or an enemy, any name I’ll allow,

Say it loud and I’ll show you them now.”

“Hurry! Start examining crystals!” Reaper exhorted, standing on tiptoes and inspecting the back edges of the mask.

“What crystals?” Tedros said, confused.

Agatha approached her cat, watching him paw the beads of smoke that formed the phantom—

Her eyes widened.

It wasn’t smoke.

Each bead of mist was a crystal. Thousands of these little glass orbs, the size of teardrops, floated in the mask’s shape like pearls held together without a string. And within every one, a scene played out, like its own miniature crystal ball.

Agatha pulled a handful of