of the arena to the other, challenging each and every person, the screaming becomes positively deafening. Students are stomping now in addition to yelling, and I’m certain the entire arena is going to collapse around us. It’s thrilling and awe-inspiring and my face aches with the giant smile plastered on it.
It doesn’t take long before I’m screaming and stomping right along with everyone else, but I have to admit, I have no idea why we’re all so excited. Maybe this is tradition?
Hudson chuckles in my head, where I can hear him over the crowd. “Did you forget the comet gets hotter and vibrates at excruciating speeds the longer you hold it?”
My eyes go wide. Ohhhhh. She’s been holding it for at least five minutes now. Jaxon had told me the longest he’d ever held it was two minutes before the pain became so unbearable, he couldn’t survive it. Five minutes…?
“Flint’s mom is scary as fuck.” The awe in Hudson’s voice matches my own.
A quick glance at Flint shows him beaming with pride.
Finally, Nuri seems satisfied she’s made her point and raises the comet above her head. And everything instantly goes dead silent.
The teams are lined up along both lines, and I notice that Rafael is directly in the center of his line, along with a short Black girl named Kali, whom I’ve never met but am pretty sure is a witch. On the other side are two warlocks: Cam—Macy’s ex, and James, his friend with the creepy wandering eyes—another reason I’m not rooting for team one.
“The two in the center for each team are the ones who go for the ball,” Hudson tells me quietly. Now that his father is done talking, he’s leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees, so he can talk to me.
“Do they run for it?” I ask, because this isn’t something we practiced—or even discussed, I realize now.
“Not exactly,” Hudson answers, and he nods toward the field. “Watch and see.”
And so I do, eyes wide as a whistle blows and Nuri throws the ball up as high as her dragon strength will let her. It soars straight up, up, up, almost to the top of the dome, and no one goes for it. No one tries to touch it at all. But the second it begins to fall, it. Is. On.
Rafael uses every ounce of vampire strength he has to jump straight at the ball, while Kali shoots flames out of her fingertips straight at where she assumes James and Cam will be. But they have tricks up their sleeves, too, and they’re already under her blast radius. In the meantime, James sends a powerful cyclone of water straight toward Kali and Rafael, while Cam uses a wind spell to knock the ball several feet back from where it should be falling.
It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, the byproduct of power flying this way and that as the four players battle for control of the ball. It’s about a million times more exciting than the tip-off at the beginning of a basketball game, and I can’t even begin to imagine what an NBA stadium would look like if this kind of action went on.
Probably a lot like this one, actually, with its crowds of students yelling and stomping in excitement.
Rafael overshoots because of Cam’s wind spell and misses the ball, which falls straight toward James. He jumps, prepared to catch it, but Kali swoops in with an air spell of her own and yanks it away at the last second. She fires it straight at one of the other girls on her team, who catches it.
And the game is on.
The girl runs for about ten seconds, and then she just disappears.
“Where’d she go?” I demand, leaning forward and searching the field—like every other person in the entire arena.
“Watch and see,” Hudson repeats, which is absolutely no help at all. I turn to Jaxon, but he’s shouting encouragement to his friends.
Seconds later, the girl pops back up—all the way at the opposite end of the field from where she needs to be to win.
“Portals are a real bitch,” Xavier says with a shake of his head. “Especially since her team isn’t anywhere near her—”
He breaks off as Luca fades across the field to her in less than the blink of an eye. She tosses him the comet, and he fades right back to the other end of the field.
Except one of the dragons from Cam’s team is there waiting, and as soon as he