Page 67 of Monster's Pet

Keeping an eye on each other, we took measured steps to meet in the middle.

“How do we know if it worked?” I asked from a couple paces away.

“You’ll know.”

I didn’t understand his amusement until we got closer. The medallions lifted of their own accord until they wrapped their chains around each other, the circles overlapping each other. When the last disc had fallen in place, a number appeared on the topmost one.

“Perfect,” Professor Akhtar said cheerfully. “Almost full magical potential! We can go home now.”

“But the math?” I asked.

“The math will take longer than we want to stay here,” he replied gently. “Aiden, are you prepared for a long night?”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

“That’s all any of us can do.”

We made our way back though the portal to the school.

I joined them in Professor Akhtar’s office at first. He made the hologram of the nexus points appear, marking down the magical energy over the Easter Island point. I saw that he had already written down the ones for us and Atlantis. Ours was so tiny it might as well have been zero. Atlantis was strong, but according to the professor, it was only seventy percent of its usual magnitude. I had so many questions, but the men bent over sheets of paper and started calculating, and I didn’t want to interrupt them. “I’ll be back with dinner,” I said.

“Thanks,” Aiden mumbled, distracted.

I thought I could have said that I’d be back with an elephant, and he would have responded the same way.

I didn’t want to go to Care of Magical Creatures with only half an hour left, so instead, I went to retrieve my grimoire from my room and headed to Aiden’s to keep Moonbeam company.I decided that I’d sleep there too. If Professor Akhtar thought Aiden would have a long night, there wasn’t a guarantee that he’d make it back to his room before classes tomorrow.

When I arrived at his room, I was greeted with the sight of Hazel curled up in the armchair Aiden had conjured out of one of the empty beds, Moonbeam batting at her toes.

“Hey roomie,” I said, sinking into the desk chair. “I thought you’d be in class.”

“We had a test and I finished early,” she said absentmindedly. She flipped the page of the book she was reading. “Mummy sent me this book about our family history, and I wanted to read it.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Apparently we immigrated from the Americas in the Dark Ages,” Hazel said. She looked up at me, her eyes flashing with amusement. “Want to guess why?”

“Because there were magic schools here?”

She shook her head. “Close. It’s related to magic.”

“Just tell me,” I begged.

“The ley lines vanished!”

I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

Hazel nodded, laughing. “I said what I said. The ley lines in Chile had vanished, so my family left in search of answers. They made it here, where the lines were fine, and they settled down. They sent letters back home to ask if the lines had returned there, but they didn’t want to get back on a boat, so here we stayed.”

Hazel’s seasickness was always dramatic and immediate. I didn’t blame her ancestors, especially after crossing the Atlantic.

“Were the ley lines back? When was that?”

“It was around the year 600, and I didn’t see a reply.” Hazel frowned. “I don’t know if they lost contact entirely, but I had no idea that I had family, however distant, in Chile.”

“When I travel the world after graduating, I’ll go see if I can find their descendents,” I promised.

“Thank you.” Hazel beamed at me.

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