It took a little while for the five friends to decide where to go, but at Beatrice's suggestion, they all wandered back to their dormitory, in shock and silence. All of them piled into The Witches Three's dorm room, with Beatrice sitting among the plants in Hanan's corner and Nova sitting by the floor beside the door with a dazed expression on her face and her arms resting on her knees.

"So..." Adeline said after a long while of stunned silence. Her familiar, the winged lion, flittered to and fro among the friends with a concerned whine. "What just happened?"

"I have no idea," Hanan said, staring into the middle distance. Her will-o'-the-wisp settled floating in one place and cast a soft flickering light among the plants in her room. "We were just called into the Headmistress's office by Professors Hope and Grace, and..."

"And then there was..." Sascha likewise trailed off from where they sat on their messy bed, the pixie pulling at their hair.

"Nova and I caught an intruder that had been masquerading as Nova." Beatrice paced the short amount of free space in the room as she recounted the events to her friends. "And I mean it had Nova's face, clothes, body type. We followed them into the hall —and Nova was with me the whole time!— and when they realized they couldn't get away with looking like Nova anymore, they took on Hanan's face instead."

"But why me though?"

"I have no idea."

"What was it after?"

Beatrice shook her head. "All I know is that a hooded thief tried to steal an artifact from the Abjuration classroom cases. That was before I met the Nova impostor, and I believe they're connected."

"All of this, while Hawkswood is here?" Nova sighed heavily. "It's way too much trouble."

"No, that's exactly what they want!" Beatrice said so suddenly and with such conviction that the rest of her friends snapped their heads towards her. "The chaos of the Inter-School Games and Hawkswood students and staff being here is exactly the kind of cover a thief would need to explore the school without any interruption! We'd all be too focused on the Games! And since they can use illusions, they can just copy any of the professors to get to restricted areas of the castle!"

"But we shouldn't worry so much now, right? You caught the impostor and the Headmistress lifted the illusion."

"Yes..." Beatrice stopped pacing and stood deep in thought. "That's true. But I don't think this is the end of it. The way she told us to leave her office so suddenly..." The earth witch took a moment to smooth down her skirt and her blouse, mostly as a movement to calm herself down, then looked to each of her friends in turn. "This is just the start of something big. We need to be ready for whatever happens next."

The Witches Three glanced at each other, an air of tension and trepidation hanging heavily in the room. Eventually, it was Adeline who spoke. "Beatrice, darling. We love you dearly, I hope you know that" she said, her voice soft. "But surely you should leave all this to the Headmistress and the others?"

Beatrice's face fell. She clutched a hand to her heart. "But I thought... You won't—"

"I think this is much too far out of our league, darling," Adeline said. "This is getting very dangerous, and we're just students!"

The earth witch looked around to Hanan and Sascha for support, but the two averted their eyes. It wasn't that they were unwilling, Beatrice knew. She couldn't fault The Witches Three, really. They were scared.

Suddenly, she felt someone take her free hand. Glancing behind her, she saw Nova's dark eyes and the subtle smile on her face. She squeezed Nova's hand back, grateful tears welling in her eyes. Beatrice wasn't alone.

"I just can't believe they won't help, is all." Beatrice sighed from where she lay, on her back and staring at her dorm room's ceiling.

"It's a tall order, Bee. You were asking a lot from people with no experience." Nova replied. It was the next day and the start of the Inter-School Games. She shrugged as she pulled on her boots and laced them up. "You're from a family of healers and protectors. You have experience in chasing down bad guys and whatever."

"Hunting vampires."

"Yes, exactly. You know how to hunt vampires. Who else in our year knows how to do that?"

"You have a point." Beatrice sighed again as she sat up and wiped her glasses on the end of her blouse before putting them on. "But you don't have experience either, why didn't you back out?"

Nova laughed a short laugh and pulled on a black jacket with form-fitting sleeves. "What, and leave you to face all that danger alone? No way." She paused to slip her phone into her pocket, then patted it again to make sure it was there, just in case. "But don't worry about it for now, Bee. All you need to focus on are winning the games and trumping Hawkswood. We're not going to let Circe have the last laugh, right?"

"Right!"

"Come on, my Skeet-Shooting events first on this morning and I need to get moving before I have a panic attack."

The two witches quickly left their dorm room, walking arm in arm, with seemingly not a care in the world. In reality, Beatrice was warily watching every other student they came across, unsure if they too were impostors or intruders in some kind of disguise with ill intentions towards them or the school. She clung more tightly to Nova as well, twining her fingers with hers and holding onto her arm as they walked. Owing to Nova's height, Beatrice didn't see the constant blush that her roommate was trying desperately to dissipate before anyone else saw and commented.

The Skeet-Shooting arena was set up in the west field and was only a short walk away from Beatrice and Nova's dorm. The arena itself was bordered on three sides with markers and a magical wall that shimmered slightly as the sun shone on it. The remaining side was where the participants would stand, with a line marking the starting point and a long table just in front of it. The judges’ stand had a series of floating placards with scores that changed on their own, their faces wiped clean and rewritten by an invisible hand.

Professor Arcturus was all smiles as he gathered the competitors, waving them over and announcing in a loud, excited voice that the first-year Skeet-Shooting Games were to start in a few minutes.

"I guess that's my queue to go," Nova said, squeezing Beatrice's hand. "You'll still be here, right?"

"Yes, of course! I'll be watching the whole time." The earth witch said with an earnest, excited smile. "Good luck, Nova!"

The Asian witch smiled and began to turn away to get to the briefing with the rest of the contestants when Beatrice lightly pulled her back. When Nova turned back to her roommate, she was met with a soft peck on the lips.

Beatrice grinned ear to ear, giddy, as she headed off to the audience stand with a bounce in her step, leaving her roommate stunned and blushing hard.

Professor Arcturus applied the voice magnification spell to himself and cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice boomed over the arena, the stands, and carried on through to the far end of the west field where a flock of birds took flight in fright.

"Good morning, dear students!" The Destruction professor said cheerily. "Today marks the first day of the Inter-School Games, and the first event: Skeet-Shooting! For those unfamiliar with the rules, do listen up. You contestants will stand at the marked starting line with your wands laid on the table here. You are not to ready your wand or any spells or touch it at all, till the signal is given. Clay constructs will take to the skies at varying intervals, and your objective is to destroy as many of them as accurately as you can within a given time limit with whatever destruction spells you are comfortable with. The spells you use, however, must focus on a single target at a time only. You cannot summon, for example, a rain of needles to wait and destroy all targets in an area."

As the professor said that, one of the Hawkswood students muttered in disappointment.

"If you look over here, above your heads, the scoreboards have moved. They have been spelled to track your spells, and your spells only—not the spells of the ones beside you! This is a contest of skill, after all. Now then!" Arcturus motioned for the contestants to step forward and get in position before the starting marker.

Nova found herself beside a fidgety Ravensburl first-year and a calm, collected Hawkswood who was staring down the field unblinking. At another of Arcturus's signals, all the contestants lay down their wands: Nova's smartphone joined a collection of slim, polished wooden wands, a small miniature figure, and a tube of lipstick. The tech wicth took a breath and glanced over to the stands, where her eyes immediately found an excited witch in browns and greens waving wildly at her.

Nova smiles, faced forward, and waited.

"Begin!" Arcturus's voice boomed.

As soon as the words left the professor's mouth, targets began to fly into the space of the arena at speed. Nova was fully expecting clay targets to be launched from machines, just like what she had seen on TV during the Olympics. But the targets that flew into the air now were small birds that flitted and banked and turned as if they were real. All along the row of contestants, others had started to snatch up their wands and call out spells, casting them towards the moving targets. Nova saw immediately who the ones who came from a magical background were: they all had polished wooden wands and were not taken by surprise by the targets as she had.

Nova's brow knitted together as she focused, snatching up her phone and letting the electricity crackle down her outstretched arm and into her smartphone. She raised the phone, pointed it towards the sky, and searched for a target.

From the audience stands where Beatrice was watching with bated breath, the earth witch could have sworn she saw the crackle of power shining in Nova's eyes for a fraction of a second before she heard her roommate's voice.

Nova likewise called out the name of a spell, one that she had made herself so soon into the school year, and spoke the Korean activation word clearly and with confidence.

The scoreboard above her head jumped to life, the number rapidly rising as bolts of lightning shot out from Nova's phone. The bolts zigged and zagged through the air in a blink of an eye, destroying the targets and pulverizing them in a burst of pale yellow dust. The lightning flew faster than the cast fireballs from the other students and even managed to make mid-air turns to follow wily targets. Beatrice whooped and hollered as her roommate's score jumped into the lead!

The Hawkswood student beside Nova glared and stomped his foot as Nova's score pulled in leagues ahead of his own. He twirled his wand with a flourish and called out another spell: a flurry of needles. The thin needles shot out in a burst that spread out into a wide-angle and pulverized several targets at once instead of one at a time in quick succession like Nova's lightning. The tech witch grit her teeth as the needles destroyed the target her lightning was inches away from taking; they were a clear violation of the rules. But still, no one seemed to notice as the Hawkswood student returned to shooting fireballs once his needles had put him ahead of Nova in the score.

While Nova was locked in a heated head-to-head competition with the Hawkswood student that stood beside her, something near the judges' table caught Beatrice's eye and caused her to stop mid-cheer. Someone skulked about in the tree line just behind the table and was making their way off the west field towards the castle. It was Beatrice.

The earth witch's eyes went wide as the realization hit her like she was hit by one of Nova's bolts. It was the intruder! If it wasn't the same one she had caught before, then there were at least two! Someone was walking around with her face! Glancing back at Nova and the Skeet-Shooting arena one more time, the earth witch bit her lip and made her way off the stands.

The false Beatrice ducked into the west hallway while everyone's eyes were on the arena and the first-years' scores. They slipped into the relative dimness of the castle unnoticed and hurried down the empty hallway with none the wiser. The real Beatrice was only a few seconds away and slipped into as quiet of a quick walk as she could manage as she followed the impostor down the hall. She drew her wand from her satchel in a fluid motion and held it at the ready.

The impostor stopped at the artifacts case in front of the Abjuration classroom, the same as the first thief had done some time ago. They seemed to search up and down the shelves for a particular artifact and, in a move that surprised Beatrice, moved on and left the Abjuration case untouched. The earth witch continued to follow them quickly as once they made it to the main hall she would most likely lose track of them in the crowds.

The impostor slipped past the arch and into the main hall, and as Beatrice herself approached the same arch she saw a slight movement on the wall above her. One of the small stone ravens that were perched and guarding the west hall had turned its head towards her, and a feeling of relief came over the earth witch. The raven took notice, and that means the Headmistress is aware of what's happening! Beatrice's priority shifted from taking down the intruder herself to at least keeping track of them just long enough for the Headmistress or another professor to catch them.

She wove past small groups of students and craned her neck to keep an eye on the impostor's mane of wavy brown hair. Was that what she looked like from behind? Beatrice grew a tad self-conscious as she followed the impostor from a distance. As she did, she saw them roughly bump into a student and all but shove them aside as they passed. An expression of insult passed over the student's face, followed quickly by a disgusted crinkle of the nose.

Beatrice dipped her head and muttered an apology to the student as she passed him, hot on the impostor's heels.

"Beatrice?!" she heard the student yelp behind her. It was Lee, the werewolf upperclassman from the library, but the earth witch couldn't stop to chat.

The impostor was heading down the east hallway, towards the Destruction classroom. Beatrice was sure of it. There was another case of false artifacts in front of the classroom, and while the ones on display were replicas, they still reflected real and working artifacts hidden either in the classrooms themselves or somewhere in the castle. She saw the fake Beatrice begin to approach the glass case down the hall.

She held her wand out and visualized the stream of binding vines erupting out from the gaps in the stone floor of the hall when suddenly she was falling. Just falling through the void as if the very ground underneath ceased to exist. It all happened so suddenly that she was too stunned to scream. All around the earth witch was thick darkness, and her mind reeled, grasping at all the possible explanations for what had happened.

She tumbled head over heels, or at least that was what it felt like. There was no way to know which was up or down, and the blinding panic that was rising in her heart, burning through her chest, and setting every nerve alight didn't help to focus her senses and make sense of what was going on.

"Help!" Beatrice cried out with all her might, but her ears could hear no sound. "Mom! Dad!" She felt hot tears pooling at her eyes and falling down her cheeks, only to float up and away before they could truly carve a trail down her cheeks like tears normally would.

"Nova! Help me!"

It felt like she was falling forever, but just as suddenly as it happened, it was over.

Her eyes flashed open and she gulped lungfuls of air as if she had been drowning and only now was able to come up for air. She touched her face, her hair her chest, and somehow she managed to keep her wand firmly in her fist. Only once she was satisfied she was on firm ground and her senses were working did she take stock of her surroundings.

Beatrice was in the Headmistress's office again, and now the Headmistress herself was standing over her with a stern, angry expression. She had never seen the Headmistress like that before, the founder of Ravensburl always met her with kind eyes and a smile. But now, she was glowering all her barely contained wrath at someone standing just behind Beatrice.

"Honestly Laurence, what on earth were you thinking!" The Headmistress raised her voice. "Not only did you target a student, but you used the void prison spell! You know that is only to be used against dangerous, violent criminals!"

"How was I supposed to know I chose the wrong target?" Laurence shot back. "This Beatrice leveled her wand at the other, wouldn't you have thought this one would be the instigator of violence as well?"

Headmistress Cassandra threw her arms up into the air in exasperation. "You are impossible, Laurence!"

"And the void prison spell isn't illegal either!"

"It's not, but it borders on cruelty. It is never to be used on a student! And now the impostor is still at large!" Headmistress shook her head and held out a hand to help Beatrice up. "I am so sorry this has happened to you, my dear. Are you alright?"

"Shaken, but alright." Beatrice managed to mutter as she stood with Headmistress's help.

"I was watching the whole thing." Headmistress's voice softened as she smoothed down Beatrice's hair and clothes. "You were very brave to follow the impostor all over again, but next time..."

"I did wait for you or a professor to come. Or I tried, but they were approaching the—"

"The east field, yes." Headmistress cut Beatrice off suddenly, and the earth witch saw the urgency in her eyes. Her eyes flickered briefly to Laurence and Beatrice nodded. "We'll take it from here, Beatrice. I have a few spells in mind to try on my ravens to better respond to such things. I believe you're not any worse for wear so go on your way. If you feel any adverse effects, please head straight to the infirmary."

The Headmistress gave Beatrice a few protective pats on the shoulder, glared daggers at Laurence, and escorted the earth witch out the door. Once out in the hallway and with her back to the office, the Headmistress put her finger to her lips in a shushing motion. Another pat and a reassuring smile later, the doors to the office closed again leaving Beatrice on her own.

Stunned, the earth witch went on her way, walking down the hall in a confused daze. What happened to the false Beatrice then? They must have gotten away while professor Laurence was dealing with his mistake... Unless...

A loud, booming voice sounded from somewhere outside the castle, startling Beatrice out of her reverie. She smacked herself in the forehead and took off at a run down the hall. It was professor Arcturus's voice! The Skeet-Shooting event must have just ended.

"Nova!"