Not going to lie, I love her already, even before she thrusts out a hand to shake mine and says, “Being a gargoyle is the most kick-ass thing I have ever heard of. Good job.”

I laugh. “It’s not like I had a choice in the matter.”

She shrugs. “No one actually gets a choice of what they are at the molecular level, Grace. It’s what you do with it that matters, and so far everything you’ve done is pretty badass.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do. And you should listen to me. Everybody does.”

Again, she should come off as completely arrogant, but instead it just kind of screams of charming and total rock star. No wonder Flint adores her.

“It’s true,” Flint tells me as he drapes an arm around her shoulders and squeezes tight enough to make Eden glare at him. “She gives the best advice.”

Eden shoots him a “why are you touching me” look, which only makes him squeeze her harder. But when he reaches up to ruffle her hair, she ducks out from under his arm and twists it behind his back hard enough to have him squealing—not to mention coughing out a couple of pathetic blasts of ice—which has Jaxon, Macy, and the guy who came on the field with Eden, who I don’t know yet, cracking up.

“Are you done?” Eden asks, eyes narrowed.

“For now.” Flint gives her his most charming grin, and she just rolls her eyes. But she also lets him go.

“Anyway,” Flint continues, “this is Eden. And this”—he turns to the white guy dressed in navy track pants, a gray compression shirt, and a navy baseball cap—“is Xavier. He’s a wolf, but we try not to hold it against him.”

Xavier cheerfully flips him off before nodding my way. “Nice to meet you, Grace. I’ve certainly heard a lot about you.”

He doesn’t tell me from where, and I don’t ask. If he’s a wolf, I’m not sure I want to know anyway.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I answer with a smile. He’s got laughing green eyes and a wide smile that makes it impossible not to grin back at him. Eden may be cool, but this guy is F.U.N. It’s written all over him.

Add in the fact that my cousin keeps glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, and I’m only more interested in getting to know this guy.

“Is this everyone?” I ask, because I thought Flint mentioned there being eight people on a team.

“Mekhi will be here any minute,” Jaxon tells the group.

“And Gwen had a makeup test this morning,” Macy says. “But she’ll be here as soon as it’s over.”

I’m super excited that Mekhi’s going to be on our team—and just as excited that Macy chose Gwen to play with us instead of one of her other friends. Gwen was definitely the nicest when I met her whole friend group a few months ago. Somehow I can’t imagine Simone agreeing the way Gwen and everyone else had when Jaxon explained just why we needed the bloodstone.

It still feels strange to think of that time being a few months ago, since for me it feels like it’s been only a few weeks. But I’m trying to get used to it, just like I’m trying to get used to my memory likely never coming back. I hate the thought of never remembering those months, but I’m tired of worrying about it, tired of beating myself up over it.

“I hate that you can’t remember, too,” Hudson says, but it’s a soft tone, not his usual sardonic one. He wanders over to check out the wolf, no longer pretending to be captivated by his book.

I want to ask him what happened, want to beg him to forget what everyone says is good for me and just tell me. But now isn’t exactly the time, and how do I know I can trust what he tells me anyway?

“So what are we doing first?” Xavier asks, bouncing up on his toes like he’s ready to take off at any second. Take off for where, I don’t know, but I’m betting he’ll be an impressive sight.

“I think we should probably divide into teams and see what we can do together first,” Flint says, pulling a medium-size ball out of the duffel bag he’d dropped on the ground. “Macy, you want to enchant this thing for us?”

He tosses it to my cousin, who pulls out her wand and aims it at the ball as she murmurs what I assume is a spell.

“What’s she doing?” I ask Jaxon, completely lost.

“Ludares is half Keep Away, half Hot Potato, but with a bunch of magical twists. The first twist is that the ball burns hotter and hotter the longer you hold it, so you’ve got to get rid of it after thirty seconds at the most or you’re going to end burned right up. And shocked, because it vibrates, too.”

“It vibrates and burns you?”

“Yeah, which is why teamwork makes the dream work,” Flint adds. “The ball resets itself every time a new player touches it, so you have to move it around a lot. The only surefire way to lose the game is to try to do everything yourself. You can’t do it, at least not without causing some pretty serious damage to yourself.”

“How is this even a game?” I ask, baffled. “Let alone one they let high school students play.”

“It’s the best game ever,” Xavier chimes in. “Especially when you fall through a portal.”

“A portal?” I turn to Jaxon. “What’s a portal?”

“It’s a magical passageway or door to somewhere else,” he explains.

“I know what a portal is,” I tell him with a roll of my eyes. “I mean, what is a portal in Ludares?”

“Exactly the same thing,” Eden tells me. “When you’re up here so close to the North Pole, several portals exist anyway, in nature. Ludares kind of takes advantage of that. Some of the school staff taps into the same kind of energy that opens portals between the poles and the sun and channels it into portals all over the arena that you can fall into.”

“Ours don’t take you to the sun, though,” Macy finishes. “They just take you around the arena. But each one is different, and you don’t know where you’re going to be when you enter a portal. You may end up at the finish line, or you may end up all the way at the other end of the field and you have to start over.”

“So I just jump into a portal over there”—I gesture to an area right inside the field’s boundaries—“and I could end up all the way over there?” I point to the goalpost.

“Exactly!” Eden tells me with a grin that lights up her whole face. “Or you could end up over there.” She points in the opposite direction. “With half of the opposing team crawling up your ass.”

“That does sound like fun,” I say, tongue totally in cheek, but the others just laugh.

“Once you play it, you’ll see how cool it is,” Xavier assures me. “Especially since everyone gets to use their magic however they want—so the game gets really wild sometimes.”

“Right?” Eden agrees. “Remember sophomore year, when Alejandro turned everyone on the opposing team into turtles and then he and his teammates just ran the ball all the way down the field?”

“Well, until the witch used up all her energy and couldn’t block the opposing wolves who broke free and ran them down,” Xavier adds with a gleam in his eyes.

“I remember Sancha turning herself into a giant snapping turtle and nearly snapping Felicity’s hand right off. That was something to see,” Flint says.

“Or when Drew turned the entire arena into a lightning storm and Foster nearly got struck?” Jaxon reminisces.

“My dad was so mad. He walked around with his hair sticking up for three days straight.” Macy giggles.

“So yeah,” Jaxon tells me. “Lots of wild times on the Ludares field.”

A horrifying thought occurs to me. “Can’t the dragons just burn everyone on the other team?” And then another thought. “Can’t the vamps just fade to the end and win in thirty seconds?”

Xavier’s grin gets even wider. “I like how this one thinks.”

But Jaxon shakes his head and clarifies, “There are magical safeguards that prevent any spell or speed burst lasting more than ten seconds. Think of it as everyone wearing a personal handicap device. Our abilities are tempered.” Jaxon winks at me. “Otherwise, obviously, I’d win in seconds.”

Everyone laughs at his joke.

Everyone except Hudson, who turns his attention from studying Xavier to Jaxon, his eyebrows raised. “And I thought my ego was huge.”

“So how do you win?” I snark. “Whoever’s not dead or a turtle by the end?”

“We’re not quite that sadistic,” Eden says with a laugh, “but I like your style.”

Xavier picks up where Macy and Eden left off, his green eyes dancing with excitement. “Whoever gets the ball over the other team’s goal line first wins. No excuses. No second chances.”

“That’s it? You just run the hot ball down the field and cross a goal line with it?” I ask.

“Don’t forget the ‘try not to die’ portion of that equation,” Jaxon tells me.

“Yeah,” Eden agrees. “And believe me, that’s easier said than done at least half the time. Especially since this is the big magic show of the year—everyone is using their powers at the most spectacular level trying to shock and awe the other team.”

“And everyone else in the arena,” Xavier adds.

“True dat,” Flint agrees with the biggest grin I’ve ever seen from him, and that’s saying something.

“So, just to be clear, there’re a bunch of portals you can wander into all over the stadium.”

“Yeah.” Flint grins. “I mean, not now. They set them up the day of the event, but yeah. It’s super fun.”

I nod. “And even if you’re almost at the goal line, if you fall through a surprise portal the last couple of seconds, then you could be totally screwed.” I shake my head. “That’s diabolical.”