“They’re dead!” he said defensively.

“Doesn’t mean there aren’t more of them who were waiting for leftovers.” I shook my head in disgust.

Aadhya didn’t look happy about it. I wouldn’t have either, if I was going to be first into the shop with a potential mimic or two lingering. But at least with the information she’d be able to make sure she wasn’t literally first in, and possibly put a shield on her back or something.

“I’ll hold us a table if you’ll get the trays,” she said as we came into the cafeteria, being too clever for my own good. I couldn’t blame her, really. It wasn’t stupid to want to be pals with Orion if that looked like a real possibility. Aadhya’s family live in New Jersey: if she got into the New York enclave, she could probably pull them all inside. And I couldn’t afford to alienate one of the vanishing few people who are willing to deal with me. Sullenly I got on the line and loaded up a tray for myself and for her, hoping faintly that Orion would spot one of his enclave friends and ditch us. Instead he put a couple of apples on the extra tray, and then reached ahead of me and said, “C’est temps dissoudre par coup de foudre,” and fried a tentacle just beginning to poke out from under the steam tray of excessively inviting scrambled eggs. It dissolved with a horrible gagging smell, and a wafting green cloud leaked up from all around the tray and settled immediately over the eggs.

“That’s the stupidest spell I’ve ever heard, and your pronunciation is terrible,” I said, nasally. I skipped the now-stinking egg tray and went on to the porridge.

“ ‘Thanks, Orion, I didn’t see that blood-clinger about to grab me,’ ” he said. “Don’t mention it, Galadriel, really, no problem.”

“I did see it, and because there was only half an inch out, there was enough time that I could’ve got a helping of eggs if you hadn’t shoved in front of me. And if I was still stupid enough at the tail end of junior year to go for a tray full of freshly cooked scrambled eggs without checking the perimeter, not even your undivided attention would get me out of this school alive. Are you a masochist or something? Why are you still doing favors for me?” I grabbed the raisin bowl, covered it with a small side plate, and shook it until two dozen of them had come out one at a time. I poked them all thoroughly with my fork and went on to the cinnamon shaker, but one distant sniff was enough to tell me that was no-go today. The cream was also a loss: if you tilted it to the light, there was a faint blue slick over the surface. At least the brown sugar was all right.

I took a quick look both ways after coming off the line and then carried the two trays back over to where Aadhya had set us up at a good table, three in from the door: close enough to get out if they started to shut us in, and far enough not to be in the front lines if something came in through them. She’d laid a perimeter and done a safety charm on the cutlery and even got us one of the safer water jugs, the clear ones. “No eggs, thanks to Mr. Fantastic here,” I told her, putting down the trays.

“Was it the clinger? One of them got a senior pretty badly before we got here,” Aadhya said, nodding over at a table where an older boy was leaning half conscious between two of his friends with a series of huge bloody sucker-marks wrapped around his arm twice like a twining bracelet. They were trying to give him something to drink, but he had a clammy going-into-shock look, and they were already trading resigned anxious glances across him. I don’t think anyone ever gets used to it, but only the most sensitive flowers still burst into tears over losses by the time they’re staring graduation in the face. By then they’ve got to be locking down alliances and planning strategy, and however critical he’d been to theirs, they were going to have to find a way to patch it—tough with only three weeks to end of term.

Sure enough, the first bell rang for seniors—we leave meals at staggered intervals, oldest kids first, and if you think that it’s worse to go first, you’re right—and the two of them gently eased him down slumped onto the table. Ibrahim was sitting at the end of the neighboring table with Yaakov—his best friend here in our goldfish bowl, although they both know they’ll never speak to each other again if they live to get out of it—and one of the seniors turned to them and said something, probably bribing them to stay with their friend to the end. They must have had a time slot down in the gym they couldn’t afford to lose: it was going to be bad enough for them losing a member of their team this close to graduation. Ibrahim and Yaakov traded looks and then nodded and switched tables, taking the gamble. It’s not safe to skive off this close to finals, but lessons aren’t as important as graduation practice.

“Still sorry I took it out?” Orion said to me. His face was unhappy and wrenched, looking at them, although I’d have given any odds you like that he hadn’t even known the boy. No one else was looking anywhere in that direction. You have to ration sympathy and grief in here the way you ration your school supplies, unless you’re a heroic enclaver with a vat of mana.

“Still sorry I was done out of my scrambled eggs,” I said coolly, and started eating my porridge.

Ibrahim’s deal turned out okay: the senior died before our first bell rang. Ibrahim and Yaakov left his body there, arms folded on the table and head pillowed facedown, like he’d just drifted off for a nap. It wouldn’t be here by the time we came in for lunch. I marked off the table mentally, along with the ones surrounding it. Some of the things that clean up messes like that will stay around hoping for another meal.

I have languages every morning: I’m studying five of them. That sounds like I’m some mad linguistics fiend, but there’re only three academic tracks here: incantations, alchemy, or artifice. And of those three, incantations is the only one you can practice in your own cell without having to go to the lab or the shop more than the minimum. Alchemy or artifice tracks only make strategic sense if you’re someone like Aadhya, with a related affinity, and then you get the double advantage of playing to your own strengths and the relatively smaller number of people going for it. If she does get out of here alive, a smart, trained artificer with an affinity for unusual materials and a lot of good alliances, she might even be able to get into New York. If not, she’s got good odds for New Orleans or Atlanta. The better the enclave you get into, the more power you have to draw on. The artificers in New York and London had the power to build the Trans-Atlantic Gateway, which means if I did get into New York, I could be back in Birmingham New Street, an easy train trip from home, just by walking through a door.

Of course, getting into New York wasn’t on the cards for me unless I pulled off something really amazing, and probably not at all given that I was with increasing passion contemplating the murder of their darling star, but there’re plenty of solid enclaves in Europe. None of them will take me, either, though, unless I come out of here with a substantial reputation and a substantial spell-list. If you’re doing incantation, either you have to go languages-track to build yourself a really good collection of spells, or go creative writing and invent your own. I tried the creative writing track, but my affinity’s too strong. If I sit down to write modestly useful spells, they don’t work. In fact, more often than not they blow up in my face in dangerous ways. And the one and only time I let loose on the page instead, stream of consciousness the way Mum writes hers, I came up with a highly effective spell to set off a supervolcano. I burnt it straight away, but once you’ve invented a spell, it’s out there, and who knows, someone else might get it. Hopefully there’s no one garbage enough to ask the school for a spell to set off a supervolcano, but no more inventing spells for me.