you to come with me,” said Jessica, entering the kitchen and addressing me; I was still eating breakfast.
“Come where?”
“Through the tunnel.”
“What on earth for?” I asked in surprise. None of us usually required help getting through the tunnel, unless you counted the two grandmothers, who generally avoided it altogether.
“So you can use your crystal as a light,” she explained. “I’ve stubbed my toe twice in there this morning.”
The Light Crystal, whose magical function was still unknown to us, glowed more brightly than a candle, so it could be used as a torch. Hence her request.
“You taking that crystal to school today?” asked Peter.
“Yeah,” I said. “They wanted me to take it everywhere with me.”
“You’d better not,” said Mum fiercely. “If the Hammersons attack you for it—”
“Better than having the Hammersons burst in here for it,” I retorted, and I did, before we left, retrieve the Light Crystal from my bedside drawer and stuff it in my pocket. I had to wrap it in three handkerchiefs as well, because it shone so brightly that my hip appeared to glow if I didn’t.
Then, almost as though we’d quite like to be fighting for our lives again, the six of us gloomily set off for school. It was an overcast day with a fair breeze.
“What—er—what’s happening this afternoon?” Peter asked when we were half way to school.
“Nothing,” said Nicole. “I don’t think. Lucien said—”
“No, not that,” said Peter quickly. “I meant with me and John. How long are we staying back today?”
This just illustrated how extraordinary our last couple of weeks had been. During the week in which Marc’s father had been turning himself into a Sorcerer, Peter, James, Harry, Simon and I had (half due to circumstances unrelated to magic) scored ourselves quite a few detentions from our least favourite teacher, Mr. Hall. He taught us boys English this year, but he also taught Science and French classes, including the girls’ Science class. The previous Monday, he’d given us three lessons in a row due to the absences of our Science and French teachers, and possibly the strain of so much teaching had caused him to put half our French class into this afternoon’s detention.
“Oh, I forgot about all that,” said Nicole. “You can’t have too many left, can you?”
“Three for me,” I said.
“Me too,” said Peter. “Except one goes for three hours. I’m not sure which one though. The last one I got, so probably Wednesday.”
“What about Harry and Simon?” asked James.
“Three hours every day,” said Peter. “For three weeks. Then they also got two each in French last week; they’d be half hour ones, and I think Simon got another one from somewhere.”
“Those two,” sighed James.
“Don’t you have some too?” Jessica asked him shrewdly.
“No,” said James. “I had my last one Friday week ago.”
To assist us in keeping track of all our detentions, or possibly to embarrass us in front of the rest of the school, a notice board had been put up in the year-nine/ten locker bay, right above our lockers, showing which teachers held detentions over a week-long period, which rooms they were in, and all the students who were expected to attend. The six of us looked up at it as we arrived at our lockers.
“They’ve changed it,” Peter observed. “Look—ours are the same, but there aren’t as many people as last week.”
Indeed, this afternoon’s detention had, last time I’d seen the notice, said that about twenty-five people had detention this afternoon. Now, however, it had just eight names. Harry and Simon both had the number three next to their names, and Peter and I were right below them. Below us were just four more names from our French class. Looking across the rest of the week, I saw that people had had their detentions scattered, some of them even stretching into the following week.
“Noticed, have you?” said a voice, and we turned to see Harry and Simon— twins who lived across the river—enter through the doorway just to the left of our lockers.
“We reckon it's because he doesn’t think he can handle so many trouble makers in the one room at once,” said Simon, grinning wickedly. “Shame, I was rather looking forward to it.”
“Lis and Nat around?” asked Nicole. “’Cause I was just thinking, you boys will see those girls and the four boys in your class today, won’t you?”
“Not the boys,” said Peter. “They’re not in many of our classes.”
“Well tell the girls not to meet us at recess,” said Nicole. “Remember what Lucien said…”
“Right,” said James. “I would have objected once before, but I guess it makes sense now. You tell the other year-tens.”
Movements behind us announced the arrival of Natalie, Lisa, Marc and Tommy, and James turned and asked, “Did you four get that?”
“No, but I’m sure we’ll catch up eventually,” said Tommy, only a little bitterly.
Owing to the fact that he had been shot a week earlier, and had therefore missed the camp, Tommy hadn’t been involved in our hunt for the Sien-Leoard Crystal the previous week. It was easy to understand why he felt slightly left out whenever the topic of the Magic Crystals came up. The twelve of us gathered around our lockers and stood chatting away for several minutes about nothing in particular while I, having been just reminded of what was in my pocket, kept a hand around the Light Crystal the whole time. Seeing as Lucien had told us not to be too conspicuous as a group at school, we were doing a very poor job on our first day out, something Nicole wouldn’t shut up about.
“We can’t look like this!” she kept hissing. “My God, if anyone’s watching—”
“It’s not so bad,” Harry said bracingly. “We hung out in this group long before all this started, and the rest of them know not to hang out with us. Oh, ‘ello.”
Amelia and Stella had just entered the locker bay behind Harry and Simon. Stella waved once at us before heading for her locker, but Amelia hovered nearby to listen to the rest of the conversation.
“I think they know not to hang out with us,” Peter continued. “Lucien made that pretty plain, but if you’re still not sure, Nicole, why not dash around here now and tell them? I’m sure they’re all in here somewhere.”
He was probably right; the locker bay was packed and noisy, as always. I glanced around, but couldn’t see anyone else from the so-called Young Army mixed in with the mass of students. Harry opened his locker a moment later, causing a rather large gap between the nearest students, large enough for me to get a glimpse of Mr. Hall, our least favourite teacher and the one who had given us so many detentions, prowling the locker bay. The gap was caused because when Harry had opened his locker, about seven or eight of his textbooks had gone flying through the air; his locker appeared to be cursed, sending its contents across the room whenever he opened it.
“You didn’t say—you never—you should have told me that was yours,” shouted Amelia over the racket, straightening up after she’d dived sideways to avoid Harry’s Maths book. She gave the locker a pointed glance, making it obvious what she was talking about.
“I forgot,” he said, giving his locker a hip-and-shoulder to close it. It was trembling, apparently wishing to send more books out. “But can you…”
“I did that,” she said. “That was mine last year.”
“What?” Harry’s jaw gaped, and Peter made a spectacle of standing