Liam and Rafael are looking right back at us, shaking their heads. “You’re going down, Vega!” Liam shouts.

“I’m so scared,” Jaxon shoots back. “Can’t you tell?”

“Children,” Hudson says. “They’re all children.” But he’s grinning almost as widely as his brother.

“You need a star sticker,” I tell him. “For spirit.”

“You mean like one of these?” Hudson turns his head, and I can see he’s already got one on his left cheek. Which I totally wasn’t expecting.

“Looks good on you,” I tell him.

“Everything looks good on me,” he answers, but the sparkle in his eyes makes it a joke.

“So what do we do now?” I ask the group at large.

“Now, we find a shady place in the stands and kick back to watch the action,” Eden tells us. “We’ll be playing fourth, and I can’t wait to watch some of these people out here get their asses kicked on the field.”

“And by that she means, she can’t wait to kick their asses herself,” Xavier interprets as we follow behind her.

“Yeah.” I laugh. “I got that.”

He smiles and makes a show of bumping fists with me before jogging to the front of our group, so he can walk next to Flint…and Macy.

Once we’re settled, I reach into my bag for a granola bar—I need the energy even if my stomach may be in knots right now—but Macy stops me. “They’ll be around with much better stuff in a few minutes.”

I’m not sure what she means until I realize several witches from the kitchen are buzzing up and down the field with huge containers strapped in front of them—kind of like the ones vendors wear at football games, only much smaller.

“Hot dogs?” I ask, a little surprised because they seem like such an incongruous food to be eating in the middle of Alaska.

Macy laughs. “Not quite.”

It takes a few minutes, but eventually one of the witches makes her way to us. Turns out she’s selling funnel cakes in the shape of the Katmere Academy crest. They’re smothered in strawberries and whipped cream and they look absolutely delicious.

Flint orders about fifteen of them for the group. I figure she’s just going to take our order, but then she reaches into her box and keeps pulling them out, hot and fresh and dripping with strawberries.

The next vendor who comes along is selling fresh lemonade, and Xavier gets what feels like several gallons of it as we settle in to watch the first match.

Cyrus—in a fitted, three-piece pinstriped suit, hair tied back into a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck and bloodstone ring glowing under the stadium lights—saunters his way to the center of the field, a microphone in his hand. Once there, he throws his arms wide and welcomes us all to the annual Ludares tournament, then goes through the rules “for anyone who might need a refresher.”

Every player must hold the comet (a large ball about six inches in diameter that magically vibrates painfully and heats the longer a player holds it) at least once in every match.

There are magical handicaps in place so that yes, one player can be faster or stronger than another, or be able to turn them into a turtle even (everyone laughs at that joke), but no spell or burst of speed or supernatural strength lasts more than ten seconds.

The only exception is flight, which can last up to twenty seconds at a time. So clearly a team with good flyers is going to have a slight advantage. I glance at Flint, and we fist-bump on that one.

All abilities that time out recharge every thirty seconds. I can tell from this rule, timing of when to use your speed or strength or flight or whatever so you have it when you need it is going to require a lot of strategy—and luck.

Everyone has been given a magical bracelet to prevent any serious injury. Dragon fire or ice, vampire bites, wolf claws and bites, and even witch’s spells can all still hurt like a bitch, but there’s no actual damage.

And of course, a player in mortal danger would immediately be magically transported to the sidelines and marked as permanently out of that match.

Despite all the rules, the actual game play is pretty simple. Get the comet across your goal line before your opposing team does the same—without breaking the rules.

Cyrus finishes his recitation of the regulations and then postures on for a while about interspecies cooperation, like he invented the game himself—which is made more entertaining by Hudson’s snarky comments about Cyrus liking the sound of his own voice more than anyone else in the entire stadium. He’s sitting directly behind me, the only one in the whole row, and I can tell he likes it that way. Even before he stretches out on the bench, sunglasses on, and heckles his father.

His insults are so inventive that I’m a little sad I’m the only one who gets to enjoy them. Then again, I’m pretty sure they’d get our team ejected from the tournament if anyone else heard him call the king a slack-jawed numby, so there is that…

Eventually, Cyrus calls the first two teams down to the field and blunders through introductions because he never bothered to figure out how to pronounce their names before he called them down. It’s the most arrogant—and also the most normal—school thing I’ve seen the whole time I’ve been at Katmere. I mean, besides having watched my uncle fidget with the sound system as he tried to get it to work.

Once the teams are introduced—I decide I’m rooting for team two, because it’s got Luca and Byron on it—Cyrus opens up the case that’s been lying at the center of the field since I got here this morning.

He announces into the microphone that Nuri—Flint’s mom—is going to be in charge of this tip-off, and we all have to wait while she walks out from the sidelines. I grin as I realize she’s dressed much more casually than Cyrus in a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck, and it only makes him look like more of a tool. Not that he needs much help in that department.

Cyrus motions to the box with a flourish but makes no move to pick up the comet.

Nuri leans over and picks up the black and purple object—and can I just say it’s a lot more interesting-looking than I anticipated, a shiny black ball inside a purple metal netting—and holds it up in front of her. The entire stadium screams and cheers until the whole place feels like it’s shaking with excitement.

The playing field is completely empty of markings except for a small box directly in the center of the grass and two purple lines—one on either side of the box—about ten feet away from it, which run the vertical length of the field.

The longer she holds the comet, the louder everyone cheers. This goes on for at least two minutes, and then she walks to the box at the center and steps on the raised platform, the comet still in her hand. I genuinely don’t think the crowd can get any louder.

But when she holds out the ball—that has now turned a bright red—to the spectators as if offering it, her gaze going back and forth from one side of the arena to the other, challenging each and every person, the screaming becomes positively deafening. Students are stomping now in addition to yelling, and I’m certain the entire arena is going to collapse around us. It’s thrilling and awe-inspiring and my face aches with the giant smile plastered on it.

It doesn’t take long before I’m screaming and stomping right along with everyone else, but I have to admit, I have no idea why we’re all so excited. Maybe this is tradition?

Hudson chuckles in my head, where I can hear him over the crowd. “Did you forget the comet gets hotter and vibrates at excruciating speeds the longer you hold it?”

My eyes go wide. Ohhhhh. She’s been holding it for at least five minutes now. Jaxon had told me the longest he’d ever held it was two minutes before the pain became so unbearable, he couldn’t survive it. Five minutes…?

“Flint’s mom is scary as fuck.” The awe in Hudson’s voice matches my own.

A quick glance at Flint shows him beaming with pride.

Finally, Nuri seems satisfied she’s made her point and raises the comet above her head. And everything instantly goes dead silent.

The teams are lined up along both lines, and I notice that Rafael is directly in the center of his line, along with a short Black girl named Kali, whom I’ve never met but am pretty sure is a witch. On the other side are two warlocks: Cam—Macy’s ex, and James, his friend with the creepy wandering eyes—another reason I’m not rooting for team one.

“The two in the center for each team are the ones who go for the ball,” Hudson tells me quietly. Now that his father is done talking, he’s leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees, so he can talk to me.

“Do they run for it?” I ask, because this isn’t something we practiced—or even discussed, I realize now.

“Not exactly,” Hudson answers, and he nods toward the field. “Watch and see.”

And so I do, eyes wide as a whistle blows and Nuri throws the ball up as high as her dragon strength will let her. It soars straight up, up, up, almost to the top of the dome, and no one goes for it. No one tries to touch it at all. But the second it begins to fall, it. Is. On.

Rafael uses every ounce of vampire strength he has to jump straight at the ball, while Kali shoots flames out of her fingertips straight at where she assumes James and Cam will be. But they have tricks up their sleeves, too, and they’re already under her blast radius. In the meantime, James sends a powerful cyclone of water straight toward Kali and Rafael, while Cam uses a wind spell to knock the ball several feet back from where it should be falling.

It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, the byproduct of power flying this way and that as the four players battle for control of the ball. It’s about a million times more exciting than the tip-off at the beginning of a basketball game, and I can’t even begin to imagine what an NBA stadium would look like if this kind of action went on.

Probably a lot like this one, actually, with its crowds of students yelling and stomping in excitement.

Rafael overshoots because of Cam’s wind spell and misses the ball, which falls straight toward James. He jumps, prepared to catch it, but Kali swoops in with an air spell of her own and yanks it away at the last second. She fires it straight at one of the other girls on her team, who catches it.