It's probably impossible for a mundane to get inducted, no matter how much magic she's carrying, but she's not taking any chances. Cara said goodbye to her brother ten minutes ago and now she's taking a walk around the far side of the trailer park.

(She's the same age as her wizard brother, but they're not twins. They're not related by blood at all.)

She walks back and forth along the widest avenue enough times that Mr. Martinez, smoking in the back of his truck, is giving her a watchful glare, so she loops around the far edge of the park. There's a narrow gap between the tall grass and the trailers, scattered with lawn furniture, bike parts, and a sideways refrigerator. She's almost at the next avenue when a grogler grabs her ankle from under a wind-blown newspaper.

It wraps tight and climbs up her leg, under her pants, pressing feeding tendrils into her skin. She hacks at it with her knife, burning through the fabric of her pants. When she chops off a tentacle, it steams, but grows back immediately. You're supposed to freeze groglers, she knows, but she doesn't have any way to do it. Is her burning knife making it stronger? She can't turn it off. Her mom has been intending for the last year to add a switch and a poison injector to it, but has been focusing on her brother's induction preparations.

It's already got a taste of her, so even if it's smart enough to be disappointed that she's not a delicious wizardling, there's no point using one of her step-father's decoys to draw it away.

"Fucking raccoon! You're rabid, aren't you!" she yells, hurrying to next wide avenue, hoping that the mundanes will notice - the usual kind of mundanes who don't believe in magic and can turn a grogler into a raccoon just by thinking at it. When it gets a tentacle around her neck, she runs for home, bangs on the door.

That's when she feels the pull.

The grogler seems to be stunned by induction. She pulls it off, chops it into pieces with her drained no-longer-burning knife, and throws the pieces into the void above her. She feels queasy, but not as bad as she would have expected.

"You were supposed to take Leonard, not me."

The Scholomance does not respond.

"Did... something get him at the last minute? If you abandoned him, he's in danger."

She pulls a pen out of her pocket and writes on the outside of her door on her way to the cafeteria.

For sale:

phone, wallet, keys, sunglasses

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