Becoming Magical [2]

C H A P T E R - 1 3

"You're doing it again," Dex said, nudging her with his elbow. "That thing where you stare into space, totally oblivious to everything around you. Usually means you're planning some secret thing that'll end in an emergency Elwin call."

"I'm not planning anything."

Planning would mean she'd at least have some idea what to do.

"Yeah, well, whatever you're 'not planning'—just . . . if you need me, I'm here, okay?"

"I know, Dex." But she'd put him through enough already. More than she'd realized.

She picked up the broken piece of gadget he'd been playing with. "So what is this thing?"

"Right now it's a pile of junk, but I'm hoping I can turn it into a gadget that'll transmit my thoughts as telepathic signals."

Sophie smiled. "There are much cooler things you could do with your talent."

Dex shrugged and snatched the piece away from her. He twisted the broken wires together, reconnecting them to other pieces of the metal.

"You know, if you took technopathy training, you'd—"

"Not gonna happen. Just a little more than a week and I start ability detecting again, and I'm going to work as hard as I can to make sure they trigger something."

"School starts in a little more than a week?"

She'd known it was coming up, but that suddenly felt very, very soon.

"Yep. The Opening Ceremonies are next Friday and school starts the following Monday. Didn't you get your Foxfire uniforms yesterday?"

"Not that I know of."

She told herself to stay calm—that everything had been settled at her final Tribunal. But the Council couldn't have changed their minds about letting her return to Foxfire, could they?

"I should go home and look for them," she said, getting up and pulling out her home crystal.

"Yeah, you'll want to make sure your costume fits."

She was so distracted by her worries that she didn't catch what Dex said until the warm light was already pulling her away.

Costume?

"Please tell me this is a joke," Sophie begged as she trudged down the stairs into Havenfield's living room in a tight bodysuit covered in a shaggy brown fur.

It had sewn-in feet.

Feet!

Apparently her Foxfire uniforms, along with the monstrosity they called an "Opening Ceremonies costume," had arrived the day before. But Sandor—who had given her a twenty-minute lecture on how dangerous it was for her to leave Slurps and Burps without telling him—had insisted on inspecting the package before delivering it to her.

What was next? Was he going to start searching her laundry before the gnomes delivered it to her room? Worried the kidnappers might attack her with deadly socks?

"You forgot your headpiece," Edaline said, picking up a folded piece of brown fabric from the pile on the couch. She slipped the band of fur around Sophie's forehead, adjusting the narrow strip of cloth attached so that it hung down the center of Sophie's face and ended just below her waist. "There. Now you're a mastodon."

There were many, many questions racing through Sophie's mind as she scratched her neck where the furry collar was tickling it. But the most important one was probably, "Why am I dressed like a shaggy elephant?"