* * *
Larkin sat on her bed in the candidate dorm. There were bunks with a desk on bottom and a bed on top. Thirteen desks for thirteen Clans.
Larkin looked around the room. Six beds had already been stripped of their sheets. Those candidates hadn’t even made it to the third week of training. The Virginia Clan candidate hadn’t even shown up, but his family had died in a feud fight the night before he was set to report. Probably because he had been chosen instead of someone from a more favored family. That was the way of the Virginia wizards.
Larkin rubbed her forehead with the heels of her hands. She had been chosen from the entire Gray Clan to be this year’s candidate for the Magical Agency for the Gathering of Intelligence. Being a MAGI Agent was all she had ever wanted. Ever since she was six and made all the trees in her yard bloom in the middle of a Massachusetts blizzard. Isadora Gray had shown up at her door the next day. Iz had told her that there were witches and wizards all over the country, and Larkin was one of them. And MAGI protected them all.
And now she was finally a MAGI candidate. All she had to do was make it through the training and she would be in. Larkin let out a stifled laugh that echoed coldly around the dorm. Last year five candidates made it to MAGI, the year before, none. And if Stone was right about her…
Larkin lay down, burying her face in her pillow. It didn’t matter what Stone or Coldwater or any of the rest of them said. She was good enough to be a MAGI. They just didn’t know it yet.