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yourself?”
    Lark smiled mischievously, like she had a secret.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Watch,” she said. She slid off the bed and sat down in the center of her floor on a square pink rug. She crossed her legs and set her hands palm up on her knees.
    I felt a tingle of energy on the tiny hairs on my arm. I didn't know whether to sit down with her or back away.
    Her eyes closed and her lips moved silently. There was movement in the air that lifted my hair slightly off my shoulders. Underneath where Lark was sitting, the pink rug slowly turned a color of teal as bright as pictures I'd seen of the Caribbean ocean. The color crept outward from her in a circular pattern, like a drop of water spreading on a napkin.
    The dark wood furniture suddenly became shiny white. The polka-dot bedspread turned black with teal and white stripes, the color perfectly matching the newly teal rug on the floor. Other details of the room changed too. Like the lamp on her bedside table. I watched as it turned from a wooden base with a pink shade to a tall chrome base with a shimmery white shade. When the circle of color reached the edges of the room, a bright white paint climbed up the walls, replacing the pink that was already there. One wall became a teal accent wall.
    Less than ten minutes after Lark sat down, the entire room transformed in front of my eyes. I stood, open-mouthed, staring at each changed detail.
    “You like it?” She opened her eyes and stood, hand on one hip, surveying her work.
    “Like it? This is incredible.” I walked over to the bedside table and touched the lamp to make sure it was real. The chrome base was cool to the touch and very much real chrome.
    “How did you do that?”
    “It's called a glamour,” she said. “A staple of every respectable witch. It takes a lot of energy and concentration. I used to get super sick to my stomach after doing it, but I've been practicing. It gets easier.”
    I ran my hand along the bedspread and the walls, completely fascinated by what she had done. This was definitely a higher level of magic than anything Mrs. King had taught us so far.
    “Do you want to learn?”
    “Are you kidding me?” I said. “I would kill to learn how to do this. Do you think I could actually do it?”
    She smiled and took my hand. “Of course. Here, sit down with me.”
    We sat together in the center of the room facing each other, then scooted together until our knees were touching. Lark took my hands in hers and arranged them correctly on top of my knee.
    “You need to always sit palms up, like you're meditating. It's kind of like opening yourself up to the power all around you. Feel the energy of the room?”
    I nodded. I did feel it. A muted version of what I'd felt in the grass the night they gave me the demon tattoo. A hum deep below the surface of the air.
    “Imagine that energy is entering your body through your hands and your eyes and your mouth and your ears. Just close your eyes and let it fill you up.”
    I closed my eyes and imagined that the energy was a blue light pouring into me. I soaked it in, and it felt like a warm current running up my arms and through my shoulders. It flowed from my head down through my chest and all the way down to the tips of my toes.
    “Good,” she said. She touched my arm lightly and I felt a tiny shock. I pulled away and opened my eyes. Lark giggled. “Sorry. Making a connection with another shadow witch can be pretty intense.”
    “Lark? What does Shadowford Plantation have to do with the Order of Shadows?”
    Lark shrugged. “I don't know for sure. Only that the clearing is there on the property,” she said. “And I've heard there's a sacred ritual room somewhere underground. Kind of like our training room in the gym. It's where they take girls for their final initiation on their eighteenth birthday.”
    “Have you ever been there?”
    “No.” She shook her head. “But sometimes I overhear my mom talking about things.”
    So her mother was