Page 28

There was something birdlike about the way she moved. She could remain perfectly still for a long time and then cross half the yard in a sudden burst of motion.

A kestrel, Tamsin had whispered when we first saw her.

Once Tamsin said it, I couldn't stop seeing it.

I changed behind the screens with the other newcomers. None of them seemed remotely embarrassed by the arrangement. They stripped off while talking about homework and comparing tattoos as casually as if they were changing shoes.

I faced the wall, kept my elbows clamped to my sides, and managed to get into the robe in approximately four seconds.

It was supposedly unisex.

Like most things described as unisex, it had clearly been designed for someone with no hips.

Once everyone had changed, we lined up on the sand.

"Find the seam," Mistress Fenwick said as she walked slowly in front of us. "Every one of you has a place inside yourself, just beneath the breastbone, where the human and the beast meet. You felt it when you stood before the glass. Now you need to find it without help. Breathe into that place. Put pressure on it. Give it room to open."

I had felt something at the Beastglass.

The problem was that the sensation hadn't come from the black stone. It had come from beneath my palm.

Apparently that distinction mattered only to me.

Around me, the others began to shift.

It was much uglier than I had expected. There was nothing graceful or cinematic about it. Bones cracked, joints moved, backs bowed, and faces twisted with effort. A boy two places down from me grunted and sweated for nearly a minute before his robe collapsed around him and a lanky gray wolf crawled awkwardly out from beneath it.

He looked startled by his own success.

The lynx girl from the Beastglass, Portia Vale, dropped onto all fours with a sharp hiss. A moment later, she stood on the sand as a spotted golden cat with the same smug expression she wore as a human.

Tamsin shifted into an otter in about six seconds and immediately disappeared beneath the pile of spare robes. Mistress Fenwick had to drag her out by the back legs.

I stood in the middle of the yard and breathed into the space beneath my breastbone.

That was where the ache from the courtyard still lingered.

I tried to follow Fenwick's instructions exactly. I concentrated on the ache, breathed slowly into it, and tried to apply pressure without knowing what I was supposed to be pressing against. I waited for something inside me to give.

Nothing happened.

I tried again.

This time I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed harder, trying to force some response out of my body.

For a second, I felt something.

It was faint enough that I almost dismissed it, but there was movement somewhere beneath the ache, deep enough that I couldn't tell whether it belonged to muscle, bone, or something else entirely. Something shifted once and then went still again.

I opened my eyes.

I was still standing in the sand in a gray robe.

Everyone else had become something.

I hadn't.

Someone laughed under their breath.