Young Writers Society

Harper hopped off her perch and went to the other room with the others, watching in confusion as they struggled to remove their masks. She frowned. Curiously, she tried to lift hers off. Nothing.

Well, she was wearing a mask now. That was fine. The others could find a way to get it off later.

She snickered thinking about how the pastor would react to her little situation.

She lifted up the bottle she was still holding to take a sip, only for it to knock against her mask. She rolled her eyes. Fine. So there was no drinking with this thing on.

Stumbling a little, she walked over to the posh British kid and his 'miss Alice', throwing an arm around Alice's shoulders, "Do either of you lovelies know where I can find a straw? This bottle here is almost done-" she held up the bottle and gave it a little shake, "-and I'd like to finish at least one of the things I started last evening."

Alice stiffened at the sudden contact, but she didn't try to get out of Harper's grip. She couldn't draw attention to herself. If she did, someone might start asking questions about her and Edward - and she wasn't sure she could resist the urge to tell them the truth.

"We don't," Edward said, his smile looking a little forced.

Just a moment ago, it seemed like no one was here. And then now, suddenly, five masked people were in the room with Casey.

Three of them were talking with one another. There was one guy with auburn hair, a girl, and another girl. Or, at least it looked like another girl. The only things Casey had to go on were the hair and the outfit. Her face was completely obscured by a mask, which looked like it had sprung from a nightmare. Casey's skin crawled, and she looked away.

And then there were two others. One girl, one boy. Both pretty formally dressed. The boy was slowly creeping towards her, as if she was a rabbit and he was a hunter, trying not to scare his dinner away.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Casey brushed herself off. "I'm Casey, by the way." She stuck a hand out and took a careful look at the boy's eyes. No black, no purple, nothing unnatural. Casey didn't know if she should be relieved or not. Well, she should be relieved that his eyes weren't black. She did not want to deal with one of them.

"Do any of you have any idea what's happening?" Casey asked aloud, letting her voice reach everyone in the room.

Alice hadn't just been trying to get Edward to calm down earlier - the masks probably were cursed to their faces. But not a single person had whipped out a wand yet, and Alice didn't really want to add breaking the International Statute of Secrecy to the list of crimes she had committed since joining Edward's cult.

They were probably dealing with a group of muggles.

Alice was a muggleborn. She knew was being a hypocrite. But she was only supposed to be in her fifth year if she had actually gone to Hogwarts this year, and she wasn't ready to go against the government. And she could erase their memories after this, but that was just as much of a crime.

She opened her mouth - ready to say that she didn't know - but then Edward suddenly moved from beside her.

He took a step into the room.

"I think magic might be involved," he said.

Alice gaped at his back.

He pulled out his wand from the depths of his sleeve and held it out. "I can prove to you that magic is real if you don't believe me, but there's not point in avoiding the truth. I think these masks were cursed onto our faces, and that we were brought here by some kind of transportation spell. Probably Apparating, but Alice and I were supposed to be in somewhere that was safe from that."

She stared for another moment.

And then she slipped out of Harper's grasp and over to Edward's side, a look of disbelief etched across her face. "Edward, what are you doing?" she hissed. "You can't just tell them magic is real-"

"But I just did," he said.

"That doesn't make it any better!" she argued. "That's-That's going against the law!"

He gave her a long, hard look. It was the kind of look that made her wonder how transparent she really was around him - and the kind of look that made her afraid that he had already figured out the truth.

"Miss Alice," he pointed out, his voice a low whisper, "don't you remember what I told you? We're going against God, but you're worried about something trivial like a statue of secrecy?"

Alice couldn't up with an answer to that.

Edward smiled - that cold, apathetic smile she hated so much - and turned his attention back to the rest of the group. The smile was replaced by one that seemed so off on his face: one that seemed almost good.

(It was too good, in fact. Alice hated how it made her forget just who she was dealing with, and how it made her think that he was just a regular old person.)

"Anyone want a demonstration?" Edward asked, giving the stupidest grin she had ever seen him make.

Monty barely had time to respond to Casey with his own name before Edward spoke. Monty listened to him speak, and to the little whisper argument, he and Alice had. Then Edward took out a wand.

"Of course there's magic, just cause you're unmarked doesn't mean you gotta prove it's existence." He scratched at his own mark absentmindedly.

Nettie didn't look the most excited about the wand. "Really, using unnecessary props too? More childish then I thought"

Alice gaped.

Again.

Edward froze, too, but he recovered much quicker than Alice did. She was much newer to all of this - the demons, the other forms of magic, and the idea that alternate realities existed. She didn't know about the last one and might have been vaguely aware of the second, but it looked like Edward would be doing some more lessons after all.

"You can do wandless magic?" Alice whispered, incredulous. "But that's-that's so difficult. How are you talking about it like it's normal?"

Edward slid his wand back down his sleeve.

"There's multiple kinds of magic, remember?" he reminded her. He stopped himself from adding Miss Alice onto the end of the question - this was both a lesson for her and for the others in the room. "The magic you're used to involves wandwork when casting spells, but there's other kinds. The creatures you've dealt with in something like Care of Magical Creatures have their own kind of magic, just like a certain other kind of creature does."

He gave her a look. It was hard to tell if the others in the room knew anything about one of the darkest arts, but it wasn't worth the risk. She knew exactly what he was talking about.

He looked back over at Nettie and Monty.

"I'm sorry for any misunderstanding," he said. "I didn't mean to offend you. Where Alice and I are from, almost everyone needs their wands to cast their magic - and 'unmarked' is a term that really doesn't mean anything to us. Could you please explain what you mean?"

Edward didn't miss how Alice grabbed onto her arm when he mentioned marks. She, after all, had one right there in what was essentially permanent ink - she would never be able to get it out.

Casey was just trying to hang on to the conversation.

Sure, she knew that ghosts existed. She knew that spiritual crap that she didn't really understand existed. She knew that bringing people back from the dead (kind of) existed. But magic? Completely new level of "WTF."

And then the two others with tattoos on their necks were just handily jumping into the conversation, like they were talking about stores at the mall. Even the guy with the wand looked shocked at that, not to mention his companion.

Casey just couldn't stay quiet. She was supposed to be the smart one. And here she was, barely grasping what the conversation was about.

"Excuse me." She raised a hand into the air. "But what the actual crap? Are you guys from other dimensions? Because... well, magic definitely doesn't exist where I come from."

Harper giggled, hugging her grimoire to her chest, "Oh, you're probably wrong about that," she said to the poor, confused girl, "Demons live in the places between dimensions, so they're in all of them." She was awfully chipper about explaining this, but it really was a fascinating topic. Annie was always pretty tight-lipped about it, but she was always distracted by other things. More important things, to her anyway.

Nettie snorted at Edward asking what unmarked meant.

"Unmarked. You know, without these" She flicked Monty's mark, and he flinched back, placing a hand over it.

"Hey!" He glared at her and earned nothing more than a shrug and a glance.

Alice's grip on her arm tightened.

Harper had mentioned demons. That meant she had to know, didn't she? She had to be just like Edward. And part of her had known something was off about Harper, but she had been so excited at the prospect of being herself that she hadn't bothered to think more about it.

"I still don't understand," Edward admitted.

He didn't even seem the least bit phased by what Harper had just said - how could he be taking this so calmly? If Harper knew about demons, then she had to be just like them. It didn't matter that she didn't have the mark on her arm. Either way, she had to summon demons to know about them!

"What happens if you are marked?" Edward asked. Alice barely caught the glance he gave in Harper's direction.

Alice, giving up on both Edward and trying to understand his reaction to Harper, went over to Casey's side.

"I know this is a lot to take in," she said. "I was in a similar situation to you four years ago, and it's hard accepting that magic is real."

Casey looked over to the girl who had slid over to her. "Thanks," she said, rubbing her neck. "It's just... honestly, this is such a new discovery! For me, I mean. The girl in the freaky mask"--she gestured to her--"said there were alternate dimensions. And there are demons. Demons. That means there must be angels, too!" Casey whipped out her notebook from her hoodie pocket and began writing notes. "Which mean that maybe there is a God. Religion could actually exist! That could be the reason why all the Tribes' souls were imprisoned! Or maybe that was a demon, too..." Her pencil worked furiously. "So much potential, so many possibilities! That we've never known about! And if magic is real, too..." Her voice faded off. She realized she had been off on one of her rants.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, turning back to the girl at her side. "I tend to... speak out loud." She smiled embarrassingly. "Can I ask you what your name is? And what everyone else's name is? It looks like you all know each other already--sort of. Obviously not very well."

"I'm Harper," Harper said, suppressing a laugh, "and you need to chill. Angels aren't real, just demons, and 'other dimensions' is a space-y way of putting it. Think...uh...I don't know. Annie knows a whole lot better than I do." She shook her head, "You're getting all riled up about it."

Not even the preacher's kid was this frazzled when she found out about the rituals. She was actually pretty enthusiastic about it all. Harper just wished she'd join in sometime instead of just reading Harper's grimoire.

Nettie's eyes darted between everyone. Monty just looked a bit nervous. Jeanette stepped forward more. She turned to address Edward first.

"Marks dictate your place in society, to put it simply. There are two different ones you can have, or you can have neither. They're given to you at birth," Then she turned back to the group as a whole. "I believe Casey here is correct. We aren't all from the same world per se. Otherwise, you'd know what these mean." She gestures to her neck.

She takes a deep breath and blows hair out of her eyes, she's rambling.

"Regardless. We need to figure out why we're here."

"I guess there's no problem with the Statute of Secrecy, then," Edward said, looking down at Alice. She resisted the urge to pull a face at him when she heard his tone - she was supposed to be the mature one here. "So, Mi-Alice, it would probably be a good idea for you to get your wand out as well."

She grabbed her wand out from her bag. She didn't need it yet, but it would be useful in case they got into any kind of trouble.

"We should start by looking through this building," Alice suggested. She scanned the mostly empty room they were in - it looked like it hadn't been used for a long time. "I think this used to be some kind of storage building. It's too uniform and large to be a regular house."

Casey looked around. "I suppose that makes sense," she mused. She turned to face Alice. "Nice to meet you, by the way," she said, flashing a smile. "So, if you're magic, and I assume your companion is, too..." She pointed at the tall man with auburn hair. "And if you two also can do magic," she continued, pointing now at the girl and boy with tattoos--no, marks--"and I assume that you can do magic too, Harper, given you know about demons..." Casey spun around, looking at each individual, taking a glimpse at each of their masks. Harper's still gave her chills, but she was getting used to it, she thought.

"That means I'm the only one who can't do magic," Casey concluded, letting out a burst of air as she said the sentence. She smiled. "It's strange, you know? Why would someone, whoever brought us here, want to do with me if I can't perform magic? Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but I just think it's strange." Casey looked down at the floor, smiling shyly, already starting to cringe away from any potential corrections. She didn't want to admit it, but she liked being right. And when Harper corrected her on her theories about angels and crap, she felt... miffed. That was the right word. Involuntarily miffed. Just slightly.

"Never mind all of that," she said, waving a hand in the air. "Just forget it, I guess. I completely agree with Alice. We should explore. If nothing else, we can find a front door or something." She rubbed her forehead. "Yeah."