Disclaimer: don't own them, just the continuing scenario.

Happy New Year, everyone, and a new chapter to go with it! And as a bonus, the quasi-sidefic 'New Tricks' is up, too.
Though I'm afraid it'll be a while until the next update, since I managed to injure my hand and typing is slow going.

Thanks to those of you who've let me know you like the story! If getting noticed by the crossover goddess herself isn't an incentive to continue, I don't know what is. (grins)

And as per usual, anonymous reviews get answered in my profile.

(Edited 3/06)

Akako was not a happy witch.

Someone had been messing around with her phantom thief.

She had seen it as soon as he had walked through the classroom door, her shock great enough to break through to show on her face. His aura, normally brighter than that of most mortals, was eclipsed by a thick, enveloping shroud of foreign magic. The dancing rainbow corona of playfully shifting hues she had grown accustomed to flickered dimly from the depths of the dark cloud wrapped around him. Despite all the difficulty she had had with enchanting him, some other practitioner of the dark arts had ensnared him…!

He had greeted her as though nothing was wrong, right up until she had sprung from her desk and pinned him to the wall, demanding to know what had happened to him. Who had dared bind the elusive prey she had set her sights on?

He had denied any knowledge whatsoever of what she was talking about. Not that she had believed him, since he also denied being the Kaitou Kid, but she couldn't get any other answer out of him.

"There's no such thing as magic," he had said with a smile, right before pulling a pack of cards out of thin air and beginning to shuffle them expertly, fanning them out into the shape of a flower that was suddenly a real carnation, which he stuck into a buttonhole and then used to squirt water at another classmate.

It only made it worse that she knew he really wasn't using magic. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had been a sorcerer, someone with power. But he was merely a magician with only that silly sleight-of-hand to call on, just like any mortal with a few card tricks. And yet her spells still couldn't control him.

She had released him then, and he had leapt lightly over the desks to his own seat, greeting Aoko on the way with a shower of confetti. Akako firmly repressed the impulse to snarl at the common, unglamourous, mop-wielding girl who had captured the magician's heart when her magic had failed, and didn't even have the sense to realize it. What did it matter if they had known each other since they were small children? The tomboy was nowhere near as attractive as Akako, not to mention how her father was the loudly obsessed head of the taskforce dedicated to attempting to capture the Kid!

She felt a bit better when Kaito dropped a frog into Hakuba's bag when the detective wasn't looking. The English detective had irked her greatly when he had discovered Kaito's secret on his own. She herself only figured it out because of the prophecy; knowing that all men save the Kaitou Kid were to be her slaves, it didn't take a genius to put two and two together when Kaito proved immune to her spells. But she would have him eventually, she would! And no arrogant blond boy in a silly coat and hat was going to arrest him before she was finished! No one would win against him before she did!

Even this thrice-becursed other enchanter.

Or maybe she wouldn't stop at three, once she knew who to cast them on.

With nothing better to do, she had continued to study the strange, dark magic she could feel overlying her classmate; it wasn't as though whatever the teacher was blathering about this time was important. Once she had had a more careful look, it didn't look as though it had changed his basic nature in any detectable way. But it moved with him so naturally she might not have realized it wasn't supposed to be there if she hadn't known how he should have been, which told her it had its hooks in deep, far deeper than even her voodoo doll had managed. The power itself was strange, dark and clinging like shadows, yet she would swear there was light deep within, content to let its glow be hidden beneath the obscuring surface tendrils. She could almost make out currents within it, and ties leading elsewhere, but she couldn't follow them to their source. It was so frustrating. She'd never been denied anything like this before she'd met Kaito!

Determined that this mysterious other warlock would not get the better of her, she continued to keep an eye on the slippery magician. The darkness grew stronger around him as the days passed, which worried her. But the sense of light hidden within grew stronger too, though it lagged a few days behind.

The only explanation she could think of was that Kaito was somehow changing the strange power, making it his own somehow merely by being himself.

She wasn't sure whether to be glad that he seemed to be winning or annoyed that it might be harder to use her own powers on him again.

So she paid more attention than usual to Kaito one afternoon when he seemed oddly distracted. He hid it well, but was sending questing glances around the classroom, at her and Hakuba before dismissing them and continuing the search. Even as he sat, head propped on a hand and elbow resting on the desk, appearing bored with the teacher, he seemed to be trying to locate the source of some elusive sound that no one but him could hear.

And so Akako was watching when suddenly something…shifted. For a second she thought he had slumped, but his position hadn't changed. Yet there was something different about his posture, an abrupt lessening of the coiled energy that they had all come to associate with the young magician. And his eyes…when she leaned over to get a look, it was as though some of the life had gone out of them. Oh, they were as bright a shade of blue as ever, but their bright sparkle just wasn't there. When he noticed her staring, he grinned and pulled a string of flags out of his ear, but the trick somehow didn't seem as surprising as usual, the grin less infectious.

When she thought to check with magic sight, the dark cloud was gone as though it had never been.

But his aura, despite the removal of the obscurity that had enveloped it, seemed weaker. The shape of the slender, ethereal flames dancing in a thin outline around his form was the same, but they were misty pastels no brighter than those of his mundane classmates, if still somewhat more colorful.

Kaito still seemed to behave as usual, but somehow his antics lacked their usual oomph. The entire atmosphere of the classroom seemed to reflect it, the other students subdued without quite knowing why. Even Aoko and Hakuba seemed vaguely aware that something was amiss, though the latter's suspicious stare at Kaito was probably more on general principles than any actual observation; Kaito had certainly caused enough mischief for him in both personas. Akako's own eyes narrowed in speculation.

She was ready by the time class to be dismissed, all preparations completed. As the other students started to stand up and get ready to leave, she bided her time, waiting for the exact moment. And it came, as Kaito turned to get up from his desk and made eye contact with her for a split second in passing.

And Akako threw most of the gathered power of her glamour over him.

She felt it catch instead of slipping away as it had always done before, and without wasting a moment called his name. And as she watched his eyes glazed over, his motion halted and head turned back toward her.

"Kaito," she murmured, watching his full attention lock on her. "Come to me."

"Yes, Miss Akako," his lips shaped. And he came, moving as though in a trance, walking through the other students to stand before her. A sense of exultation filled her. She had done it! She had finally brought him within her power!

"Do you like me, Kaito?" she tested, watching him carefully from beneath lowered lashes.

"Of course, Miss Akako."

"How much do you like me?"

"Immensely, Miss Akako."

His eyes were unfocused, but fixed unwaveringly in her direction. Akako smiled.

"Tell me how much you care for me."

"I adore you. You are the most beautiful girl in the world, and your eyes more radiant than the stars. I would like nothing more than to spend the rest of my life by your side. You have but to tell me what you desire, and I will do what I can to provide it."

There was little expression on his face or in his tone, but his voice did not waver, and all Akako cared about was whether his actions would back up his words. Her eyes swept the classroom, and she smiled again, less pleasantly. What better way to cement his bond to her than having him demonstrate it in front of their classmates? Even if he did eventually fight free, he would be trapped by public opinion.

And Aoko would have given up on him, leaving him nowhere else to go.

"Would you like to kiss me?" Akako asked him. Of course, his spell-rapt expression did not change.

"Of course, if you wish it, Miss Akako."

"Then do it now."

Kaito came to kneel at the edge of her desk. He gravely took her hand and planted a gentlemanly kiss upon it, then rose slightly to wait her instruction.

"Again," she commanded, "on the lips."

Akako felt a thrill of elation as Kaito unhesitatingly stood and leaned across the desk toward her. She tilted her head up to face him, stealing a glimpse out of the corner of her eye at the other students whose attention had been attracted by Kaito's earlier actions.

All the better, she thought in triumph.

Their faces were inches apart when Akako felt something snap back into place, like a rubber band that had been pulled out to its full length and then let go. And she looked into Kaito's eyes as they instantly sparkled back to full awareness, all traces of her spell shattering like glass. The magician grinned at her then, that devastating grin full of delight in life heartstopping at close proximity, and swiftly moved closer still.

And the classroom was filled with a resounding honk as Kaito gleefully beeped the bright red clown's nose he had stuck on her and backflipped away, laughing.

The witch knew without bothering to look that his aura danced once more in its full glory, cloaked once more by the roiling nebula of darkness that her own powers could not overcome. And as Kaito caught up to Aoko, playfully scolding her at not waiting for him as they departed, the other students turned back to their own business, quickly forgetting about yet another of the magician's pranks. And Akako was left alone in the classroom, staring blackly at the far wall.

Comments treasured. Criticism desperately needed.