Amity pushed open the door to her room and stood on the threshold for a moment. She let out a long, slow breath and rubbed her eye with the palm of her hand. The headache that threatened to bloom all through dinner was in full effect, and the aches and pains of prodding at the printing press for hours were starting to catch up with her. She trudged into her room and leaned against the door until it latched shut. She stayed propped up against it for a few moments until she dragged herself back up and crossed the room to her desk.

Despite the throbbing in her head and whining in her shoulders, she sat down at her desk and pulled the notebook closer. She picked up the fountain pen, feeling the filigree inlay between her fingers. She uncapped the inkwell, dipped the pen, and brought the nib to the page.

The door swung open and Edric stuck his head in the room. "Hey, Mittens!"

Amity sighed and set the pen back in its holder. She pushed away from the desk, half turning the chair toward the door. "What is it, Edric?" He slipped in the room and Amity saw he wasn't alone. "Emira?" she added.

Emira clicked her tongue. "Aww, look at that frowny face, aren't we allowed to check in on our baby sister?"

"You seemed awful quiet at dinner," Edric said, dumping Amity's neatly stacked pile of homework off a spare chair and onto the floor. He dragged the chair around to the corner of the bed and sat down. "Quieter than usual, I mean."

Emira sat on the corner of the bed, rumpling Amity's sheets. "We've heard you're working on a super-secret project at school. Is it giving you any trouble? Is that what's bothering you?"

Amity glared at them. "Nothing's bothering me, I just have a headache." She glanced at the untouched notebook on the desk. "That and I was planning to write tonight," she muttered. "Where did you even hear I was working on something at school?"

Edric grinned. "So you are working on something."

Emira smiled to match. "We have our sources. Word is that you've been putting something together in the school with Luz's help, but nobody's saying what exactly." Emira's eyes glittered with mischief. "Unless of course it's just an excuse for you to sneak away and do other stuff with Luz."

Amity felt heat creep up her neck and was positive she was blushing. She kept her tone even as she said, "I have no idea what you mean by that." Emira gave her a look that implied that she knew that Amity knew exactly what she meant by that, but she stayed silent and Amity continued. "And it's more that I'm helping Luz with a project, not the other way around."

Edric crossed one leg over his knee and leaned back in the chair. "Well stop being so cagey about it, spill already."

She sighed and slumped in the chair, propping her elbow against the desk and leaning her head on her hand. "If I tell you will you go away?"

"That stings, Mittens."

Emira flashed sad eyes at her. "We just want to help our baby sister, is that so wrong?"

Amity rubbed the bridge of her nose. The headache was getting worse. She named the headache Edric and Emira. "Luz wants to put out a Hexside literary magazine at the end of the semester and she needed a second editor. We're still in the pre-planning stages right now and there's a lot of work to get done before we can really start. We got a lot done today, which is good, and it made me tired, which is why I'm—"

"Our little black raincloud of grumpiness," Edric finished for her. Emira snickered.

"… Yeah, sure." Her frown deepened, and she let out a long breath, giving her siblings and calculating look. "I guess there is something about the whole thing that is bothering me."

Edric flashed a grin at Emira. "Is working closely with Luz proving to be extra challenging?"

"No. Luz and I get along well," she said flatly.

Edric sighed. "She's just gonna pretend that she doesn't know that we know, huh?"

"That just means we can tease her about it as much as we want and she'll pretend to ignore it," Emira pointed out.

"But the teasing's just to get her to do something about it, and if she ignores us …"

"We'll just have to tease harder."

Amity clenched her jaw and rubbed her face. "Look, I know you know, and I'm aware you've known for weeks now, and I appreciate the discretion you've kept with everyone except me about it, but this is something I don't want your help on, don't want your advice over, and am not going to talk to you about. Nothing you do or say is going to make me do anything sooner than I'm ready to, either. So drop it."

Edric chuckled at her. "Oof, touchy."

She sighed. "It's just … things are good with Luz right now, and I'm really enjoying things being good. I can worry about trying to make them better later, okay?"

Emira raised her hands in surrender. "Totally okay. Just so long as you do do something eventually, because I really want to gossip about it."

Grumbling, Amity shook her head. "Anyway, the thing I was actually going to talk to you about was about how we're making the literary magazine."

Edric's smile fell to neutral. "If you're looking for how to get permission, don't ask us, we just know how to get away with things we didn't have permission to do in the first place."

"We already have permission, Principal Bump gave us the go-ahead to reform the Hexside Herald school club to do it. That's why mom and dad are okay with me working on it."

"Makes sense," Emira said, "I was wondering why mom didn't raise hell when you came home just before dinner. So what's up?"

"The reason Luz and I are doing this at all is because Luz found the machine in the school that was used to print the Hexside Herald. It's in a part of the school—"

Both Edric and Emira interrupted her, saying in unison, "That you can only get to through the Secret Room of Shortcuts?"

Amity's jaw snapped shut.

"Lemme guess," Edric said. "It looks like a part of the school that nobody's used in decades where the only light's the emergency beacons?" He glanced at Emira.

"And there are no windows, and everything seems way too big for it to just be the basement?"

"And everything's covered in years of dust, except that sometimes something just isn't for absolutely no obvious reason?"

Amity glanced back and forth between the two. "I take it you've seen the printing press before, then."

"Nope!" they both chimed.

"I don't even know what a printing press is," said Edric. "I take it it's a machine you print stuff with, but I'm getting that from context clues."

Emira nodded. "We've just been to the under wing before."

"And if there's something weird and hidden at Hexside …"

They both finished together, saying, "It's going to be in the under wing."

Amity's brow knit. "The under wing?"

Emira's smile turned smug. "It's so fun knowing something widdle Mittens doesn't know about. You know how the school has an east wing and a west wing? The under wing is at a ninety-degree angle to the rest, going straight down into the Titan."

Amity's eyes widened in confusion. "Wouldn't it be full of stairs then?"

Edric shook his head. "That's the thing, you turn ninety degrees when you're there, so it looks like any other part of the school, just no windows."

Picking up where he left off, Emira continued. "Oracle and abomination magic used to be in that wing, plus a whole bunch of other classes that got shut down after the coven system started."

They both smiled at each other and said, "Until one year it blew up."

Amity sunk back in her chair, her frown growing. "… But—"

Edric cut her off. "If you're wondering why it blew up or why it's still there, don't ask us, no idea on the first, and we can only guess on the second."

"We're assuming that after a while Hexside put itself back together."

"After all, the under wing is inside the Titan, and goes through the remains of the school Hexside was built on top of."

Emira nodded. "Plus Grom is there, too, that might have something to do with it. All we can say for sure is that it is there, and is the best place to hide stuff. None of the teachers seem to know about it, even the ones who know about the Secret Room of Shortcuts."

"And you better not go telling any teachers about it, Mittens."

They both paused and looked at each other. "… Wait …"

"Have you already told?" Edric asked, a dangerous edge in his tone. "Is that how you got permission from Bump?"

Amity raised her hands up in surrender. "No, no, we haven't mentioned the, uh, under wing or the printing press at all." Her siblings leaned back, looking relieved. "Luz was worried that we probably weren't supposed to be there and convinced me to not mention it unless Principal Bump asked directly. We just said that we had production costs covered and wouldn't need a budget from the school board." She dropped her tone, feeling sour. "Principal Bump assumed that mom and dad are paying for it as a political maneuver for me but didn't want that acknowledged publicly."

Edric gave her a look of pride. "Dang, Mittens, I didn't think you had that sorta subterfuge in you."

Emira raised a finger. "To be fair, she does seem to have a thing for secret rooms in places already."

"That's true."

Amity sighed and shook her head. "They're only secret if you two don't know about them." She idly rifled her notebook, letting the pages run over her thumb like she was shuffling cards. "So you said the under wing blew up?"

They nodded. Edric said, "Don't ask us why, we've asked before, but nobody'll tell us. Teachers always say it's from a dark chapter of the school's history and it's best to let sleeping demons lie, whatever that means."

"Doesn't help that we have to act like we're just interested in the history of the school and not make it sound like the under wing is still there."

Amity smiled at them despite herself. "I swear, talking to you two is like talking to a pair of criminals sometimes." They both puffed up with pride and she rolled her eyes. "That is not a good thing. Anyway, I understand that you don't know what caused the explosion, but do you know when it happened?"

"Sure, yeah," Emira said, "about forty years ago, just a few years before mom and dad started going to the baby classes."

With a furrowed brow, Amity rubbed her chin. "… Hmm. That's about when the newspaper stopped and the writing staff disappeared."

Emira and Edric exchanged a look, and Edric raised an eyebrow at Amity. "You think they're connected? Sounds a little hardcore for a school newspaper."

Amity shrugged. "Maybe. I'll mention it to Luz at least. Might help us figure out where the printing press came from. We figured out how to work it, more or less, but the more we know about it in general, the better. It's already a big project without needing to figure out how a machine works." Amity felt a yawn force its way out and rubbed her eyes. "Speaking of, all that time spent figuring it out is starting to take its toll."

Edric flashed an indulgent smile. "I think Mittens needs her beauty sleep, Em."

"Gotta look good for her widdle girlfriend." Amity's eye twitched and she flung her notebook at Emira's head. Emira batted it down, her smile widening. "Ooh, that word struck a nerve."

Edric got up and slid the borrowed chair halfway back to where it had been before, leaving the homework he'd knocked off earlier strewn across the floor. "C'mon, we should go before Mittens starts throwing spells instead." The two of them chuckled together as they headed for the door.

Amity huffed and dragged herself up, heading toward the notebook she hadn't gotten to write in that night, then glanced over at Edric, still lingering at the door. "What?" she grumbled.

"Amity," he said, his tone serious and with a hand held up in truce.

Amity straightened at him using her actual name, some of her annoyance shifting to curiosity.

"I just wanted to say that even though Em and I joke a lot about it, we really do hope things go well with you and Luz, whatever that means for the two of you."

Amity flinched, giving her brother a guarded and wary look.

"Teasing you's fun and all, but ever since you've met Luz, you've been happy, happier than we've seen you in a long time. Luz is good for you. We hope things go well and we're rooting for you."

She cast her glance down and gripped the hem of her school uniform in her fingers, feeling heat rise to her face. "… Thanks, Ed," she mumbled. "I hope things go well, too."

Edric gave her one of the most earnest smiles she'd ever seen on him, and he shut the door.

Sighing, she picked up her notebook and brought it back to the desk. The brain fog was setting in thick and heavy, and she dropped the notebook on the surface, capped the inkwell, and pushed her chair in. She shuffled around the room, straightening things up and getting ready for bed. Freshly changed into pajamas, she crawled under her sheets and snuffed the light with the twirl of a finger. She sunk into her pillow and drifted off to sleep, her dreams teeming with ideas that begged to be written down