(Content/trigger warnings for this chapter: self-hatred, depression-like thing)

-Ranya-

The church was not a large, cool-looking place with halls stretching to the sky, large glass windows filling the sanctuary with sun, and rows of shiny dark-wooded pews, but like the sort you might find next to an abandoned cemetery. The halls were drafty; the windows covered in crawling, scraggly branches; and the pews bare-bones chairs with scratch marks running across them. A Windshallow church.

The staff present that day, mostly a few older ladies working behind creaky desks in a small office, had directed us to where everyone else was waiting in the large, empty lobby. Dakota and I soon joined the crowd of students and staff milling about and separated from each other.

I should've been happy. I might have a way to help my sister. I knew of one way to kill Fear Angels, at least. And I had escaped the school with my consciousness still intact.

But soon, I wasn't.

An hour ended by the time the high school staff thought to call the bus drivers to take us home. Before that, I got so many stares you would've thought I was a corpse returned from the grave. People whispered about where Dakota and I had gone and wondered when we left. Why my clothes were torn and soaked tight against my skin. The most common theory was that Dakota had beaten me up and shoved me into a toilet. One girl said we'd been fighting Fear Angels, but everyone else shot her down. They didn't take it as the Windshallow mystery it was.

I longed to correct the rumors. "That's not what happened!" I tried once. "You see—I—" But according to the Guardians' rules, I couldn't tell everyone what was going on. I'd made an exception for Dakota, and Tooth was nearby now. "I fought people who broke into the school," I said.

"Oh yeah, who?" a girl with narrow yellow eyes said to me.

I opened my mouth to respond, but soon closed it. How could I possibly explain what had caused the paralysis in a normal, non-supernatural way?

I couldn't.

I should have been happy, though, because mostly, everyone was concerned with the paralysis. They cried over the people they'd lost. People either spoke in whispers or not at all.

But the weight in my chest grew heavier like a growing stone when, having nothing else to do, I was forced to think about all the mistakes I'd made in less than half an hour. Pitch now threatened my family—he wouldn't have if I hadn't gotten involved. I had broken Tooth's trust. The Guardians probably wouldn't like me anymore either. It had always been part of my fantasy to be friends with them, but now I had ruined that.

When the buses came through the still-thick, obscuring fog, I slouched against the window in my back seat. Tooth hovered next to me and kept casting glances my way.

The weight in my chest spread to the rest of my body. I suddenly hardly had the motivation to turn my head. Now wasn't a good time for this—the almost depression-like symptoms I caught for a week whenever something bad enough happened. Not actually depression, since depression didn't appear for a week from external triggers, according to my Internet searches, but it still sucked. I didn't know what it was, really.

But these episodes had begun the year after my friends betrayed and left me—when I still hadn't found any new ones after trying so hard.

Five years ago. And it still kept happening.

When the bus stopped at my house, and limbs heavy, I got up and trudged to my porch, North greeted Tooth and me as soon as we had stepped through the front doors. "Ranya's school sent—" He stopped and looked down at all my rips.

My muscles tensed as I waited for everything to break apart.

I told him about the mist. At least that was safe.

Footsteps sounded from the computer room, and soon my mom emerged. "What happened?" She walked over as her neck stiffened. I repeated what I had told North. "A vanishing mist?"

"Where were you when this happened, Ranya?" North asked.

I looked down and tried to think of something that could save this. What could make me sound like I had broken the rules for everyone's best interests? But before I could, Tooth said, "While she was in her school. She went back after I told her not to." North's face darkened. My chest panged.

"I didn't want my classmates to be paralyzed," I said half-heartedly. "I couldn't just leave them there."

"A being mimicked Isabelle's voice and powers to try to get Ranya to reenter the building, and Pitch captured her."

"I—"

"Pitch was in there?" North straightened. "Doing what? Ranya, what did you do?" His words were loud and harsh. I shrunk inward.

"He asked where you guys were," I tried. "I made him angry, so he let me go. He wasn't after me."

"Ranya, that was very, very dangerous," North said. "If you were really trying to protect people, you wouldn't put us in a position where we might have to leave your sister, who will one day save them, to rescue you." Did Jack leave the school because he knew I was in danger? I cursed myself ten times over. "Leave the protecting to the Guardians," North continued. "From now on, no one's leaving this house. And we catch you trying, you will be locked in your room without your electronics, and not be allowed to speak even to family."

I jerked my head up, looking directly into his piercing blue gaze. "But North—"

"You clearly need the rule."

"But my sister won't become—"

"You think wrong."

My mom put a cold hand on my shoulder. Her gaze was blank. "The Guardians are right, Ranya. They know best."

I didn't have the energy to argue more. Why is my mom even on his side, anyway? She knows about Isabelle's first Guardian Angel's warning! I trudged past North up the stairs to my room. Tooth hovered behind me, following. Her features were downturned, but still pale from earlier.

My plants didn't give me the light burst in my chest they usually did when I saw them. They always seemed to breathe life. But today, I noticed the green and white leaves of my spider plant drooping too low, the pink blooms of my anthurium growing a little brown. Usually, I was good at keeping plants alive and healthy, but I still had problems with random plants every once in a while.

They reminded me of how awful I was.

I sat next to my bed, the carpet making my hands itch. Jack left Isabelle alone because I was in danger. The weight in my body threatened to drag me down so far I would give up. Let go. But Isabelle's first Guardian Angel had still told me I had to replace her or she would die. The weight would have to be stronger to make me throw away my sister's life. How did Jack even know I was in danger? That's why he came looking, right? Did Tooth tell him?

But the weight was just enough to keep my faults in my core: The Guardians didn't like me now. I was the reason Jack had left Isabelle alone. And Pitch had threatened my family because I had insulted him. If I hadn't done that, he wouldn't have had a reason to give me that threat. He would've just kept interrogating me.

Slowly, I slid my phone from my damp pocket and turned it on. I stared down at the screen. I still needed a way to kill Pitch since Dakota couldn't. Tooth hovered nearby, so I still couldn't plan out loud; instead, I slowly typed on the Notes app. It wasn't the best, but it worked better than thoughts trapped in my head with nothing to bounce off of.

The first thing that came to mind was to steal weapons from the Guardians, but that didn't sound like it would make the Man in the Moon choose me as Isabelle's replacement. It would make the Guardians like me even less anyway.

I had an idea that I could try asking the Man in the Moon for a power or weapon, telling him what Isabelle's first Guardian Angel had said, but as I thought that, the weight lifted for a few seconds. I didn't need his help. Everything would still turn out fine.

Do any non-Guardian spirits have weapons I could borrow? …None that I could get to.

How could I do this? What if I couldn't save Isabelle?

No. I just needed help. I'd already recruited Dakota, so I needed more allies. As long as WHS still ran tomorrow, I could sneak out and try to recruit. I had planned on getting away from my family somehow anyway with Pitch's threat.

My parents could probably help, too. I texted my dad everything that had happened so far and my current plans and asked for advice. I wasn't sure what was going on with my mom, but something told me I shouldn't tell her about my plans.

Then I began writing down ideas for escaping the house. To keep the Guardians from going after me, I would have to make sure they didn't know I escaped for as long as I could. I thought about telling them about Pitch's threat, but I didn't think that would help my case. They were already going to be on high alert after the assault on my school, and might assign me extra protection that would be difficult to escape if I let them know the threat.

The Guardians didn't sleep aside from Sandy, so there was no easy time to escape. I would have to do it when I was most alone, separated from the Guardians—when my family slept, since everyone would be behind different closed doors.

But Tooth would still be with me, so I'd have to knock her out somehow. I didn't feel comfortable hitting her on the head or using chemicals, so that left Sandy's Dreamsand. I would have to get ahold of some. Then as long as the Guardians didn't check on her, I'd be good.

But then what about Isabelle? I had to get her to Dakota somehow. I doubted the Guardians would leave us alone for a talk if we invited Dakota over to our house. So she would either have to sneak into our home tonight before we left, or we'd have to go somewhere else. Bringing Dakota here would be risky, since there was still a chance the Guardians could hear us. And if I knocked out all five of them, my family could be attacked with no protection.

So we'd have to go somewhere else. That meant Isabelle would escape, too. It would be easiest if she came with me tonight, and then we could meet Dakota at the high school. Pitch wouldn't kill Isabelle before she became a spirit, so hopefully he wouldn't come to her tonight; there was a narrow tunnel cut into the top of the school roof where we could keep out of the grasp of the Fear Angels, but that still went inside the building enough that it'd be warm.

I tapped on the mail app. I knew the structure of WHS students' emails. First four letters of the first name, full last name, .edu. I had to email Dakota.

But surprisingly, she had emailed me first:

"Dear Ranya:

Please give me a time and place.

Sincerely,

Dakota Halbrook"

So formal. It reminded me of Isabelle.

I emailed Dakota my plan so far while I updated my parents on my thoughts and waited for them to respond. Then I pulled up a Google Doc to make recruiting posters and sign-up sheets. I could print them out during keyboarding class tomorrow.

Only one thing remained: carrying everything out.

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