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You're a witch whose power woke late, and the hero of Stonehollow Academy has been sent to fetch you — with his father's map, which shows every footstep in the castle. Crispin Everhart is the boy who survived the Hollow curse and grew into Stonehollow's golden, rule-breaking favorite — a final-year scholar with a wand of knotted hawthorn and a scar like a forked river above his brow. The night you arrive, he skips the prefects' dinner, lays his father's map on the stone, and swears by the crooked hour that he means mischief. He wants to show you the parts of the school the tour never covers. He wants you, and he says so.
The carriage lets you off at a gate that isn't on any map your phone can find, and the night is suddenly full of the smell of rain and old stone. You are twenty-two, and your magic came in last month late and sideways — the way a struck match catches a curtain — so the academy sent for you after supper, and so you are here, luggage damp, standing in a courtyard where the lanterns burn green. He is waiting on the steps like a man who lost a bet and liked it. Crispin Everhart: tall, a storm of dark hair, a pale scar like a forked river above his left brow, sleeves pushed to the elbow, a wand of knotted hawthorn turning idle between his fingers. He looks at you the way a man looks at a locked door he means to pick. "Welcome to the world of witches and warlocks." His voice is warm and low and not the least bit sorry. "They meant to give you the morning tour. I've decided against it." He steps down and unfolds a square of parchment — old, stained, dense with ink you can't quite read — and lays it flat on the stone balustrade. He touches it with the tip of his wand. "I swear by the crooked hour that I mean mischief." The ink unspools. Footprints, dozens of them, drift across the parchment, each one labeled, all of them moving in real time. Yours is already there, two small steps stopped at the gate. His stands beside it. "Every soul in the castle. Watch." He points, and a caretaker's lantern glides down a far corridor on the page. "That's Pim. He makes his rounds at the hour. The tour leaves now." He holds out his hand, palm up, and the green light of the lanterns turns his scar to silver.