Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) by Marion G. Harmon Page A

could be anywhere but here, and the school had given her the lab to get her to stick around. She had plans, they had plans, and the relationship was a friendly one. Probably.
    I knocked politely and the door swung open; it wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been someone she’d introduced to it as “on the list.”
    “Good morning,” her Royal Majesty Princess Ozma of Oz said without looking up. Already in her school uniform, she wore a surgical mask over her face as she measured something gram by gram onto a set of apothecary scales. Without asking, I grabbed a mask from the box by the door.
    “More Powder of Life?”
    “Crystallized Water of Oblivion.”
    “No freaking way.” I’d read all the Oz books, even though most of them, canon and non, made me want to stick nails in my brain. I edged for the door and she laughed, a bright, sparkly sound.
    “Don’t worry. In crystallized form, the effects are determined by dosage — if you accidentally inhaled a speck, you would forget a few minutes, not your whole life.” She put another gram on the scales. “Nox says you tried to kill him. Did he deserve it?”
    “He was rude.”
    She gave a regal nod. “Nix says he’s been bullying students. There wasn’t much point in making Nix so he could have a girlfriend if she can’t stand him.”
    “I wouldn’t call it bullying, but the little Goth maniac has some of the nastier guys convinced if they don’t toe the line they’ll wake up with a fork in their eye.”
    “Well.” No more needed to be said; Ozma was a big believer in applying the Golden Rule, which to her meant “you got what you gave.” For some, that might be a fork. I edged closer to the bench.
    “So, Your Highness summoned me?”
    “Her Highness did.” She finished her measure and carefully tipped the grains into a glass vial. When she sealed it I breathed easier. “We need you to look in the Question Box.”
    “The last time I did, it told me to go away.”
    “That’s because you were asking it for football spreads. Naughty.” She carefully wiped her hands and dropped the wipe in a hazmat burn can. She’d explained once that while Oz magic was fairy magic underneath it all, it looked a lot like chemistry and computer programming; all powerful sorcerers and sorceresses, witches and wizards, were careful . Or they were careless and a potted plant. A confused potted plant.
    She raised an eyebrow. “So, the box? We both need to get to class.”
    “Right. Okay, fine. Where is it?”
    She pointed to an oak cabinet, which opened to reveal Glegg’s Box of Mixed Magic. She’d managed to find it last year, and she was still looking for most of the other Royal Treasures. It didn’t worry me anymore that she was actually finding them, and the school didn’t complain as long as she kept most of it in the lab.
    Most schools might object to a student keeping the magical equivalent of high-grade explosives on campus; at Hillwood, a lot of the students counted as high explosives — or at least military ordnance — and Ozma’s security measures were better than the school’s.
    Even the Magic Belt, which she wore all the time and used for her famous hat trick, didn’t freak me out like the GBMM. The chest was an “empty” casket of gold filigree studded with gems. You knew it was empty because you could see right through its wire-thin sides. If you held it up in a sunbeam, the light shining through made cool patterns on the wall that were almost letters (you could never quite read them because they changed when you blinked). You could tell which side was up because the Great Sorcerer Glegg had considerately spelled out Gleggs’s Box of Mixed Magic in gemstones on a plaque on top, the modest bastard. To open the lid, you said the magic words, which Ozma changed as often as she changed her locker combination.
    I went over it in my head, already feeling stupid.
    “Ras rats rax rast rascal.”
    The lid popped open to reveal the red velvet-lined