Excerpt from Oaks

“Time for a tour?” Dallas, my first-year roommate, beams, and I lead her by the arm into the courtyard of Sorcery City. Campers emerge from their dorms out onto the paved, covered breezeway going all the way around the circle. Clumps of old friends are finding each other, exchanging baubles from their off-Camp travels, and charmed stones that will open each others’ doors later tonight, past curfew. The newest trinkets in the City are pairs of shells that work like walkie-talkies without interference from the anti-tech hexes that Cavan casts over the ring. Every year, there’s something new for her to find a way to protect us from. Every year, I wonder if she’ll be able to keep up.

Within the circle, magia is safe. Well, as safe as it can ever really be. Whenever someone tries to enchant something with some lanzar they just learned, they find out the hard way that any object more complex than a spoon imbued with magia will eventually become sentient and go about wreaking havoc. It’s so prevalent that O’Brien hung a sign:
This is not Fantasia.

Oaks is different from the other schools. Most people don’t think it’s safe to have hechi and no-mágico students together like we are. But it’s all part of Cavan’s plan, y’see. She builds this great place, she fills it with love, and if the Big Secret ever were to break, every no-má to ever spend a season at Oaks would be confronted with the truth: we aren’t dangerous, mysterious, shadow people; we’re just kids, just like them.
At least, that’s the theory.