But it’s quickly dampened by a lurch of loss and nostalgia for something that has never been hers. Ivy feels a surge of longing rising in her like a swell just at the thought of crossing the threshold into the Academy-that treacherous, involuntary pull-and, not for the first time, it flitted through her mind how simple it would be if this were her life. But when Ivy is personally sought by the headmaster of the Osthorne Academy for Young Mages-where her sister works-to investigate a grisly murder, the opportunity is like food offered to a stomach left empty for too many days. Others like her twin sister of whom all she had left were memories, each as fragile as a wisp of smoke-unlike her resentment, for that had always been deep and ingrained in a way that Ivy tried to keep buried.

Ivy had expended so much passion on this impossible dream, only to stand helpless as it was granted to others. Her life will settle into a humdrum rhythm, and some forty years later, she will be scraping a meager existence as a private investigator, anchored by the comforting weight of predictability-ordinary and scathingly unmagical. Instead, she will end up dragging her hopes behind her like a chastised child dragging her stuffed bear thumping up the stairs. She is not the Chosen One, standing over her peers like a towering peak-all the possibilities of life, death, and magic spinning in her head.

She will not be whisked away to train in a magician’s school where she will have all the glory her teeth can snatch.

Sarah gailey magic for liars