The Prophecy of Shadows by Michelle Madow Page B

bothering to test how hot it was. It scorched my tongue, and I gasped and chugged some water, hoping I hadn’t temporarily destroyed my taste buds.
    Without asking if I minded, Danielle reached across the table and wrapped her hand around my steaming mug. I almost yanked it out of her grip, but stopped when I saw how intensely she was staring at it.
    Finally, she pulled her hand back and looked at me. “Try it now,” she said simply.
    I hesitated. Hopefully she hadn’t poisoned my drink with gray energy. However, doubting she would do that with everyone watching, I lifted the mug and took a sip, preparing to burn my tongue for a second time.
    The hot chocolate was the perfect temperature.
    “How did you do that?” I asked, placing it back down.
    “My element is water,” she said. “Obviously there’s water in hot chocolate, so I gathered blue energy and thought about the drink cooling off. I guess it worked.”
    “Cool!” Chris placed both palms on the table, his eyes lighting up. “Can you boil my water?”
    “Not unless you want me to melt the plastic.” Danielle laughed, looking at him like he was a few brain cells short. “Although I might be able to do this.” She reached forward and wrapped her hand around his cup, the same intense expression in her eyes that she’d had when cooling my hot chocolate.
    The ice cubes in Chris’s water melted in seconds.
    “Wow.” Chris’s mouth dropped open. “Impressive.”
    “But not exceptionally useful,” she said, dropping her arm back to her side. “I’m going to figure out some more things I can do with it later.”
    It was tempting to say something along the lines of “besides making water fountains explode in peoples faces,” but I held back. There was no need to start an unnecessary argument now.
    “Good plan,” I said instead, taking another sip of hot chocolate.
    “So, why are Journey and Shadows capitalized in the prophecy?” Chris asked after we got our food.
    “I’ve been thinking about that,” Kate said. “In standard English, only proper nouns are capitalized. So the capitalized words could represent names or locations.”
    “Thanks for the grammar lesson,” Danielle said, grabbing a packet of fake sugar and dumping it into her coffee.
    I ignored her and re-focused on the prophecy. “So we have to go on a Journey down a path to … the Shadows.” I paused to take a bite of my burger, and to think. What could that mean ? It still didn’t make any sense.
    We sat in silence, eating our food and trying to come up with ideas. Everyone else seemed to be drawing a blank, too.
    “Sophie!” Chris yelled, waving his arms in the air and zapping me out of my thoughts. “Hey.”
    A large woman with a huge, toothy smile walked towards us. She looked about my grandmother’s age, with wrinkly skin and a few brown spots on her face. Her gray hair was pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, and she wore a long blue dress that made her look like she’d stepped right out of an old village.
    “Chris,” she greeted him. “It’s good to see you again. It’s been … two days?”
    “I can’t resist the burgers,” he said with a laugh. “Plus Nicole just moved here, and we all know that eating at Sophie’s is a must in Kinsley.”
    “Nicole.” Sophie looked at me and smiled. “Victory of the people.”
    “What?” I scrunched my eyebrows and tilted my head.
    “The origin of your name is Greek,” she said. “It means ‘victory of the people.’”
    It was a strange thing to say, but I nodded, assuming she was just a quirky older lady. “Are you from Greece?” I asked.
    “I was born there, yes,” she replied. “I moved here with my family about thirty years ago, and we opened the diner together. Been running it ever since.”
    “I’ve never known the town without Sophie’s.” Chris shook some hair out of his eyes and turned back to her. “Hey, maybe you can help us out with something. It’s homework for our Greek