Book excerpt: Andre Washington is a streetwise young thug with something to prove and attitude to spare. When he finally decides to step up to the Big Time, he doesn't care who pays the costs. Marshall Hightower doesn't want to make any waves. Finally settled into a new home after years of foster care, he just wants to run track and avoid trouble in middle school but he quickly finds himself running from far more than lithe-limbed competitors. Na'ohmi Lightfoot is more than just a pretty mixed girl with unsettling copper brown eyes. She's the key to an impossible magic. One that can make or break empires. Though she desperately wants to find her missing parents, there are evil men behind her, men determined to see her captured, dead, or worse.