Most of the people on the helicopter ride were quiet, even those that looked like they had the jitters. One, though, you couldn't get to shut up.

"Magic is real. Magic is real. Gonna be a wizard. Magic is real. Wingardium Leviosa, Hokus Pocus. Magic is real." Charlie mumbled under her breath as she tapped her feet in tune with the muffled WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP that the helicopter blades made in the air. Charlie was a big believer in the concept of thought affecting the body. Not in any hippy dippy mystical placebo effect kind of way, no, in a practical way. She'd read in a book that when you repeated and ruminated on an idea the neural pathways related to that idea got stronger and stronger, like working out a muscle, so that in the future information about that topic was easier to carry and it allowed you to accept the ideas much easier. 

The book had been about suicide clusters. Good read, but a little overwrought.

She looked around at the people in the cabin, still mumbling to herself, and wondered for the tenth time today whether this really was on the up and up. Those things where they slapped an explosive collar around your neck and made you fight to the death didn't actually happen (at least on this scale, she wasn't willing to rule it completely out of existence), but there were those weird sex islands that big businessmen and politicians occasionally owned. 

Maybe Amos had been right about this. She hadn't exactly gotten her uncles permission to go on this trip. 

She should have bought a phone before coming out here.

"Magic is real. Magic is real. Weird sex island battle royal. Abracadabra, avada cadarva."