Firespell

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A special thanks to the Putzy and Murphy families for their hospitality (and patience) during the editing process, and to the always entertaining folks at my online forum (go Team Eel!) for their enthusiasm, humor, and support.

This one is dedicated to Nate.

(He knows why.)

I flicked on my flashlight and swung the beam into the dark, the arc of light barely penetrating the blackness, even as I squinted to get a better look.

And then I saw them—Scout and Jason behind her, both in uniform and both running toward me as if they were running for their lives. I dropped the beam of the flashlight to the floor to keep from blinding them.

“Scout?” I tried to call out, but fear had frozen my throat. I tried again, and this time managed sound. “Scout!”

They were still far away—the corridor was a deep one—but they were running at sprinter speed . . . and there was something behind them.

Chasing after them was the blonde we’d seen outside on Monday—the girl with the hoodie who had watched us in the memorial garden. She was in jeans, running shoes, and a T-shirt this time,

and she ran full-bore after Scout and Jason. But even as she sprinted through the corridor, herexpression was somehow vacant, a strange gleam in her eyes the only real sign of life. Her hair was long and wavy, and it flew out behind her as she ran, arms pumping, toward us.

Suddenly she pulled back her hand, then shot it forward as if to throw something at the two of them. The air and ground rumbled, and this time the rumble was strong enough to knock me off my feet. I hit the ground on my knees, palms out in front of me.

By the time I glanced up again, Scout and Jason had reached me. I saw the look of horror on Scout’s face. “Get up, Lily!” she implored. “Run!”

“Chicago—a city where they are always rubbing a lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities.”

—Mark Twain

They were gathered around a conference table in a high-rise, eight men and women, no one under the age of sixty-five, all of them wealthy beyond measure. And they were here, in the middle of Manhattan, to decide my fate.

I was not quite sixteen and only one month out of my sophomore year of high school. My parents, philosophy professors, had been offered a two-year-long academic sabbatical at a university in Munich, Germany. That’s right—two years out of the country, which only really mattered because they decided I’d be better off staying in the United States.

They’d passed along that little nugget one Saturday in June. I’d been preparing to head to my best friend Ashley’s house when my parents came into my room and sat down on my bed.

“Lily,” Mom said, “we need to talk.”

I don’t think I’m ruining the surprise by pointing out that nothing good happens when someone starts a speech like that.

My first thought was that something horrible had happened to Ashley. Turned out she was fine; the trauma hit a little closer to home. My parents told me they’d been accepted into the sabbatical program, and that the chance to work in Germany for two years was an amazing opportunity for them.

Then they got quiet and exchanged one of those long, meaningful looks that really didn’t bode well for me. They said they didn’t want to drag me to Germany with them, that they’d be busy while they were there, and that they wanted me to stay in an American school to have the best chance of going to a great college here. So they’d decided that while they were away, I’d be staying in the States.

I was equal parts bummed and thrilled. Bummed, of course, because they’d be an ocean away while I passed all the big milestones—SAT prep, college visits, prom, completing my vinyl collection of every Smashing Pumpkins track ever released.

Thrilled, because I figured I’d get to stay with Ashley and her parents.

Unfortunately, I was only right about the first part.

My parents had decided it would be best for me to finish high school in Chicago, in a boarding school stuck in the middle of high-rise buildings and concrete—not in Sagamore, my hometown in Upstate New York; not in our tree-lined neighborhood, with my friends and the people and places I knew.

I protested with every argument I could think of.

Flash forward two weeks and 240 miles to the conference table where I sat in a button-up cardigan and pencil skirt I’d never have worn under normal circumstances, the members of the Board of Trustees of St. Sophia’s School for Girls staring back at me. They interviewed every girl who wanted to walk their hallowed halls—after all, heaven forbid they let in a girl who didn’t meet their standards. But that they traveled to New York to see me seemed a little out of the ordinary.

“I hope you’re aware,” said one of them, a silver-haired man with tiny round glasses, “that St.

Sophia’s is a famed academic institution. The school itself has a long and storied history in Chicago, and the Ivy Leagues recruit from its halls.”

A woman with a pile of hair atop her head looked at me and said slowly, as if talking to a child,

“You’ll have any secondary institution in this country or beyond at your feet, Lily, if you’re accepted at St. Sophia’s. If you become a St. Sophia’s girl.”

Okay, but what if I didn’t want to be a St. Sophia’s girl? What if I wanted to stay home in Sagamore with my friends, not a thousand miles away in some freezing Midwestern city,

surrounded by private-school girls who dressed the same, talked the same, bragged about their money?

I didn’t want to be a St. Sophia’s girl. I wanted to be me, Lily Parker, of the dark hair and eyeliner and fabulous fashion sense.

The powers that be of St. Sophia’s were apparently less hesitant. Two weeks after the interview,

I got the letter in the mail.

“Congratulations,” it said. “We are pleased to inform you that the members of the board of trustees have voted favorably regarding your admission to St. Sophia’s School for Girls.”

I was less than pleased, but short of running away, which wasn’t my style, I was out of options.

So two months later, my parents and I trekked to Albany International.

Mom had booked us on the same airline, so we sat in the concourse together, with me between the two of them. Mom wore a shirt and trim trousers, her long dark hair in a low ponytail. My father wore a button- up shirt and khakis, his auburn hair waving over the glasses on his nose.

They were heading to JFK to connect to their international flight; I was heading to O’Hare.

We sat silently until they called my plane. Too nervous for tears, I stood and put on my messenger bag. My parents stood, as well, and my mom reached out to put a hand on my cheek.

“We love you, Lil. You know that? And that this is what’s best?”

I most certainly didn’t know this was best. And the weird thing was, I wasn’t sure even she believed it, considering how nervous she sounded when she said it. Looking back, I think they both had doubts about the whole thing. They didn’t actually say that, of course, but their body language told a different story. When they first told me about their plan, my dad kept touching my mom’s knee—not romantically or anything, but like he needed reassurance, like he needed to remind himself that she was there and that things were going to be okay. It made me wonder. I mean, they were headed to Germany for a two-year research sabbatical they’d spent months applying for, but despite what they’d said about the great “opportunity,” they didn’t seem thrilled about going.

The whole thing was very, very strange.

Anyway, my mom’s throwing out, “It’s for the best,” at the airport wasn’t a new thing. She and dad had both been repeating that phrase over the last few weeks like a mantra. I didn’t know that it was for the best, but I didn’t want a bratty comment to be the last thing I said to them, so I nodded at my mom and faked a smile, and let my dad pull me into a rib-breaking hug.

“You can call us anytime,” he said. “Anytime, day or night. Or e-mail. Or text us.” He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “You’re our light, Lils,” he whispered. “Our light.”

I wasn’t sure whether I loved him more, or hated him a little, for caring so much and still sending me away.

We said our goodbyes, and I traversed the concourse and took my seat on the plane, with a credit card for emergencies in my wallet, a duffel bag bearing my name in the belly of the jet,

and my palm pressed to the window as New York fell behind me.

Goodbye, “New York State of Mind.”

Pete Wentz said it best in his song title: “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago.”

Two hours and a tiny bag of peanuts later, I was in the 312, greeted by a wind that was fierce and much too cold for an afternoon in early September, Windy City or not. My knee-length skirt,

part of my new St. Sophia’s uniform, didn’t help much against the chill.

I glanced back at the black-and-white cab that had dropped me off in front of the school’s enclave on East Erie. The driver pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic, leaving me there on the sidewalk, giant duffel bag in my hands, messenger bag across my shoulder, and downtown Chicago around me.

What stood before me, I thought as I gazed up at St. Sophia’s School for Girls, wasn’t exactly welcoming.

The board members had told me that St. Sophia’s had been a convent in its former life, but it could have just as easily been the setting for a gothic horror movie. Dismal gray stone. Lots of tall, skinny windows, and one giant round one in the middle. Fanged, grinning gargoyles perched at each corner of the steep roof.

I tilted my head as I surveyed the statues. Was it weird that nuns had been guarded by tiny stone monsters? And were they supposed to keep people out . . . or in?

Rising over the main building were the symbols of St. Sophia’s—two prickly towers of that same gray stone. Supposedly, some of Chicago’s leading ladies wore silver rings inscribed with an outline of the towers, proof that they’d been St. Sophia’s girls.

Three months after my parents’ revelation, I still had no desire to be a St. Sophia’s girl. Besides,

if you squinted, the building looked like a pointy-eared monster.

I gnawed the inside of my lip and scanned the other few equally gothic buildings that made up the small campus, all but hidden from the rest of Chicago by a stone wall. A royal blue flag that bore the St. Sophia’s crest (complete with tower) rippled in the wind above the arched front door.

A Rolls-Royce was parked on the curved driveway below.

This wasn’t my kind of place. This wasn’t Sagamore. It was far from my school and my neighborhood, far from my favorite vintage clothing store and favorite coffeehouse.

Worse, given the Rolls, I guessed these weren’t my kind of people. Well, theyused to not be my kind of people. If my parents could afford to send me here, we apparently had money I hadn’t known about.

“This sucks,” I muttered, just in time for the heavy double doors in the middle of the tower to open. A woman—tall, thin, dressed in a no- nonsense suit and sensible heels—stepped into the doorway.

We looked at each other for a moment. Then she moved to the side, holding one of the doors open with her hand.

I guessed that was my cue. Adjusting my messenger bag and duffel, I made my way up the sidewalk.

“Lily Parker?” she asked, one eyebrow arched questioningly, when I got to the stone stairs that lay before the door.

I nodded.

She lifted her gaze and surveyed the school grounds, like an eagle scanning for prey. “Come inside.”

I walked up the steps and into the building, the wind ruffling my hair as the giant doors were closed behind me.

The woman moved through the main building quickly, efficiently, and, most noticeably, silently.

I didn’t get so much as a hello, much less a warm welcome to Chicago. She hadn’t spoken a word since she’d beckoned me to follow her.

And follow her I did, through lots of slick limestone corridors lit by the tiny flickering bulbs in old-fashioned wall sconces. The floor and walls were made of the same pale limestone, the ceiling overhead a grid of thick wooden beams, gold symbols painted in the spaces between them. A bee. The flowerlike shape of a fleur-de-lis.

We turned one corner, then another, until we entered a corridor lined with columns. The ceiling changed, rising above us in a series of pointed arches outlined in curved wooden beams, the spaces between them painted the same blue as St. Sophia’s flag. Gold stars dotted the blue.

It was impressive—or at least expensive.

I followed her to the end of the hallway, which terminated in a wooden door. A name,

MARCELINE D. FOLEY, was written in gold letters in the middle of it.

When she opened the door and stepped inside the office, I assumed she was Marceline D. Foley.

I stepped inside behind her.

The room was darkish, a heavy fragrance drifting up from a small oil burner on a side table. A gigantic, circular stained glass window was on the wall opposite the door, and a massive oak desk sat in front of the window.

“Close the door,” she said. I dropped my duffel bag to the floor, then did as she’d directed.

When I turned around again, she was seated behind the desk, manicured hands clasped before her, her gaze on me.

“I am Marceline Foley, the headmistress of this school,” she said. “You’ve been sent to us for your education, your personal growth, and your development into a young lady. You will become a St. Sophia’s girl. As a junior, you will spend two years at this institution. I expect you to use that time wisely—to study, to learn, to network, and to prepare yourself for academically challenging studies at a well-respected university.

“You will have classes from eight twenty a.m. until three twenty p.m., Monday through Friday.

You will have dinner at precisely five o’clock and study hall from seven p.m. until nine p.m.,

Sunday through Thursday. Lights-out at ten o’clock. You will remain on the school grounds during the week, although you may take your exercise off the grounds during your lunch breaks,

assuming you do not leave the grounds alone and that you stay near campus. Curfew is promptly at nine p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Do you have any questions?”

I shook my head, which was a fib. I had tons of questions, actually, but not the sort I thought she’d appreciate, especially since her PR skills left a lot to be desired. She made St. Sophia’s sound less like boarding school and more like prison. Then again, the PR was lost on me,

anyway. It’s not like I was there by choice.

“Good.” Foley pulled open a tiny drawer on the right-hand side of her desk. Out of it she lifted an antique gold skeleton key—the skinny kind with prongs at the end—that was strung from a royal blue ribbon.

“Your room key,” she said, and extended her hand. I lifted the ribbon from her palm, wrapping my fingers around the slender bar of metal. “Your books are already in your room. You’ve been assigned a laptop, which is in your room, as well.”

She frowned, then glanced up at me. “This is likely not how you imagined your junior and senior years of high school would be, Ms. Parker. But you will find that you have been bestowed an incredible gift. This is one of the finest high schools in the nation. Being an alumna of St.

Sophia’s will open doors for you educationally and socially. Your membership in this institution will connect you to a network of women whose influence is international in scope.”

I nodded, mostly about that first part. Of course I’d imagined my junior and senior years differently. I’d imagined being at home, with my friends, with myparents . But she hadn’t actually asked me how I felt about being shipped off to Chicago, so I didn’t elaborate.

“I’ll show you to your room,” she said, rising from her chair and moving toward the door.

I picked up my bag again and followed her.

St. Sophia’s looked pretty much the same on the walk to my room as it had on the way to Foley’s office—one stone corridor after another. The building was immaculately clean, but kind of empty. Sterile. It was also quieter than I would have expected a high school to be, certainly quieter than the high school I’d left behind. But for the click of Foley’s heels on the shining stone floors, the place was graveyard silent. And there was no sign of the usual high school stuff.

No trophy cases, no class photos, no lockers, no pep rally posters. Most important, still no sign of students. There were supposed to be two hundred of us. So far, it looked like I was the only St.

Sophia’s girl in residence.

The corridor suddenly opened into a giant circular space with a domed ceiling, a labyrinth set into the tile on the floor beneath it. This was a serious place. A place for contemplation. A place where nuns once walked quietly, gravely, through the hallways.

And then she pushed open another set of double doors.

The hallway opened into a long room lit by enormous metal chandeliers and the blazing color of dozens of stained glass windows. The walls that weren’t covered by windows were lined with books, and the floor was filled by rows and rows of tables.

At the tables sat teenagers. Lots and lots of teenagers, all in stuff that made up the St. Sophia’s uniform: navy plaid skirt and some kind of top in the same navy; sweater; hooded sweatshirt; sweater-vest.

They looked like an all-girl army of plaid.

Books and notebooks were spread on the tables before them, laptop computers open and buzzing. Classes didn’t start until tomorrow, and these girls were already studying. The trustees were right—these people were serious about their studies.

“Your classmates,” Foley quietly said.

She walked through the aisle that split the room into two halves, and I followed behind her, my shoulder beginning to ache under the weight of the duffel bag. Girls watched as I walked past them, heads lifting from books (and notebooks and laptops) to check me out as I passed. I caught the eyes of two of them.

The first was a blonde with wavy hair that cascaded around her shoulders, a black patent leather headband tucked behind her ears. She arched an eyebrow at me as I passed, and two other brunettes at the table leaned toward her to whisper. To gossip. I made a prediction pretty quickly that she was the leader of that pack.

The second girl, who sat with three other plaid cadets a few tables down, was definitely not a member of the blonde’s pack. Her hair was also blond, but for the darker ends of her short bob.

She wore black nail polish and a small silver ring on one side of her nose.

Given what I’d seen so far, I was surprised Foley let her get away with that, but I liked it.

She lifted her head as I walked by, her green eyes on my browns as I passed.

She smiled. I smiled back.

“This way,” Foley ordered. I hustled to follow.

We walked down the aisle to the other end of the room, then into another corridor. A few more turns and a narrow flight of limestone stairs later, Foley stopped beside a wooden door. She bobbed her head at the key around my neck. “Your suite,” she said. “Your bedroom is the first on the right. You have three suitemates, and you’ll share the common room. Classes begin promptly at eight-twenty tomorrow morning. Your schedule is with your books. I understand you have some interest in the arts?”

“I like to draw,” I said. “Sometimes paint.”

“Yes, the board forwarded some of the slides of your work. It lends itself to the fantastic—

imaginary worlds and unrealistic creatures—but you seem to have some skill. We’ve placed you in our arts track. You’ll start studio classes within the next few weeks, once our instructor has settled in. It is expected that you will devote as much time to your craft as you do to your studies.” Apparently having concluded her instructions, she gave me an up-and-down appraisal.

“Any questions?”

She’d done it again. She said, “Any questions?” but it sounded a lot more like “I don’t have time for nonsense right now.”

“No, thank you,” I said, and Foley bobbed her head.

“Very good.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked away, her footsteps echoing through the hallway.

I waited until she was gone, then slipped the key into the lock and turned the knob. The door opened into a small circular space—the common room. There were a couch and coffee table in front of a small fireplace, a cello propped against the opposite wall, and four doors leading, I assumed, to the bedrooms.

I walked to the door on the far right and slipped the skeleton key from my neck, then into the lock. When the tumblers clicked, I pushed open the door and flipped on the light.

It was small—a tiny but tidy space with one small window and a twin-sized bed. The bed was covered by a royal blue bedspread embroidered with an imprint of the St. Sophia’s tower. Across from the bed was a wooden bureau, atop which sat a two-foot-high stack of books, a pile of papers, a silver laptop, and an alarm clock. A narrow wooden door led to a closet.

I closed the door to the suite behind me, then dropped my bag onto the bed. The room had a few pieces of furniture in it and the school supplies, but otherwise, it was empty. But for the few things I’d been able to fit into the duffel, nothing here would remind me of home.

My heart sank at the thought. My parents had actually sent me away to boarding school. They chose Munich and researching some musty philosopher over art competitions and honors society dinners, the kind of stuff they usually loved to brag about.

I sat down next to my duffel, pulled the cell phone from the front pocket of my gray and yellow messenger bag, flipped it open, and checked the time. It was nearly five o’clock in Chicago and would have been midnight in Munich, although they were probably halfway over the Atlantic right now. I wanted to call them, to hear their voices, but since that wasn’t an option, I pulled up my mom’s cell number and clicked out a text message: “@ SCHOOL IN ROOM.” It wasn’t much, but they’d know I’d arrived safely and, I assumed, would call when they could.

When I flipped the phone closed again, I stared at it for a minute, tears pricking at my eyes. I tried to keep them from spilling over, to keep from crying in the middle of my first hour at St.

Sophia’s, the first hour into my new life.

They spilled over anyway. I didn’t want to be here. Not at this school, not in Chicago. If I didn’t think they’d just ship me right back again, I’d have used the credit card my mom gave me for emergencies, charged a ticket, and hopped a plane back to New York.

“This sucks,” I said, swiping carefully at my overflowing tears, trying to avoid smearing the black eyeliner around my eyes.

A knock sounded at the door, which opened. I glanced up.

“Are you planning your escape?” asked the girl with the nose ring and black nail polish who stood in my doorway.

“Seriously, you look pretty depressed there.” She pushed off the door, her thin frame nearly swamped by a plaid skirt and oversized St. Sophia’s sweatshirt, her legs clad in tights and sheepskin boots. She was about my height, five foot six or so.

“Thanks for knocking,” I said, swiping at what I’m sure was a mess beneath my eyes.

“I do what I can. And you’ve made a mess,” she confirmed. She walked toward me and, without warning, tipped up my chin. She tilted her head and frowned at me, then rubbed her thumbs beneath my eyes. I just looked back at her, amusement in my expression. When she was done,

she put her hands on her hips and surveyed her work.

“It’s not bad. I like the eyeliner. A little punk. A little goth, but not over the top, and it definitely works with your eyes. You might want to think about waterproof, though.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m your suitemate, Scout Green. And you’re Lily Parker.”

“I am,” I said, shaking her hand.

Scout sat down on the bed next to me, then crossed her legs and began to swing a leg. “And what personal tragedy has brought you to our fine institution on this lovely fall day?”

I arched a brow at her. She waved a hand. “It’s nothing personal. We tend to get a lot of tragedy cases. Relatives die. Fortunes are made and the parentals get too busy for teen angst. That’s my basic story. On the rare but exciting occasion, expulsion from the publics and enough money for the trustees to see ‘untapped potential. ’ ” She tilted her head as she looked at me. “You’ve got a great look, but you don’t look quite punk enough to be the expulsion kind.”

“My parents are on a research trip,” I said. “Twenty-four months in Germany—not that I’m bitter about that—so I was sentenced to lockdown at St. Sophia’s.”

Scout smiled knowingly. “Unfortunately, Lil, your parents’ ditching you for Europe makes you average around here. It’s like a home for latchkey kids. Where are you from? Prior to being dropped off in the Windy City, I mean.”

“Upstate New York. Sagamore.”

“You’re a junior?”

I nodded.

“Ditto,” Scout said, then uncrossed her legs and patted her hands against her knees. “And that means that if all goes well, we’ll have two years together at St. Sophia’s School for Girls. We might as well get you acquainted.” She rose, and with one hand tucked behind her back and one hand at her waist, did a little bow. “I’m Millicent Carlisle Green.”

I bit back a grin. “And that’s why you go by ‘Scout.’ ”

“And that’s why I go by ‘Scout,’ ” she agreed, grinning back. “First off, on behalf of the denizens of Chicago”—she put a hand against her heart—“welcome to the Windy City. Allow me to introduce you to the wondrous world of snooty American private schooldom.” She frowned. “ ‘Schooldom.’ Is that a word?”

“Close enough,” I said. “Please continue.”

She nodded, then swept a hand through the air. “You can see the luxury accommodations that the gazillion dollars in tuition and room and board will buy you.” She walked to the bed and, like a hostess onThe Price Is Right , caressed the iron frame. “Sleeping quarters of only the highest quality.”

“Of course,” I solemnly said.

Scout turned on her heel, the skirt swinging at her knees, and pointed at the simple wooden bureau. “The finest of European antiques to hold your baubles and treasures.” Then she swept to the window and, with a tug of the blinds, revealed the view. There were a few yards of grass,

then the stone wall. Beyond both sat the facing side of a glass and steel building.

“And, of course,” Scout continued, “the finest view that new money can buy.”

“Only the best for a Parker,” I said.

“Now you’re getting it,” Scout said approvingly. She walked back to the door, then beckoned me to follow. “The common room,” she said, turning around to survey it. “Where we’ll gossip,

read intellectually stimulating classics of literature—”

“Like that?” I asked with a chuckle, pointing at the dog-eared copy ofVogue lying on the coffee table.

“Absolument,” Scout said. “Vogueis our guide to current events and international culture.”

“And sweet shoes.”

“And sweet shoes,” she said, then gestured at the cello in the corner. “That’s Barnaby’s baby.

Lesley Barnaby,” she added at my lifted brows. “She’s number three in our suite, but you won’t see much of her. Lesley has four things, and four things only, in her day planner: class, sleeping,

studying, and practicing.”

“Who’s girl number four?” I asked, as Scout led me to the closed door directly across from mine.

Her hand on the doorknob, Scout glanced back at me. “Amie Cherry. She’s one of the brat pack.”

“The brat pack?”

“Yep. Did you see the blonde with the headband in the study hall?”

I nodded.

“That’s Veronica Lively, the junior class’s resident alpha girl. Cherry is one of her minions. She was the brunette with short hair. You didn’t hear me say this, but Veronica’s actually got brains.

She might not use them for much beyond kissing Foley’s ass, but she’s got them. The minions are another story. Mary Katherine, that’s minion number two—the brunette with long hair—is former old money. She still has the connections, but that’s pretty much all she has.

“Now, Cherry—Cherry has coin. Stacks and stacks of cash. As minions go, Cherry’s not nearly as bad as Mary Katherine, and she has the potential to be cool, but she takes Veronica’s advice much too seriously.” Scout frowned, then glanced up at me. “Do you know what folks in Chicago call St. Sophia’s?”

I shook my head.

“St. Spoiled.”

“Not much of a stretch, is it?”

“Exactly.”With a twist of her wrist, Scout turned the knob and pushed open her bedroom door.

“My God,” I said, staring into the space. “There’s so much . . .stuff .”

Every inch of space in Scout’s tiny room, but for the rectangle of bed, was filled with shelves.

And those shelves were filled to overflowing. They were double-stacked with books and knickknacks, all organized into tidy collections. There was a shelf of owls—some ceramic, some wood, some made of bits of sticks and twigs. A group of sculpted apples—the same mix of materials. Inkwells. Antique tin boxes. Tiny houses made of paper. Old cameras.

“If your parents donate a wing, you get extra shelves,” she said, her voice flat as week-old soda.

“Where did you get all this?” I walked to a shelf and picked up a delicate paper house crafted from a restaurant menu. A door and tiny windows were carefully cut into the facade, and a chimney was pasted to the roof, which was dusted in white glitter. “And when?”

“I’ve been at St. Sophia’s since I was twelve. I’ve had the time. And I got it anywhere and everywhere,” she said, flopping down onto her bed. She sat back on her elbows and crossed one leg over the other. “There’s a lot of sweet stuff floating around Chicago. Antiques stores, flea markets, handmade goods, what have you. Sometimes my parents bring me stuff, and I pick up things along the way when I see them over the summer.”

I gingerly placed the building back on the shelf, then glanced back at her. “Where are they now?

Your parents, I mean.”

“Monaco—Monte Carlo. The Yacht Show is in a couple of weeks. There’s teak to be polished.”

She chuckled, but the sound wasn’t especially happy. “Not by them, of course—they’ve moved past doing physical labor—but still.”

I made some vague sound of agreement—my nautical excursions were limited to paddleboats at summer camp—and moved past the museum and toward the books. There were lots of books on lots of subjects, all organized by color. It was a rainbow of paper—recipes, encyclopedias,

dictionaries, thesauruses, books on typology and design. There were even a few ancient leather books with gold lettering along the spines.

I pulled a design book from the shelf and flipped through it. Letters, in every shape and form,

were spread across the pages, from a sturdy capitalA to a tiny, curlicuedZ .

“I’m sensing a theme here,” I said, smiling up at Scout. “You like words. Lists. Letters.”

She nodded. “You string some letters together, and you make a word. You string some words together, and you make a sentence, then a paragraph, then a chapter. Words have power.”

I snorted, replacing the book on the shelf. “Words have power? That sounds like you’re into some Harry Potter juju.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” she said. “So, what does a young Lily Parker do in Sagamore, New York?”

I shrugged. “The usual. I hung out. Went to the mall. Concerts. TiVoANTM andMan vs. Wild .”

“Oh, my God, Ilove that show,” Scout said. “That guy eats everything.”

“And he’s hot,” I pointed out.

“Seriously hot,” she agreed. “Hot guy eats bloody stuff. Who knew that would be a hit?”

“The producer of every vampire movie ever?” I offered.

Scout snorted a laugh. “Well put, Parker. I’m digging the sarcasm.”

“I try,” I admitted with a grin. It was nice to smile—nice to have something to smile about.

Heck, it was nice to feel like this boarding school business might be doable—like I’d be able to make friends and study and go about my high school business in pretty much the same way as I could have in Sagamore.

A shrill sound suddenly filled the air, like the beating of tiny wings.

“Oops, that’s me,” Scout said, untangling her legs, hopping off the bed, and grabbing a brick-

shaped cell phone that was threatening to vibrate its way off one of the shelves and onto the floor. She picked up the phone just before it hit the edge, then unpopped the screen and read its contents.

“Jeez Louise,” she said. “You’d think I’d get a break when school starts, but no.” Maybe realizing she was muttering in front of an audience, she looked up at me. “Sorry, but I have to go. I have to . . . exercise. Yes,” she said matter-of-factly, as if she’d decided on exercise as an excuse, “I have to exercise.”

Apparently intent on proving her point, Scout arched her arms over her head and leaned to the right and left, as if stretching for a big run, then stood up and began swiveling her torso, hands at her waist. “Limbering up,” she explained.

I arched a dubious brow. “To go exercise.”

“Exercise,” she repeated, grabbing a black messenger bag from a hook next to her door and maneuvering it over her head. A white skull and crossbones grinned back at me.

“So,” I said, “you’re exercising in your uniform?”

“Apparently so. Look, you’re new, but I like you. And if I guess right, you’re a heck of a lot cooler than the rest of the brat pack.”

“Thanks, I guess?”

“So I need you to be cool. You didn’t see me leave, okay?”

The room was silent as I looked at her, trying to gauge exactly how much trouble she was about to get herself into.

“Is this one of those, ‘I’m in over my head’ kind of deals, and I’ll hear a horrible story tomorrow about your being found strangled in an alley?”

That she took a few seconds to think about her answer made me that much more nervous.

“Probably nottonight ,” she finally said. “But either way, that’s not on you. And since we’re probably going to be BFFs, you’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

“BFFs?”

“Of course,” she said, and just like that, I had a friend. “But for now, I have to run. We’ll talk,” she promised. And then she was gone, her bedroom door open, the closing of the hallway door signaling her exit. I looked around her room, noticing the pair of sneakers that sat together beside her bed.

“Exercise, my big toe,” I mumbled, and left Scout’s museum, closing the door behind me.

It was nearly six o’clock when I walked the few feet back to my room. I glanced at the stack of books and papers on the bureau, admitting to myself that prep-ping for class tomorrow was probably a solid course of action.

On the other hand, there were bags to be unpacked.

It wasn’t a tough choice. I liked to read, but I wasn’t going to spend the last few waking hours of my summer vacation with my nose in a book.

I unzipped and unstuffed my duffel bag, cramming undergarments and pajamas and toiletries into the bureau, then hanging the components of my new St. Sophia’s wardrobe in the closet.

Skirts in the blue and gold of the St. Sophia’s plaid. Navy polo shirt. Navy cardigan. Blue button-up shirt, et cetera, et cetera. I also stowed away the few articles of regular clothing I’d brought along: some jeans and skirts, a few favorite T-shirts, a hoodie.

Shoes went into the closet, and knickknacks went to the top of the bureau: a photo of my parents and me together; a ceramic ashtray made by Ashley that read BEST COWGIRL EVER. We didn’t smoke, of course, and it was unrecognizable as an ashtray, as it looked more like something you’d discover in the business end of a dirty diaper. But Ashley made it for me at camp when we were eight. Sure, I tortured her about how truly heinous it was, but that’s what friends were for, right?

At the moment, Ash was home in Sagamore, probably studying for a bio test, since public school had started two weeks ago. Remembering I hadn’t texted her to let her know I’d arrived, I flipped open my phone and snapped shots of my room—the empty walls, the stack of books, the logoed bedspread—then sent them her way.

“UNIMPRESSED RR,” she texted back. She’d taken to calling me “Richie Rich” when we found out that I’d be heading to St. Sophia’s—and after we’d done plenty of Web research. She figured that life in a froufrou private school would taint me, turn me into some kind of raving Blair Waldorf.

I couldn’t let that stand, of course. I sent back, “U MUST RESPECT ME.”

She was still apparently unimpressed, since “GO STUDY” was her answer. I figured she was probably on to something, so I moved back to the stack of books and gave them a look-see.

Civics.

Trig.

British lit.

Art history.

Chemistry.

European history.

“Good thing they’re starting me off easy,” I muttered, nibbling on my bottom lip as I scanned the textbooks. Add the fact that I was apparently taking a studio class, and it was no wonder Foley scheduled a two-hour study hall every night. I’d be lucky if two hours were enough.

Next to the stack of books was a pile of papers, including a class schedule and the rules of residency at St. Sophia’s. There wasn’t a building map, which was a little flabbergasting since this place was a maze to get through.

I heard the hallway door open and shut, laughter filling the common room. Thinking I might as well be social, I blew out a breath to calm the butterflies in my stomach, then opened my bedroom door. There were three girls in the room—the blonde I’d seen in the library and her two brunette friends. Given Scout’s descriptions, I assumed the blonde was Veronica, the shorter-

haired girl was Amie, the third of my new suitemates, and the girl with longer hair was Mary Katherine, she of the limited intelligence.

The blonde had settled herself on the couch, her long, wavy hair spread around her shoulders,

her feet in Amie’s lap. Mary Katherine sat on the floor in front of them, her arms stretched behind her, her feet crossed at the ankles. They were all in uniform, all in pressed, pleated skirts,

tights, and button- down shirts with navy sweater-vests.

A regiment of officers in the army of plaid.

“We have a visitor,” said the blonde, one blond brow arched over blue eyes.

Amie, whose pale skin was unmarred by makeup or jewelry except for a pair of pearl earrings,

slapped at Veronica’s feet. Veronica rolled her eyes, but lifted them, and the brunette stood and walked toward me. “I’m Amie.” She bobbed her head toward one of the bedrooms behind us.

“I’m over there.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Lily.”

“Veronica,” Amie said, pointing to the blonde, “and Mary Katherine,” she added, pointing to the brunette. The girls both offered finger waves.

“You missed the mixer earlier today,” Veronica said, stretching out her legs again. “Tea and petits fours in the ballroom. Your chance to meet the rest of your new St. Sophia’s chums before classes start tomorrow.” Veronica’s voice carried the tone of the wealthy, jaded girl who’d seen it all and hadn’t been impressed.

“I’ve only been here a couple of hours,” I said, unimpressed by the attitude.

“Yeah, we heard you weren’t from Chicago,” said Mary Katherine, head tilted up as she scanned my clothes. Given her own navy tights and patent leather flats, and the gleam of her perfectly straight hair, I guessed she wouldn’t dig my Chuck Taylors (the board of trustees let us pick our own footware) and choppy haircut.

“Upstate New York,” I told her. “Near Syracuse.”

“Public school?” Mary Katherine asked, disdain in her voice.

Oh, how fun. Private school reallywas likeGossip Girl . “Public school,” I confirmed, lips curved into a smile.

Veronica made a sound of irritation. “Jesus, Mary Katherine, be a bitch, why don’t you?”

Mary Katherine rolled her eyes, then turned her attention to her cuticles, inspecting her short,

perfectly painted red nails. “I just asked a question. You’re the one who assumed I was being negative.”

“Please excuse the peanut gallery,” Amie said with a smile. “Have you met everybody else?”

“I haven’t met Lesley,” I said. “I met Scout, though.”

Mary Katherine made a sarcastic sound. “Good luck there. That girl hasissues .” She stretched out the word dramatically. I got the sense Mary Katherine enjoyed drama.

“M.K.’s just jealous,” Veronica said, twirling a lock of hair around one of her fingers, and sliding a glance at the brunette on the floor. “Not every St. Sophia’s girl has parents who have the cash to donate an entire building to the school.”

I guess Scout hadn’t been kidding about the extra shelves.

“Whatever,” Mary Katherine said, then crossed her legs and pushed herself up from the floor.

“You two can play Welcome Wagon with the new girl. I need to make a phone call.”

Veronica rolled her eyes, but swiveled her legs onto the floor and stood up, as well. “M.K.’s dating a U of C boy,” she said. “She thinks he hung the moon.”

“He’s pre-law,” Mary Katherine said, heading for the door.

“He’s twenty,” Amie muttered after Mary Katherine had stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her. “And she’s sixteen.”

“Quit being a mother, Amie,” Veronica said, straightening her headband. “I’m going back to my room. I suppose I’ll see you in the morning.” She glanced at me. “I don’t want to be bitchy, but a little advice?”

She said it like she was asking for permission, so I nodded, solely out of politeness.

“Mind the company you keep,” she said. With that gem, which I assumed was a shot at Scout,

she walked to Amie. They exchanged air kisses.

“Nighty night, all,” Veronica said, and then she was gone.

When I turned around again, Amie was gone, her bedroom door closing behind her.

“Charming,” I muttered, and headed back to my room.

It was earlier than I would have normally gone to sleep, but given the travel, the time change,

and the change in circumstances, I was exhausted. Finding the stone-walled and stone-floored room chilly even in the early fall, I exchanged the uniform for flannel pajamas, turned off the light, and climbed into bed.

The room was dark, but far from quiet. The city bustled around me, the thrum of traffic from downtown Chicago creating a backdrop of sound, even on a Sunday night. Although the stone muffled it, I wasn’t used to even the low drone of noise. I had been born and bred amongst acres of lawns and overhanging trees—and when the sun went down, the town went silent.

I stared at the ceiling. Tiny yellow-green dots emerged from the darkness. The plaster above me was dotted with glow-in-the-dark stars, I assumed pasted there by a former St. Sophia’s girl. As my mind raced, wondering about tomorrow and repeating my to-do list—find my locker, find my classes, manage not to get humiliated in said classes, figure out where Scout had gone—I counted the stars, tried to pick out constellations, and glanced at the clock a dozen times.

I tossed and turned in the bed, trying to find a comfortable position, my brain refusing to still even as I lay exhausted, trying to sleep.

I must have drifted off, as I woke suddenly to a pitch-black room. I must have been awakened by the closing of the hallway door. That sound was immediately followed by the scuffle of tripping in the common room—stuff being knocked around and mumbled curses. I threw off the covers and tiptoed to the door, then pressed my ear to the wood.

“Damn coffee table,” Scout muttered, footsteps receding until her bedroom door opened and closed. I glanced at the clock. It was one fifteen in the morning. When the common room was quiet, I put a hand to the doorknob, twisted it, and carefully pulled open the door. The room was dark, but a line of light glowed beneath Scout’s door.

I frowned. Where had she been until one fifteen in the morning? Exercise seemed seriously unlikely at this point.

That mystery in hand, I closed the door again and went back to bed, staring at the star-spangled ceiling until sleep finally claimed me.

My bedroom was cold and dark when the alarm—which I’d moved next to the bed—went off.

Not nearly awake enough to actually sit upright, I fumbled for the OFF button and forced my eyes open. My stomach grumbled, but I didn’t think I was up for food. I already had butterflies—

the combination of new school, new classes, new girls. Questionable high school cafeteria fare probably wasn’t going to help.

After a minute of staring at the ceiling, I glanced over at the nightstand. The red light on my phone flashed, a sign that I had messages waiting. I grabbed it, flipped it open . . . and smiled.

“SAFE & SOUND IN GERMANY,” read the text from my mom. “FIGHTING JET LAG.”

There was a message from Dad, as well, a little less businesslike (which was pretty much how it worked with them): “HAVE A HOT DOG FOR US! LV U, LILS!”

I smiled, closed the phone again, and put it back on the nightstand. Then I threw off the covers and forced my feet to the floor, the stone cold even beneath socks. I stumbled to the closet and grabbed a robe, then grabbed my toiletries and a towel, already stacked on the bureau, prepped and ready for my inaugural shower.

When I opened my bedroom door, Scout, already in uniform (plaid skirt, sweater, knee-high pair of fuzzy boots), smiled at me from the common room couch. She held up theVogue . “I’ll read about skinny chicks in Milan. When you get back, we’ll go down to breakfast.”

“Sure,” I mumbled. But halfway to the hallway door, I stopped and glanced back. “Were you exercising until one fifteen this morning?”

Scout glanced up at me, fingers still pinched around the edge of a half-flipped page. “I’m not admitting whether I was or was not exercising, but if you’re asking if I was doing whatever I was doing until one fifteen, then yes.”

I opened and closed my mouth as I tried to work out what she’d just said. I settled on, “I see.”

“Seriously,” she said, “it’s important stuff.”

“Important like what?”

“Important like, I really can’t talk about it.”

The room was silent for a few seconds. The set of her jaw and the stubbornness in her eyes said she wasn’t going to budge. And since I was standing in front of her in pajamas with a fuzzy brain and teeth that desperately needed introducing to some toothpaste, I let it go.

“Okay,” I said, and saw relief in her eyes. I left her with the magazine and headed for the bathroom, but there was no way “exercise” was going to hold me for long. Call it too curious,

too nosy. But one day after my arrival in Chicago, she was the closest friend I had. And I wasn’t about to lose her to whatever mess she was involved in.

She was on the couch when I returned (much more awake after a good shower and toothbrushing), her legs beneath her, her gaze still on the magazine on her lap.

“FYI,” she said, “if you don’t hurry, we’re going to be left with slurry.” She looked up, her countenance solemn. “Trust me on this—you don’t want slurry.”

Fairly confident she was right—the name being awful enough—I dumped my toiletries in my room and slipped into today’s version of the uniform. Plaid skirt. Tights to ward off the chill.

Long-sleeved button-up shirt and V-neck sweater. A pair of ice blue boots that were shorter but equally as fuzzy as Scout’s.

I stuffed books and some slender Korean notebooks I’d found in a Manhattan paper store (I had a thing for sweet office supplies) into my bag and grabbed my ribboned room key, then closed the door behind me, slipping the key into the lock and turning it until it clicked.

“You ready?” Scout asked, a pile of books in her arms, her black messenger bag over her shoulder, its skull grinning back at me.

“As I’ll ever be,” I said, pulling the key’s ribbon over my head.

The cafeteria was located in a separate building, but one that looked to be the same age as the convent itself—the same stone, the same gothic architecture. I assumed the modern, windowed hallways that now linked them together were added to assuage parents who didn’t want their baby girls wandering around outside in freezing Chicago winters. The nuns, I guessed, had been a little more willing to brave the elements.

But the interior of the cafeteria was surprisingly modern, with a long glass wall overlooking the small lawn behind the building. The yard was tidy, inset with wide, concrete paving stones, tufts of grass rising between them. In the far corner sat a piece of what I assumed was industrial sculpture—a series of round metal bands set atop a metal post.Ode to a Sundial , maybe?

Having perused the art, I turned back to the cafeteria itself. The long rectangular room was lined with long rectangular tables of pale wood and matching chairs; the tables were filled with the St.

Sophia’s army. After ten years of public school diversity, it was weird to see so many girls in the same clothes. But that sameness didn’t stifle the excitement in the room. Girls clustered together,

chatting, probably excited to be back in school, to be reunited with friends and suitemates.

“Welcome to the jungle,” Scout whispered, and led me to a buffet line. Smiling men and women in chef gear—white smocks, tall hats—served eggs, bacon, fruit, toast, and oatmeal. These were not your mom’s surly lunch ladies—these folks smiled and chatted behind sneeze guards, which were dotted with cards describing how organic or free- range or un-steroided their particular goods were. Whole Foods must have made a fortune off these people.

My stomach twitching with nerves, I didn’t have much appetite for breakfast, organic or not, so I asked for toast and OJ, just enough to settle the butterflies. When I’d grabbed my breakfast, I followed Scout to a table. We took two empty chairs at one end.

“I guess we were early enough to avoid the slurry?” I asked.

Scout nibbled at a chunk of pineapple. “Yes, thank God. Slurry is the combination of everything that doesn’t get eaten early in the round—oatmeal, fruit, meat, what have you.”

I grimaced at the combination. “That’s disgusting.”

“If you think that’s bad, wait until you see the stew,” Scout said, nodding toward a chalkboard menu for the week that hung on the far end of the room. “Stew” made a lot of appearances over the weekend.

Scout raised her glass of orange juice toward the menu. “Welcome to St. Sophia’s, Parker. Eat early or go home, that’s our motto.”

“And how’s the new girl this morning?”

We turned our gazes to the end of the table. Veronica stood there, blond hair in a complicated ponytail, arms cradling a load of books, Mary Katherine and Amie behind her. Amie smiled at us. Mary Katherine looked viciously bored.

“She’s awake,” I reported. That was mostly the truth.

“Mmmm,” Veronica said in a bored tone, then glanced at Scout. “I hear you’re friends with someone from Montclare. Michael Garcia?”

Scout’s jaw clenched. “I know Michael. Why do you ask?”

Veronica glanced over her shoulder at Mary Katherine, who made a sound of disdain. “We spent some time together this summer,” she said, glancing at Scout again. “He’s cute, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t tell if they were trying to fix Scout up, or figure out if she was crushing Michael so they could throw his interest in Veronica back at her.

Scout shrugged. “He’s a friend,” she said. “Cute doesn’t really figure into it.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Veronica said, smiling evilly at Scout, “because I’m thinking about inviting him to the Sneak.”

Yep. There it was. I didn’t need to know what the “Sneak” was to figure out her game—stealing a boy from under Scout’s nose. If I’d had any interest in Michael, it would have been hard for me to avoid clawing that superior look right off Veronica’s face. But Scout did good—she played the bigger girl, crossing her arms over her chest, her expression bored. “That’s great, Veronica. If you think Michael’s interested in you, you should go for it. Really.”

Her enthusiasm put a frown on Veronica’s face. Veronica was pretty—but the frown was not flattering. Her mouth twisted up and her cheeks turned red, her features compressing into something a little less prissy, and a little more ratlike—definitely not attractive.

“You’re bluffing,” Veronica said. “Maybe I will ask him.”

“Do you have his number?” Scout asked, reaching around for her messenger bag. “I could give it to you.”

Veronica practically growled, then turned on her heel and headed for the cafeteria door. Mary Katherine, lip wrinkled in disgust, followed her. Amie looked vaguely apologetic about the outburst, but that didn’t stop her from turning tail and following, too.

“Nicely done,” I complimented.

“Mmm-hmm,” Scout said, straightening in her chair again. “See what I mean? TBD.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “TBD?”

“Total brat drama,” she said. “TBD is way too much drama for me, especially at seven thirty in the morning.”

Drama or not, there were questions to be answered. “So, who’s Michael Garcia? And what’s Montclare?”

“Montclare is a boys’ private high. It’s kind of our brother school.”

“Are they downtown, too?”

“In a roundabout way. They have more kids than we do—nearly four hundred—and their classrooms are scattered in the buildings around the Loop.”

“What’s the Loop?”

“It’s the part of downtown that’s within a loop of the El tracks. That’s our subway,” she added in an elementary-teacher voice.

“Yes,” I responded dryly. “I know what the El is. I’ve seenER .”

Scout snorted. “In that case, you’d better be glad you’re hooking up with me so I can give you the truth about Chitown. It’s not all hot doctors and medical drama, you know.” She waved a hand in the air. “Anyway, Montclare has this big- city immersion-type program. You know,

country mouse in Gotham, that kind of thing.”

“They clearly don’t have a Foley,” I said. Given what I knew of her so far, I guessed she wouldn’t let us out of her sight long enough to “immerse” ourselves in Chicago.

“No kidding,” Scout agreed. She pushed back her chair and picked up her tray. “Now that we’ve had our fill of food and TBD, let’s go find our names.” Although I had no clue what she was talking about, I finished my orange juice and followed her.

“Our names?” I asked, as we slid our trays through a window at the end of the buffet line.

“A St. Sophia’s tradition,” she said. I followed her out of the cafeteria, back into the main building, and then through another link into another gothic building, which, Scout explained,

held the school’s classrooms.

When we pushed through another set of double doors and into the building, we found ourselves in a knot of plaid-clad girls squealing before three rows of lockers. These weren’t your typical high school lockers—the steel kind with dents on the front and chunks of gum and leftover stickers on the inside. These were made of gleaming wood, and there were notches cut out of both the top and bottom lockers, so they fit together like a puzzle.

An expensive puzzle, I guessed. Slurry or not, St. Sophia’s wasn’t afraid to spend some coin.

“Your name will be on yours,” Scout shouted through the din of girls, young and old, who were scanning the nameplates on the lockers to find the cabinet that would house their books and supplies for the next nine months.

Frowning at the mass of squirmy teenagers, I wasn’t sure I understood the fuss.

I watched Scout maneuver through the girls, then saw blond hair bobbing up and down above the crowd, one arm in the air, as she (I assumed) tried to get my attention.

Gripping the strap of my messenger bag, I squeezed through the gauntlet to reach Scout. She was beaming, one hand on her hip, one hand splayed against one of the top lockers. A silver nameplate in the midst of all that cherry-hued wood bore a single word: SCOUT.

“It says ‘Scout’!” she said, glowing like the proud parent of a newborn.

“That’s your name,” I reminded her.

Scout shook her head, then ran the tips of her fingers across the silver plaque. “For the first time,” she said, her gazing going a little dreamy, “it doesn’t say ‘Millicent.’ And only juniors and seniors get the wooden lockers.” She bobbed her head down the hall, where the lockers switched back to white enameled steel with vents across the front—the high school classic.

“So you’ve upgraded?”

Scout nodded. “I’ve been here for four years, Lil, squeezing books into one of those tiny little contraptions, waiting for the day I’d get wood”—I made an admittedly juvenile snicker—“and G-Day.”

“G-Day?”

“Graduation Day. The first day of my freedom from Foley and St. Sophia’s and the brat pack.

I’ve been planning for G-Day for four years.” She rapped her knuckles against the locker as girls swarmed around us like a flock of birds. “Four years, Parker, and I’ve got a silver nameplate. A silver nameplate that means I’m only two years from G-Day.”

“You really are a weirdo.”

“Better to be myself and a little odd than trying to squeeze into some brat pack mold.” Her gaze suddenly darkened. I glanced behind us, just in time to see the brat pack moving through the hall.

The younger St. Sophia’s girls—awed looks on their faces—moved aside as Veronica, Amie,

and Mary Katherine floated down the hall on their cloud of smug. That they were only juniors—

still a year from full seniority—didn’t seem to matter.

“Better to be yourself,” I agreed, then looked back at Scout, who was still massaging her nameplate. “Do I get a locker?”

“Only the best one,” she snorted, then pointed down. LILY was inscribed in Roman capital letters on a silver nameplate on the Utah- shaped locker beneath hers (which was shaped more like Mississippi).

“If your stinky gym sock odor invades my locker, you’re in deep, Parker.” Scout slipped her own ribboned room key from her neck and slid the key into the locker. It popped open, revealing three shelves of the same gleaming wood.

She faked a sniff. “This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Such luxury! Such decadence!”

This time, I snorted out loud. Then, realizing the locker bay was beginning to clear out of students, I poked her in the arm. “Come on, weirdo. We need to get to class.”

“You have to stop the compliments, Parker. You’re making me blush.” She popped extra books into her locker, then shut the door again. That done, she glanced at me. “They probably will be expecting us. Best we can do is honor them with our presence.”

“We’re a blessing, really.”

“Totally,” she said, and off we went.

Our lockers arranged (although I hadn’t so much as opened mine—there was something comforting about having my books in hand), I used the rest of our short walk through the main corridor of the classroom building to our first class—art history—to drag a little more information out of Scout. Thinking it best to hit the interesting stuff first, I started with Veronica’s breakfast-hour ploy.

“So,” I said, “since you didn’t answer me before, I’m going to try again. Tell me about Michael Garcia.”

“He’s a friend,” Scout said, glancing at the room numbers inscribed on the wooden classroom doors as we passed. “Justa friend,” she added before I could ask a follow-up. “I don’t date guys who go to Montclare. One private school brat in the family is enough.”

There was obviously more to that story, but Scout stopped in front of a door, so I assumed we’d run out of time for chatting. Then she glanced back at me. “Do you have a boyfriend back home?”

Well, we were out of time for chatting abouther , anyway. The door opened before I could respond—although my answer would have been “no.” A tall, thin man peered out from the doorway, casting a dour look at me and Scout.

“Ms. Green,” he said, “and Ms.—” He lifted his eyebrows expectantly.

“Parker,” I filled in.

“Yes, very well. Ms. Parker.” He stepped to the side, holding the door open with his arm.

“Please take your seats.”

We walked inside. Much like the rest of the buildings, the classroom had stone floors and walls that were dotted with whiteboards. There were only a couple of girls at desks when we came in,

but as soon as Scout and I took a seat—Scout in the desk directly behind mine—the room began to fill with students, including, unfortunately, the brat pack. Veronica, Amie, and Mary Katherine took seats in the row beside ours, Amie in the front, Veronica in the middle, Mary Katherine behind them. That order put Veronica in the desk right next to mine. Lucky me.

When every desk was taken, girls began pulling notebooks or laptops from their bags. I’d skipped the laptop today, thinking I had enough to worry about today without adding power outlet locations and midclass system crashes to the list, so I pulled out a notebook, pen, and art history book from my bag and prepared to learn.

The man who’d greeted us, who I assumed was Mr. Hollis, since the name was written in cursive, green letters on the whiteboard, closed the door and walked to the front of the room. He looked pretty much exactly like you’d expect a private school teacher to look: bald, corduroy slacks, button-up shirt, and corduroy blazer with leather patches at the elbows.

Hollis glanced down at his podium, then lifted his gaze and scanned the room. “ ‘What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself?’ ” He turned and uncapped a marker, then wrote “WILLA CATHER” in capital letters below his name. He faced us again, capping and uncapping the marker in his hands with a rhythmic click. Nervous tic, I guessed.

“What do you think Ms. Cather meant? Anyone?”

“Bueller? Bueller?” whispered a voice behind me. I pushed my lips together to bite back a laugh at Scout’s joke as Amie popped a hand into the air.

When Hollis glanced around before calling her name, as if hoping to give someone else a chance, I guessed Amie answered a lot of questions. “Ms. Cherry,” he said.

“She’s talking about a piece of art capturing a moment in time.”

Hollis’s expression softened. “Well put, Ms. Cherry. Anyone else?” He glanced around the room, his gaze finally settling on me. “Ms. Parker?”

My stomach dropped, a flush rising on my cheeks as all eyes turned to me. Didn’t it just figure that I’d be called on during the first day of class? I was more into drawing than talking about art,

but I gave it a shot, my voice weirdly loud in the sudden silence.

“Um, moments change and pass, I guess, and we forget about them—the details, how we felt at that moment. You still have a memory of what happened, but memories aren’t exact. But a painting or a poem—those can save the heart of the moment. Capture it, like Amie said. The details. The feelings.”

The room was quiet as Hollis debated whether I’d given him a good answer or a pile of nonsense. “Also well put, Ms. Parker,” he finally said.

My stomach unknotted a little.

Apparently having fulfilled his interest in seeking our input, Hollis turned back to the whiteboard and began to fill the space—and the rest of the hour- long period—with an introduction to major periods in Western art. Hollis clearly loved his subject matter, and his voice got high-pitched when he was really excited. Unfortunately, he also tended to spit the little foamy bits of stuff that gathered in the corners of his mouth.

That wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to see right after breakfast, but I had at least one other form of entertainment—Mary Katherine had this really complicated method of twirling her hair.

I mean, the girl had asystem . She picked up a lock of dark hair, spun it around her index finger,

tugged on the end, then released it. Then she repeated the process. Twirl. Tug. Drop. Twirl. Tug.

Drop. Again and again and again.

It was hypnotizing—so hypnotizing that I nearly jumped when bells rang fifty minutes later,

signaling the end of class. Girls scattered at the sound, so I grabbed my stuff and followed Scout into the hallway, which was like a six-lane interstate of St. Sophia’s girls hurrying to and fro.

“You’ve got to figure out how to merge!” Scout said over the din, then disappeared into the throng. I hugged my books to my chest and jumped in.

A little more than three hours later, we left art history, trig, and civics behind and headed again for the cafeteria.

“Grab a bag,” Scout said when we arrived at the buffet line, and pointed at a tray of paper lunch bags. “We’ll eat outside.”

I’d been a vegetarian since the day I’d hand-fed a lamb at a petting zoo, only to be served lamb chops a few hours later, so I grabbed a bag labeled VEGGIE WRAP and a bottle of water and followed her.

Scout took a winding route from the cafeteria to the main building, finally pushing open the double doors and heading down the sidewalk. I followed her, the city street full of scurrying people—women in office wear and tennis shoes, men nibbling sandwiches on their way back to the office, tourists with Starbucks cups and glossy shopping bags.

Scout pulled an apple from her bag, then nodded down the street and toward the right. “We can’t go far without an escort, but I’ll give you the five-dollar block tour while we eat.”

“I’m not giving you five dollars.”

“You can owe me,” she said. “It’ll be worth it. Like I said, I’ve been here since I was twelve. So if you want to know the real deal, the real scoop, you talk to me.”

I didn’t doubt she knew the real scoop; she’d clearly been here long enough to understand the St. Sophia’s procedures. But given her midnight disappearance, I wasn’t sure she’d pass on “the real scoop” to me.

Of course, the most obvious fact about St. Sophia’s didn’t need explaining. The nuns who built the convent had done a bang-up job of picking real estate—the convent was right in the middle of downtown Chicago. Scout said they’d moved to the spot just after the Chicago Fire of 1871,

so the city grew up around them, creating a strip of green amidst skyscrapers, a gothic oasis surrounded by glass, steel, and concrete.

One of those glass, steel, and concrete structures stood directly next door.

“This boxy thing is Burnham National Bank,” Scout said, pointing at the building, which looked like a stack of glass boxes placed unevenly atop one another.

“Very modern,” I said, unwrapping my own lunch. I took a bite of my wrap, munching sprouts and hummus. It wasn’t bad, actually, as wraps went.

“The architecture is modern,” she said, taking a bite of her apple, “but the bank is very old-

school Chicago. Old-moneyChicago.”

I definitely wasn’t old school or old money (unless my parents really did have way more cash than I thought), so I guessed I wasn’t going to be visiting the BNB Building any time soon. Still,

“Good to know,” I said.

We walked to the next building, which was a complete contrast to the bank. This one was a small, squat, squarish thing, the kind of old-fashioned brick building that looked like it had been built by hand in the 1940s. PORTMAN ELECTRIC CO. was chiseled in stone just above the door. The building was pretty in an antique kind of way, but it looked completely out of place in between high-rises and coffee shops and boutique stores.

“The Portman Electric Company Building,” Scout said, her gaze on the facade. “It was built during the New Deal when they were trying to keep people employed. It’s kind of an antique by Loop standards, but I like it.” She was quiet for a moment. “There’s something kind of . . . honest about it. Something real.”

A small bronze marker in front of the building read SRF. I nodded toward the sign. “What’s

‘SRF’?”

“Sterling Research Foundation,” she said. “They do some kind of medical research or something.”

With no regard for the employees or security guards of the Sterling Research Foundation, Scout made a bee-line for the narrow alley that separated the SRF from the bank. I stuffed the remainder of my lunch back into my paper bag and when Scout signaled the coast was clear,

glanced left and right, then speed-walked into the alley.

“Where are we going?” I asked when I reached her.

“A secret spot,” she said, bobbing her head toward the end of the passageway. I glanced up, but saw only dirty brick and a set of Dumpsters.

“We aren’t going Dumpster diving, are we?” I glanced down at my fuzzy boots and tidy knee-

length skirt. “ ’Cause I’m really not dressed for it.”

“Did you ever readNancy Drew ?” Scout suddenly asked.

I blinked as I tried to catch up with the segue. “Of course?”

“Pretend you’re Nancy,” she said. “We’re investigating, kind of.” She started into the alley,

stepping over a wad of newspaper and avoiding a puddle of liquid of unidentifiable origin.

I pointed at it. “Are we investigating that?”

“Just keep moving,” she said, but with a snicker.

We walked through the narrow space until it dead-ended at the stone wall that bounded St.

Sophia’s.

I frowned at the wall and the grass and gothic buildings that lay beyond it. “We walked around two buildings just to come back to St. Sophia’s?”

“Check your left, Einstein.”

I did as ordered, and had to blink back surprise. I’d expected to see more alley or bricks, or Dumpsters. But that’s not what was there. Instead, the alley gave way to a square of lush, green lawn filled with pillars—narrow pyramids of gray concrete that punctured the grass like a garden of thorns. They varied in height from three feet to five, like a strange gauntlet of stone.

We walked closer. “What is this?”

“It’s a memorial garden,” she said. “It used to be part of the convent grounds, but the city discovered the nuns didn’t actually own this part of the block. Those guys did,” she said,

pointing at the building that sat behind the bank. “St. Sophia’s agreed to put in the stone wall,

and the building agreed to keep this place as- is, provided that the St. Sophia’s folks promised not to raise a stink about losing it.”

“Huh,” I said, skimming my fingers across the top of one nubby pillar.

“It’s a great place to get lost,” she said, and as if on cue, disappeared between the columns.

It took a minute to find her in the forest of them. And when I reached her in the middle, she wasn’t alone.

Scout stood stiffly, lips apart, eyes wide, staring at the two boys who stood across from her.

They were both in slacks and sweaters, a button-down shirt and tie beneath, an ensemble I assumed was the guy version of the private school uniform. The one on the right had big brown eyes, honey skin, and wavy dark hair curling over his forehead.

The one on the left had dark blond hair and blue eyes. No—not blue exactly, but a shade somewhere between blue and indigo and turquoise, like the color of a ridiculously bright spring sky. They glowed beneath his short hair, dark slashes of eyebrows, and the long lashes that fanned across those crazy eyes.

His eyebrows lifted with interest, but Scout’s voice pulled his gaze to her. I, on the other hand,

had a little more trouble, and had to drag my gaze away from this boy in the garden.

“What are you doing here?” she asked them, suspicion in her gaze.

The boy with brown eyes shrugged innocently. “Just seeing a little of Chicago.”

“I guess that means I didn’t miss a meeting,” Scout said, her voice dry. “Don’t you have class?”

“There wasn’t a meeting,” he confirmed. “We’re on our lunch break, just like you are. We’re out for a casual stroll, enjoying this beautiful fall day.” He glanced at me and offered a grin. “I’m guessing you’re St. Sophia’s latest fashion victim? I’m Michael Garcia.”

“Lily Parker,” I said with a grin. Sothis was the boy Veronica talked about. Or more important,

the boy Scout had avoided talking about. Given the warmth in his eyes as he stole glances at Scout, I made a prediction that Veronica wasn’t going to win that battle.

“Hello, Lily Parker,” Michael said, then bobbed his head toward blue eyes. “This is Jason Shepherd.”

“Live and in person,” Jason said with a smile, dimples arcing at each corner of his mouth. My heart beat a little bit faster; those dimples were killers. “It’s nice to meet you, Lily.”

“Ditto,” I said, offering back a smile. But not too much of a smile. No sense in playing my entire hand at once.

Jason hitched a thumb behind him. “We go to Montclare. It’s down the road. Kind of.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said, then looked at Scout, who’d crossed her arms over her chest, the universal sign of skepticism.

“Out for a casual stroll,” she repeated, apparently unwilling to let the point go. “A casual stroll that takes you to the garden next door to St. Sophia’s? Somehow, I’m just not buying that’s a coincidence.”

Michael arched an eyebrow and grinned back at her. “That’s because you’re much too suspicious.”

Scout snorted. “I have good reason to be suspicious, Garcia.”

Michael’s chocolate gaze intensified, and all that intensity was directed at the girl standing next to me.

This was getting pretty entertaining.

“Youimagine you had a good reason,” he told her. “That’s not the same thing.”

I glanced at Jason, who seemed to be enjoying the mock debate as much as I was. “Should we leave them alone, do you think?”

“It’s not a bad idea,” he said, brows furrowed in mock concentration. “We could give them a little privacy, let them see where things can go.”

“That’s a very respectful idea,” I said, nodding gravely. “We should give them their space.”

Jason winked at me, as Scout—oblivious to our jokes at her expense—pushed forward. “I don’t understand why you’re arguing with me. You know you have no chance.”

Michael clutched at his chest dramatically. “You’re killing me, Scout. Really. There’s chest pain —a tightness.” He faked a groan.

Scout rolled her eyes, but you could see the twitch in her smile. “Call a doctor.”

“Come on, Green. Can’t a guy just get out and enjoy the weather? It’s a beautiful fall day in Chicago. My amigo Jason and I were thinking we should get out and enjoy it before the snow gets here.”

“Again, I seriously doubt, Garcia, if you’re all that concerned about the weather.”

“Okay,” Michael said, holding up his hands, “let’s pretend you’re right. Let’s say,

hypothetically, that it’s no coincidence that our walk brought us next door to St. Sophia’s. Let’s say we had a personal interest in skipping lunch and showing up on your side of the river.”

Scout rolled her eyes and held up a finger. “Oh, bottle it up. I don’t have the time.”

“You should make time.”

“Guys, eleven o’clock,” Jason whispered.

Scout snorted at Michael. “I’m amused you think you’re important enough to—”

“Eleven o’clock,” Jason whispered again, this time fiercely. Scout and Michael suddenly quieted, and both glanced to where Jason had indicated. I resisted the urge to look, which would have made us all completely obvious, but couldn’t help it.

I gave it a couple of seconds, then stole a glance over my shoulder. There was a gap in the pillars through which we could see the street behind us, the one that ran parallel to Erie, but behind St. Sophia’s. A slim girl in jeans and a snug hoodie, the hood pulled over her head, stood on the sidewalk, her hands tucked into her pockets.

“Who is that?” I whispered.

“No—why is she here?” Jason asked, dimples fading, his gaze on the girl. While her face wasn’t visible, her hair was blond—the curly length of it spilling from her hood and across her shoulders. Veronica was the only Chicago blonde I knew, but that couldn’t be her. I didn’t think she’d be caught dead in jeans and a hoodie, especially not on a uniform day.

Besides, there was something different about this girl. Something unsettling. Somethingoff . She was too still, as if frozen while the city moved around her.

“Is she looking for trouble?” Michael asked. His voice was quiet, just above a whisper, and it carried a hint of concern. Like whether she was looking for trouble or not, he expected it.

“In the middle of the day?” Scout whispered. “And here? She’s blocks away from the nearest enclave. Fromher enclave.”

“What’s an enclave?” I quietly asked. Not so quietly that they couldn’t hear me, but they ignored me, anyway.

Jason nodded. “Blocks from hers, and much too close to ours.”

In the time it took me to glance at Jason and back at the girl again, she was gone. The sidewalk was as empty as if she’d never been there at all.

I looked back and forth from Scout to Michael to Jason. “Someone want to fill me in?” I was beginning to guess it was pointless for me to ask questions—as pointless as my trying to goad Scout into telling me where she’d gone last night—but I couldn’t stop asking them.

Scout sighed. “This was supposed to be a tour. Not a briefing. I’m exhausted.”

“We’re all tired,” Michael said. “It was a long summer.”

“Long summer for what?”

“You could say we’re part of a community improvement group,” Michael said.

It took me a minute to realize that I’d been added back into the conversation. But the answer wasn’t very satisfying—or informative. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Community improvement? Like, you clean up litter?”

“That’s actually not a bad analogy,” Jason said, his gaze still on the spot where the girl had been.

“I take it she was a litterbug?” I asked, hitching my thumb in that direction.

“In a manner of speaking, yes, she was,” Scout said, then put a hand on my arm and tugged.

“All right, that’s enough fond reminiscing and conspiracy theories for the day. We need to get to class. Have fun at school.”

“MA is always fun,” Jason said. “Good luck at St. Sophia’s.”

I nodded as Scout pulled me out of the garden, but I risked a glance back at Michael and Jason.

They stood side by side, Michael an inch or two taller, their gazes on us as we headed back to school.

“I have so many questions, I’m not sure where to start,” I said when we were out of their sight and hauling down the alley, “but let’s go for the good, gossipy stuff, first. You say you aren’t dating, but Michael obviously has a thing for you.”

Scout made a snort that sounded a little too dramatic to be honest. “I didn’t justsay we aren’t dating. We are,in fact , not dating. It’s an objective, empirical, testable fact. I don’t date MA guys.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. While I didn’t doubt that she subscribed to that rule, there was more to her statement, more to her and Michael, than she was letting on. But I could pry that out of her later.

“And your community service involvement?”

“You heard—we clean up litter.”

“Yeah, and I’m totally believing that, too.”

That was the last word out of either of us as we slipped through the gap between the buildings,

then back onto the sidewalk, and finally back to St. Sophia’s. In the nick of time, too, as the bells atop the left tower began to ring just as we hit the front stairs. Thinking we needed to hurry, I nearly ran into Scout when she stopped short in front of the door.

“I know this is unsatisfying,” she said, “but you’re going to have to trust me on this one, too.”

I arched an eyebrow at her. “Will there come a day when you’ll trust me?”

Her expression fell. “Honestly, Lil, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Famous last words, those.

There were three more periods to get through—Brit lit, chemistry, and European history—

before I completed my first day of classes at St. Sophia’s. Maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t had much of an appetite for lunch, because listening to teachers drone on about kinetic energy,Beowulf , and Thomas Aquinas on a full stomach surely would have put me into a food coma. It was dry enough on an empty stomach.

And wasn’t that strange? I loved facts, information, magazine tidbits. But when three, one-

hour-long classes were strung together, the learning got a little dullsville.

My attention deficit issue notwithstanding, I made it through my first day of classes, with a lot of unanswered questions about my suitemate and her friends, a good two hours of homework,

and a ravenous hunger to show for it.

And speaking of hunger, dinner was pretty much the same as breakfast—a rush to the front of the line so Scout and I weren’t stuck with “dirty rice,” which was apparently a combination of rice and everything that didn’t get eaten at lunch. I appreciated the school’s recycling, but “dirty rice” was a little too green for me. I mean that literally—there were green bits in there I couldn’t begin to identify.

On the other hand, it definitely reminded you to be prompt at meal times.

Since we were punctual and it was the first official day of school, the smiling foodies served a mix of Chicago favorites—Chicago-style “red-hot” hot dogs, deep-dish pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, and cheesecake from a place called Eli’s.

When we’d gotten food and taken seats, I focused on enjoying my tomato- and cheese-laden slice of Chicago’s finest so I wouldn’t pester Scout about our meeting with the boys, her

“community improvement group,” or her midnight outing.

Veronica and her minions spared us a visit, which would have interrupted the ambience of eating pizza off a plastic tray, but they still spent a good chunk of the dinner hour sending us snarky looks from across the room.

“What’s with the grudge?” I asked Scout, spearing a chunk of gooey pizza with my fork.

Scout snuck a glance back at the pretty-girl table, then shrugged. “Veronica and I have been here, both of us, since we were twelve. We started on the same day. But she, I don’t know, took sides? She decided that to be queen of the brat pack, she needed enemies.”

“Very mature,” I said.

“It’s no skin off my back,” Scout said. “Normally, she stays on her side of the cafeteria, and I stay on mine.”

“Unless she’s in your suite, cavorting with Amie,” I pointed out.

“That is true.”

“So why this place?” I asked her. “Why did your parents put you here?”

“I’m from Chicago,” she said, “born and bred. My parents were trust fund babies—my great-

grandfather invented a whirligig for electrical circuits, and my grandparents got the cash when he died. One trickle-down generation later, and my parents ended up with a pretty sweet lifestyle.”

“And they opted for boarding school?” I wondered aloud.

She paused contemplatively and pulled a chunk of bread from the roll in her hand. “It’s not that they don’t love me. I just think they weren’t entirely sure what todo with me. They grew up in boarding schools, too—when my grandparents got their money, they made some pretty rich friends. They thought boarding school was the best thing you could do for your kids, so they sent my parents, and my parents sent me. Anyway, they have their schedules—Monte Carlo this time of year, Palm Beach that time of year, et cetera, et cetera. Boarding school made it easier for them to travel, to meet their social commitments, such as they were.”

I couldn’t imagine a life so separate from my family—at least, not before the sabbatical. “Isn’t that . . . hard?” I asked her.

Scout blinked at the question. “I’ve been on my own for a long time. At this point, it justis , you know?” I didn’t, actually, but I nodded to be supportive.

“I mean, before St. Sophia’s, there was a private elementary school and a nanny I talked to more often than my parents. I was kind of a trust fund latchkey kid, I guess. Are you and your parents close?”

I nodded, and I had to fight back an unexpected wash of tears at the sudden sensation of aloneness. Of abandonment. My eyes ached with it, that threshold between crying and not, just before the dam breaks. “Yeah,” I said, willing the tears not to fall.

“I’m sorry,” Scout said. Her voice was soft, quiet, compassionate.

I shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve known for a while that they were leaving. Some of those days I was fine, some days I was wicked pissed.” I shrugged. “I’m probably not supposed to be mad about it. I mean, it’s not like they went to Germany to get away from me or anything, but it still stings.

It still feels like they left me here.”

“Well then,” Scout said, raising her cup of water, “I suppose you’d better thank your lucky stars that you found me. ’Cause I’m going to be on you like white on rice. I’m a hard friend to shake,

Parker.”

I grinned through the melancholy and raised my own cup. “To new friendships,” I said, and we clinked our cups together.

When dinner was finished, we returned to our rooms to wash up and restock our bags with books and supplies before study hall. I also ditched the tights and switched out my fabulous—but surprisingly uncomfortable—boots for a pair of much more comfy flip- flops. My cell phone vibrated just as I’d slipped my left foot into the second, thick, emerald green flip- flop. I pulled it out of my bag, checked the caller ID, and smiled.

“What’s cooking in Germany?” I asked after I opened the phone and pressed it to my ear.

“Nothing at the moment,” my father answered, his voice tinny through four thousand miles of transmission wires. “It’s late over here. How was school?”

“It was school,” I confirmed, a tightness in my chest unclenching at the sound of my dad’s voice. I sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed one leg over the other. “Turns out, high school is high school pretty much anywhere you go.”

“Except for the uniforms?” he asked.

I smiled. “Except for the uniforms. How was your first day of sabbaticalizing, or whatever?”

“Pretty dull. Mom and I both had meetings with the folks who are funding our work. A lot of ground rules, research protocols, that kind of thing.”

I could practically hear the boredom in his voice. My dad wasn’t one for administrative details or planning. He was a big-picture guy, a thinker, a teacher. My mom was the organized one. She probably took notes at the meetings.

“I’m sure it’ll get better, Pops. They probably wanna make sure they aren’t handing gazillions of research dollars over to some crazy Americans.”

“What?” he asked. “We are not so crazy,” he said, a thick accent suddenly in his voice, probably an impersonation of some long-dead celebrity. My dad imagined himself to be quite the comedian.

He had quite an imagination.

“Sure, Dad.” There was a knock at the door. I looked up as Scout walked in. “Listen, I need to run to study hall. Tell Mom I said hi, and good luck with the actual, you know, research stuff.”

“Nighty night, Lils. You take care.”

“I will, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” I closed the phone and slipped it back into my bag. Scout raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

“My parents are safe and sound in Germany,” I told her.

“I’m glad to hear it. Let’s go make good on their investment with a couple hours of homework.”

The invitation wasn’t exactly thrilling, but it’s not like we had another choice. Study hall was mandatory, after all.

Study hall took place in the Great Hall, the big room with all the tables where I’d first gotten a glimpse of the plaid army. They were in full attendance tonight, nearly two hundred girls in navy plaid filling fifty-odd four-person tables. We headed through the rows toward a couple of empty seats near the main aisle, which would give us a view of the comings and goings of St. Sophia’s finest. They also gave the plaid army a look at us, and look they did, the thwack-thwack of my flip-flops on the limestone floor drawing everyone’s attention my way.

That attention included the pair of stern-looking women in thick-soled black shoes and horn-

rimmed glasses. Their squarish figures tucked into black shirts and sweaters, they patrolled the perimeter of the room, clipboards in hand.

“Who are they?” I whispered, as we took seats opposite each other.

Scout glanced up as she pulled notebooks and books from her bag. “The dragon ladies. They monitor lights-out, watch us while we study, and generally make sure that nothing fun occurs on their watch.”

“Awesome,” I said, flipping open my trig book. “I’m a fun hater myself.”

“I figured,” Scout said without looking up, pen scurrying across a page of her notebook. “You had the look.”

One of the roaming dragon ladies walked by our table, her gaze over her glasses and an eyebrow arched at our whispering as she passed. I mouthed, “Sorry,” but she scribbled on her clipboard before walking away.

Scout bit back a smile. “Please quit disturbing the entire school, Parker, jeez.”

I stuck out my tongue at her, but started my homework.

We worked for an hour before she stretched in her chair, then dropped her chin onto her hand.

“I’m bored.”

I rubbed my eyes, which were blurring over the tiny print in our European history book. “Do you want me to juggle?”

“You can juggle?”

“Well, notyet . But there’re books everywhere in here,” I pointed out. “There’s gotta be a how-

to guide somewhere on those shelves.”

The girl who sat beside me at the table cleared her throat, her gaze still on the books in front of her. “Really trying to do some work here, ladies. Go playGilmore Girls somewhere else.”

The girl was pretty in a supermodel kind of way—in a French way, if that made sense. Long dark hair, big eyes, wide mouth—and she played irritated pretty well, one perfect eyebrow arched in irritation over brown eyes.

“Collette, Collette,” Scout said, pointing her own pencil at the girl, then at me. “Don’t be bossy.

Our new friend Parker, here, will think you’re one of the brat pack.”

Collette snorted, then slid a glance my way. “As if, Green. I assume you’re Parker?”

“Last time I checked,” I agreed.

“Then don’t make me give you more credit than you deserve, Parker. Some of us take our academic achievements very seriously. If I’m not valedictorian next year, I might not get into Yale. And if I don’t get into Yale, I’m going to have a breakdown of monumental proportions.

So you and your friend go play clever somewhere else, alrighty? Alrighty,” she said with a bob of her head, then turned back to her books.

“She’s really smart,” Scout said apologetically. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t done much for her personality.”

Collette flipped a page of her book. “I’m still here.” “Gilmore Girls,” Scout repeated, then made a sarcastic sound. Apparently done with studying, she glanced carefully around, then pulled a comic book from her bag. She paused to ensure the coast was clear, then sandwiched the comic between the pages of her trig book.

I arched an eyebrow at the move, but she shrugged happily, and went back to working trig problems, occasionally sneaking in a glazed-eyed perusal of a page or two of the comic.

“Weirdo,” I muttered, but said it with a grin.

After we’d done our couple of mandatory hours in study hall—not all studying, of course, but at least we were in there—we went back to the suite to make use of our last free hour before the sun officially set on my first day as a St. Sophia’s girl. The suite was empty of brat pack members,

and Lesley’s door was shut, a line of light beneath it. I nudged Scout as we walked toward her room. She followed the direction of my nod, then nodded back.

“Cello’s gone,” she noted, pointing at the corner of the common room, which was empty of the instrument parked there when I arrived yesterday.

Music suddenly echoed through the suite, the thick, thrumming notes of a Bach cello concerto pouring from Lesley’s room. She played beautifully, and as she moved her bow across the strings, Scout and I stood quietly, reverently, in the common room, our gaze on the closed door before us.

After a couple of minutes, the music stopped, replaced by scuffling on the other side of the door.

Without preface, the door opened. A blonde blinked at us from the threshold. She was dressed simply in a fitted T-shirt, cotton A-line skirt, and Mary Janes. Her hair was short and pale blond,

a fringe of bangs across her forehead.

“Hi, Lesley,” Scout said, hitching a thumb at me. “This is Lily. She’s the new girl.”

Lesley blinked big blue eyes at me. “Hi,” she said, then turned on one heel, walked back into the room, and shut the door behind her.

“And that was Lesley,” Scout said, unlocking her own door and flipping on her bedroom light.

I followed, then shut the door behind us again. “Lesley’s not much of a talker.”

Scout nodded and sat cross- legged on the bed. “That was actually pretty chatty for Barnaby.

She’s always been quiet. Has a kind of savant vibe? Wicked good on the cello.”

“I got goose bumps,” I agreed. “That song is really haunting.”

Scout nodded again, and had just begun to pull a pillow into her lap when her cell phone rang.

She reached up, grabbed it from its home on the shelf, and popped it open.

“When?” she asked after a moment of silence, turning away from me, the phone pressed to her ear. Apparently unhappy with the response she got, she muttered a curse, then sighed haggardly.

“We should have known they had something planned when we saw her.”

I assumed “her” meant the blonde we’d seen outside at lunch.

More silence ensued as Scout listened to the caller. In the quiet of the room, I could hear a voice, but I couldn’t understand the words. The tone was low, so I guessed the caller was a boy.

Michael Garcia, maybe?

“Okay,” she said. “I will.” She closed the phone with a snap and paused before glancing back at me.

“Time to run?”

Scout nodded. And this time, there was a tightness around her eyes. It didn’t thrill me that the tightness looked like fear.

My heart clenched sympathetically. “Do you need backup? Someone else to help clean up the litter?”

Scout smiled, a little of the twinkle back in her eyes. “I’d love it, actually. But community improvement isn’t ready for you, Parker.” She grabbed a jacket and her skull-and-crossbones bag, and we both left her room. Scout headed for a secret rendezvous; I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going.

“Don’t wait up,” she said with a wink, then opened the door and headed out into the hallway.

Don’t count on it, I thought, having made the decision. This time, I wasn’t going to let her get away with mumbled excuses and a secret nighttime trip—at least not solo.

This time, I was going, too.

She’d closed the door behind her. I cracked it open and watched her slip down the hallway.

“Time to play Nancy Drew,” I murmured, then slipped off my noisy flip- flops, picked them up,

and followed her.

She was disappearing around the corner as I closed the door to the common room. The hallway was empty and silent but for her footsteps, the limestone floor and walls glowing beneath the golden light of the sconces.

Scout headed toward the stairs, which she took at a trot. I hung back until I was sure she wouldn’t see me as she rounded the second flight of stairs, then followed her down. When she reached the first floor, she headed through the Great Hall, which, even after the required study period, still held a handful of apparently ambitious teenagers. Unfortunately, the aisle between the tables was straight and empty, so if Scout turned around, my cover was blown.

I took a breath and started walking. I made it halfway without incident when, suddenly, Scout paused. I dumped into the closest chair and bent down, faking an adjustment to my flip- flop.

When she turned around again and resumed her progression through the room, I stood up, then hustled to squeak through the double doors before they closed behind her.

I just made it through, then flattened myself against the wall of the hallway that led to the domed center of the main building. I peeked around the corner; Scout was hurrying across the tiled labyrinth. I gnawed my lip as I considered my options. This part of playing the new Nancy Drew was tricky—the room was gigantic and empty, at least in the middle, so there weren’t many places to hide.

Without cover, I decided I’d have to wait her out. I watched her cross the labyrinth and move into the hallway opposite mine, then pause before a door. She looked around, probably to see whether she was alone (we’re all wrong sometimes), then slipped the ribboned key from her neck and slid the key into the lock.

The click of tumblers echoed across the room. She winced at the sound, but placed a hand on the door, took a final look around, and disappeared. When she was gone, I jogged across the labyrinth to the other side, then pressed my ear to the door she’d closed behind her. After the sound of her footsteps receded, I twisted the doorknob, found that it was still unlocked and—

heart beating like a bass drum in my chest—edged it open.

It was another hallway.

I blew out the breath I’d been holding.

A hallway wasn’t much to get stressed out about. Frankly, the chasing was getting a little repetitive. Hallway. Room. Hallway. Room. I reminded myself that there was a greater purpose here—spying on the girl who’d adopted me as a best friend.

Okay, put that way, it didn’t sound so noble.

Morally questionable or not, I still had a job to do. I walked inside and closed the door behind me. I didn’t see Scout, but I watched her elongated shadow shrink around the corner as she moved. I followed her through the hallway, and then down another set of stairs into what I guessed was the basement, although it didn’t look much different from the first floor, all limestone and golden light and iron sconces. The ceiling was different, though. Instead of the vaults and domes on the first floor, the ceiling here was lower, flatter, and covered in patterned plaster. It looked like a lot of work for a basement.

The stairs led to another hall. I followed the sound of footsteps, but only made it five or six feet before I heard another sound—the clank and grate of metal on metal. I froze and swallowed down the lump of fear that suddenly tightened my throat. I wanted to call her name, to scream it out, but I couldn’t seem to draw breath to make a sound. I forced myself to take another step forward, then another, nearly jumping out of my skin when that bone-chilling gnash of metal echoed through the hallway again.

Oh, screw this, I thought, and forced my lungs to work. “Scout?” I called out. “Are you okay?”

When I got no response, I rounded the corner. The hallway dead-ended in a giant metal door . . . and she was nowhere to be seen.

“Frick,” I muttered. I glanced around, saw nothing else that would help, and moved closer so I could give the door a good look-see.

It was ginormous. At least eight feet high, with an arch in the top, it was outlined in brass rivets and joints. In the middle was a giant flywheel, and beneath the flywheel was a security bar that must have been four or five inches of solid steel. It was in its unlocked position. That explained the metal sounds I’d heard earlier.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that door was keeping out of St. Sophia’s, but Scout was in there. Sure, we hadn’t known each other long, and I wasn’t up on all the comings and goings of her community improvement group, but this seemed like trouble . . . and help was the least I could offer my new suitemate.

After all, what were they going to do—kick me out?

“Sagamore, here I come,” I whispered, and put my hands on the flywheel. I tugged, but the door wouldn’t open. I turned the flywheel, clockwise first, then counterclockwise, but the movement had no effect—at least, not on this side of the door.

Frowning, I scanned the door from top to bottom, looking for another way in—a keyhole, a numeric pad, anything that would have gotten it open and gotten me inside.

But there was nothing. So much for my rescue mission.

I considered my options.

One: I could head back upstairs, tuck into bed, and forget about the fact that my new best friend was somewhere behind a giant locked door in an old convent in downtown Chicago.

Two: I could wait for her to come back, then offer whatever help I could.

I nibbled the edge of my lip for a moment and glanced back at the hallway from which I’d come, my passage back to safety. But I was here,now , and she was in there, getting into God only knew what kind of trouble.

So I sat down on the floor, pulled up my knees, and prepared to wait.

I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I jolted awake at the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door. I jumped up from my spot, the flip-flops I’d pulled off earlier still in my hand, my only weapon. As I faced down the door with only a few inches of green foam as protection, it occurred to me that there might be a stranger—and not Scout—on the other side of the door.

My heart raced hammerlike in my chest, my fingers clenched into the foam of my flip- flops.

Suddenly the flywheel began to turn, the spokes rotating clockwise with a metallic scrape as someone sought entrance to the convent basement. Seconds later, oh so slowly, the door began to open, hundreds of pounds of metal rotating toward me.

“Don’t come any closer!” I called out. “I have a weapon.”

Scout’s voice echoed from the other side of the door. “Don’t use it! And get out of the way!”

It wasn’t hard to obey, since I’d been bluffing. I stepped aside, and as soon as the crack in the door was big enough to squeeze through, she slipped through it, chest heaving as she sucked in air.

She muttered a curse and pressed her hands to the door. “I’m going to rail on you in a minute for following me, but in the meantime,help me close this thing !”

Although my head was spinning with ideas about what, exactly, she’d left on the other side of the door, I stepped beside her. With both pairs of hands on the door, arms and legs outstretched,

we pushed it closed. The door was as heavy as it was high, and I wondered how she’d gotten it open in the first place.

When the door was shut, Scout spun the flywheel, then reached down to slide the steel bar back into its home. We both jumped back when a crash echoed from the other side, the door shaking on its giant brass hinges in response.

Eyes wide, I stared over at her. “What the hell wasthat ?”

“Litter,” Scout said, staring at the closed door, as if making sure that whatever had been chasing her wasn’t going to breach it.

When the door was still and the hallway was silent, Scout turned and looked at me, her bob of blond hair in shambles around her face, jacket hanging from one shoulder . . . and fury in her expression.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing down here?” She pushed at the hair from her face,

then pulled up the loose shoulder of her jacket.

“Exercising?”

Scout put her hands on her hips, obviously dubious.

“I was afraid you were in trouble.”

“You were nosy,” she countered. “I asked you to trust me on this.”

“Trusting you about a secret liaison is one thing. Trusting you about your safety is something else.” I bobbed my head toward the door. “Call it community improvement if you want, but it seems pretty apparent that you’re involved in something nasty. I’m not going to just stand by and watch you get hurt.”

“You’re not my mother.”

“Nope,” I agreed. “But I’m your new BFF.”

Her expression softened.

“I don’t need all the details,” I said, holding up my hands, “but I am going to need to know what the hell was on the other side of that door.”

As if on cue, a crash sounded again, and the door jumped on its hinges.

“We get it already!” she yelled. “Crawl back into your hole.” She grabbed my arm and began to pull me down the hall and away from the ominous door. “Let’s go.”

I tugged back, and when she dropped my arm, slipped the flip-flops back onto my feet. She was trucking down the hall, and I had to skip to keep up with her. “Is it an axe murderer?”

“Yeah,” she said dryly. “It’s an axe murderer.”

Most of the walk back was quiet. Scout and I didn’t chat much, and both the main building and the Great Hall were dark and empty of students. The moonlight, tinted red and blue, that streamed through the stained glass windows was the only light along the way.

As we moved through the corridors, Scout managed not to look back to see whether the basement door had been breached or whether some nasty thing was on our trail. I, on the other hand, kept stealing glances over my shoulder, afraid to look, but more afraid that something would sneak up behind us if I didn’t. That the corridors were peacefully quiet didn’t stop my imagination, which made shapes in the shadows beneath the desks of the Great Hall when we passed through it.

Exactly what had been behind that door? I decided I couldn’t hold in the question any longer.

“Angry drug dealer?” I asked her. “Mental institution escapee? Robot overlord?”

“I’m not aware if robots have taken us over yet.” Her tone was dry.

“Flesh-eating zombie monster?”

“Zombies are a myth.”

“So you say,” I muttered. “Just answer me this: Are you in cahoots with those Montclare guys?”

“What is a ‘cahoot,’ exactly?”

“Scout.”

“I was exercising. Great workout. I got my heart rate up, and I got into the zone.” Her elbow bent, she pumped one arm as if lifting a dumbbell.

When we opened the door to the building that held our dorm rooms, I pulled her to a stop. She didn’t look happy about that.

“You were being chased,” I told her. “Something behind that door was after you, and whatever it was hit the door after we closed it.”

“Just be glad we got the door closed.”

“Scout,” I said. “Seriously. What’s going on?”

“Look, Lily, there are things going on at this school—just because things seem normal doesn’t mean they are. Things are rarely what they seem.”

Things hardly seemed normal, from late- night disappearances, to the coincidental meeting of the boys next door, to this. And all of it within my first twenty-four hours in Chicago. “Exactly what does that mean, ‘rarely what they seem’?”

She arched an eyebrow at me. “You said you had a weapon.” She scanned me up and down.

“Exactly what weapon was that? Flip-flops?”

I held up a foot and dangled my thick, emerald green flip-flop in front of her. “Hey, I could have beaned a pursuer on the head with this thing. It weighs like ten pounds, and I guarantee you he would have thought twice before invading St. Sophia’s.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that would hold them off.” At my arch expression, she held up her hands. “Fine.

Fine. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I’m in a club for gifted kids. Of a sort.”

“A club for gifted kids. Like, what kind of gifted?” Gifted at fibbing came immediately to mind.

“Generally gifted?”

The room was silent as I waited in vain for her to elaborate on that answer.

“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“That’s as much as Ican tell you,” she said, “and I’ve already said too much. I wish I could fill you in, but I really, really can’t. Not because I don’t trust you,” she said, holding up a defensive hand. “It’s just not something I’m allowed to do.”

“You aren’t allowed to tell me, or anyone else, that something big and loud and powerful is hanging out beneath a big-ass metal door in the basement? And that you go down there willingly?”

She nodded matter-of-factly. “That’s pretty much it.”

I blew out a breath and shook my head. “You’re insane. This whole place is insane.”

“St. Sophia’s has a lot to offer.”

“Other than nighttime escapades and maniacs behind giant cellar doors?”

“Oh, those aren’t even the highlights, Lil.” Scout turned and resumed the trek back home.

When we reached the suite, Scout walked toward her room, but then paused to glance back at me.

“Whatever you’re involved in,” I told her, “I’m not afraid.” (My fingers were totally crossed on that one.) “And if you need me, I’m here.”

I could tell she was tired, but there was a happy glint in her eyes. “You rock pretty hard,

Parker.”

I grinned at her. “I know. It’s one of my better qualities.”

Whatever the St. Sophia’s “highlights” were, they weren’t revealed during the next couple days of school. I still wasn’t entirely sure what Scout was doing at night, but I didn’t see any strange bruises or scratches or broken bones. Since she wasn’t limping, I kept my mouth shut about her disappearances . . . and whatever was going on in the corridors beneath the school.

On the other hand, the dark circles beneath her eyes showed that she was still going somewhere at night, thatsomething was going on, regardless of how oblivious the rest of the school was. I didn’t pester her, mostly because I’d weighed the benefit of pestering her (nil, given how stubborn she was) against the potential cost (hurting our newfound friendship). We were still getting to know each other, and I didn’t want that kind of tension between us . . . even though her secret was still between us.

However, there was still one skill I knew I could bring to the Scout Green mystery game—I was patient, and I could wait her out. I could tell it bothered her to keep it bottled up, so I guessed it wouldn’t take much longer before she spilled.

That mystery notwithstanding, things were moving along pretty much par for the course, or at least what I learned was par for the course by St. Sophia’s standards. That meant studying,

studying, and more studying. I managed to squeeze in some nerdly fun with Scout—a little sketching, checking out her comic book stash, walking the block over the lunch hour—and I’d had a few rushed conversations with my parents. (Everything seemed to be going fine in Deutschland.) But mostly, there was studying . . . at least until my first Thursday at St. Sophia’s.

I’d been in European history when it happened. Without preface, in the middle of class, the door opened. Mary Katherine walked in, her hair in a long, thick braid that lay across one shoulder, a gray scarf of thick, felted wool knots wrapped around her neck.

She handed Peters, our surly history teacher, a note. Peters gave her a sour look—the fate of European peasants being the most important thing on his mind—but he took it anyway, read it over, and passed it back to M.K.

“Lily Parker,” he said.

I sat up straight.

Peters tried to arch one eyebrow. But he couldn’t quite manage it, so it just looked like an comfortable squint. “You’re wanted in the headmistress’s office.”

I frowned, but bobbed my head in acknowledgment, grabbed the stuff on my desk with one hand and the strap of my bag from the other, and stood up. M.K., arms crossed, rolled her eyes as she waited for me. She was halfway to the door by the time I got to the front of the room.

“Nice shoes,” she said when we’d closed the classroom door and had begun walking down the hall. She walked in front of me, the note between her fingers.

I glanced down at today’s ensemble—button-up shirt, St. Sophia’s hoodie, navy tights, and yellow boots in quilted patent leather—as I situated my messenger bag diagonally across my chest. The boots were loud and not everyone’s style, but they were also vintage and made by a very chichi designer, so I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic. I assumed, since they were pretty fabulous, that she was being sincere.

“Thanks,” I said. “They’re vintage.” Unfortunately, the owner of the thrift shop in old,

downtown Sagamore knew they’d been vintage, too. Three months of hard-saved allowance disappeared in a five-minute transaction.

“I know,” she said. “They’re Puccinis.”

Her voice was mildly condescending, as if I couldn’t possibly have been savvy enough to know that they were Puccinis when I bought them. Three months of allowance knew better.

That gem was the only thing Mary Katherine said as we walked through the Great Hall, crossed the labyrinth, and turned into the administrative wing. It was the same walk I’d taken when I’d met Foley at the door a few days ago, except in reverse . . . and presumably under different circumstances this time around.

When we reached the office, M.K. put her hand on the doorknob, but turned to face me before opening it. “You’ll need a hall pass before you go back,” she sniped. She opened the door and after I walked inside, closed it behind me. Friendly girl.

Foley’s office looked the same as it had a few days ago, except that she wasn’t in the room this time. Her heavy oak desk was empty of stuff—no pencil cups, no flowers, no lamp—but for the royal blue folder that lay in the exact middle, its edges parallel with the edges of the desk, as if placed just so.

I walked closer. Holding my bag back with a hand, I leaned forward to take a closer look. LILY PARKER was typed in neat letters across the folder’s tab.

A folder bearing my name in an otherwise empty room. It practically begged to be opened.

I glanced behind me. When I was sure I was alone, I reached out a hand to open it, but snatched it back when a grinding scrape echoed through the room.

I stood straight again as the bookshelf on one side of Foley’s office began to pivot forward.

Foley, tall and trim, every hair in place, navy suit perfectly tailored, stepped through the opening,

then pushed the bookshelf back into place.

“Can I ask what’s behind the hidden door?”

“You could ask,” she said, walking around the massive desk, “but that does not mean I’d provide an answer to you, Ms. Parker.” Elegantly, she lowered herself into the chair, glanced at the folder for a moment, then lifted her gaze, regarding me with an arched brow.

I responded with what I hoped was a bland and completely innocent smile. Sure, I’dwanted to look, but it’s not like I’d actually had time todo anything.

Apparently satisfied, she lowered her gaze again and, with a single finger, flipped open the folder. “Have a seat,” she said without looking up.

I dropped into the chair in front of her desk and piled my stuff—books and bag—on my lap.

“You’ve been here three days,” Foley said, linking her fingers together on top of her desk. “I have asked you here to inquire as to how you’ve settled in.” She looked at me expectantly. I guessed that was my cue.

“Things are fine.”

“Mmm-hmm. And your relationships with your classmates? Are you integrating well into the St.

Sophia’s community? Into Ms. Green’s suite?

Interesting, I thought, that it was “Ms. Green’s suite,” and not Amie’s or Lesley’s suite. But my answer was the same regardless. “Yes. Scout and I get along pretty well.”

“And Ms. Cherry? Ms. Barnaby?”

“Sure,” I said, thinking a vague answer would at least save my having to answer questions about the brat pack’s attitude toward newcomers.

Foley nodded. “I encourage you to expand your circle of classmates, to meet as many of the girls in your class as you can, and to make as many connections as possible. For better or worse,

your success will be measured not only by what you can learn, by what you can be tested on, but on whom you know.”

“Sure,” I dutifully said again.

“And your classes? How are your academics progressing?”

I was only in the fourth day of my St. Sophia’s education—three and a half pop-quiz- and final-

exam-free days behind me—so there wasn’t much to gauge “progressing” against. So I stuck to my plan of giving teenagerly vague answers; being a teenager, I figured I was entitled. “They’re fine.”

She made a sound of half interest, then glanced down at the folder again. “Once you’ve settled into your academic schedule, you’ll have an opportunity to experience our extracurricular activities and, given your interest in the arts, our art studio.” Foley flipped the folder closed, then crossed her hands upon it, sealing its secrets inside. “Lily, I’m going to speak frankly.”

I lifted my eyebrows invitationally.

“Given the nature of your arrival here and of your previous tenure in public school, I was not entirely confident you would find the fit at St. Sophia’s to be . . . comfortable.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Comfortable,” I repeated, in a tone as flat and dry as I could make it.

“Yes,” Foley unapologetically repeated. “Comfortable. You arrived here not by choice, but because of the wishes of your parents, and despite your having no other connections to Chicago.

I can only imagine how difficult it is for you to be here in light of your current separation from your parents. But I am acquainted with Mark and Susan, and we truly believe in their research.”

That stopped me cold. “You know my parents?”

There was a hitch in her expression, a hitch that was quickly covered by the look of arrogant blandness she usually wore. “You were unaware that I was acquainted with your parents?”

All I could do was nod. The only thing my parents told me about St. Sophia’s was that it was an excellent school with great academics, blah blah blah. The fact that my parents knew Foley—

yeah. They’d kind of forgotten to mention that.

“I must admit,” Foley said, “I’m surprised.”

That made two of us, I thought.

“St. Sophia’s is an excellent institution, without doubt. But you are far from home and your connections in Sagamore. I’d assumed, frankly, that your parents chose St. Sophia’s on the basis of our relationship.”

She wasn’t just acquainted with my parents—they had arelationship ? “How do you know my parents?”

“Well . . . ,” she said, drawing out her one-word response while she traced her fingers along the edges of the folder. The move seemed odd for her—too coy. I figured she was stalling for time.

After a long, quiet moment, she glanced up at me. “We had a professional connection,” she finally said. “Similar research interests.”

I frowned. “Research interests? In philosophy?”

“Philosophy,” she flatly repeated.

I nodded, but something in her tone made my stomach drop. “Philosophy,” I said again, as if repeating it would answer the question in her voice. “Are you sure you knew my parents?”

“I am well acquainted with your parents, Ms. Parker. We’re professional colleagues of a sort.”

There was caution in her tone, as if she were treading around something, something she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell me.

I dropped my gaze to the gleaming yellow of my boots. I needed a minute to process all this—

the fact that Foley had known my parents, that they’d known her, and that maybe—just maybe—

their decision to send me here hadn’t just been an academic choice.

“My parents,” I said, “are teachers. Professors, both of them. They teach philosophy at Hartnett College. It’s in Sagamore.”

Foley frowned. “And they never mentioned their genetic work?”

“Genetic work?” I asked, the confusion obvious in my voice. “What genetic work?”

“Their lab work. Their genetic studies. The longevity studies.”

I was done, I decided—done with this meeting, done listening to this woman’s lies about my parents. Or worse, I was done listening to things I hadn’t known about the people I’d been closest too.

Things they hadn’t told me?

I rose, lifting my books and shouldering my bag. “I need to get back to class.”

Foley arched an eyebrow, but allowed me to rise and gather my things, then head for the door.

“Ms. Parker,” she said, and I glanced back. She pulled a small pad of paper from a desk drawer,

scribbled something on the top page, and tore off the sheet.

“You’ll need a hall pass to return to class,” she said, handing the paper out to me.

I nodded, walked back, and took the paper from her fingers. But I didn’t look at her again until I was back at the door, note in hand.

“I know my parents,” I told her, as much for her benefit as mine. “I know them.”

All my doubts notwithstanding, I let that stand as the last word, opened the door, and left.

I didn’t remember much of the walk back through one stone corridor after another, through the Great Hall and the passageway to the classroom building. Even the architecture was a blur, my mind occupied with the meeting with Foley, the questions she’d raised.

Had she been confused? Had she read some other file, instead of mine? Had the board of trustees dramatized my background in order to accept me at St. Sophia’s?

Or had my parents been lying to me? Had they kept the true nature of their jobs, their employment, from me? And if so, why hide something like that? Why tell your daughter that you taught philosophy if you had a completely different kind of research agenda?

What had Foley said? Something about longevity and genetics? That wasn’t even in the same ballpark as philosophy. That was science, anatomy, lab work.

I’d been to Hartnett with my parents, had walked through the corridors of the religion and philosophy department, had waved at their colleagues. I’d colored on the floor of my mother’s office on days when my babysitter was sick, and played hide- and-seek in the hallways at night while my parents worked late.

Of course there was one easy way to solve this mystery. When I was clear of the administrative wing, I stepped into an alcove in the main building, a semicircle of stone with a short bench in the middle, and pulled my cell phone from my pocket. It would be late in Germany, but this was an issue that needed resolving.

“HOW IS RESEARCH?” I texted. I sent the message and waited; the reply took only seconds.

“THE ARCHIVES R RAD!” was my father’s time-warped answer. I hadn’t even had time to begin a response when a second message popped onto my screen, this one from my mother.

“1ST PAGE IN GERMN JRNL OF PHILO!”

In dorky professor-speak, that meant my parents had secured the first article (a big deal) in some new German philosophy journal.

Italso meant there would be a bound journal with my parents’ names on it, the kind I’d seen in our house countless times before. You couldn’t fake that kind of thing. Foley had to be wrong.

“Take that,” I murmured with a slightly evil grin, then checked the time on my phone. European history class would be over in five minutes. I didn’t think Peters would much care whether I came back for the final five minutes of class, so I walked back through the classroom building to the locker hall to switch out books for study hall later.

A note—a square of careful folds—was stuck to my locker door.

I dropped my books to the floor, pulled the note away, and opened it.

It read, in artsy letters: I saw you and Scout, and I wasn’t the only one. Watch your back.

A knot of fear rose in my throat. I turned around and pressed my back against my locker, trying to slow my heart. Someone had seen me and Scout—someone, maybe, who’d followed us from the library through the main building to the door behind which the monster lay sleeping.

The bells rang, signaling the end of class.

I crumpled the note in my hand.

One crisis at a time, I thought. One crisis at a time.

I waited until Scout had returned to the suite after classes, during our chunk of free time before dinner, to tell her about the note. We headed to my room to avoid the brat pack, who’d already taken over the common room. Why they’d opted to hang out in our suite mystified me, given their animosity toward Scout, but as Scout had said, they seemed to have a thing for drama. I guessed they were looking for opportunities.

When my bedroom door was shut and the lock was flipped, I pulled the note from the pocket of my hoodie and passed it over.

Scout paled, then held it up. “Where did this come from?”

“My locker. I found it after I left Foley’s office. And that’s actually part two of the story.”

Scout sat down on the floor, then rolled over onto her stomach, booted feet crossed in the air. I sat down on my bed, crossing my legs beneath me, and filled her in on my time in Foley’s office and the things she’d said about my parents. The genetic stuff aside, Scout was surprised that Foley seemed interested in me at all. Foley wasn’t known for being interested in her students; she was more focused on numbers—Ivy League acceptance rates and SAT scores. Individual students, to Foley, were just bits of data within the larger—and much more important—statistics.

“Maybe she feels sorry for me?” I asked. “Being abandoned by my parents for a European vacation?”

Okay, I can admit that sounded pretty pitiful, but Scout didn’t buy it, anyway. “No way,” she said. “This is a boarding school. No one’s parents are around. Now, she said what? That your parents are doing research in genetics?”

I nodded. “That’s exactly what she said. But my parents teach philosophy. I mean—they do research, sure. They write articles—that’s why they’re traveling right now. But not on genetics.

Not on biology. They were into Heidegger and existentialism and stuff.”

“Huh,” Scout said with a frown, chin propped on her hand. “That’s really strange. And you went to their offices, and stuff? I mean, they weren’t just dumbing down their job to help you understand what they did?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been there. Seen their diplomas. Seen their books. I’ve watched them grade papers.” Scout pursed her lips, eyebrows drawn down as she concentrated. “That’s really weird. On the other hand, maybe Foley was just confused. It’s not that hard to imagine that she’d mistake one student for another.”

“That’s what I thought at first,” I said, “but she seemed pretty sure.”

“Hmm.” Scout rolled over onto her back and laced her hands behind her head. “While we’re contemplating your parents’ possibly secret identities, what are we going to do about this note thing?”

“What do you mean ‘we’? The note thing is your deal, not mine. Someone must have seen you.”

“It was on your locker, Parker. They probably saw you following me. Probably heard you clomping through the hall in those flip-flops like a Clydesdale.”

“First of all, I took off the flip- flops so they wouldn’t make noise. And second, I do notclomp .”

I threw my pillow at her to emphasize the point. “I am a very slender, spritely young woman.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t clomp.”

“I am not above hitting a girl.”

Scout barked out a laugh. “I’d like to see you try it.”

“Dare me, Pinhead. Dare me.”

That time, I got a glare. She pointed at her nose ring. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt to get this thing? How much I endured to achieve this look?”

“That’s a ‘look’?”

“I am the epitome of high fashion.”

“Yeah,Vogue will surely be calling you tomorrow for the fall spread.”

Scout snorted out a laugh. “What did someone tell me once? That they’re not above hitting a girl? Well, neither am I, newbie.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s get back on track—the note.”

“Right, the note.” Scout crossed her legs, one booted foot swinging as she thought. “Well,

clompy or not, someone saw us. Could have been one of our lovely suitemates; could have been someone else at St. Sophia’s. The path to the basement door isn’t exactly inconspicuous. I have to go through the Great Hall to get to the main building. That part’s not so unusual—going into the main building, I mean. Girls sometimes study in the chapel, and there’s a service in there on Wednesday nights.” She sat up halfway and looked over at me. “Did you notice anyone noticing us?”

I shook my head. “I thought I was caught when you stopped in the Great Hall. I sat down at a table for a second, but I was up and out of there pretty fast afterward.”

“Hmm,” Scout said. “You’re sure you didn’t tell anyone?”

“Did I tell anyone I was running around St. Sophia’s in the middle of the night, following my suitemate to figure out why she’s sneaking around? No, I didn’t tell anyone that, and I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of thing I’d remember.”

She grinned up at me. “Can you imagine what would have happened if one of the”—she bobbed her head toward the closed door—“you-know-what pack found us down there?” She shook her head. “They would have gone completely postal.”

“I nearly went completely postal,” I pointed out.

“That is true. Although you did have your flip- flop weaponry.”

“Hey, would you want to meet me in a dark alley with a flip-flop?”

“Depends on how long you’d been awake. You’re an ogre in the morning.”

We broke into laughter that was stifled by a sudden knock on my bedroom door. Scout and I exchanged a glance. I unknotted my legs and walked to the door, then flipped the lock and opened it.

Lesley stood there, this time in uniform—plaid skirt, oxford shirt, tie—wide blue eyes blinking back at me. “I’d like to come in.”

“Okay,” I said, and moved aside, then shut the door again when she was in the room.

“Hi, Barnaby,” Scout said from the floor. “What’s kicking?”

“Those girls are incredibly irritating. I can hardly hear myself think.”

As if on cue, a peal of laughter echoed from the common room. We rolled our eyes simultaneously.

“I get that,” Scout said. “What brings you to our door?”

“I need to be more social. You know, talk to people.” Still standing near the door, she looked at us expectantly. The room was silent for nearly a minute.

“Okaaaay,” Scout finally said. “Good start on that, coming in here. How was your summer?”

Barnaby shrugged, then crossed her ankles and lowered herself to the floor. “Went to cello camp.”

Scout and I exchanged a glance that showed exactly how dull we thought that sounded.

Nevertheless, Scout asked, “And how was cello camp?”

“Not nearly as exciting as you’d think.”

“Huh,” Scout said. “Bummer.”

After blinking wide eyes at the floor, Lesley lifted her gaze to Scout, then to me. “Last year was dull, too. I want this year to be more interesting. You seem interesting.”

Scout beamed, her eyes twinkling devilishly. “I knew I liked you, Barnaby.”

“Especially when you disappear at night.”

Scout’s expression flattened. With a jolt, she sat up, legs crossed in front of her. “What do you mean, when we disappear at night?”

“You know,” Lesley said, pointing at Scout, “when you head into the basement”—she pointed at me—“and you follow her.”

“Uh-huh,” Scout said, picking at a thread in her skirt, feigned nonchalance in her expression.

“Did you by any chance leave a note for Lily? A warning?”

“Oh, on her locker? Yeah, that was me.”

Scout and I exchanged a glance, then looked at Lesley. “And why did you leave it?” she asked.

Lesley looked back and forth between us. “Because I want in.”

“In?”

Lesley nodded. “I want in. Whatever you’re doing, I want in. I want to help. I have skills”

“I’m not admitting that we’re doing anything,” Scout carefully said, “but if we are doing something, do you know what it is?”

“Well, no.”

“Then how do you know you have skills that would help us?” Scout asked.

Lesley grinned, and the look was a little diabolical. “Well, did you see me following you? Did you know I was there?”

“No,” Scout said for both of us, appreciation in her eyes. “No, we did not.” She looked at me.

“She makes a good argument about her skills.”

“Yes, she does,” I agreed. “But why leave an anonymous note on my locker? If you wanted in,

why not just talk to us here? We do live together, after all.”

Lesley shrugged nonchalantly. “Like I said, things are dull around here. I thought I’d spice things up.”

“Spice things up,” Scout repeated, her voice dry as toast. “Yeah, we could probably help you out with that. We’ll keep you posted.”

“Sweet,” Lesley said, and that was the end of that.

Scout didn’t, of course, fill Lesley in about exactly how interesting she was. I, of course, didn’t contribute much to that interestingness. I hadn’t been more than an amusing sidekick, if that. It was probably more accurate to call me a nosy sidekick.

I was relieved we’d solved the note mystery, but I was quiet at dinner, quiet in study hall, and quiet as Scout and I sat in the common room afterward—which was thankfully empty of brat packers. I couldn’t get Foley’s comments out of my mind. Sure, I’d seen the articles and the offices and met the colleagues, but I’d also seenAlias . People had created much more elaborate fronts than collegiate careers. Had my parents concocted some kind of elaborate fairy tale about their jobs to keep their real lives hidden? If so, I highly doubted they’d tell me if I asked. I’d walked into St. Sophia’s thinking I was beginning day one of my two-year separation from the people who meant more to me than anyone else in the world—two people who’d been honest with me, even if we hadn’t always gotten along. (I was a teenager, after all.) But now I had to wonder. I had to look back over my life and decide whether everything I knew, everything I believed to be true about my mother and father, was a lie.

Or maybe Foley was wrong. Maybe she’d confused my parents for someone else’s parents.

Parker wasn’t such an unusual name. Or maybe she’d known my parents before I was born, at a time when they’d had different careers.

The biggest question of all, though, didn’t have anything to do with my parents. It was aboutme . Why did Foley’s questions bother me so much?Scare me so much? Why did I put so much stock in what she had to say? Foley’s words had struck a nerve, but why? Did I have my own doubts?

I kept replaying the memories, going over the details of my visits to the college, conversations with my parents, the conversation with Foley, to milk them of every detail.

I didn’t reach any conclusions, but the thought process kept me quiet as Scout lay on the floor of the common room with her iPod and theVogue from the coffee table, and I lay on the couch with an arm behind my head, staring at the plaster ceiling.

When her cell phone buzzed, Scout reached up and grabbed it, then mumbled something about exercise. I waved off the excuse.

“I know,” I told her. “Just do what you need to do.”

Without explanation, she packed her gear—or whatever was in her skull-and-crossbones messenger bag—and left the suite. Since I was going to do us both a favor by not spying, I decided I was in for the night. I went back to my room, and grabbed a sketch pad and a couple of pencils. I hadn’t done much drawing since I’d gotten to Chicago, and it was time to get to work,

especially if I was going to start studio classes soon.

Studio was going to be a change, though. I usually drew from my imagination, even if Foley hadn’t been impressed. No fruit bowls. No flowerpots. No portraits of fusty men in suits. And as far as drawing from the imagination went, the Scout Green mystery made for pretty good subject matter. My pencil flew across the nubby paper as I sketched out the ogre I’d imagined behind the door.

The hallway door opened so quickly, and with such a cacophony of chirping that I nearly ripped a hole in the paper with the tip of my pencil. The brat pack rushed into the suite, a girly storm of motion and noise. Thinking there was no need to make things worse for me or Scout, I flipped my sketchbook closed and stuffed it under my pillow.

Veronica followed Amie, Mary Katherine behind them, a glossy, white shoe box in her hands.

“Oh,” M.K. said, her expression falling from devilishness to irritation as she met my gaze through my bedroom doorway. “What are you doing here?”

Amie rolled her eyes. “She lives here?”

“So she does,” Veronica said with a sly smile, perching herself in the threshold. “M.K. tells us you met with Foley today.”

M.K. was a talker, apparently. “Yep,” I said. “I did.”

Veronica crossed her arms over her untucked oxford and tie as Mary Katherine and Amie moved to stand behind her, knights guarding the queen. “The thing is, Foley never talks to students.”

“Is that so?”

“That is very much so,” she said. “So we were all interested to hear that you’d been invited into the inner sanctum.”

“Did you learn anything interesting?” Mary Katherine asked with a snicker.

Out of some sarcastic instinct, I almost spilled, almost threw out a summary of how five minutes in Foley’s office had made me doubt nearly sixteen years of personal experience and had made me question my parents, my family, a lifetime of memories. But I kept it in. I wasn’t comfortable with these three having that kind of information about me or my fears. It was just the kind of weakness they’d exploit.

I was surprised, though, to learn that Mary Katherine hadn’t simply listened at Foley’s door.

That also seemed like the kind of situation she’d exploit.

“Not really,” I finally answered. “Foley was just checking in. Since I’m new, I mean,” I added at M.K.’s raised brows. “She wanted to see if I was adjusting okay.”

M.K.’s brows fell, her lips forming a pout. “Oh,” she said. “Whatever, then.” Her hunt for drama unsuccessful, she uncrossed her arms and headed toward Amie’s room. Amie followed,

but Veronica stayed behind.

“Well,” she said, “are you coming, or what? We haven’t got all day.”

It took me nearly a minute to figure out that she was talking to me.

“Am I coming?”

She rolled her eyes, then turned on her heel. “Come on,” she said, then beckoned me forward. I blinked, but ever curious, uncrossed my legs, hopped down off the bed, and followed. She walked to the open door of Amie’s room and stood there for a moment, apparently inviting me inside.

I had no cluewhy she was asking me inside, and I was just nosy enough to wonder what she was up to. That was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

“Sure,” I said, then joined Veronica at the threshold. When she bobbed her head toward the interior of the room, I ventured inside and got my first look . . . at the room that pink threw up on.

Honestly—it looked like a Barbie factory exploded. There was pink everywhere, from the walls to the carpet to the bedspread and pillowcases. I practically had to squint against the glare.

On the other hand, thestuff in the room was choice: flat-screen TV; top- of-the-line laptop; fancy speaker system with an iPod port; thick, quilted duvet. I mean, sure it was all covered in kill-me-

now pink, but I could appreciate quality.

“Nice room,” I half lied, as Veronica shut the door behind me. Mary Katherine was already on Amie’s bed, one leg crossed over the other and the glossy shoe box on her lap. Amie was in a sleek, clear plastic chair in front of a desk made of the same clear plastic. “Why, exactly, is she here?” Mary Katherine asked.

Veronica gave me an appraising look. “We’re going to see how cool she is.”

When Mary Katherine stroked the sides of the shoe box, I assumed my field trip into the Kingdom of Pink and the coolness test were related to whatever was in the shoe box in Mary Katherine’s lap . . . or my reaction to it.

“How do we know she’s not a Little Mary Tattletale?” Mary Katherine asked.

“Oh, come on, M.K. Lily’s from New York. She’s hip.” Veronica arched a challenging eyebrow. “Aren’t you?”

I was from Sagamore,not New York, but I was too busy contemplating the first-degree peer pressure to bother correcting her. But since the surprise invitation was a mystery that would be solved when M.K. flipped the lid off the shoe box, I figured I’d go for it. I wasn’t getting a whole lot of closure on mysteries these days.

“I’m wicked hip,” I agreed, my voice wicked dry.

“Are you ready?” Veronica asked, as Mary Katherine slipped her fingers beneath the lip of the shoe box.

“Sure,” I said.

I’m not sure what I expected for all the buildup. Mind-altering substances? Diamonds? Stolen electronics? Weapons-grade plutonium? Or, if they’d been teenage boys, fireworks and nudie magazines?

It wasn’t quite that dramatic.

With her girls—and me—around her, Mary Katherine lifted the lid. It was filled with candy, diet soda, back issues ofCosmo , energy drinks and clove cigarettes. It was like a supermodel’s necessities kit.

“Well?” M.K. prompted. “Pretty sweet, huh?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again with a snap. Surely they weren’t so sheltered that issues ofCosmo —which were probably available at every drugstore, bodega, and grocery store in the United States—were contraband. Still, I was a guest in enemy territory. Now was not the time for insults. “There’s definitely . . . all sorts of stuff in there.”

Veronica reached in and grabbed a box of candy cigarettes, then pulled out a stick of white candy. “We have friends who bring it in,” she said, nipping a bit off the end.

“And Mary Katherine’s parents practically make shipments,” Amie added, disapproval ringing in her voice.

M.K. rolled her eyes. “Weneed it,” she said. “St. Sophia’s is all about health and vigor, organic and free-range and vitamin-enhanced. Weaknesses like these don’t figure into that. And if Foley ever found this stuff in our room, we’d be toast.” She gave me an appraising glance. “So—can you keep your mouth shut?”

My gaze on a small bag of black licorice—my greatest weakness—I nodded. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

Mary Katherine snorted and, seeing the direction of my gaze, reached over, grabbed the packet of licorice Scotties, and tossed it to me. I pulled it open—not even pausing to question why she was offering me candy—and began to nibble the head off a tiny, chewy dog.

Veronica looked at her BFFs, then slid a glance my way, her eyes bright with promise. “You know, Parker, we don’t keep all of Mary Katherine’s stash up here, just in case Foley decides to start doing room checks again. The rest of it is in our little hidey-hole. We call it our treasure chest. We were going there, you know, to replenish our stack.” She glanced back at Mary Katherine. “M.K.’s almost out of Tab.”

When Veronica looked at me again, her gaze was cool . . . and calculating. “You can go with us if you want. Share in the bounty.”

I’d have been stupid not to be suspicious. The stash these trendy big-city girls played at being so excited about wasn’t really that exciting. More important, they were being unusually nice. While I guessed it was possible they were still making some kind of misguided attempt to steer me toward “better” pals, it seemed more likely that something more nefarious was on their agenda.

But they weren’t the only ones with secret plans. Foley had nearly ripped the rug out from under me earlier today; this was my chance to retake control, to take charge, toact .

“Where, exactly, is this stash?” I looked at Amie, thinking she offered the best chance to get an honest answer.

“Downstairs,” she said. “Basement.”

And we have a winner, I thought. A trip downstairs would get me one step closer to figuring out what Scout was involved in—and what else was going on at St. Sophia’s School for Girls.

I nodded at the group. “I’m in. Let’s go treasure hunting.”

We were armed with pink flashlights, Amie having produced the set of them from a bottom-

drawer stash. I also saw a set of pink tools, a pink first aid kit, and some pink batteries in there.

Amie was apparently the prepared (and single-minded) type.

I was also armed with a pretty good dose of skepticism at their motives. I assumed the brat pack was leading me into trouble, that the “treasure” at the end of our hunt was a prank with my name on it. Given the strong possibility that I’d have to make a run for it, I was glad I’d worn boots. I figured they offered at least a little more traction than the flip- flops, and they’d probably pack a bigger wallop, if it came to that.

Scout was still gone when we left the suite, three brat packers and one hanger- on, Veronica in the lead. It was nearly ten p.m., and the hallways were silent and empty as we followed the same route I’d taken behind Scout two days ago—down the stairs to the first floor, back through the long, main corridor to the Great Hall, then through the Great Hall and into the main building. But instead of stopping at the door Scout had taken, we took a left into the administrative corridor I’d taken with M.K. earlier in the day.

We hadn’t yet turned on our flashlights, so I’m not entirely sure why we had them. But when footsteps suddenly echoed through the hall, I was glad we hadn’t turned them on. Veronica held out a hand, and we all stopped behind her. She turned, excitement in her eyes, and motioned us back with a hand. We tiptoed back a few steps, then crowded into one of the semicircular alcoves in the hallway. I gnawed my lip as I tried to control my breathing, sure that the thundering beat of my heart was echoing through the hallway for all to hear.

After what felt like an hour, the sound of footfalls faded as the person—probably one of the clipboard-bearing dragon ladies—moved off in the other direction.

Veronica peeked out of the nook, one hand behind her to hold us back while she surveyed the path.

“Okay,” she finally whispered, and we set off again—Veronica, then Mary Katherine, Amie,

and I. I couldn’t help but glance behind us as we moved, but the hall was empty except for the cavernous silence we left in our wake, and the moonlight-dappled limestone floor.

We continued down the administrative hallway, but before we got as far as Foley’s office, we turned down a side corridor that dead-ended in a set of limestone stairs. The air got colder as we descended to the basement, which didn’t help the feeling that we were heading toward something unpleasant. We probablywere headed toward the nasty that had been chasing Scout, but I couldn’t imagine the brat pack had any clue what lurked in the corridors beneath their fancy school. If they had known, they surely would have tortured Scout about it. They seemed like the type.

“Almost there,” Veronica whispered as we reached the bottom of the staircase. True to St.

Sophia’s form, we entered another limestone hallway. I’d heard about buildings that contained secret catacombs, but I wondered why the nuns had bothered building out the labyrinthine basement of the convent—a task they’d taken on without trucks, cranes, or forklifts.

“Here we are,” Veronica finally said as we stopped before a simple, wooden door. The word CUSTODIAN was written in gold capitals across it, just like the letters on Foley’s office.

I arched an eyebrow at the door. “We’re going into the janitorial closet?”

Without bothering to answer, Mary Katherine and Veronica fiddled with the brass doorknob,

then opened the door with a click.

“Check it,” Veronica said, grinning as she held the door open.

I walked inside, and my jaw dropped at the scene before me.

The room was a giant limestone vault, completely empty but for one thing—it held an entire,

little Chicago, a scale model of the city. From a two-foot-high Sears Tower and its two gleaming points (which even I could recognize), to the Chicago River, to the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. All in miniature, all exactingly detailed, laid out across the floor of the giant room by someone who clearly loved Chicago—someone whoknew Chicago.

“Who did this?” I asked.

“No clue,” Veronica said. “It’s been here as long as we’ve been here. Pretty sweet, huh?”

“Very,” I muttered, eyes wide as I walked the empty perimeter of the limestone room, just taking it all in.

The model was almost totally devoid of color—the buildings and landscape rendered in various shades of thin, gray cardboard—but for symbols that were stamped on a few points across the city. In navy blue was a symbol that looked like four circles stuck together, or a really curvy plus sign. In apple green was a circle enclosing a capitalY .

Markers, I thought, pointing out the locations of two kinds ofsomething across the city.

I moved into the middle of Lake Michigan—an empty space across the floor—and peered between the buildings, looking for St. Sophia’s. When I found East Erie, I realized there were two symbols nearby: the four-circle thing on Michigan Avenue and, more interesting, the enclosedY only a couple of blocks from St. Sophia’s. “What do the symbols mean?” I asked.

I got only silence in response.

I glanced up and looked behind me just in time to watch them shut the door, and just in time to hear the lock tumblers click into place. I hurdled Navy Pier, ran to the door, gripped the doorknob in both hands, and pulled.

Nothing.

I shook it, tried to turn it, pulled again.

Still nothing, not even a knob to unlock the door from the inside. Just a brass keyhole.

“Hello?” I yelled, then beat my fist against the door. “Veronica? Amie? Mary Katherine? I’m still in here!”

I added that last part in the off chance they were somehow unaware that they’d locked me into a room in the basement of the school; in case they’d forgotten that the four of us had traveled the halls of St. Sophia’s to get to this underground room, but only three were headed back up.

But it wasn’t an accident, of course, and the only answer I got back was giggling, which I could hear echoing down the hallway.

“Way mature!” I yelled out, then muttered a curse, mostly at my own stupidity.

Of course there was no candy, no Tab, no hidden cigarettes, or black-market energy drinks down here. There was a treasure—the brat pack had stumbled upon something, a hidden room that contained an intricate scale model of the city. But they’d probably missed the point, being only interested in how to use the room to prank me—how to punk me.

I kicked a foot against the door, which did nothing but vibrate pain up through my foot. Turned out, even my favorite boots didn’t provide much more insulation than flip- flops. I braced one arm against the door and rubbed my foot with my free hand, berating myself for following them into the room.

Traipsing around the school was one thing; I’d done that already. But being locked in a custodial closet in the all-but-abandoned basement of a private school was something else. My love of exploration notwithstanding, I knew better.

When my foot finally stopped throbbing, I stood up again. For better or worse, I was stuck down here, in a hidden room that was probably a little too close to whatever lurked behind the metal door. It was time for action.

One hand around my pink flashlight, the other on my hip, I took a look around. Unfortunately,

the obvious exit wasn’t an option. The door was locked from the outside, and I didn’t have a key.

“Hold that thought,” I muttered, put my flashlight on the floor. This was an old building, and I had a skeleton key. I pulled the ribboned room key off my head.

“Come on, Irene,” I said. Two fingers crossed for good luck, I slipped the key into the lock.

The tumblers didn’t budge.

I muttered out another curse, then pulled back the key and slipped the ribbon over my head again. I slid my gaze to the flashlight on the floor and considered, for a minute, pummeling the lock with it, but God only knew how long I’d be down here. Sacrificing the flashlight probably wasn’t the brightest idea (ha!).

I stepped back and surveyed the door. Like the doors in the main building, this one was an old-

fashioned panel of thin wood, attached to the jamb by two brass hinges. The pins in the hinges were pretty big, so I figured I could try to pull them out, unhinge the door, and squeeze through the crack, but I really didn’t like the thought of ending up in Foley’s office again, this time for destruction of St. Sophia’s property. There was no doubt the brat pack would tell her who was responsible, and I guessed that was the kind of thing she’d put in my permanent record.

All that in mind, I put “taking the door apart” at the bottom of my mental list and glanced back at the rest of the room, looking for another way. What about a secret door? Since Foley had one,

it didn’t seem far- fetched that I’d find one in a secret, locked basement room. I walked the perimeter of the room, pressing my palms against the limestone tiles as I walked, hoping to find some kind of trigger mechanism.

I made two passes.

I found nothing.

Just as I was about to give up on an escape route that didn’t involve dismantling the door,

something occurred to me. The model had obviously taken a lot of work, a lot of craftsmanship,

with all those tiny buildings, all that architecture. And that meant someone spent a lot of time in here. A lot ofhours in here.

But the door was locked from the outside, so what if the architects got locked in while they were whiling away the hours on their obsessively detailed project? Wouldn’t they need another way out? Surely they—or he or she or whoever—had their own escape route. I must have missed something.

I was on the far side of the room when I saw it—when I noticed the glint of light, the reflection,

on the eastern edge of the city. I cocked my head at it, realizing the glint was coming from the two spires on the Sears Tower.

I moved closer.

The spires were metal, which was weird because they were the only metal in the tiny city.

Everything else was rendered in that same, gray paperboard.

“Interesting,” I mumbled, and kneeled down in what I assumed was a branch of the Chicago River. I reached out and carefully, oh so carefully, tugged at a spire.

It didn’t budge.

“Come on,” I said, and reached for the second. I grasped the end, wiggled, and felt it begin to slide free of the cardboard. One tug, then another, just enough to pull the metal through, but not hard enough to tear the roof from the building.

It finally slid free. I held it up to the light.

It was a key.

“Oh,rock on ,” I said with a grin, then rose from the lake. It may not have been a huge victory—

and I wasn’t even sure the key would work in the lock—but it sure felt like one. A victory for the architect who’d been locked in, and a victory for me. And more important, a loss for the brat pack.

I walked along the river until I reached the lake, then turned for the door, where I slipped the key into the lock and turned.

The lock flipped open.

I’m not embarrassed to say that I did a little dance of happiness, yellow boots and all.

Thinking the next person who was locked into the room might need the key, I pulled it from the lock and returned it to its home in the Sears Tower. I glanced across the city, making a mental note to tell Scout about the model in case she hadn’t already seen it. I had a suspicion the symbols on the buildings were related to whatever she was doing, and whatever “litter” she and her friends were battling against.

And speaking of battling, it was time to consider my next step.

Option one involved my returning to the suite to face down Veronica et al. They’d gloat about locking me in; I’d gloat about getting out. Not exactly my idea of a thrilling Thursday night.

Option two was a little riskier. I’d joined the brat pack in their trip to the basement on the off chance they might lead me somewhere interesting. Success on that one, I think.

Now that they’d returned to the Kingdom of Pink, I had the chance to do a little exploring of my own. So, for the second time in a single night, I opted for danger. I’d managed to finagle my way out of a locked room, so I figured luck was on my side.

I took a final look at the city and pulled the door closed behind me.

“Good night, Chicago,” I whispered.

Maybe not surprising, the hallway was empty when I emerged from the custodian’s closet, the brat pack nowhere to be seen. They were probably celebrating their victory somewhere. Little did they know. . .

The corridor split into two branches—one that led back to the stairs and the first floor, and one that probably led deeper into the basement. My decision to play Nancy Drew already made, I took the road not yet traveled.

I moved slowly, one shoulder nearly against the wall, trying to make myself as invisible as possible. The hallway dead-ended in a T-shaped corridor; I headed for it. This part of the basement was well lit, so I kept the flashlight off, but gripped it with such force, my palm was actually sweating. I was still in the basement, still close to whatever nasties Scout had locked behind the big metal door. That meant I needed to be on my guard.

I made it to the dead end without incident, then glanced down the left- and right-hand corridors.

Both were empty, and I had no clue where I was relative to the rest of the building. Worse, both hallways were long and dark. There were no overhead lights and no wall sconces—just darkness.

Not the best of choices. I didn’t have a coin to flip or a Magic 8-Ball to ask, so I went with the only other respectable method of making a decision as important at this one.

Unfortunately, I’d only made it through “eeny meeny miney mo” when the ground began to rumble beneath my feet. I was thrown forward into the crux of the hallway, and had to brace myself against the limestone wall to stay upright as the floor vibrated beneath me.

But just as suddenly as it had begun, the rumbling stopped. My palm still flat against the limestone bricks, heart pounding in my chest, I looked up at the ceiling above me as I waited for screaming and footfalls and other telltale signs of the aftermath of the Earthquake That Ate Chicago.

There was only silence.

I snapped my gaze to the left as hurried footsteps echoed toward me from that end of the hallway and tried to swallow down the panic.

I flicked on my flashlight and swung the beam into the dark, the arc of light barely penetrating the blackness, even as I squinted to get a better look.

And then I saw them—Scout and Jason behind her, both in uniform, both running toward me as if they were running for their lives. I dropped the beam of the flashlight to the floor to keep from blinding them, afraid that’s exactly what was happening.

“Scout?” I called out, but fear had frozen my throat. I tried again, and this time managed some sound. “Scout!”

They were still far away—the corridor was a deep one—but they were running at sprinter speed . . . and there was something behind them.

It almost didn’t surprise me to see that they were being chased. After all, I’d already helped Scout try to escape fromsomething . But I’m not sure what I expected to see chasing her.

As they drew closer, I realized that behind them was the blonde we’d seen outside the pillar garden on Monday—the girl with the hoodie who had watched us from the street. She ran full-

bore behind Scout and Jason. But even as she sprinted through the corridor, her expression was somehow vacant, a strange gleam in her eyes the only real sign of life. Her hair was long and wavy, and it flew out behind her as she ran, arms pumping, toward us.

Suddenly she pulled back her hand, then shot if forward, as if to throw something at the two of them. The air and ground rumbled, and this time, the rumble was strong enough to knock me off my feet. I hit the ground on my knees, palms extended.

By the time I glanced up again, Scout and Jason were only feet in front of me. That meant the blond girl was only a few yards behind. I saw the look of horror on Scout’s face. “Get up, Lily!”

she implored.“Run!”

I muttered a curse that would have made a string of sailors blush, and ignoring the bruises blossoming on my knees, jumped to my feet and did as I was ordered. The three of us took off down the hallway, presumably for a safer place.

We ran through one corridor, then another, then another, heading in the opposite direction of the path I’d taken with the brat pack—probably a good thing, since there was no giant metal door in that part of the convent to keep them out.

To keepher out.

Whatever juju the blonde used before, she used again, the ground rumbling beneath our feet. I don’t know how she managed it, how she managed to make the earth—and all the limestone above it—move, but she did it sure enough. We all stumbled, but Scout reached out a hand and grabbed at the wall to keep her balance, and Jason caught Scout’s elbow. I caught limestone, the stones rushing toward my face as she knocked me off my feet again. I braced myself on my hands, the pads of my hands burning as I hit the floor.

They were on their feet again and yards ahead before they realized I wasn’t with them.

“Lily!” Scout screamed, but I was already looking behind me, watching the blonde. The earthquake- maker just stood there, and I figured if I was already on the floor, there wasn’t much else she could do to me.

Of course, that didn’t mean the guy who stepped out from behind her couldn’t do damage. He was older than she was—college, maybe. Curly dark hair, broad shoulders, and blue eyes that gleamed with a creepy intensity. With a hunger. And all that hunger and intensity was directed at me.

I swallowed down fear and panic and tried to make my brain work, tried to make my arms and legs push me up from the floor, but I was suddenly puppy-clumsy, unable to order my limbs to function.

The boy stepped beside the blonde, muttered something, and just as she had done, whipped his hand in my direction.

The air pressure in the room changed, and something flew my way, something he’d created with that flick of his hand. It looked like a contact lens of hazy, green smoke, but it wasn’t really smoke. It wasn’t really athing . It was more like the very air in the room had warped.

Still on the floor—only a second or two having passed since I fell to the ground, time slowing in the midst of my panic—I stared, eyes wide, mouth open in shock as it moved toward me.

Nothing in my life in Sagamore, or my week in Chicago, had prepared me for . . . whatever it was. And whatever it was, it was about to make contact.

They say there are moments in your life when time slows down, when you can see your fate rushing toward you. This was one of those times. I had a second to react, which wasn’t enough time to move out of the way, so I turned my back on it. That warp of air slammed into me with the force of a freight train, pushing the air from my lungs. It arced across my body like alien fire,

like a living thing that tunneled into my spine, through my torso, across my limbs.

“Lily!” Scout screamed.

The floor rumbled beneath me again, and I heard a growl, a roar, like the scream of an angry animal. I heard shuffling, the sounds of fighting, but I could do nothing but lie there, my body spasming as pain and fire and heat raced through my limbs. I blinked at the colors that danced before my eyes, the world—or the portions of the floor and room that I could see from my sprawled-out position on the floor—covered by a green haze.

I must have passed out, because when I lifted my eyelids again, I was in the air, cradled by strong arms. I looked up and found bright eyes, eyes the same blue as a spring prairie sky, staring back at me.

“Jason?” I asked, my voice sounding hollow and distant.

“Hold on, Lily,” he said. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

The world went black.

I woke blinking, my eyes squinted against the sunlight that streamed through the wall of windows on my left, and bounced off white walls on the other three sides of the room I was in. I looked down. I was on a high bed, my legs covered by a white sheet and thin blanket, the rest of me wrapped in one of those nubby, printed hospital gowns.

“You’re awake.”

I lifted my gaze. Scout sat in a plastic chair across from my bed, a thick leather book in her hands. She was in uniform, but she’d covered her button-up oxford shirt with a cardigan.

“Where am I?” I asked her, shading my eyes with a hand.

“LaSalle Street Clinic,” she said. “A few blocks from the school. You’ve been sleeping for twelve hours. The doctor was in a few minutes ago. She said you didn’t have a concussion or anything; they just brought you in since you passed out.”

I nodded and motioned toward the windows. “Can you do something about the light?”

“Sure.” She put aside the book and stood up, then walked to the wall of windows and fidgeted with the cord until the blinds came together, and the room darkened. When she was done, she turned and looked at me, arms crossed over her chest. “How are you feeling?”

I did a quick assessment. Nothing felt broken, but I had a killer headache and I was pretty sore —as if I’d taken a couple of good falls onto unforgiving limestone. “Groggy, mostly. My head hurts. And my back.”

Scout nodded. “You were hit pretty hard.” She walked to the bed and hitched one hip onto it.

“I’d say that I’m sorry you got dragged into this but, first things first, why, exactly, were you in the basement?”

There was an unspoken question in her tone:Were you following me again?

“The brat pack went down there. I was invited along.”

Scout went pale. “The brat pack? They were in the basement?”

I nodded. “They fed me a story about a stash of contraband stuff, but it was just a prank. They locked me in the model room.”

“The model room?”

I drew a square with my fingers. “The secret custodian’s closet that contains a perfect-scale model of the city? I’m guessing you know what I’m talking about here.”

“Oh. That.”

“Yeah. Look, I was patient about the midnight disappearances, the secret basement stuff, but”—

I twirled a finger at the hospital room around us—“the time has come to start talking.”

After a minute of consideration, she nodded. “You’re right. You were hit with firespell.”

For a few seconds, I just looked at her. It took me that long to realize that she’d actually given me a straight answer, even if I had no idea what she’d meant. “A what?”

“Firespell. The name, I know, totally medieval. Actually, so is firespell itself, we think. But that’s really a magical archaeology issue, and we don’t need to get into that now. Firespell,” she repeated. “That’s what hit you. That green contact-lens-looking deal. It was a spell, thrown by Sebastian Born. Pretty face, evil disposition.”

I just stared blankly back at her. “Firespell.”

“It’s going to take time to explain everything.”

I hitched a thumb at the monitor and IV rack that stood next to my bed. “I think my calendar is pretty free at the moment.”

Scout’s expression fell, her usual sarcasm replaced by something sadder and more fearful. There was worry in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Lil. I was so scared—I thought you were gone for a minute.”

I nodded, not quite ready to forgive her yet. “I’m okay,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I meant it.

Scout nodded, but blinked back tears, then bobbed her head toward the table beside my bed.

“Your parents called. I guess Foley told them you were here? I told them you were okay—that you fell down the stairs. I couldn’t—I wasn’t sure what to tell them.”

“Me, either,” I muttered, and plucked the phone from the nightstand. They’d left me a voice mail, which I’d check later, and a couple of text messages. I opened the phone and dialed my mom’s number. She answered almost immediately through a crackling, staticky connection.

“Lily? Lily?” she asked, her voice a little too loud. There was fear in her tone. Worry.

“Hi, Mom. I’m okay. I just wanted to call.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, relief in her voice. “She’s okay, Mark,” she said, her voice softer now as she reassured my father, who was apparently beside her. “She’s fine. Lily, what happened?

God, we were so worried—Marceline called and said you’d taken a fall?”

I opened and closed my mouth, completely at a loss about how I was supposed to deal with the fact that I now had proof my Mom was on a first name basis with Foley—not to mention Foley’s perspective on my parents’ careers—so I asked the most basic question I could think of. “You know Foley? Ms. Foley, I mean?”

There was a weird pause, just before a crackle of static rumbled through the phone. I pressed my palm against my other ear. “Mom? You’re cutting out. I can’t hear you.”

“Sorry—we’re on the road. Yes, we’re—yes. We know Marceline.”Crackle . “—you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said again. “I’m awake and I feel fine. I just—slipped. Why don’t you call me later?”

That time, I only heard “traveling” and “hotel” before the connection went dead. I stared at the phone for a few seconds before flipping it shut again.

“I just lied to my parents,” I snottily said when I’d returned the phone to the table. I heard the petulance in my voice, but given my surroundings, I thought I deserved it.

Scout opened her mouth to respond but before she could get words out, a knock sounded at the door. Scout met my gaze, but shrugged.

“Come in?” I said.

The door opened a crack, and Jason peeked through.

“My, my,” Scout murmured, winging up eyebrows at me. I sent her a withering look before Jason opened the door fully and stepped inside. He was out of his Montclare Academy duds today, and was dressed casually in jeans and a navy zip-up sweater. I knew this was neither the time nor the place, but the navy did amazing things for his eyes. On one shoulder was the strap of a backpack, and in his hand was a slim vase that held a single, puffy flower—a peony, maybe.

The flower and backpack weren’t Jason’s only accessories. When Michael appeared behind him,

I gave Scout the same winged-up eyebrows she’d given me. A blush began to fan across her cheeks.

“Just wanted to see how you were feeling,” Jason said, closing the door once he and Michael were in the room. He dropped his backpack on a second plastic chair, then extended his arm, a smile on his face. “And we brought you a flower.”

“Thanks,” I said, self-consciously touching a hand to my hair. I couldn’t imagine that anything up there looked pretty after twelve hours of unconsciousness. Scout reached out to take the vase,

then placed it atop a bureau next to a glass container of white tulips.

I pointed at the arrangement. “Where’d those come from?”

“Huh?” Scout asked, then seemed to realize the tulips were there. “Oh. Right. Let’s see.” She pulled out the card, frowned, then glanced back at me. “It just says, ‘Board of Trustees.’ ”

“That was surprisingly thoughtful,” I mumbled, thinking Foley must have given them a call.

“Garcia didn’t want to study,” Jason said, “so we thought we’d amble over.”

Scout arched a brow at Michael. “Does Garcia ever want to study?”

“I have my moments, Green,” he said, then moved toward the bed. When he reached me, he picked up my hand and squeezed it. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I was hit by a freight train.”

“Understandable,” Jason said behind him, and Michael nodded in agreement.

“Scout was just about to explain to me exactly what’s going on beneath Chicago.” Jason and Michael both snapped their gaze to Scout. I guessed they had mixed feelings about her confession. She waved cheekily.

“But now that the full club has convened,” I continued, linking my hands in my lap, “you can decide amongst yourselves who wants to do the explaining. Blue eyes? Brown eyes?” I glanced over at Scout. “Instigator?”

“I am sonot an instigator,” Scout said. “I was the one being chased, if you’ll recall, not doing the chasing.”

“Instigator,” Michael said with a grin. “I like that.”

When Scout stuck her tongue out at him, he winked back at her. Her blush flared up again. I bit back a smile.

“All right,” Jason said. “You got dragged into the conflict, so you deserve some answers. What do you want to know?”

“Scout already said I was hit by firespell,” I said, “and I’ve figured out some of the rest of it.

You three are in cahoots and you roam around under the convent and battle bad guys who make earthquakes and shoot fire from their hands.”

Silence.

“That’s not bad, actually,” Scout finally said.

Michael cocked his head at me. “How are you feeling about the earthquakes-and-shooting-fire part of that?”

I frowned down at the thin hospital sheet, then picked at a pill in the fabric. It was probably time for me to give some thought to whatever it was I’d been dragged into—or, maybe more accurately, that I’dfallen into.

“I’m not sure,” I said after a minute. “I mean, I’m not really in a position to doubt the earthquakes-and-shooting-fire part. I’ve felt the earthquakes, felt the fire. It hurt,” I emphasized.

The memory of that burning heat made my shoulders tense, and I rolled them out to relieve the tension.

“I’m alive,” I said, glancing up at them, “which I guess isn’t something I can really take for granted right now. But beyond that, I haven’t really had time to think much about it. To process it, if that makes sense.”

I glanced up at Scout. Her expression had fallen, and she nibbled the edge of her lip. There was fear in her face, maybe apology, as well. It was the insecurity that comes from knowing that someone you’d brought into your life could disappear again, leaving you alone.

“It makes sense,” she quietly said. Her words were a statement, but there was a question in her tone:Is this it for us? For our friendship?

Scout and I looked at each other for a few seconds, and in the time that elapsed during that glance, something happened—I realized I’d been given an opportunity to become part of a new kind of family; an opportunity to trust someone, to take a chance on someone. My parents may have been four thousand miles away, but I’d gained a new best friend. And that was something.

That was the kind of thing you held on to.

“Well then,” I said, my gaze on hers, “I suppose you’d better fill me in.”

It took her a moment to react, to realize what I’d said, to realize that I was committing to being a part of whatever it was they were really, truly involved in. And when she realized it, her face lit up.

But before we could get too cozy, Jason spoke up.

“Before you tell her more than she already knows,” he said, “you need to think about what you’re doing. She was underground for only a little while. That means there’s a chance they won’t recognize her. We can all go about our business, and there’s no need for them to know she exists.”

He crossed his arms and frowned. “But if you bring her into it, she becomes part of the conflict.

Not a JV member, sure, but part of the community. You’ll put her on the radar, and they’ll mark her as a supporter of the enclave. She may become a target. If you tell her more, she’s in this. For better or worse, she’s in it.”

I was okay with “for better or worse.” It was “till death do us part” that I wasn’t really excited about.

“Look around,” Scout quietly said, her gaze on me. “She’s in the hospital wearing a paper nightgown. She has a tube in her arm.” She shifted her gaze to Jason, and there was impatience there. “She’s already in this.”

As if she’d made the decision, Scout half jumped onto the bed and arranged herself to sit on the edge. As she moved around, Michael and Jason took a step backward to get out of her way,

exchanging a quiet glance as they waited for her to begin.

“Unicorns,” she said.

There was silence in the room for a few seconds. “Unicorns,” I repeated.

She bobbed her head. “Unicorns.”

I just blinked. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with that.”

“Aha,” she said, a finger in the air. “You didn’t expect me to start with that, did you? But,

seriously, unicorns. Imagine yourself in medieval Europe. You’ve got horses, oxen, assorted beasts of burden. Times are dark, dirty, generally impoverished.”

Jason leaned toward Michael. “Is this going somewhere?”

“Not a clue,” Michael said. “This is the first time I’ve heard this speech.”

“Zip it, Garcia. Okay, so dark, dirty, lots of peasants, things are dreary. All of a sudden, a maiden walks into a field or some such thing, and she expects to see a horse there. But instead,

there’s a unicorn. Horn, white mane, magical glow, the whole bit.”

She stopped talking, then looked at me expectantly.

“I’m sorry, Scout, but if that was supposed to be a metaphor or something, I got nothin’.”

“Seconded,” Michael added.

Scout leaned forward a little, and when she continued, her voice was quieter, more solemn.

“Think about what I said. What if, all of a sudden, every once in a while, it wasn’t just another horse in the field? What if it really was a unicorn?”

“Ohhh,” Jason said. “Got it.”

“Yep,” Michael agreed.

“There are people in the world,” Scout said, “like those unicorns in the field. They’re unique.

They’re rare.” She paused and glanced up at me, her expression solemn. “And they’re gifted.

With magic.”

Okay, I guess with all the unicorn talk, I probably should have seen that coming. Still, I had to blink a few times after she laid that little egg.

“Magic,” I finally repeated.

“Magical powers of every shape and size,” she said. “I can see the doubt in your eyes, but you’ve seen it. You’ve felt it.” She bobbed her head toward my IV. “You have firsthand experience it exists, even if you don’t know the what or the why.”

I frowned. “Okay, earthquakes and fire and whatnot, but magic?”

Jason leaned forward a little. “You can have a little time to get used to the idea,” he said. “But in the meantime, you might want to have her move along with the explanation. She’s got quite a bit to get through yet.” He smiled warmly, and my heart fluttered, circumstances notwithstanding.

“You must be a real hit with the ladies, Shepherd, with all that charm.” Scout’s tone was dry as toast. I bit back a grin, at least until she looked back at me again. She gave me a withering expression, the kind of raised-eyebrow look you might see on a teacher who’d caught you passing notes in class.

“Please,” I said, waving an invitational hand. “Continue.”

“Okay,” she said, holding up her hands for emphasis, “so there’s a wee percentage of the population that has magic.”

“What kind of magic? Is it all earthquakes and air-pressure-contact-lenses and whatnot?”

“There’s a little bit of everything. There are classes of powers, different kinds of skills.

Elemental powers—that’s fire and water and wind. Spells and incantations—” One of the puzzle pieces fell into place.

“That’s you,” I exclaimed, thinking of the books in Scout’s room. Recipe books.Spell books.

“You can do spells?”

“Of a sort,” she blandly said, as if I’d only asked if she had a nose ring. “They call me a spellbinder.”

I glanced over at Jason and Michael, but they just shook their heads. “This is your field trip. You can get to us later,” Michael said, then glanced at Scout. “Keep going.”

“Anyway,” Scout said, “the power usually appears around puberty. At the beginning of the transition to adulthood.”

“Boobsand earthquakes?” I asked. “That’s quite a change.”

“Seriously,” she agreed with a nod. “It’s pretty freaky. You wake up one morning andboom — you’re sporting B cups and the mystical ability to manipulate matter or cast spells or battle Reapers for dominion over Chicago.Gossip Girl has nothing on us.”

I just stared at her for a minute, trying to imagine exactly what that life would have been like.

Not just the part about waking up with B cups—although that would be a pretty big adjustment. I glanced down at my chest. Not a horrible adjustment, I guessed, but nonetheless . . .

“You still with us?” Scout asked.

I glanced up quickly, a flush rising on my cheeks. She grinned cheekily. “I’ve thought the same thing,” she said with a wink.

“Before you two get too friendly,” Michael said, “tell her the catch.”

“There’s a catch?” I asked.

“Isn’t there always?” she asked dryly. “The thing is, the magic isn’t eternal. It doesn’t last forever, at least, not without a price. When we’re young—teens, twenties—the magic makes us stronger. It works in conjunction with our bodies, our minds, our souls. When we’re young, it’s like an extra sense or an extra way to understand the world, an extra way to manipulate it. We have access to something humans forgot about after the witch trials scared it out of everyone,

after fear made everyone forget about the gift.”

“And when you get older?”

“The power comes at a cost,” Jason said. “And our position is, the cost is pretty nasty.”

“Too high,” Michael added with a nod.

I arched an eyebrow. “A cost? Like mentally? Does it make you crazy or something?”

“It could,” Scout said. “It rots the body, the soul, from the inside out.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean, it rots the body? Like, it kills people?”

She nodded. “The older you get, the more the magic begins to feed from you. It drains you,

transforms you. The magic shifts, from something symbiotic to a parasite. And in order to stay alive, to keep up with the power’s constant craving, you have to feed it.”

“With what?” My voice was quiet. So was Scout’s when she answered.

“With the energy of others. Those who keep their power must learn to drink the essence of others—like vampires of the soul. We call them Reapers.”

“Takers of life,” I thought aloud.

“Bringers of death,” she said. “You want a shorter life span, they’re the folks you call.”

“You said they take the energy of others,” I repeated. “What does that mean?”

Jason took a step forward. “Have you ever seen people who you thought seemed drained of energy? Depressed? Like, kids who are sleeping in class all the time, dragging around, that kind of thing?”

“I’m a teenager,” I flatly said. “That’s pretty much how we live.”

“Puberty takes its toll,” Scout agreed, “but hormones aren’t the only problem. Reapers target people with self-confidence issues—people who don’t fit in. And slowly, so they don’t gain too much attention, the Reapers consume their energy. Call it their aura, their soul, their will to live.

That spark that makes us who we are, that makes us more than walking robots.”

“The earthquake and fire kids,” I said, “The ones chasing you—chasingus —under the convent.

Those were the Reapers?”

Scout nodded. “It’s a belated introduction, but meet Alex and Sebastian. She’s a senior in the publics; he’s a sophomore at Northwestern. They don’t actually need to do any reaping right now —they’re too young—but they help find victims for the older ones. That’s the Reaper way. Do whatever you have to do to keep your grip on the magic, regardless of how many people you hurt —or kill—to do it.”

“Okay,” I said. “So these bad guys, these Reapers, suck the souls out of people so they won’t become walking zombies. But what about the rest of you?” I looked at each of them in turn. “I assume you don’t plan on doing any soul sucking in the future?”

Before they could answer, there was another knock on the door. Before I could answer, a scrubs-

clad nurse walked in, tray in hand.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “How are you feeling?” She shooed Scout off the bed, then put the tray—which held a small plastic tumbler of water, a small plastic pitcher, and a chocolate pudding cup.