Firespell

“Okay. Considering.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, then came to my bedside and measured my pulse. She pulled the end of a tube from a machine connected to the wall, then held it toward me.

“Stick out your tongue,” she said. When I did, she stuck the chunk of cold plastic beneath my tongue, then watched a read-out behind me. “Shouldn’t you all be in school right now?” she asked without glancing up.

“We have passes,” Scout said.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said again. When the machine beeped, she pulled out the thermometer, put it away, and then moved to the end of my bed, where she scribbled something on my chart. When she’d returned it to its slot, she looked at me. “Visiting hours are over in an hour.”

“Sure,” I said. After a final warning glance at Scout, Michael, and Jason, she disappeared out the door again.

Suddenly starving, I pointed at the tray at the end of the bed. “Hand me the pudding cup and get on with the story,” I told Scout. She peeled off the foil top, then handed me the cup and spoon as she licked the remnant of chocolate pudding from the foil. I dug in.

“No soul sucking,” Michael continued. “From our perspective, keeping the power isn’t worth it —not to feed off others. We aren’t willing to pay that cost, to take lives so we can wax poetic about how great it is to be an Adept.”

I swallowed a giant spoonful of chocolate pudding—magical near misses really built up the appetite—then lifted my brows at him. “Adept?”

“Those of us with magic,” he said, “but who are willing to give it up. It’s what we call ourselves. Our philosophy is, we hit twenty-five, and we return our power to the universe. We stop using it. We make a promise, take a vow.”

“It’s an even trade,” Scout said, with a small smile. “No more power, but no more upsetting the balance of the universe.”

“No more being Adepts,” Jason said, his voice quieter and, I thought, a little wistful, as if he’d considered the blow that giving up his magic would be, and he wasn’t thrilled about it.

“Okay,” I said. “So, to review, you’ve got kids with magical powers running around Chicago.

Some of them are willing to give it up when the magic gets predatory—that would be you guys.”

Scout bobbed her head.

“And some of them aren’t willing to give it up, so they have a future of soul sucking to look forward to.”

“That’s a fair summary,” Michael said with a nod.

“But that doesn’t explain why you guys are running around under the convent throwing, what,

firespell, at one another.”

Scout looked up at Michael, who nodded, as if giving her permission to answer the question.

“We found a list,” she said. “A list of, well, I guess you’d call them leads. Kids who’ve been scoped out by Reapers. Kids they’re targeting for a power lunch, no pun intended.”

I nodded my understanding.

“I’ve been working out a spell of protection, a little half charm, half curse, to keep the Reapers from being able to zero in on their targets.”

“How do you do that?”

“Have you ever tried to look at a faraway star,” Scout asked, “but the closer you look at it, the fuzzier it gets?”

“Sure. Why?”

“That’s what Scout’s trying to do here,” Michael said, crossing his arms and bobbing his head in her direction. “Making the targets invisible to the Reapers. She’s been working on a kid who lives in a condo on Michigan, goes to a high school in South Loop. They haven’t been real thrilled with that.”

“And that’s why they’ve been chasing you?” I asked, sliding my gaze to Scout.

“As you might imagine,” she said, “we aren’t exactly popular. Our ideas about giving up our power don’t exactly put us in the majority.”

“The gifted are proud to have magic,” Jason said, “as well they should be. But most of them don’t want to give it up.”

“That puts us in the minority,” Michael added. “Rebels, of a sort.”

“A magic splinter cell?”

“Kinda,” Scout said with a rueful smile. “So the Reapers identify targets—folks who make a good psychic lunch—and kids who are coming into their own, coming into their own gifts.

Spotters,” she added, anticipating my question. “Their particular gift is the ability to find magic.

To detect it.”

“Once a kid is identified,” Michael said, “the Reapers circle like lions around prey. They’ll talk to the kid, sometimes their parents, about the gift, figure out the parameters, exactly what the kid can do. And they’ll teach the kid that the gift is nothing to be embarrassed about, and that any souls they take are worth it.”

“The Reapers try to teach the kids that the idea of giving up your power willingly is a conspiracy,” Jason said, “that feeding on someone else’s energy, their essence, is a kind of magical natural selection—the strong feeding on the weak or something. We disagree. We work our protective spells on the targets, or we try to intercede more directly with the gifted, to get the kids to think for themselves, to think about the consequences of their magic.”

“For better or worse,” Scout added.

“So you try to steal their pledges,” I concluded.

“You got it,” Scout said. “We try to teach kids with powers that giving up their powers is the best thing for humanity. You know, because of the soul sucking.”

I smiled lightly. “Right.”

“That makes us pretty unpopular with them, and it makes the Reapers none too popular with us,” she added. “We didn’t need the original Reapers. And we certainly don’t need Reapers spawning out there.”

“Seriously,” Jason muttered. “There’re already enough Cubs fans in Chicago.”

Michael coughed, but the cough sounded a lot like, “Northside.”

I arched an eyebrow, and returned my glance to Scout. “Northside?”

“Where the Cubs are,” she said. “They’re territorial.”

“I see. So, what do you do about the evangelizing? About the Reaper spawn, I mean?”

“Well, weare the good guys,” Michael said. “They’re bullies, and we’re a nuisance. We make it harder for them to do their jobs—to recruit, to brainwash, to convince kids with magic that they can keep their powers and live long, fulfilling lives as soul-sucking zombies.”

“We thwart with extreme prejudice,” Scout said with a grin. “Right now, we’re doing a lot of protecting targets, and a lot of befriending the gifted who haven’t yet been turned toward the dark side.”

“A lot of things that get you chased,” I pointed out, giving Scout a pointed look.

“That is true,” she said with a nod. “Reapers are tenacious little suckers. We spend a lot of time keeping ourselves alive.”

I crossed my legs beneath the thin blanket. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have let them into St.

Sophia’s.”

Scout snorted. “We didn’tlet them in. The tunnels beneath the convent connect it to half the buildings in the Loop. Welcome to the Pedway.”

“How many of them are there?” I asked.

“We think about two hundred,” Scout said. “Sounds like a lot, but Chicago is the third-biggest city in the country. Two hundred out of nearly three million isn’t a lot. And we don’t really have an ‘in’ with them, obviously, so two hundred’s only a best guess.”

“And you guys?”

“This month, we’re holding steady at twenty-seven identified Adepts in and around Chicago,” Michael said. “That includes Junior Varsity—high schoolers—and Varsity. V-squad is for the college Adepts, their last chance to play wizard and warlock before it’s time to return to a life of mundane living. We’re organized into enclaves in and around the city. Headquarters, kind of.”

Another puzzle piece fell into place. “That’s what the symbols on the buildings in the model room mean.” My voice rose a little in excitement. “There was aY in a circle, and these kind of combined circles, sort of like a cross. Those are enclave locations?”

“Those circle things are called ‘quatrefoils,’ ” Michael said. “TheY symbol indicates enclave and sanctuary locations—that’s where the Reapers plan their minion baiting—around the city.

There are six enclaves in Chicago. St. Sophia’s is Enclave Three.”

“Or ET, as the idiots like to call it,” Scout added with a grin, bobbing her head toward the boys.

Jason lifted his gaze to mine, and there was concern there. “Did you say you’ve been to the city room?” He looked over at Scout, and this time his gaze was accusatory. “You let her into the city room?”

“I didn’t let her in,” Scout defended. “I wasn’t even there. The preps found the room and led her down there, locked her in.”

Jason put his hands on his hips. He was definitely not happy. “Regulars know about the city room?”

“I told you people would get through,” Scout said. “Not all the tunnels are blocked off. I told you this was going to happen eventually.”

“Not now,” Michael interjected. “We don’t need to talk about this right now.”

A little tension there, I guessed. “Why the tunnels in the first place?” I wondered. “If Reapers are out to suck the souls from humans and keep you guys from getting in their way, why don’t they just bust through the front door of St. Sophia’s and take out the school?”

“We may be a splinter cell,” Jason said, “but we’ve got one thing in common with the Reapers —no one wants to be outed to the public. We don’t want to deal with the chaos, and Reapers like being able to steal a soul here and there without a lot of public attention.”

“People probably wouldn’t take that very well,” I said.

“Exactly,” Scout agreed with a nod. “Reapers don’t want to be locked up in the crazy house—or experimented on—any more than we do. So we keep our fights out of the public eye. We keep them underground, or at least off the streets. We usually make it out and back without problems,

but they’ve been aggressive lately. More aggressive than usual,” she muttered.

I remembered what Scout had told me about their long, exhausting summer. I guessed ornery,

magic-wielding teenagers could do that to a girl.

“They have given chase a lot lately,” Jason said. “We’re all thinking they must be up to something.”

The room got quiet, the three of them, maybe contemplating just what the Reapers might be up to. Then they looked at me expectantly, maybe waiting for a reaction—tears or disbelief or enthusiasm. But I still had questions.

“Do you look forward to it?” I asked.

Scout tilted her head. “To what?”

“To giving up your powers?” I uncrossed my legs and buried my toes in the blanket—this place was as frosty as St. Sophia’s. “I mean, you’ve got costs and benefits either way, right? Right now, you all have some kind of power. You hit puberty, and you get used to being all magically inclined, but then you have to give it up. Doesn’t that bother you?”

They exchanged glances. “It’s the way it is,” Scout quietly said. “Magic is part of who we are now, but it won’t be part of us forever.”

“But neither will midnight meetings and obnoxious Reapers and power-happy Varsity Adepts.”

Scout lifted her eyebrows at Jason’s mini-tirade.

“I know,” Jason said. “Not the time.”

I guessed things weren’t entirely hunky-dory in Enclave Three. “So the guy that blasted me, or whatever. You said his name was Sebastian. And he’s a Reaper.”

Scout nodded. “That’s him.”

“He said something before he blasted me. What was that?”

“Ad meloria,” Michael said. “It’s Latin. Means ‘toward better things.’ ” I raised my eyebrows. “I’m guessing that’s their motto.”

“You’d be right,” Scout said. “They think the world would be a better place if they kept their magic. They think they’re the elite, and everyone should give them their due. A survival of the fittest kind of thing.”

“Survival of the craziest, more like,” Jason muttered. He glanced down at his watch, then looked up at Michael. “We probably need to head,” he said, then glanced at me. “Sorry to leave you in here. We’ve got some stuff at MA this afternoon.”

“No problem. Thanks for coming by. And thanks for the flower.”

He stuck his hands into his pockets and grinned back at me. “No problem, Parker. Glad you’ve rejoined the land of the living.”

I grinned back at him, at least until Scout’s throat clearing pulled my attention away.

“I should also head back,” she said, pulling a massive, baffled down jacket off the back of her chair. She squeezed into it, then fastened the clips that held it together. The white jacket went past her knees, which made it look like she had on nothing but tights and thick-soled Dr. Martens Mary Janes beneath it.

“You look like the Pillsbury Snow Boy.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s breezy out there today. Not all of us have these warm, lush accommodations to look forward to.”

I snuggled into the bed, thinking I’d better gather what warmth I could, given the possibility that I’d be returning to my meat locker of a room tomorrow.

“Take care,” Michael said, rapping his knuckles on the tray at the end of the bed. I assumed that was the macho-guy equivalent of giving me a hug. Either way, I appreciated the gesture.

I smiled back at him. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

“And hopefully under better circumstances.” He cast Scout a sideways glance. “Green.”

She rolled her eyes. “Garcia.” When she looked at me again, she was smiling. “I’ll give you a call later.”

I nodded.

The trio gathered up their things, and I clenched my fingers, itching to ask one final question.

Well, scared to ask it, anyway. My palms were actually sweating, but I made myself get it out.

“Jason.”

They all turned back at the sound of his name.

He arched his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Could I talk to you for a sec?”

“Um, sure.” He shouldered his backpack, then exchanged a glance with Scout and Michael. She winged up her brows, but let Garcia push her toward and out the door.

When the door shut behind them, Jason glanced back at me. “Everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah.” I frowned down at the blanket for a minute before finally raising my gaze to his crystal blue eyes. “Listen, I just wanted to say thanks. For getting me out of the basement, I mean. If it hadn’t been for you and Scout—”

“You wouldn’t have gotten hit in the first place,” he finished.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again, not really able to argue that point.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he softly said. “And for what it’s worth, you’re welcome, Lily.”

I liked the way he said my name, as if it weren’t just a series of letters, but a word thick with meaning.Lily .

“I mean, I’m not glad you got wrapped up in this—especially since you don’t have magic to defend yourself with.” He tipped his head to the side. “Although, I think I heard something about a flip-flop?”

“I guess Scout’s been giving up all my offensive moves?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “And impressive moves they are. I mean, who’d have thought that a few square inches of foam were really a technologically advanced—”

“All right, Shepherd. You’ve made your point.”

“Have I?” he asked, with a half smile.

Turned out, Jason’s half smile was even more deadly than the full, dimpled grin. The half smile was drowsier—almost ridiculously handsome.

“You did,” I finally said.

We stared silently at each other for a moment before he bobbed his head toward the door. “I guess I should join Scout and Michael?”

He made it a question, as if he didn’t want to leave, but could sense my nerves. Heart pounding fiercely in my chest, I stopped him. “Actually, one more thing.”

He raised questioning brows.

“When we were down there in the basement. When I got hit. I thought—I thought I heard a growl. Like an animal.”

His eyes widened, lips parting in surprise. He hadn’t expected me to bring it up, but I couldn’t get the sound out of my mind.

Jason hadn’t yet given me an answer, so I pressed on. I knew the growling hadn’t come from Scout—she’d admitted to being a spellbinder. And I didn’t think it had come from earthquake girl or firespell boy. Jason was the only other person there.

“That sound,” I said. “Was it you?”

He gazed at me, a chill in his blue eyes, shards of icy sapphire.

“Scout gave you the simple answer about Adepts,” he finally said. “She told you that we each have magic, a gift of our own. That’s a short answer, but it’s not entirely accurate.” He paused,

then wet his lips. “I’m not like the others.”

My heart thudded so fiercely, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he could hear it. It took me a moment to ask him. “How much not like them?”

When Jason looked up at me again, the color of his eyes had shifted to green and then to a silvered yellow, like those of a cat caught in the light. And there was something wolfish in his expression.

“Enough,” he said, and I’d swear his voice was thicker, deeper. “Different enough.”

He turned to go.

My heart didn’t stop pounding until the door closed behind him.

The room was quiet after the triplets left, at least for a few minutes. The doctor finally visited and looked me over, and reached the same conclusion that had been passed along earlier—I was fine. Notably, he didn’t ask me what threat sent me from an all-girls’ private school to a hospital.

Whatever he knew, I had hours yet to kill in the hospital. For the first ten minutes, I flipped my cell phone over and over in my hand, trying to gather up the nerve to call Ashley. But she was probably still in class and, besides, what was I going to tell her? That I’d met some magical weirdos who’d managed to rope me into their shenanigans? I wasn’t crazy about the idea of that conversation, or how I was going to explain it without sounding completely loopy—so I put the phone down again and glanced around the room. Since no one had brought me homework—and I wasn’t about to ask for any—I turned on the television bolted to the wall, settled back into the bed, and had just started watching a reality show about bored, rich housewives when there was a knock at the door.

I had no idea who else would visit—other than brat packers hoping to gloat about their victory —but I pointed the remote at the television and turned it off.

“Come in,” I said.

The door opened and closed, followed by the sound of heels clacking on the tile floor. Foley appeared from around the corner, hands clasped before her, a tidy, pale suit on her slender frame,

ash-blond hair tidy at her shoulders. Her expression was all business.

“Ms. Parker.” Foley walked to the window, pushed aside a couple of the slats in the blinds, and glanced out at the city. “How are you feeling?”

“Good, considering.”

“You lost consciousness,” she said. Said, not asked.

“That’s what I hear.”

“Yes, well. I trust, Ms. Parker, that you understand the importance of our institution’s reputation, and of the value of discretion. We, of course, do not wish to elicit untoward attention regarding the hijinks of our students. It would not serve St. Sophia’s, nor its students or alumnae,

for the community or the press to believe that our institution is not a safe place for its students.”

I don’t know what she knew about what went on—or what she thought went on—but she was certainly keen on keeping it quiet.

“I also trust that you understand well enough the importance of caring for your physical well-

being, and that you will take sufficient care to ensure that you do not lose consciousness again.”

That made me sit up a little straighter. What did she think—that I was starving myself and I’d passed out for lack of food? If only she’d seen the private moment I shared with the pudding cup earlier.

“I take care of myself,” I assured her.

“All evidence to the contrary.”

Okay, honestly, there was a tiny part of me that wanted to rat on Scout, Jason, Michael, and the rest of the Adepts, or at least on the brat packers who threw me into harm’s way. It would have been satisfying to wipe that smug expression from Foley’s face, and replace it with something a bit more sympathetic.

There were two problems with that theory.

First, I wasn’t entirely sure Foley was capable of sympathy.

Second, I had to be honest. I hadn’t gone downstairs because Veronica and the rest of her cronies had forced me. And I’d made my way down the other hallway—and into the Reapers’ path—because I’d decided to play junior explorer. I’d been curious, and I’d walked that plank willingly.

Besides, I could have walked away from all of it earlier. I could have stepped aside, told Jason,

Michael, and Scout that I didn’t want to be included in their magical mystery tour, and let them handle their Reaper problems on their own. But I’d invited their trust by asking them to fill me in, and I wasn’t about to betray it.

So this time, I’d take one for the team. But Scoutso owed me.

“You’re right,” I told her. Her eyes instantaneously widened, as if she were surprised a teenager would agree with her orders. “It’s been a stressful week.” Total truth. “I should take better care of myself.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “That’s a surprisingly mature attitude.”

“I’m surprisingly mature.” It wasn’t that I wanted to snark back to the principal of my high school, the head honcho (honchess?) of the place I lived, slept, ate, and learned. But her attitude,

her assumption that I was here because I lacked some fundamental ability to keep myself safe,

practically begged for snark.

On the other hand, since I’d made the decision to move deeper into the convent instead of heading back to my room, maybe I did.

Foley lifted her brows, and her expression made her thoughts on my snark pretty clear. “Ms.

Parker, we take the well-being of our students and the reputation of our institution very seriously.”

Given what was going on beneath her institution, I wondered about that. But I managed to keep my mouth shut.

“I expect you’ll return to St. Sophia’s tomorrow?”

“That’s what they say.”

Foley nodded. “Very well. I’ve asked Ms. Green to gather your assignments. Given that tomorrow’s Saturday, you’ll have some time to complete them before classes resume. I’ll arrange for a car to transport you back to St. Sophia’s. If you require anything before your return,

you may contact our staff.”

I nodded. Her work apparently done, she walked toward the door. But then she glanced back.

“About our conversation,” she said, “perhaps I was . . . ill informed about your parents’ professions.”

I stared at her for a few seconds, trying to make sense of the about-face. “Ill informed?”

“I recognize that you, of course, would know better than I the nature of your parents’ work.”

She glanced down at her watch. “I need to return to the school. Enjoy your evening.”

My mind began to race, but I managed to bob my head as she disappeared around the corner,

then opened and closed the door again.

I stared down at the remote control in my hand for a minute after she’d left, flipping it through my fingers as I ruminated.

It was weird enough that she’d dropped by in the first place—I mean, how many high school principals visited their students in the hospital? She clearly had her own theories about what had happened to me—namely, that it was my fault. I guess she wanted to cover her bases, make sure I wasn’t going to spill to the media or call a lawyer about my “accident.”

But then, out of the blue, she brought up my parents and changed her story? And even weirder,

she actually seemed sincere. Contrite, even, and Foley didn’t exactly seem like the nurturing type, much less the type to admit when she was wrong.

I gnawed the edge of my lip and gave the remote a final flip. Call it what you want—Reapers,

Adepts, magic, firespell, whatever. Things were seriously weird at St. Sophia’s.

True to the doc’s word, I was released the next morning. True to Foley’s word, one of the glasses-clad matrons who usually patrolled the study hall brought casual clothes for me to change into—jeans and a T-shirt, probably selected by Scout—and signed me out. A nurse wheeled me, invalid style, to the front door of the clinic and the St. Sophia’s-branded minivan that sat at the curb. The matron was silent on the way back to the convent, but it was a pretty short ride—only a few blocks back to my new home on Erie. They dropped me off at the front door without a word, and I headed up the stairs and into the building. Although I’d been gone only a couple of days, the convent seemed almost . . . foreign. It hadn’t yet begun to feel like home, but now, it felt farther from Sagamore than ever.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and the main building was all but empty. A handful of students peppered the study hall, maybe catching up on weekend homework or trying to get ahead to pad their academic resumes. The halls that held the suites were louder, music and television spilling into the hallway as St. Sophia’s girls relaxed and enjoyed the weekend.

I unlocked the door to our suite. Scout jumped up from the couch, decked out in jeans and layered T-shirts, her hair pulled into a short ponytail, and practically knocked me over to get in a hug.

“Thank God,” she said. “The brat packers were getting almost unbearable.” She let me go, then gave me an up-and-down appraisal. “Is everything where I left it?”

“Last time I checked,” I said with a smile, then waved at Barnaby, who sat on the couch behind us. She wore a fitted pale blue T-shirt with a rainbow across the front, and her hair was up in some kind of complicated knot. It was verySound of Music .

“Hello, Lily,” she said.

“Hi, Lesley.”

The door to Amie’s suite opened. Amie, M.K., and Veronica piled out of the room, their smiles fading as they realized I’d come home. They were all dressed in athletic shorts, snug tank tops,

and sneakers. I assumed it was workout time.

Amie’s smile faded to an expression that was a lot heavier on the contrition and apology. M.K.’s smile was haughty. Veronica was using both hands to pull her hair into a ponytail. I wasn’t even on her radar.

“You were in the hospital,” M.K. said. There was no apology behind her words, no indication that she thought they might have been responsible for anything that happened to me. They weren’t, of course, responsible, but they didn’t know that. I’d hoped for something a little more contrite, honestly—maybe something in a nice “sheepish embarrassment.”

“Yep,” I said.

“What happened to you?” M.K. had apparently skipped embarrassment and gone right to being accusatory.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” I told them.

“Why? Is it catching?” M.K. snickered at her joke. “Something contagious?”

“There are certain . . . liability issues,” I said, then looked over at Amie. She was the worrywart of the group, so I figured she was my most effective target. “Insurance issues. Parental liability issues. Probably best not to talk about it. We don’t want to have to get the lawyers involved. Not yet, anyway.”

Scout, half turning so that only I could see her, winked at me.

Veronica and Amie exchanged a nervous glance.

“But thanks for the tour,” I added as I headed for my bedroom. I unlocked the door, then stood there as Scout and Barnaby skipped inside.

“It was very educational,” I said, then winked at the brat pack, walked inside, and closed the door behind us.

As dramatic exits went, it wasn’t bad.

I gave Scout and Lesley a mini- update, at least the parts I could talk about in Lesley’s company.

Lesley wasn’t an Adept, at least as far as I was aware, so I kept my replay of Foley’s visit and my chat with Jason purely PG. But I shooed them out of my room pretty quickly.

I needed a shower.

A superhot, superlong, environmentally irresponsible shower. As soon as they were out the door, I changed into my reversible robe (stripes for perky days, deep blue for serious ones),

grabbed my bucket o’ toiletries, and headed for the bathroom.

I spent the first few minutes with my hands against the wall, my head dunked under the spray.

The heat probably didn’t do much good for my hair, but I needed it. I had basement and hospital grime to wash off, not to mention the emotional grime of (1) more of Foley’s questioning of my parents’ honesty; (2) having been unconscious and apparently near death for twelve hours; (3) having been the victim of a prank that led to point number two; and (4) having been carried out of a dangerous situation by a ridiculously pretty boy and having almostno memory of it whatsoever. That last one was just a crime against nature.

And, of course, there was the other thing.

The magic thing.

Varsity, Junior Varsity, Adepts, firespell, Reapers, enclaves. These people had their own vocabulary and apparently a pretty strong belief that they had magical powers.

Sure, I’d seensomething . And whatever was going on beneath St. Sophia’s, beneath the city, I wasn’t about to rat them out. But still—what had I seen? Was it really magic? I mean—magic, as in unicorns and spells and wizards and witchcraft magic?

That, I wasn’t so sure about.

I gave it some thought as I repacked my gear and padded back to the room in my shower shoes,

then waved at Scout and Lesley, who were playing cards in the common room. I gave it some thought as I scrubbed my hair dry, pulled flannel pajama bottoms from the drawer of my bureau,

and got dressed again.

There was a single, quick rap at the door. I turned around to face it, but the knocking stopped,

replaced by a pink packet that appeared beneath my door. I hung the damp towel on the closet doorknob, then plucked the packet from the floor. Out of an abundance of caution—I couldn’t be too sure these days—I held it up to my ear. When I was pretty sure it wasn’t ticking, I slipped a finger beneath the tab of tape that held the sides together.

And smiled.

Wrapped in the pink paper—that could only have come from Amie’s room—was the rest of the bag of licorice Scotties I’d started on before my trip to the basement. I wasn’t sure if the gift was supposed to be an apology or a bribe.

Either way, I thought, as I nipped the head from another unfortunate Scottie, I liked it.

Unfortunately, as I had realized on my way to pick up the Scotties, my knees still ached from the double falls on the limestone floor. I put my prize on the bureau, rolled up my pants legs, and moved in front of the mirror to check them out. Purple bruises bloomed on my kneecaps,

evidence of my run-in with . . . well, whatever they were.

My back had cramped as I rolled the hems of my pants down. I twisted halfway around in the mirror, then tugged up the back of the Ramones T-shirt I’d paired with my flannel pajama bottoms to check out the place where the firespell had hit me. I expected to see another bruise,

some indication of the force that had pushed me to the floor and knocked the breath from my lungs.

There was no bruise, at least that I could see from my position—half-turned as I was to face the mirror, one hip cocked out, neck twisted. I almost dropped the bottom of my shirt and went on my merry way—straight into bed with the coffee table’sVogue .

But then I saw it.

My heart skipped a beat, something tightening in my chest.

At the small of my back was a mark. It wasn’t a bruise—the color wasn’t right. It wasn’t the purple or blue or even that funny yellow that bruises take on.

It was green. Candy apple green—the same color as the firespell that had bitten into my skin.

More important, there was a defined shape. It was a symbol—a glyph on the small on my back,

like a tattoo I hadn’t asked for.

It was a circle with some complicated set of symbols inside it.

I’d been marked.

I stood in front of the mirror for fifteen minutes, worrying about the mark on my back. I turned this way and that, my hem rolled up in my hands, neck aching as I stretched until I thought to grab a compact from my makeup bag. I flipped it open, turned around, and aimed it at the mirror.

It wasn’t just a mark, or a freckle, or a weird wrinkle caused by lounging in a hospital bed for twenty-four hours.

It was a circle—a perfect circle. A circle too perfect to be an accident. Too perfect to be anything but purposeful. And inside the circle were symbols—squiggles and lines, all distinct,

but not organized in any pattern that looked familiar to me.

But still, even though I didn’t know what they meant, I could tell what theyweren’t . The lines were clear, the shapes distinct. They were much too perfect to be a biological accident.

I frowned and dropped my arm, staring in confusion at the floor. Where had it come from? Had something happened to me when I was unconscious? Had I been tattooed by an overeager ER doctor?

Or was the answer even simpler . . . and more complex?

The mark was in the same place I’d been hit with the firespell, where that rush of heat and fire (and magic) thrown by Sebastian had roared up my spine.

I had no ideahow firespell could have had anything to do with the symbol, but what else could it have been? What else would have put it there?

Without warning, there was a knock at the door. Instinctively, I flipped the compact shut and pulled down my T-shirt. “Yeah?”

“Hey,” Scout said from the other side of the closed door. “We’re going to grab a Rainbow Cone at a place down the street. You wanna come with? It’s only three or four blocks. Might be nice to get some fresh air?”

Something in my stomach turned over, maybe at the realization that, at some point, I’d have to tell Scout about the mark and enlist her help to figure out what it was. That didn’t sit well. Her telling me about her adventures was one thing. My being part of those adventures and part of this whole magic thing—being permanently marked by it—was something else.

“No, thanks,” I said, giving the closed door the guilty look I couldn’t stand to give Scout. “I’m not feeling so great, so I think I’m just going to rest for a little while.”

“Oh, okay. Do you want us to bring some back?”

“Uh, no thanks. I’m not really hungry.” That was the absolute truth.

She was quiet for a minute. “Are you okay in there?” she finally asked.

“Yeah. Just, you know, tired. I didn’t get much sleep in the hospital.” Also the truth, but I felt bad enough that I crossed my fingers, anyway.

“Okay. Well, take a nap, maybe,” she suggested. “We’ll check in later.”

“Thanks, Scout,” I said. When footsteps echoed across the suite, I turned and pressed my back against the door and blew out a breath.

What had I gotten myself into?

True to my word, I climbed into bed, pulling the twin-spired symbols of St. Sophia’s over my head as I tried, unsuccessfully, to nap. I’d been supportive of Scout and the Adept story in the hospital. I’d made a commitment to believe them, to believe in them, even when Foley showed up. I’d also made a commitment not to let the basement drama—whatever it was about—affect my friendship with Scout.

And now I was in my room, head buried in cotton and flannel, hiding out.

Some friend I was.

Every five minutes, I’d touch the tips of my fingers gingerly to the bottom of my spine, thinking I’d be able to feel some change when, and if, the mark disappeared. Every fifteen minutes, I’d climb out of bed and twist around in front of the mirror, making sure the mark hadn’t decided to fade.

There was no change.

At least, not physically. Emotionally, I was freaking out. And not the kind of freaking out that lent itself to finding a friend and venting. This was the kind of freaking out that was almost . .

.paralyzing . The kind of fear that made you hunker down, avoid others, avoid the issue.

And so I lay in bed, sunlight shifting across the room as the day slipped away. The suite being relatively small, I heard Scout and Lesley return, mill about in the common room, and then head into their respective bedrooms. They eventually left for dinner, after a prospective knock on the door to see if I wanted anything. For the second time, I declined. I could hear Scout’s disappointment—and fear—when she double-checked, but I wasn’t up for company. I wasn’t up for providing consolation.

I needed to be consoled.

Eventually, I fell asleep. Scout didn’t bother knocking for breakfast on Sunday morning. Not that I could blame her, I supposed, since I’d ignored her for the last twenty-four hours, but her absence was still noticeable. She’d become a fixture during my first week at St. Sophia’s.

I snuck down to breakfast in jeans and my Ramones T-shirt, my hair in a messy knot, the ribboned key around my neck. I wasn’t dressed for brunch or socializing, so I grabbed a carrot raisin muffin and a box of orange juice before heading back to my room, bounty in hand.

What a difference a day makes.

It was around noon when they knocked on the door.

When I didn’t answer, Amie’s voice rang out. “Lily? Are you in there? Are you . . . okay?”

I closed the art history book I’d been perusing in bed, went to the door, opened it, and found Amie and Veronica, both in jeans, brown leather boots, snug tops, and dangly earrings, standing there. Not bad outfits, actually, if you ignored the prissiness.

The last time they’d sought me out, they offered a chance to go treasure hunting. The offer this time wasn’t much different.

“We’re really sorry about what happened,” Amie said. “We’re heading to Michigan Avenue for a little shopping. Are you up for a field trip?”

I was an intelligent person, so my first instinct was, of course, to slam the door in their faces.

But as they stood there in my doorway, hair perfect, makeup just so, they offered me something else.

Oblivion.

The opportunity to pretend to be an It Girl for a little while, in a world with much simpler rules,

where what you wore meant more than how many Reapers you’d thwarted, how much firespell had taken you down.

Call it a weak moment, a moment of denial. Either way, I said yes.

Twenty minutes later, I was in boots and leggings, black skirt, black fitted shirt, jacket and drapey scarf, and I was following Amie and Veronica out the door and toward Michigan Avenue.

We strode side by side down the sidewalk—Amie, then me, then Veronica—as though we were acting out the opening credits of a new teen drama.

Even on a Sunday, Michigan Avenue was full of tourists and locals, young and old, shoppers and picture-snappers, all out to enjoy the weather before the cold began to roll in. It was understandable that they were out—the sky was ridiculously blue, the temperature perfect.

Windy City or not, there was just enough breeze to keep the sun from being oppressive.

This was my first time on Michigan Avenue, my first opportunity to explore Chicago beyond the walls of St. Sophia’s (apart from my quick jaunt around the block with Scout). I was surprised at how open Chicago felt—less constricting, less overwhelming, than walking through the Village or midtown Manhattan. There was more glass, less concrete; more steel, less brick.

With the shine of new condos and the reflection of Lake Michigan off mirrored glass, the Second City looked like Manhattan’s younger, prettier sister.

We passed boutique after boutique, the chichi stores nestled between architectural masterpieces —the ribbon-wrapped Hancock Building, the castlelike form of the Water Tower and, of course,

lots of construction.

“So,” Amie said, “are you going to tell us exactly what went on in the basement?”

“What basement?” I asked, my gaze on the high- rises above us.

“Coyness is not becoming,” Veronica said. “You were in the basement, and then you were in the hospital. We know those things happened.” She slid me a sideways glance. “Now we want to know how they connect.”

Sure, I was taking a breather from Scout and the rest of the Adepts, but I wasn’t about to rat them out, especially to brat packers. Trying to be normal for a few minutes was one thing; becoming a fink was something else entirely.

“I fell,” I told her, stating the absolute truth. “I was on my way back upstairs, and I slipped. The edges of those limestone stairs to the first floor, you know how they’re warped?”

“You’d think they could fix those,” Amie said.

“You’d think,” I agreed.

“Uh-huh,” Veronica said, doubt in her voice. “They sent you to the hospital because you fell down the stairs?”

“Because I was knocked unconscious,” I reminded them with a bright smile. “And had I not been down in the basement in the first place . . .”

I didn’t finish the sentence, letting the blame remain unspoken. Apparently, that was a good strategy. When I glanced over at Veronica, she was smiling appreciatively, as if my reminder of their culpability was just the kind of strategy she’d have used.

Suddenly, as if we were the best of friends, Veronica linked her arm in mine, then steered me in and through the pedestrian traffic.

“In here,” she said, bobbing her head toward a shopping center on the west side of the street. It was three stories high, the front wall a giant window of mannequins and clothing displays. A coffee bar filled most of the first floor, while giant hanging sculptures—brightly colored teardrops of glass—rained down from the three-story atrium.

“Nice place,” I said, my gaze rising as I surveyed the glass.

“It’s not bad,” Veronica said. “And the shopping’s pretty good, too.”

“Pretty good” might have been an understatement. The stores that spanned the corridors weren’t the kind of places where you dropped in to pick up socks. These wereinvestment stores. Once-in-

a-lifetime stores. Stores with clothes and bags that most shoppers saved months or years for.

Amie and Veronica were not your average shoppers. We spent three hours working our way down from the third floor to the first, checking out stores, trying on clothes, posing in front of mirrors in clunky shoes, tiny jeans, and Ikat prints. I bought nothing; I had the emergency credit card, but buying off the rack didn’t have much appeal. There was nohunt in buying off the rack,

no thrill of finding a kick-ass bag or pair of shoes for an incredible discount. With occasional exceptions, I was a vintage and thrift store kind of girl—a handbag huntress.

Amie and Veronica, on the other hand, boughteverything . They found must- haves in almost every store we stopped in: monogram-print leather bags, wedge-heeled boots with elflike slits in the top, leggings galore, stilettos with heels so skinny they’d have made excellent weaponry . . . or better weaponry than flip- flops, anyway. The amount of money they spent was breathtaking,

and neither of them so much as looked at the receipts. Cost was not a factor. They picked out what they wanted and, without hesitation, handed it over to eager store clerks.

Although I put a little more thought into the financial part of shopping, I couldn’t fault their design sensibilities. They may have been dressed like traditional brat packers for their excursion to Magnificent Mile, but these girls knew fashion—what was hot, and what was on its way up.

Even better, maybe because they were missing out on Mary Katherine’s obnoxiously sarcastic influence, Amie and Veronica were actually pleasant. Sure, we didn’t have a discussion in our three- hour, floor-to-floor mall survey that didn’t involve clothes or money or who’s-seeing-

whom gossip, but I had wanted oblivion. Turned out, trying to keep straight the intermingled dating lives of St. Sophia’s girls and the Montclare boys they hooked up with was a fast road to oblivion. I barely thought about the little green circle on my back, but even self-induced oblivion couldn’t last forever.

We were on the stairs, heading toward the first floor with glossy, tissue-stuffed shopping bags in hand, when I saw him.

Jason Shepherd.

My heart nearly stopped.

Not just because it was Jason, but because it was Jason in jeans that pooled over chunky boots,

and a snug, faded denim work shirt. Do you have any idea what wearing blue did for a boy with already ridiculously blue eyes? It was like his irises glowed, like they were lit by blue fire from within. Add that to a face already too pretty for anyone’s good, and you had a dangerous combination. The boy was completelyen fuego .

Jason was accompanied by a guy who was cute in a totally different kind of way. This one had thick, dark hair, heavy eyebrows, deep-set brown eyes, a very intense look. He wore glasses with thick, black frames and hipster-chic clothes: jacket over T-shirt; dark jeans; black Chuck Taylors.

I blew out a breath, remembered the symbol on the small of my back, and decided I wasn’t up for handsome Adepts or their buddies any more than I had been for funky, nose-ringed spellbinders. Mild panic setting in, I planned my exit.

“Hey,” I told Amie, as we reached the first floor, “I’m going to run in there.” I hitched a thumb over my shoulder.

Amie glanced behind me, then lifted her eyebrows. “You’re going to the orthopedic shoe store?”

Okay, so I really should have looked before I pointed. “I like to be prepared.”

“For your future orthopedic shoe needs?”

“Podiatric health is very important.”

“Veronica!”

Frick. Too late. I muttered a curse and looked over. Jason’s friend saluted.

I risked a glance Jason’s way and found blue eyes on me, but I couldn’t stand the intimacy of his gaze. It seemed wrong to share a secret in front of people who knew nothing about it, nothing about the world that existed beneath our feet. And then there was the guilt about having abandoned Scout for Louis Vuitton and BCBG that was beginning to weigh on my shoulders. I looked away.

“That’s John Creed,” Veronica whispered as they walked over. “He’s president of the junior class at Montclare. But I don’t know the other guy.”

I didn’t tell her that I knew him well enough, that he’d carried me from danger, and that he was maybe,possibly , a werewolf.

“Veronica Lively,” said the hipster. His voice was slow, deep, methodical. “I haven’t seen you in forever. Where have you been hiding?”

“St. Sophia’s,” she said. “It’s where I live and play.”

“John Creed,” said the boy, giving me a nod in greeting, “and this is Jason Shepherd. But I don’t know you.” He gave me a smile that was a little too coy, a little too self-assured.

“How unfortunate for you,” I responded with a flat smile, and watched his eyebrows lift in appreciation.

“Lily Parker,” Veronica said, bobbing her head toward me, then whipping away the cup John held in his hand. She took a sip.

“John Creed, who is currently down one smoothie,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Lively, I believe you owe me a drink.”

A sly grin on her face, Veronica took another sip before handing it back to him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s plenty left.”

John made a sarcastic sound, then began quizzing her about friends they had in common. I took the opportunity to steal a glance at Jason, and found him staring back at me, head tilted. He was clearly wondering why I was acting as if I didn’t know him, and where I’d left Scout.

I looked away, guilt flooding my chest.

“So, new girl,” John suddenly said, and I looked his way. “What brings you to St. Sophia’s?”

“My parents are in Germany.”

“Intriguing. Vacation? Second home?”

“Sabbatical.”

John raised his eyebrows. “Sabbatical,” he repeated. “As in, a little plastic surgery?”

“As in, a little academic research.”

His expression suggested he wasn’t convinced my parents were studying, as opposed to a more lurid, rich-folks activity, but he let it go. “I see. Where’d you go to school? Before you became a St. Sophia’s girl, I mean.”

“Upstate New York.”

“New York,” he repeated. “How exotic.”

“Not all that exotic,” I said, twirling a finger to point out the architecture around us. “And you Midwesterners seem to do things pretty well.”

A smile blossomed on John Creed’s face, but there was still something dark in his eyes—

something melancholy. Melancholy or not, the words that came out of his mouth were still very teenage boy.

“Even Midwesterners appreciate . . . pretty things,” he said, his gaze traveling from my boots to my knot of dark hair. When he reached my gaze again, he gave me a knowing smile. It was a compliment, I guessed, that he thought I looked good, but coming from him, that compliment was a little creepy.

“Cool your jets, Creed,” Veronica interrupted. “And before this conversation crosses a line, we should get back to campus. Curfew,” she added, then offered Jason a coy smile. “Nice to meet you, Jason.”

“Same here,” he said, bobbing his head at her, then glancing at me. “Lily.”

I bobbed my head at him, a flush rising on my cheeks, and wished I’d stayed in my room.

I’d spared myself a confrontation with Scout earlier in the day. Since she and Lesley were playing cards at the coffee table when I returned to the suite, two brat packers in line behind me,

my time for avoidance was up.

I stopped short in the doorway when I saw them, Amie and Veronica nearly ramming me in the back.

“Down in front,” Veronica muttered, squeezing through the door around me, bringing a tornado of shopping bags into the common room.

Scout glanced up when I opened the door. At first, she seemed excited to see me. But when she realized who’d followed me in, her expression morphed into something significantly nastier.

I probably deserved that.

“Shopping?” she asked, an eyebrow arched as Amie and Veronica skirted the couch on their way to Amie’s room.

“Fresh air,” I said.

Scout made a disdainful sound, shook her head, and dropped her gaze to the fan of cards in her hand. “I think it’s your turn,” she told Lesley, her voice flat.

Lesley looked up at me. “You were out—with them?”

Barnaby wasn’t much for subtlety.

“Fresh air,” Scout repeated, then put a card onto the table with asnap of sound. “Lily neededfresh air .”

Amie unlocked her bedroom door and moved inside. But before Veronica went in, she stopped and gazed back at me. “Are you coming?”

“Yes,” Scout bit out, flipping one card, then a second and third, onto the table. “You should go.

You have shoes to try on, Carrie, or Miranda, or whoever you’re pretending to be today.”

Veronica snorted, her features screwing into that ratlike pinch. “Better than hanging out here with geeks ’r’ us.”

“Geeks ’r’ us?” I repeated.

“She uses a bag with a pirate symbol on it,” Veronica said. “What kind of Disney fantasy is she living?”

Oh, right, I thought.That’s why I hated these girls. “And yet,” I pointed out, “you hung out with me today. And you know Scout and I are friends.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” Scout muttered.

“We were giving you the benefit of the doubt,” Veronica said.

Scout made a sarcastic sound. “No, Lively, you feltguilty .”

“Ladies,” Barnaby said, standing up to reveal the unicorn-print T-shirt she’d matched with a pleated skirt. “I don’t think Lily wants to be fought over. This is beneath all of you.”

I forced a nod in agreement—although it wasn’tthat horrible to be fought over.

“Uh-huh,” Veronica said, then looked at me. “We did the nice thing, Parker. You’re new to St.

Sophia’s, so we offered to help you out. We gave you a warning, and because you handled our little game in the basement, we gave you a chance.”

“So very thoughtful,” Scout bit out, “to make her a charity case.”

Veronica ignored her. “Fine. You want to be honest? Let’s be honest. Friends matter, Parker.

And if you’re not friends with the right people, the fact that you went to St. Sophia’s won’t make a damn bit of difference. Even St. Sophia’s has its misfits, after all.” As if to punctuate her remark, she glanced over at Scout and Lesley, then glanced back at me, one eyebrow raised,

willing me to get her point.

I’m not sure if she was better or worse for it, but the bitchiness of her comment aside, there was earnestness in her expression. Veronica believed what she was saying—really, truly believed it.

Had Veronica been a misfit once?

Not that the answer was all that important right now. “If you’re saying that I have to dump one set of friends in order to keep another,” I told her, “I think you know what the answer’s going to be.”

“There are only two kinds of people in this world,” Veronica said. “Friends—and enemies.”

Was this girl for real? “I’m willing to take my chances.”

She snorted indignantly, then walked into Amie’s room. “Your loss,” she said, the door shutting with a decidedclick behind her.

The room was quiet for a moment.

I blew out a breath, then glanced over at Scout. Ever so calmly, without saying a word or making eye contact, she laid the rest of her cards flat on the table, stood up, marched into her room, and slammed the door.

The coffee table rattled.

I undraped the scarf from around my neck and dropped onto the couch.

Lesley crossed her legs and sat down on the floor, then began to order the deck of cards into a tidy pile. “Granted,” she said, “I’ve only known you for a couple of days, but that was not the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She bobbed her head toward Scout’s closed door, which had begun to rattle with the bass of Veruca Salt’s “Seether.”

“How ballistic do you think she’s gonna be?” I asked, my gaze on the vibrating door.

“Intercontinental missile ballistic.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

Lesley placed her stack of cards gingerly on the tabletop, then looked over at me. “But you’re still going in there, right?”

I nodded. “As soon as I’m ready.”

“Anything you want in your eulogy?”

Lesley smiled tightly. I gathered up my scarf, rose from the couch, and headed for Scout’s door.

“Just tell my parents I loved them,” I said, and reached out my hand to knock.

Four minutes later, when Scout finally said, “Come in,” I opened the door. Scout was on her bed, legs crossed, a spread of books before her.

She lifted her gaze and arched an eyebrow at me. “Well. Look who we have here.”

I managed a half smile.

She closed a book, then uncrossed her legs and rose from the bed. After turning down the stereo to a lowish roar, she moved to her shelves and began straightening the items in her tiny museum.

“You want to tell me why you’ve been avoiding me?”

Because I’m afraid, I silently thought. “I’m not avoiding you.”

She glanced over with skeptical eyes. “You ignored me all weekend. You’ve either been holed up in your room or hanging with the brat pack. And since I know there’s no love lost there . . .”

She shrugged.

“It’s nothing.”

“You’re freaked out about the magic, aren’t you? I knew it. I knew it was going to freak you out.” She plucked one of the tiny, glittered houses from a shelf, raised it to eye level, and peered through the tiny window. “I shouldn’t have told you. Shouldn’t have gotten you wrapped up in it.” Shaking her head again, she put the house back onto the shelf and picked up the one beside it.

“You’d think I’d be used to this by now,” she said, suddenly turning around, the second house in her hand. “I mean, it’s not like this is the first time someone has walked away because I’m, you know, weird. You think my parents didn’t notice that I could do stuff?”

As if proving her point, she adjusted the house so that it sat in the palm of her outstretched hand,

then whispered a series of staccato words.

The interior of the house began to glow.

“Look inside,” she quietly said.

“Inside?”

Carefully, she placed the illuminated house back on the shelf, then moved to the side so I could stand beside her. I stepped into the space she’d made, then leaned down and peeked into one of the tiny windows.

The house—this tiny, glittered, paper house on Scout’s bookshelf—now bustled with activity.

Like a dollhouse come to life, holograms of tiny figures moved inside amongst tiny pieces of furniture, like a living snow globe. Furniture lined the walls; lamps glowed with the spark of whatever life she’d managed to breathe into it with the mere sound of her voice.

I stood up again and glanced at her, eyes wide. “You did that?”

Her gaze on the house, she nodded. “That’s my talent—I make magic from words. Like you said, from lists. Letters.” She paused. “I did it the first time when I was twelve. I mean, not that particular spell; that’s just an animation thing, hardly a page of text, and I condensed it a long time ago. That means I made it shorter,” she said at my raised brows. “Like zipping a computer file.”

“That’s . . . amazing,” I said, lifting my gaze to the house again. Shadows passed before the tiny glassine windows, lives being lived in miniature.

“Amazing or not, my mother freaked out. My parents made calls, and I was sent right into private school. I was put in a place away from average kids. Put into a home.” She lifted her gaze and glanced around the room. “A prison, of sorts.”

That explained Scout’s tiny museum—the room she’d made her own, the four walls she’d filled with the detritus of her life, from junior high to St. Sophia’s. It was her magical respite.

Her cell.

“So, yeah,” she said after a moment, waving a hand in front of the paper house, the lights in the windows dimming and fading, a tiny world extinguished. “I’m used to rejection because of my magic.”

“It’s not you,” I quietly said.

Scout barked out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s the first time I’ve heard that one.” She straightened the house, adjusting it so that it sat neatly beside its neighbors. “If we’re going to break up, let’s just get it over with, okay?”

I figured out something about Scout in that moment, something that made my heart clench with protective-ness. However brave she might have been in fighting Reapers, in protecting humans,

in running through underground tunnels in the middle of the night, fighting back against fire- and earthquake-bearing baddies, she was very afraid of one thing: that I’d abandon her. She was afraid she’d made a friend who was going to walk away like her parents had done, walk out and leave her alone in her room. That’s what finally snapped me out of nearly forty-eight hours of freaking out about something that I knew, without a doubt, was going to change my life forever.

“It’s probably nothing,” I finally said.

I watched the change in her expression—from preparing for defeat, to relief, to crisis management.

“Tell me,” she said.

When I frowned back at her, she glared back at me, daring me to argue.

Recognizing the inevitability of my defeat, I sighed, but turned around and lifted up the back of my shirt.

The room went silent.

“You have a darkening,” she said.

“A what? I think it’s just a funky bruise or something?” It wasn’t, of course, just a funky bruise,

but I was willing to cling to those last few seconds of normalcy.

“When did you get it?”

I stepped away from her, pulling down my T- shirt and wrapping my arms around my waist self-

consciously. “I don’t know. A couple of . . . days ago.”

Silence.

“Like, a couple of firespell days ago?”

I nodded.

“You’ve been marked.” Her voice was soft, tremulous.

My fingers still knotted in the hem of the shirt, I glanced behind me. Scout stood there, eyes wide, lips parted in shock. “Scout?”

She shook her head, then looked up at me. “This isn’t supposed to happen.”

The emotion in her voice—awe—raised the hair on my arms and made my stomach sink. “What isn’t supposed to happen?”

She stood up, then frowned and nibbled the edge of her lip; then she walked to one end of the room and back again. She was pacing, apparently trying to puzzle out something. “Right after you got hit by the firespell. But you’ve never had powers before, and you don’t have powers now

—” She paused and glanced over at me. “Do you?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I don’t.”

She resumed talking so quickly, I wasn’t sure she’d even heard my answer. “I mean, I guess it’s possible.” She hit the end of the room and, neatly sideswiping a footlocker, turned around again.

“I’d have to check theGrimoire to be sure. If you don’t have power, then you weren’t really triggered, but maybe it’s some kind of tattoo from the firespell? I can’t imagine how you could have gotten a darkening without the power—”

“Scout.”

“But maybe it’s happened before.”

“Scout.”My voice was loud enough that she finally stopped and looked at me.

“Hmm?”

I pointed behind me. “Hello? My back?”

“Right, right.” She walked back to me and began to pull up the hem of her shirt.

“Um, I’m not sure stripping down is the solution here, Scout.”

“Prude,” she said dryly, but when she reached me again, she turned around.

At the small of her back, in pale green, was a mark like mine—well, not exactly like mine. The symbols inside her circle were different, but the general idea was the same.

“Oh, my God,” I said.

Scout dropped the back of her T-shirt and turned, nodding her head. “Yep. So I guess it’s settled now.”

“Settled?”

“You’re one of us.”

Forty minutes—and Scout’s rifling through a two-foot-high stack of books—later, we were headed downstairs. If she’d found anything in the giant leather volumes she pulled out of a plastic tub beneath her bed, she didn’t say. The only conclusion she’d reached was that she needed to talk to the rest of the Adepts in Enclave Three, so she’d pulled out her phone, popped open the keyboard and, fingers flying, sent out a dispatch. And then we were on our way.

The route we took this time was different still from the last couple of trips I’d made. We used a new doorway to the basement level—this one a wooden panel in a side hallway in the main building—and descended a narrower, steeper staircase. Once we were in the basement, we walked a maze through limestone hallways. I was beginning to think the labyrinth on the floor was more than just decoration. It served as a pretty good symbol of what lay beneath the convent.

Despite how confusing it was, Scout clearly knew the route, barely pausing at the corners, her speed quick and movements efficient. She moved silently, striding through the hallways and tunnels like a woman on a mission. I stumbled at a half run, half walk behind her, just trying to keep up. My speed wasn’t much helped by my stomach’s rolling, both because we were actually going into the basement again—by choice—and for the reason we were going there.

Because I was her mission.

Or so I assumed.

“You could slow down a little, you know.”

“Slowing down would make it harder for me to punish you by making you keep up,” she said,

but came to a stop as we reached the dead end of a limestone corridor that ended in a nondescript metal door.

“Why are you punishing me?”

Scout reached up, pulled a key from above the threshold, and slipped it into the lock. When the door popped open, she put back the key, then glanced at me. “Um, you abandoned me for the brat pack?”

“Abandoned is a harsh word.”

“So are they,” she pointed out, holding the door open so I could move inside. “The last time you hung out with them, they put you in the hospital.”

“That was actually your fault.”

“Details,” she said.

My feet still on the limestone, hand on the threshold of the door, I peeked inside. She was leading me into an old tunnel. It was narrow, with an arched ceiling, the entire tunnel paved in concrete, narrow tracks along the concrete floor. Lights in round, industrial fittings were suspended from the ceiling every dozen yards or so. The half illumination didn’t do much for the ambience. A couple of inches of rusty water covered the tracks on the floor, and the concrete walls were covered with graffiti—words of every shape and size, big and small, monotone and multicolored.

“What is this?”

“Chicago Tunnel Company Railroad,” she said, nudging me forward. I took a step into dirty water, glad I’d worn boots for my shopping excursion, and glad I still had on a jacket. It was chilly, probably because we were underground.

“It’s an old railroad line,” Scout said, then stepped beside me. Cold, musty air stirred as she closed the door behind us. Somewhere down the line, water dripped. “The cars used to move between downtown buildings to deliver coal and dump ash and stuff. Parts of the tunnel run under the river, and some of those parts were accidentally breached by the city, so if you see a tsunami, find a bulkhead and make a run for it.”

“I’ll make a point of it.”

Scout reached into her messenger bag and pulled out two flashlights. She took one, then handed me the second. While the tunnels were lit, it made me feel better to have the weight in my hand.

Flashlights in hand, we walked. We took one branch, then another, then another, making so many turns that I had no clue which direction we were actually moving in.

“So this mark thing,” I began, as we stepped gingerly through murky water. “What is it,

exactly?”

“They’re called darkenings. We all have them,” Scout answered, the beam of light swinging as she moved. “All the members of the ‘Dark Elite,’” she flatly added, using her hands, flashlight and all, to gesture some air quotes. “That’s what some of the Reapers call us—all of us—who have magic. Elite, I guess, because we’re gifted. They think we’re special,better , because we have magic. And dark because the darkenings are supposed to appear when the magic appears.

Well, except in your case.” She stopped and looked at me. “Still no powers, right?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no. Is that why we’re down here? Are you going to prod me or poke me or something, to figure out if I have secret powers? Like a chick on an alien spacecraft?”

“And you think I’m the odd one,” she muttered. “No, Scully, we aren’t going to probe you.

We’re just going to talk to the Adepts and see what they have to say about your new tat. No bigs.” She shrugged nonchalantly, then started walking again.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, Scout stopped before a door made up of giant wooden beams, two golden hinges running across it, an arch in the top. A large numeral “3” was elegantly carved into the lintel above the door. And on the door was the same symbol I’d seen in the model room —a circle with aY inside it.

This was Enclave Three, I assumed.

Scout flipped off her flashlight, then held out her hand; I pressed my flashlight into her palm.

She flicked it off and deposited them both back in her messenger bag.

“Okay,” she said, looking over at me. “I suppose I should prep you for this. The other seven Adepts in ET should be here. Katie and Smith are our Varsity Adepts. You remember what that means?”

“They’re the college kids,” I answered. “And Junior Varsity is high school. You just told me on Friday.”

“You’ve brat-packed since then,” she muttered. “Your IQ has probably dropped.”

I gave her a snarky look.

“Anywho,” she said, ignoring the look, “Katie’s a manipulator. Literally and figuratively. You know, in history, when they talk about the Salem witch trials, about how innocent girls and boys were convinced to do all these horrible things because some witch made them?”

I’d readThe Crucible in English last year (probably just like every other sophomore), so I nodded.

“Yeah, well, they probablywere convinced. That stuff wasn’t a myth. Katie’s not a wicked witch or anything, but she’s got the same skills.”

“Well, that’s just downright disturbing,” I said.

“Yeah.” She nodded, then patted my arm. “Sleep well tonight. Anyway, Katie manipulates, and Smith—and, yes, that’s his first name—levitates. He lifts heavy stuff, raises things in the air. As for JV, you know me, Michael and Jason, obvs, and there are three more. Jamie and Jill, those are the twins. Paul’s the one with the curls.”

“You said you were a spellcaster?”

“Binder. Spellbinder.”

“Okay. So what are these guys? Michael and the rest of them. What can they do?”

“Oh, sure, um”—she shifted her feet, her gaze on the ceiling as she itemized—“um, Jamie and Jill have elemental powers. Fire and ice.”

“They have firespell?” I wondered aloud.

“Oh, sorry, no. Jamie can manipulate fire, literally—like a firestarter. Set stuff ablaze, create smoke, general pyromania. She can work with the element without getting burned. Firespell is different—it’s not about fire, really, but about power, at least we think. There aren’t any Adepts with firespell, so we kind of go off what we’ve seen in action. Anywho, you put Jamie, Jill, and me together, and we’re one medieval witch,” she said, with what sounded like a fake laugh.

“Paul is a warrior. A man of battle. Ridiculous moves, like something out of a kung fu movie.

Michael is a reader.”

“What’s a reader?”

“Well, I bind spells, right? I take words of power, charms and I translate them into action, like the house I showed you.”

I nodded.

“Michael reads objects. He can feel them out, determine their history, hear what they’re saying about things that happened, conditions.”

“Well that’s . . . weird. I mean cool, but weird.”

She shrugged. “Unusual, but handy. Architecture speaks to him. Literally.”

“And for all that, you two still aren’t dating.”

She narrowed her gaze. “I’m not sure I should let you two talk to each other anymore. Now, are you done procrastinating? Can we get on with this?”

“I’m not procrastinating,” I said, procrastinating. “What about Jason?” I already suspected, of course, what Jason’s magic was. But he hadn’t exactly confirmed it, and my own suspicions—

that he had some kind of animal-related power—were strange enough that I wasn’t ready to put them out there. On the other hand, how many teenage boys growled when they were attacked?

Okay, when you put it that way, it actually didn’t sound that rare.

Scout dropped her gaze and fiddled with her messenger bag. “Jason’s power isn’t for me to tell.

If he’s ready for that, he’ll tell you.”

“I—I have an idea.”

She went quiet and slowly lifted her gaze to mine. “An idea?”

We looked at each other for a minute, silently, each assessing the other:Do you know what I know? How can I confirm it without giving it away?

“I’ll let you talk to him about that,” she finally said, raising her hand to the door. “Are you readynow ?”

“Are they gonna wig out that you’re bringing me?”

“It’s a good possibility,” she said, then rapped her fist in a rhythmic pattern. Knock. Knock,

knock.Bang . Knock.

“Secret code?” I asked.

“Warning,” she said. “Jamie and Paul are dating. In case we’re early, I don’t want to walk in on that.”

The joke helped ease my nerves, but only a little. As soon as she touched the door handle, my stomach began rolling again.

“Welcome to the jungle,” she said, and opened the door.

The jungle was a big, vaulted room, of a quality I wouldn’t have expected to see in an abandoned railway tunnel far beneath Chicago. It looked like a meeting hall, the walls covered in paintings made up of tiny, mosaic tiles, the ceilings girded with thick, wooden beams. It had the same kind of look as the convent—big scale, careful work, earthy materials. The room was empty of furniture—completely empty except for the seven kids who’d turned to stare at the door when it opened. There were three girls and four guys, including Michael and Jason.

Jason of the deadly blue eyes and currently frigid stare.

The room went completely silent, all fourteen of those eyes on us as we stepped into the room.

Scout squeezed my hand supportively.

Silently, they moved around and formed a semicircle facing us, as if containing a threat. I shuffled a little closer to Scout and surveyed the judges.

Jamie and Jill were the obvious twins, both tallish and lanky, with long auburn hair and blue eyes. Paul was tall, lean, coffee-skinned and very cute, his hair a short mop of tiny, spiral curls.

The guy and girl in the middle, who looked older than the rest of them—early college, maybe—

stepped forward, fury on their faces. I guessed these were Katie and Smith. Katie was cheerleader cute, with a bob of shoulder-length brown hair, green eyes, a long T-shirt, and ballet flats paired with jeans. Smith—shaggy brown hair pasted to his forehead emo-style—wore a dingy, plaid shirt. He was the rebel type, I assumed.

“Green,” he bit out, “you’d better have a damn good reason for calling us in and, more important, for bringing aregular in here.”

Okay, so pasty hair was clearly not impressed with me.

Scout crossed her arms, preparing for battle. “A,” she said, “this is Lily Parker, the girl who took a hit of firespell to save us and wound up in a paper nightgown in the LaSalle Street Clinic because of it. Ring any bells?”

I actually took a hit because I’d tripped, but since the Adepts’ expressions softened after she passed along that little factoid, I kept the truth to myself.

“B,” Scout continued, “I have a damn good reason. We need to show you something.”

Katie spoke up. “You could have showed us something without her being here.”

“I can’t show you what I need to show you without her being here.” Her explanation was met with silence, but she kept going. “You have to know that I wouldn’t have brought her here if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Trust me—it’s necessary. The Reapers have already seen her, and they already think she’s associated with us. They get ambitious and come knocking on our door tonight, and she’s in even more trouble. She’s here as a favor to us.”

Katie and Smith glanced at each other, and then she whispered something to him.

“Five minutes,” Smith finally said. “You have five minutes.”

Scout didn’t need it; it took two seconds for her to drop the bomb. “I think she might be one of us.”

Silence, until Katie made a snorty, skeptical sound. “One of us? Why in God’s name would you think she’s one of us? She’s a regular, and getting hit with a blast isn’t going to change that.”

“Really?” Scout asked. “You don’t think getting hit with a dose of firespell is going to have an effect? Given that we’re all bouncing around Chicago with magical gifts, that’s kind of a narrow-

minded perspective, isn’t it, Katie?”

Katie arched an arrogant brow at Scout. “You need to watch your step, Green.”

Michael stepped forward, hands raised in peace. “Hey, if there’s something we need to figure out here, the fewer preconceptions, the better. Scout, if you have something you need us to see,

you’d better show it now.”

Scout glanced over at me, nodded her head decidedly, then spun her finger in the air.

“Turn around,” she said. I glanced around the room, not entirely eager to pull up my shirt before an assemblage of people I didn’t know—and a boy I potentially wanted to know better. But it needed to be done, so I twisted around, pulled my shirt from the waist of my skirt, and lifted it just enough to show the mark across my lower back.

Their faces pinched in concentration and thought, the group of them moved around me to stare at my back.

“It’s a darkening,” Jason said, then lifted his killer blue eyes to mine. “Is it okay if I touch it?”

I swallowed, then nodded and gripped the hem of the shirt, still between my fingers, a little tighter. He stretched out his hand. His fingers just grazed my back, my skin tingling beneath his fingers. I stifled a shudder, but goose bumps arose on my arms. This wasn’t the time or the place for me to get giggly about Jason’s attentions, but that didn’t make the effect any less powerful. It felt like a tingle of electricity moving across my skin, like that first dip into a hot bath on a cold night—spine tingling.

“It’s definitely like ours,” Jason agreed, standing again. “Have you developed any powers?” he quietly asked me.

I shook my head.

“I have no idea how she got it,” Jason finally concluded, his brow furrowed. “But it’s like ours.

Or close enough, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Scout said, “but you nailed it—there’s something different about hers, isn’t there? The edges are fuzzier. Like a tattoo, but the ink bled.”

“What could that mean, Green?” Katie asked.

She shrugged. “I have no clue.”

“Research is your field,” Smith reminded her. “There’s nothing in theGrimoire ?”

“Not that I could find, and I checked the index for every entry I could think of.” I assumed theGrimoire was the giant leather-bound book she’d skimmed through before deciding to notify the elders.

Smith raised his gaze to me. “I understand that you’ve been provided with the basics about our enclave, our struggle, our gifts.”

I nodded.

“And you’re sure you haven’t . . . become aware of any powers since you were hit?”

“I’d remember,” I assured him.

“Maybe this is just a symbol of the fact that she was hit?” Jason suggested, frowning, head tilted as he gazed at my back. “Like, I don’t know, a stamp of the shot she took?”

“I really don’t know,” Scout said quietly.

Their conversations got quieter, like scientists mumbling as they considered a prime specimen. I stared at the wall at the other end of the room while they whispered behind me and tried to figure out who—or what—I’d become.

Eventually, Smith straightened and, like obedient pups, the rest of the group followed suit and spread out again. I pulled my shirt back down and turned to face them.

Smith shook his head. “All we know is that she’s marked. It might not be a darkening. Anything else is just speculation.”

“Speculation?” Paul asked. “She’s got a darkening, just like ours.”

“Not exactly like ours,” Katie reminded him.

I watched Michael struggle to keep his expression neutral. “Enough like ours,” he countered, “to make it evident that she’s like us. That she’s one of us.”

Katie shook her head. “You’re missing the point. She’s already told us she doesn’t have skills,

magic, power. Nothing but a fancy bruise.” As if to confirm that suspicion, she turned her green-

eyed gaze on me. “She’s not one of us.”

“A fancy bruise?” Scout repeated. “You’re kidding, right?”

Katie shrugged, the movement and her expression condescending. “I’m just saying.”

“Hey,” Smith said, apparently deciding to intervene. “Let it go. It’s better for her, anyway.

Hanging out down here isn’t fun and games. This job is dangerous, it’s hard, and it’s exhausting.

This might feel like rejection. It’s actually luck.”

The room went quiet. When Scout spoke again, her voice was soft, but earnest.

“I know my place,” she said, “and we all know this isn’t the easiest job in the world. But if she’s one of us, if she’s part of us, she needs to know.We need to know.”

“There’s no evidence that she’s one of us, Scout,” Smith said. “A mark isn’t enough. A mark won’t stop Reapers, and it won’t save regulars, and it won’t help us. This isn’t up for debate.

You bring me some evidence—real evidence—that it’s a darkening, and we’ll talk about it again.”

I could feel Scout’s frustration, could see it in the stiffness in her shoulders. She looked at her colleagues.

“Paul? Jamie? Jill? Jason?” When she met Michael’s gaze, her expression softened. “Michael?”

He looked down for a moment, considering, then up at her again. “I’m sorry, Scout, but I’m with Smith on this one. She’s not like us. She wasn’t made the way we were. She wasn’t born with power, and the only reason she has a mark is because she got hit. If we let her in anyway, if we play devil’s advocate, she takes our attention away from everything else we have to deal with. We can’t afford that right now.”

“Her being damaged isn’t reason enough,” Katie put in.

I arched an eyebrow. Scout may have had to play nice for hierarchy reasons, but I (obviously) wasn’t part of this group.

“I am notdamaged ,” I said. “I’m a bystander who got wrapped up in something I didn’t want to be wrapped up in because you couldn’t keep the bad guys in hand.”

“The point is,” Smith said, “you weren’t born like us. The only thing you’ve got right now is a symbol of nothing.”

“There’s no need to be harsh,” Michael said. “It’s not like she got branded on purpose.”

“Are you sure about that?”

The room went silent, all eyes on Katie.

“Are you suggesting,” Scout bit out, “that she faked the darkening?”

Katie gazed at her with unapologetic snarkiness. This girl had college brat pack written all over her.

“So much for ‘all for one and one for all,’ ” Scout muttered. “I can’t believe you’d suspect that a person who’d never seen a darkening before faked having one forty-eight hours after she was put in the hospital because she took a full-on dose of firespell and managed to survive it. And you know what’s worse? I can’t believe you’d doubt me.” She pressed a finger into her chest.“Me .”

The JV Adepts shared heavy looks.

“Regulars put us all at risk. They raise our profile, they get in the way, they serve as distractions.” Jason lifted his chin, and eyes of sea blue stared out. He gazed at me, anger in his eyes. My slight at the mall must have hurt more than I’d thought.

“Until we know more, she’s a regular, and that’s all she is. No offense,” he added, his gaze on me.

“None taken,” I lied back to him.

“We have other business to discuss,” Smith said. “Escort her home.”

“That’s it?” Scout’s voice contained equal parts desperation and frustration.

“Bring us something we can use,” Smith said. “Someonewe can use, and we’ll talk.”

Scout offered a sarcastic salute. “Let’s go,” she said to me, her hand on my arm, leading me away as the group turned inward to begin their next plan.

We were fifty yards away from the room before she spoke. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said, not entirely sure if I believed that. I hadn’t wanted to be the victim of the firespell attack, hadn’t wanted to find the mark on my back, hadn’t been thrilled about being dragged to a meeting of Adepts, or becoming one. I knew what Scout went through. Late-

night meetings. Fear. Worry. Bearing the responsibility of protecting the public from soul-

sucking adults and hell-bent teenagers—and not just your run-of-the-mill soul-sucking adults and hell- bent teenagers. I’d seen the exhaustion on her face, even as I appreciated her sense of right and wrong, the fact that she put herself out there to protect people who didn’t know she was burning the candle at both ends.

So even though it wasn’t something I’d asked for, or something I thought I wanted, it was hard not to feel rejected by Smith and Katie and the rest of Enclave Three. I was already the new girl —a Sagamore fish out of water in a school where everyone else had years of history together and lots of money to play with. Being treated like an outcast wasn’t something I’d signed up for.

“I’ll have to keep an eye on you,” she said as we reentered the main building and headed across the labyrinth, “in case anything happens.”

“In case I get attacked by a Reaper, or in case I suddenly develop the ability to summon unicorns?” My voice was toast-dry.

“Oh, please,” Scout said. “Don’t take that tone with me. You know you’d love to have a minion.

Someone at your beck and call. Someone to do your bidding. How many times have you said to yourself, ‘Self, I need a unicorn to run errands and such’?”

“Not that often till lately, to be real honest,” I said, but managed a small smile.

“Yeah, well, welcome to the jungle,” she said again, but this time, darkly.

It was nearly midnight by the time I was tucked into bed in a tank top and shorts, the St.

Sophia’s blanket pulled up to my chin. One hand behind my head, I stared at the stars on the ceiling, sleep elusive, probably because I was already too well-rested. After all, I’d spent half the weekend either hunkered beneath the sheets, an ostrich with its head in cotton, or ignoring my best friend by lollygagging on Michigan Avenue. I’d self- medicated with luxury goods. Well,

by watching other girls buy luxury goods, anyway.

I wasn’t thrilled with what I’d done, with my abandonment. But, whether I was the perfect best friend or not, the sounds of traffic softened, and I finally, oh so slowly, fell asleep.

I woke to pounding on the door. Suddenly vaulted from sleep, I sat up and pushed tangled hair from my face. “Who’s there?”

“We’re running late!” came Scout’s frantic voice from the other side.

I glanced over at the alarm clock. Class started in fifteen minutes.

“Frick,” I said, adrenaline jolting me to full consciousness. I threw off the blankets and jumped for the door. Unlocking and opening it, I found Scout in the doorway in long-sleeved pajamas and thick blue socks.

I arched an eyebrow at the ensemble. “It’s still September, right?”

Scout rolled her eyes. “I’m cold a lot. Sue me.”

“How about I just take a shower?”

She nodded and held up two energy bars. “Get in, get out, and when you’re done, art history,

here we come.”

Have you ever had one of those days where you give up on being really clean, and settle for beinglargely clean? Where you don’t have time for the entire scrubbing and exfoliating regime,

so you settle for the basics? Where brushing your teeth becomes the most vigorous part of your cleaning ritual?

Yeah, welcome to Monday morning at St. Sophia’s School for (Slightly Grimy) Girls.

When I was (mostly) clean, I met Scout in the common room. She was sporting the preppy look today—Mary Janes, knee-high socks, oxford shirt and tie.

“You look very—”

“Nerdy?” she suggested. “I’m trying a new philosophy today.”

“A new philosophy?” I asked, as we shut the common room door and headed down the hall. She handed over the energy bar she’d shown off earlier. I ripped down the plastic and bit off a chunk.

“Look the nerd,be the nerd,” she said, with emphasis. “I figure this look could boost my grades by fifteen to twenty percent.”

“Fifteen to twenty percent? That’s impressive. You think it’ll work?”

“I’m sure it won’t,” she said. “But I’m giving it a shot. I’m taking positive steps.”

“Studying would be another positive step,” I pointed out.

“Studying interferes with my world saving.”

“It’s unfortunate you can’t get excused absences for that.”

“I know, right?”

“And speaking of saving the world,” I said, “did you have a call after we got back last night? Or did you just sleep late?”

“I sleep with earplugs,” she said, half- answering the question. “The radio alarm came on, but it wasn’t loud enough, so I dreamed about REO Speedwagon and Phil Collins for forty-five minutes. Suffice it to say, I can feel it coming in the air tonight.”

“Dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum, dum, dum,” I said, repeating the drum lead- in,

although without my usual air drumming. My reputation was off to a rocky-enough start as it was.

We took the stairs to the first floor, then headed through the corridor to the classroom building.

The lockers were our next stop. I took the last bite of the energy bar—some kind of chewy fruit,

nut, and granola combination—then folded up the wrapper and slipped it into my bag.

At our lockers, I opened my messenger bag and peeked inside. I already had my art history book, so I kneeled to my lower-level locker, opened it, and grabbed my trig book, my second class of the day. I’d just closed the door, my palm still pressed against slick wood, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I turned and found M.K. beside me—grinning.

“Fell down the stairs, did you?”

Scout slipped books into her locker, then slammed the door shut before giving M.K. a narrow-

eyed glare. “Hey, Betty, go find Veronica and leave us in peace.”

M.K. looked confused by the reference, but she shook it off with a toss of her long dark hair.

“How lame are you when you can’t even walk up a flight of stairs without falling down?” Her voice was just a shade too loud, obviously intended to get the other girls’ attention, to make them stare and whisper and, presumably, embarrass me.

Fortunately, I didn’t embarrass that easily. On the other hand, I couldn’t exactly correct her. If I threw “secret basement room” at these girls, there’d be a mad rush to find out what lurked downstairs. That wasn’t going to help the Adepts, so I opted to deflect.

“How lame do you have to be to push a girl down the stairs?”

“I didn’t push anyone down the stairs,” she clipped out.

“So you had nothing to do with my hospital visit?”

Crimson rose on her cheeks.

It was mean, I know, but I had Adepts to protect. Well, one nose-ringed Adept to protect,

anyway. Besides, I didn’t actually make an accusation. I just asked the right question.

As school bells began to peal, she nailed us both with a glare, then turned on a heel and stalked away, a monogrammed leather backpack between her shoulder blades.

I’m not sure what, or how much, the brat pack had spilled around school about my “fall” and my clinic visit, but I felt the looks and heard the whispers. They lasted through the morning’s art history, trig, and civics classes, girls in identical plaid lowering their heads together—or passing tiny, folded notes—to share what they’d heard about my weekend.

Luckily, the rumors were pretty tame. I hadn’t heard anything about bizarre rooms beneath the building, evil teenagers roaming the hallways, or Scout’s involvement—other than the fact that people “wouldn’t be surprised” if she’d had something to do with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one at St. Sophia’s who thought she was a little odd.

I glanced over at her during civics—punky blond and brown hair in tiny ponytails, fingernails painted glossy black, a tiny hoop in her nose. I was kind of surprised Foley let her get away with all that, but I thanked God Scout stood out in this bastion of über-normalcy.

After civics, we headed back to our lockers.

“Let’s go run an errand,” she said, opening her locker and transferring her books.

I arched a skeptical eyebrow.

“Perfectly mundane mission,” she said, closing the door again. She adjusted her skull-and-

crossbones messenger bag and gave me a wink.

I followed as she weaved through girls in the locker hall, then through the Great Hall and main building to the school’s front door. This one was an off-campus mission, apparently.

Outside, we found the sky a muted steel gray, the city all but windless. The weather was moody —as if we were on the cusp of something nasty. As if the sky was preparing to open on us all.

“Let’s go,” Scout said, and we took the steps and headed down the sidewalk. We made a left,

walking down Erie and away from Michigan Avenue and the garden of stone thorns.

“Here’s the thing about Chicago,” she began.

“Speak it, sister.”

“The brat pack gave you the Sex and the Windy City tour. The shopping on Michigan is nice,

but it’s not all there is. There’s an entire city out there—folks who’ve lived here all their lives,

folks who’veworked here all their lives, blue-collar jobs, dirt under their fingernails, without shopping for thousand-dollar handbags.” She looked up at a high-rise as we passed. “Nearly three million people in a city that’s been here for a hundred and seventy years. The architecture,

the art, the history, the politics. I know you’re not from here, and you’ve only been here a week,

and your heart is probably back in Sagamore, but this is an amazing place, Lil.”

I watched as she gazed at the buildings and architecture around her, love in her eyes.

“I want to run for city council,” she suddenly said, as we crossed the street and passed facing Italian restaurants. Tourists formed a line outside each, menus in hand, excitement in their eyes as they prepared to sample Chicago’s finest.

“City council?” I asked her. “Like, Chicago’s city council? You want to run for office?”

She nodded her head decisively. “I love this city. I want to serve it someday. I mean, it depends on where I live and who’s in the ward and whether the seat is open or not, but I want to give something back, you know?”

I had no idea Scout had political ambitions, much less that she’d given the logistics that much thought. She was only sixteen, and I was impressed. I also wasn’t sure if I should feel pity for her parents, who were missing out on her general awesomeness, or if I should thank them—was Scout who she was because her parents had freaked about her magic, and deposited her in a boarding school?

She bobbed her head at a bodega that sat kitty-corner on the next block. “In there,” she said, and we crossed the street. She opened the door, a bell on the handle jingling as we moved inside.

“Yo,” she said, a hand in the air to wave at the clerk as she walked straight to the fountain drink machine.

“Scout,” said the guy at the counter, whom I pegged at nineteenish or twenty, and whose dark eyes were on the comic book spread on the counter in front of him, a spill of short dreadlocks around his face. “Refill time?”

“Refill time,” Scout agreed. I stayed at the counter while she attacked the fountain machine,

yanking a gigantic plastic cup from a dispenser. With mechanical precision, she pushed the cup under the ice dispenser, peeked over the rim as ice spilled into it, then released the cup, emptied out a few, and repeated the whole process again until she was satisfied she’d gotten exactly the right amount. When she was done with the ice, she went straight for the strawberry soda, and the process started again.

“She’s particular, isn’t she?” I wondered aloud.

The clerk snorted, then glanced up at me, chocolate brown eyes alight with amusement.

“Particular hardly covers it. She’s an addict when it comes to the sugar water.” His brow furrowed. “I don’t know you.”

“Lily Parker,” I said. “First year at St. Sophia’s.”

“You one of the brat pack?”

“She is mos’ def’ not one of the brat pack,” Scout said, joining us at the counter, as she poked a straw into the top of her soda. She took a sip, eyes closed in ecstasy. I had to bite back a laugh.

Lips still wrapped around the straw, Scout opened one eye and squinted evilly at me. “Don’t mock the berry,” she said when she paused to take a breath, then turned back to the kid behind the counter. “She tried, unsuccessfully, to join the brat pack, at least until she realized how completely lame they are. Oh, and Derek, this is Lily. You two are buds now.”

I grinned at Derek. “Glad to meet you.”

“Ditto.”

“Derek is a Montclare grad who’s moved into the wonderful world of temping at his dad’s store while working on his degree in underwater basketweaving at U of C.” She batted catty eyes at Derek. “I got that right, didn’t I, D?”

“Nuclear physics,” he corrected.

“Close enough,” Scout said with a wink, then stepped back to trail the tips of her fingers across the boxes of candy in front of the counter. “Are we thinking Choco-Loco or Caramel Buddy?

Am I in the mood for crunchy or chewy today?” She held up two red and orange candy bars, then waggled them at us. “Thoughts? I’m polling, checking the pulse of the nation. Well, of our little corner of River North, anyway.”

“Choco-Loco.”

“Caramel Buddy.”

We said the names simultaneously, which resulted in our grinning at each other while Scout continued the not-so-silent debate over her candy choices. Crispy rice was apparently a crucial component. Nuts were a downgrade.

“So,” Derek asked, “are you from Chicago?”

“Sagamore,” I said. “New York state.”

“You’re a long way from home, Sagamore.”

I glanced through the windows toward St. Sophia’s towers, the prickly spires visible even though we were a couple of blocks away. “Tell me about it,” I said, then looked back at Derek.

“You did your time at MA?”

“I was MA born and bred. My dad owns a chain of bodegas”—he bobbed his head toward the shelves in the store—“and he wanted more for me. I got four years of ties and uniforms and one hell of an SAT score to show for it.”

“Derek’s kind of a genius,” Scout said, placing the Choco-Loco on the counter. “Biggest decision I’ll make all day, probably.”

Derek chuckled. “Now, I know that’s a lie.” He held up the front of the comic book, which featured a busty, curvy superheroine in a skintight latex uniform. “Your decision making is a little more akin to this, wouldn’t you say?”

My eyes wide, I glanced from the comic book to Scout, who snorted gleefully at Derek’s comparison, then leaned in toward her. “He knows?” I whispered.

She didn’t answer, which I took as an indication that she didn’t want to have that conversation now, at least not in front of company. She pulled a patent leather wallet from her bag, then pulled a crisp twenty-dollar bill from the wallet.

I arched an eyebrow at gleaming patent leather—and the designer logo that was stamped across it.

“What?” she asked, sliding the wallet back into her bag. “It’s not real; just a good fake I picked up in Wicker Park. There’s no need to look like a peasant.”

“Even the humblest of girls can have a thing for the good stuff,” Derek said, a grin quirking one corner of his mouth, then lowered his gaze to the comic book again. I sensed that we’d lost his attention.

“Later, D,” Scout said, and headed for the quick shop’s door.

Without lifting his gaze, Derek gave us a wave. We walked outside, the sky still gray and moody, the city eerily quiet, and toward St. Sophia’s.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me get this straight. You wouldn’t tell me—your roommate—about what you were involved in, but the guy who runs the quick shop down the street gets to know?”

Scout nibbled on the end of one of the sticks of chocolate in her Choco-Loco wrapper, and slid me a sideways glance as she munched. “He’s cute, right?”

“Oh, my God, totally. But not the point.”

“He has a girlfriend, Sam. They’ve been together for years.”

“Bummer, but let’s keep our eyes on the ball.” We separated as we walked around a clutch of tourists, then came back together when we’d passed the knot of them. “Why does he get to know?”

“You’re assuming I told him,” Scout said as we paused at the corner, waiting for a crossing signal in heavy lunchtime traffic. “And while I’m glad he’s supportive—seriously, he’sso pretty.”

“It’s the hair,” I suggested.

“And the eyes. Totally chocolatey.”

“Agreed. You were saying?”

“I didn’t tell him,” Scout said, leading us across the street when the light changed. “Remember what I told you about kids who seemed off? Depressed?”

“Humans targeted by Reapers?”

“Exactly,” she said with a nod. “Derek was a near victim. He and his mom were superclose, but she died a couple of years ago—when he was a freshman. Unfortunately, he rushed the wrong house at U of C; two of his fraternity brothers were Reapers. They took advantage of the grief,

made friends with him, dragged him down even further.”

“They”—how was I supposed to phrase this?—“took his energy, or whatever?”

Scout nodded gravely as we moved through lunch-minded Chicagoans. “There wasn’t much left of him. A shell, nearly, by the time we got there. He was barely going to class, barely getting out of bed. Depressed.”

“Jeez,” I quietly said.

“I know. Luckily, he wasn’t too far gone, but it was close. We identified him and had to clear away some nasty siphoning spells—that’s what the younger Reapers used to drain him, to send the energy to the elders who needed it. We got him out and away from the Reapers. We gave him space, got him rested and fed, put him back in touch with his family and real friends. The rest—

the healing—was all him.” She scowled, and her voice went tight. “Then we gave his Reaper

‘friends’ a good talking-to about self-sacrifice.”

“Did it work?”

“Well, we managed to bring one of them back. The other’s still a frat boy in the worst connotation of the phrase. Anyway, Derek’s one of a handful of people who know about us,

about Adepts. We call them the community.” I remembered the term from the conversation with Smith and Katie. “People without magic who know about our existence, usually because they were caught in the crossfire. Sometimes, they’re grateful and they provide a service later.

Information. Or maybe just a few minutes of normalcy.”

“Strawberry soda,” I added.

“That is the most important thing,” she agreed. She pulled me from the flow of pedestrian traffic to the curb at the edge of the street. “Look around you, Lil. Most people are oblivious to the currents around them, to the hum and flow of the city. We’re part of that hum and flow. The magic is part of that hum and flow. Sometimes people say they love living in Chicago—the energy, the earthiness, the sense of being part of something bigger than you are.”

Glancing around the neighborhood, across glass and steel and concrete, the city buzzing around us, I could see their point.

“There have always been a handful of people who know about us. Who know what we do, know what we fight for,” Scout said as we rounded the corner and walked toward St. Sophia’s.

And there he was.

Jason stood in front of the stone wall, hands in his pockets, in khaki pants and a navy blue sweater with an embroidered gold crest on the pocket. His dark blond hair was tidy, and his eyes had turned a muted, steel blue beneath the cloudy sky, beneath those dark eyebrows and long lashes.

Those eyes were aimed, laserlike, in my direction.

Scout, who’d taken a heartening sip of strawberry-flavored sugar water after relaying Derek’s history, released the straw just long enough to snark. “It appears you have a visitor.”

“He could be here for you,” I absently said.

“Uh, no. Jason Shepherd does not make trips to St. Sophia’s to see me. If he needed me, he could text me.”

I made a vague sound, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her assessment, but my nerves apparently agreed. My throat was tight; my stomach fluttered. Had this boy—this boy with those ridiculous blue eyes—come here to see me?

Right before I melted into a ridiculous puddle of girl, I remembered that I was still irritated with Jason and wiped the dopey smile off my face. I’d show him “distraction.”

“Shepherd,” Scout said when we reached him, “what brings you to our fine institution of higher learning?” She managed those ten words before her lips found the straw again. I realized I’d found Scout’s pacifier, should it ever prove necessary—strawberry soda.

Jason bobbed his head at Scout, then looked at me again. “Can I talk to you?”

I glanced at Scout, who checked her watch. “You’ve got seven minutes before class,” she said,

then motioned with a hand. “Give me your bag, and I’ll stick it in your chair.”

“Thanks,” I said, and made the transfer.

Jason and I watched Scout trot down the sidewalk and disappear into the building. It wasn’t until she was gone that he looked at me again.

“About yesterday.” He paused, eyes on the sidewalk, as if deciding what to say. “It’s not personal.”

I arched my eyebrows. I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.

He looked away, wet his lips, then found my gaze again. “When you were in the hospital, we talked about the Reapers. About the fact that we’re in the minority?”

“A splinter cell, you said.”

He bobbed his head. “In a way. We’re like a resistance movement. A rebellion. We aren’t equally matched. The Reapers—wecall them Reapers—they’re not just a handful of misfits.

They’reall the gifted—all the Dark Elite—except for us.”

“All except for you?”

“Unfortunately. That means the odds are stacked against us, Lily.” He took a step forward, a step toward me. “Our position is dangerous. And if you don’t have magic, I don’t want you wrapped up in it. Not if you don’t have a way to defend yourself. Scout can’t always be there . . . and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

An orchestra could have been playing on the St. Sophia’s grounds and I wouldn’t have heard it.

I heard nothing but the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears, saw nothing but the blue of his lash-fringed eyes.

“Thank you,” I quietly said.

“That’s not to say I wasn’t bitter that you ignored me Sunday.”

I nibbled the edge of my lip. “Look, I’m sorry about that—” Jason shook his head. “You saw the mark, and you needed time to process. We’ve all been there. I mean, you could have chosen better company, but I understand the urge to get away. To escape.” Jason looked down at the sidewalk, eyebrows pulled together in concentration. “When I found out who I was,what I was, I ran away. Hopped a Greyhound bus and headed to my grandmother’s house in Alabama. I camped out there for three weeks that summer. I was thirteen,” he said, raising his gaze again. His eyes had switched color from turquoise to chartreuse, and something animal appeared in his expression—something intense.

“You’re a . . . wolf?” I said it like a question, but I suddenly had no doubt, and no fear, about the possibility that he was something far scarier than Scout and the rest of the Adepts.

“I am,” he said, his voice a little deeper than it had been a moment ago. Goose bumps rose on my arms, and a chill slunk down my spine. I wondered whether that was a common reaction—

Little Red Riding Hood syndrome, maybe.

I stared at him and he stared back at me, my focus so complete that I actually shook in surprise when the tower bells began to ring, signaling the end of the lunch period.

“You should go,” he said. When I nodded, he reached out and squeezed my hand. Electricity sparked up my spine. “Goodbye, Lily Parker.”

“Goodbye, Jason Shepherd,” I said, but he was already walking away.

He’d walked to St. Sophia’s to see me—to talk to me. To explain why he hadn’t wanted me to sit in on the Adepts’ meetings, mark or not.

Because he wasworried about me.

Because he hadn’t wanted me to get hurt.

The moment I’d shared with Jason had been so incredibly phenomenal, the universe had to equalize. And what was the chosen brand of karmic balance for a high school junior?

Two words: pop quiz.

Magic in the world or not, I was still in high school, and a high school that prided itself on Ivy League admissions. Peters, our European history teacher, decided he needed to ensure that we’d read our chapters on the Picts and Vikings by using fifteen multiple-choice questions. I’d read the chapters—I was paranoid enough to make sure I finished my homework, magical hysterics notwithstanding. But that didn’t mean my stomach didn’t turn as Peters walked the rows,

dropping stapled copies of the test on our desks.

“You have twenty minutes,” he said, “which means you have a little more than one minute per question. Quizzes will account for twenty percent of your grade, so I strongly recommend you consider your answers carefully.”

When the tests were distributed, he returned to his desk and took a seat without glancing up.

“Begin,” he said, and pencils began to scribble.

I stared down at the paper, my nerves making the letters spin—well, nerves and the thought of a blue-eyed boy who’d worried for me, and who’d held my hand.

Twenty minutes later, I put my pencil down. I’d filled in the answers, and I hoped at least a few of them were correct. But I didn’t stress over it.

Infatuation apparently made me intellectually lazy.

Scout waited until dinner to interrogate me about Jason’s visit to campus. It being Monday,

we’d been blessed with brand-new food. Since I didn’t eat chicken, it was rice and mixed vegetables for me, but even simple food was better than dirty rice or stew. Or so I assumed.

“So, what did Mr. Shepherd have to say?” Scout asked, spearing a chunk of grilled chicken with her fork. “Are you engaged or promised, or what? Did you get his lavaliere? Did he pin you?”

“What’s a lavaliere?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s a fraternity thing?”

“Well, whatever it is, there wasn’t one. We just talked about the meeting. About the attitude he copped. He apologized.”

Scout lifted appreciative brows. “Shepherd apologized? Jeez, Parker. You must have worked faster than I thought. He’s as stubborn as they come.”

“He said he was worried about me. About the possibility that I’d get wrapped up in a Reapers versus Adepts cage match and wouldn’t have a way to defend myself, especially if you weren’t there to work your mojo.”

“And what spectacular mojo it is, too,” she muttered. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. “Listen,” she finally said. “I don’t want to warn you off some kind of budding romance, but you should be careful around Jason. I’m not sure I’d recommend getting involved with him.”

“I’m not getting involved with him,” I protested. “Wait, why can’t I get involved with him?”

“He’s just—I don’t know. He’s different.”

“Yeah, being a werewolf does make him kinda unique.”

She raised her eyebrows, surprise in her expression. “You know.”

“I do now.”

“How did you find out?”

“I heard him growl after I got hit with the firespell. I confirmed it yesterday.”

“He admitted he was a wolf? To you?”

“He let me see his eyes do that flashy, color-changey thing. He did the same thing again when we talked in the hospital.”

“After you made us leave?”

I bobbed my head. Scout made a low whistle. “In one week, you’ve gone from new kid in school to being wooed by a werewolf. You move fast, Parker.”

“I doubt he’s wooing me, and I didn’t do anything but be my usually charming self.”

“I’m sure you were plenty charming, but I just want you to be careful.”

“Is that a little were-ism I’m hearing?”

“It’s a little reminder that he’s not like the rest of us. He’s a whole different brand of Adept. And you don’t have to buy my opinion. I’m just telling you what I think. On the other hand, in our short but explosive friendship, have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Did you want me to start with the getting hit by firespell or becoming an enemy to soul-sucking teenagers?”

“Did you mean the Reapers or the brat pack?”

I grinned appreciatively. “Ooh, well played.”

“I have my moments. Besides, who’d you borrow those kick-ass flats from?”

I glanced down at the screaming yellow and navy patent leather ballet flats she’d let me borrow on our hurried way out the door this morning.

“Fine,” I finally said. “Fashion trumps evil and prissy teenagers. You win.”

Scout grinned at me. “I always win. Let’s chow.”

We noshed, said our hellos to Collette and Lesley, and when dinner was done, returned to the suite for our hour-long break before study hall. The brat pack had made camp in the living room,

blond hair and expensive accessories flung about as we entered.

Veronica sat cross-legged on the couch, an open folder in her lap and M.K. and Amie at her feet like adoring handmaids.

“It also says,” Veronica said, gazing at the folder, “that her parents dumped her here so they could head off to Munich.” She lifted her head, a lock of blond hair falling across her shoulders,

and gave me a pointed look.

Was that my folder she was reading? Had M.K. taken it from Foley’s office while she was on hall-monitoring duty?

“Interesting, isn’t it, that her parents left her? That they didn’t take her with them? I mean, it’s not like there aren’t English-speaking private schools in Germany. She’s not evenfrom Chicago.”

“How did you get that?” I bit out. All eyes turned to me. “How did you get my file?”

Veronica closed the navy blue folder, the St. Sophia’s crest across the front, then held it up between two fingers. “What, this? We got it from Foley’s office, of course. We have our ways.”

I took a step forward, anger dimming my vision at the edges. “You have no right to go through my file. Who do you think you are?”

Outside, thunder rolled across the city, the steel gray sky finally preparing to give way. Inside,

the room lights flickered.

“You need to back off,” Scout said.

Veronica arched an eyebrow and uncrossed her legs. M.K. and Veronica shifted to give her room. She stood up, folder in her hand, and walked toward us, a haughty look aimed at Scout.

“You think you’re queen of the school just because you’ve been here since you were twelve?

Being abandoned by your parents isn’t exactly a coup, Green.”

Scout, amazingly, stayed calm after that outburst, an expression of boredom on her face. “Is that supposed to hurt me, Veronica? ’Cause, if I recall, you’ve been here as long as I have.”

“Irrelevant,” Veronica declared. “We’re talking about you”—she shifted her gaze to me—“and your new friend. You both need to remember who’s in charge here.”

Scout made a sarcastic sound. “And you think that’s you?”

Veronica flipped up the folder. “The ones with information, with access, always win. You should write that down in one of your little books.”

M.K. snickered. Amie had the decency to blush, but her eyes were on the ground, apparently not brave enough to intercede.

“Give it back,” I said, hand extended, fingers shaking with fury.

“What, this?” she asked, batting her eyelashes, waving the folder in her hand.

“That,” Scout confirmed, reaching out her own hand, and taking a menacing step forward. When she spoke again, her voice was low and threatening. “Keep in mind, Lively, that in all the years you’ve been here, some interesting little facts have crossed my path, too. I assume you’d like to keep those facts between us, and not have them sprinkled around the sophomore and senior classes?”

There was silence as they faced off, the weirdo and the homecoming queen, a battle for rumor mill supremacy.

“Whatever,” Veronica finally said, handing over the folder between the tips of her fingers, lips pursed as if the paper were dirty or infected. “Have it. It’s not like I care. We’ve gotten everything we need.”

Scout pulled the file from Veronica’s manicured hands. “I’m glad we’ve concluded our business. And in the future, you might be a little more careful about where you get your information from and whom you share it with, capiche? Because sharing that information with the wrong people could be . . . costly.”

Thunder rolled and rippled again, this burst louder than the last. The storm was moving closer.

“Whatever,” Veronica said, rolling her eyes. She turned and, like a spinning dervish of plaid,

took her seat on the couch again, attendants at her feet, the queen returned to her throne.

“Come on,” Scout said, taking my wrist in her free hand and moving me toward her bedroom. It took a moment to make my feet move, to drag my gaze away from the incredibly smug smile on Veronica’s face.

“Lily,” Scout said, and I glanced over at her.

“Come on,” she repeated, tugging my wrist. “Let’s go.”

We moved into her room, where she shut the door behind us. Folder in hand, she pointed at the bed. “Sit down.”

“I’m fine—”

“Sitdown .”

I sat.

Thunder rolled again, lightning flashing through the room almost instantaneously. The rain started, a sudden downpour that echoed through the room like radio static.

The folder beneath her crossed arms, she walked to one end of the room, eyes on the floor, and then walked back again. “We’re going to have to put it back.” She lifted her head. “This came from Foley’s office. We needed to get it out of their hands, which we did—yay, us—but now we’re going to have to put it back. And that’s going to be tricky.”

“Great,” I muttered. “That’s great. Just one more thing I don’t need to worry about right now.

But before we figure out how to sneak into Foley’s office and drop off a student file without her knowing it was gone, can I see it, please?”

“No.”

That silenced me for a moment. “Excuse me?”

“No.” Scout stopped her pacing and glanced over at me. “I really don’t think looking through this is going to help you. If there’s anything weird in here—about your parents, for example,

since Foley likes to discuss them—it’s just going to give you things to obsess over. Things to worry about.”

“And it’s better if only Veronica and M.K. have that information?”

Silence.

“Good point,” Scout finally said, then handed it over. “You read. I’ll plot.”

My hands shaking, I flipped it open. My picture was stapled on the inside left, a shot of me from my sophomore year at Sagamore North, my hair a punky bob of black. On the inside right was an information sheet, which I skimmed—all basic stuff. A handful of documents was stapled behind the information sheet. Health and immunization records. A letter from the board of trustees about my admission.

The final document was different—a letter on cream-colored stock, addressed to Foley.

“Oh, my God,” I said as I reviewed it, my vision dimming at the edges again as the world seemed to contract around me.

“Lily? What is it?”

“There’s a letter. ‘Marceline,’ ” I read aloud, “ ‘as you know, the members of the board of trustees have agreed to admit Lily to St. Sophia’s. We believe your school is the best choice for the remainder of Lily’s high school education. As such, we trust that you will see to her education with the same vigor that you show to your other students.’ ”

“So far so good,” Scout said.

“There’s more. ‘We hope,’ ” I continued, “ ‘ that you’ll be circumspect in regard to any information you provide to Lily regarding our work, regardless of your opinion of it.’ It’s signed,

‘Yours very truly, Mark and Susan Parker.’ ”

“Your parents?” Scout quietly asked.

I nodded.

“That’s not so bad, Lil—she’s just asking Foley not to worry you or whatever about their trip—”

“Scout, my parents told me they were philosophy professors at Hartnett College. In Sagamore.

In New York. But in this letter, they tell Foley not to talk to me about theirwork ? And that’s not all.” I flipped the folder outward so that she could see the letter, the paper, the logo.

“They wrote the letter on Sterling Research Foundation letterhead.”

Scout’s eyes widened. She took the folder from my hand and ran a finger over the raised SRF logo. “SRF? That’s the building down the street. The place that does the medical research. What are the odds?”

“Medical research,” I repeated. “How close is that to genetic research?”

“That’s what Foley said your parents did, right?”

I nodded, the edge of my lip worried between my teeth. “And not what they told me they did.

They lied to me, Scout.”

Scout sat down on the bed beside me and put a hand on my knee. “Maybe they didn’t really lie,

Lil. Maybe they just didn’t tell you the entire truth.”

The entire truth.

Sixteen years of life, of what I’d believed my life to be, and I didn’t even know the basic facts of my parents’ careers. “If they didn’t tell me the entire truth about their jobs,” I quietly said, “what else didn’t they tell me?” For a moment, I considered whipping out my cell phone, dialing their number, and yelling out my frustration, demanding to know what was going on and why they’d lied. And if they hadn’t lied exactly, if they’d only omitted parts of their lives, why they hadn’t told me everything.

But that conversation was going to be a big one. I had to calm down, get myself together, before that phone call. And that’s when it dawned on me—for the first time—that there might be huge reasons,scary reasons, why they hadn’t come clean.

Maybe this wasn’t about keeping information from me. Maybe they hadn’t told me because the truth, somehow, was dangerous. Since I’d now seen an entirely new side to the world, that idea didn’t seem as far-fetched as it might have a year ago.

No, I decided, this wasn’t something I could rush. I had to know more before I confronted them.

“I’m sorry, Lil,” Scout finally said into the silence. “What can I do?”

I gave the question two seconds of deliberation. “You can get me into Foley’s office.”

Fourteen minutes later—after the brat pack had left the common suite for parts unknown—we were on our way to the administrative wing. The folder was tucked into Scout’s messenger bag,

my heart pounding as we tried to look nonchalant on our way through the study hall and back into the main building. We had two missions—first and foremost, we had to put the folder back.

If Foley found it missing, she’d only consider one likely source—me. I really wanted to avoid that conversation.

Second, since my parents’ letter assumed Foley already knew about their research—and apparently didn’t like it—I was guessing there was more information on the Sterling Research Foundation, or on my parents, in her office. We’d see what we could find.

Of course, it was just after dinner—and only a few minutes before the beginnings of study hall —so there was a chance Foley was still around. If she was, we were going to make a run for it.

But if she was gone, we were going to sneak inside and figure out what more we could learn about the life of Lily Parker.

Choir practice gave us an excuse to walk through the Great Hall and toward the main building,

even as other girls deposited books and laptops on study tables and set about their required two hours of studying. Of course, when we got to the main building, the story had to change.

“Just taking an architectural tour,” Scout explained with a smile as we passed two would- be choir girls. She blew out a breath that puffed out her cheeks after they passed, then pulled me toward the hallway to the administrative wing.

I wasn’t sure if I was happy or not to discover that the administrative wing was quiet and mostly dark. That meant we had a clear path to Foley’s office, and no excuse to avoid the breaking and entering—other than the getting-caught-and-being-severely-punished problem, of course.

“If you don’t take the folder back,” Scout said, as if sensing my fear, “we have to give it back to the brat pack. Or we have to come clean to Foley, and that means making even more of an enemy of the brat packers. And frankly, Lil, I’m full up on enemies right now.”

It was the exhaustion in her voice that solidified my bravery. “Let’s do it before I lose my nerve.”

She nodded, and we skulked down the wing, bodies pressed as closely against the wall as we could manage. In retrospect, it was probably not the least conspicuous way to get down the hall,

but what did we know?

We made it to Foley’s office, found no light beneath the wooden door. Scout knocked, the sound muffled by timely thunder. After a few seconds, when no one answered, she rolled her shoulders,

put a hand on the doorknob, and turned.

The door clicked, and opened.

We both stood in the hallway for a minute.

“Way easier than I thought that was going to be,” she whispered, then snuck a peak inside.

“Empty,” she said, then pushed open the door.

After a last glance behind me to ensure the hallway was empty, I followed her in, then pulled the door carefully shut behind us.

Foley’s office was dark. Scout rustled around in her messenger bag, then pulled out a flashlight,

which she flipped on. She cast the light around the room.

The top of Foley’s desk was empty. There weren’t any file cabinets in the room, just a bookshelf and a couple of leather chairs with those big brass tacks in the upholstery. Scout moved to the other side of Foley’s desk and began pulling open drawers.

“Rubber bands,” she announced, then pushed the drawer closed and opened another. “Paper clips and staples.” She closed that one, then moved the lefthand side of the desk and opened a drawer. “Pens and pencils. Jeez, this lady has a lot of office supplies.” She closed, then opened,

another. “Envelopes and stationery.” She closed the last one and stood straight again. “That’s it for the desk, and there’re no other drawers in here.”

That wasn’t entirely accurate. “I bet there are drawers behind the secret panel.”

“What secret panel?” she asked.

I moved to the bookshelf I’d seen Foley walk out of, pushed aside a few books, and knocked.

The resulting sound was hollow. Echoey. “It’s a pivoting bookshelf, just like in a B- rated horror flick. The panel was open when Foley called me out of class. She closed it again after she came out, but I’m not sure how.”

Scout trained her flashlight on the bookshelves. “In the movies, you pull a book and the sliding door opens.”

“Surely it’s not that easy.”

“I said the same thing about the door. Let’s see if our luck holds.” Scout tugged on a leather-

bound copy ofThe Picture of Dorian Gray . . . and jumped backward and out of the way as one side of the bookshelf began to pivot toward us. When the panel was open halfway, it stopped,

giving us a space wide enough to walk through.

“Well-done, Parker.”

“I have my moments,” I told her. “Light it up.”

My heart was thudding as Scout directed the beam of the flashlight into the space the sliding panel had revealed.

It was a storage room.

“Wow,” Scout muttered. “That was anticlimactic.”

It was a small, limestone space, just big enough to fit two rows of facing metal file cabinets. I took the flashlight from Scout’s hand and moved inside. The cabinets bore alphabetical index labels.

First things first, I thought. “Come hold this,” I told her, extending the flashlight. As she directed it at the cabinets, I skimmed the first row, then the second, until I got to theP s. I pulled open the cabinet—no lock, thankfully—and slid my folder in between PARK and PATTERSON.

Some of the tightness in my chest eased when I closed the door again, part of our mission accomplished. But then I glanced around the room. There was a little too much in here not to explore.

“Keep an eye on the door,” I said.

“Go for it, Sherlock,” Scout said, then turned her back on me, and let me get to work.

I put my hands on my hips and surveyed the room. There hadn’t been any other PARKER folders in the file drawer, which meant that my parents didn’t have files of their own—at least not under their own names.

“Maybe our luck will hold one more time,” I thought, and tucked the flashlight beneath my chin.

I checked theS drawer, then thumbed through STACK, STANHOPE, and STEBBINS.

STERLING, R. F., read the next file.

“Clever,” I muttered, “but not clever enough.” I pulled out the file and opened it. A single envelope was inside.

I wet my lips, my hands suddenly shaking, lay the file on the top of the folders in the open drawer, and lifted the envelope.

“What did you find?”

“There’s a Sterling file,” I said. “And there’s an envelope in it.” It was cream-colored, the flap unsealed, but tucked in. The outside of the envelope bore a St. Sophia’s RECEIVED BY stamp with a date on it: SEPTEMBER 21.

“Feet, don’t fail me now,” I whispered for bravery, then lifted the flap and pulled out a trifolded piece of white paper. I unfolded it, the SRF seal at the top of the page, but not embossed. This was a copy of a letter.

And attached to the copy was a sticky note with my father’s handwriting on it.

Marceline,

I know we don’t see eye to eye, but this will help you understand. —M.P.

M.P. My father’s initials.

My hands suddenly shaking, I lifted the note to reveal the text of the letter beneath. It was short,

and it was addressed to my father: Mark,

Per our discussions regarding your daughter, we agree that it would be unwise for her to accompany you to Germany or for you to inform her about the precise nature of your work.

Doing so would put you all in danger. That you are taking a sabbatical, hardly a lie, should be the extent of her understanding of your current situation. We also agree that St. Sophia’s is the best place for Lily to reside in your absence. She will be properly cared for there. We will inform Marceline accordingly.

The signature was just a first name—William.

That was it.

The proof of my parents’ lies.

About their jobs.

About their trip.

About whatever they’d gotten involved in, whatever had given the Sterling Research Foundation the ability to pass down dictates about my parents’ relationship with me.

“They lied, Scout,” I finally said, hands shaking—with fear and anger—as I stared down at the letter. “They lied about all of it. The school. The jobs. They probably aren’t even in Germany.

God only knows where they are now.”

And what else had they lied about? Each visit I made to the college? To their offices? Each time I met their colleagues? Every department cocktail party I’d spied on from the second-floor staircase at our house in Sagamore, professors—or so I’d assumed—milling about below with drinks in hand?

It was all fake—all a show, a production, to fool someone.

But who? Me? Someone else?

I picked up the envelope again and glanced at the RECEIVED BY mark.

The puzzle pieces fell into place.

“When was the twenty-first?” I asked Scout.

“What?”

“The twenty-first. September twenty-first. When was that?”

“Um, today’s the twenty-fifth, so last Friday?”

“That’s the day Foley received the envelope,” I said, holding it up. “Foley got a copy of this letter the day I got hit by the firespell. The daybefore I went into the hospital, the day before she came to the hospital room to tell me she was wrong about my parents. That I was right about their research. There’s probably a letter in here to her, too,” I quietly added, as I glanced around the room.

“Foley told you about the genetic research when you came to her office,” Scout concluded.

“Then she got the letter and realized she really wasn’t supposed to tell you. That’s why she dropped by the hospital. That’s why she changed her tune.”

I dropped my gaze back down to the letter and swore out a series of curses that should have blistered Scout’s ears. “Can anyone around here tell me the truth? Can anyonenot have, like,

sixty-five secret motives?”

“Oh, my God, Lily.”

It took me a moment to realize she’d called my name, and to snap my gaze her way. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted in shock. I thought we’d been caught, or that someone—something—

was behind us, and my heart stuttered in response.

“What?” I asked, so carefully, so quietly.

Her eyes widened even farther, if that was possible. “You don’t see that?” She flailed her hands in the air and struggled to get out words. “This!” she finally exclaimed. “Look around you, Lily.

The lights are on.”

I looked down at the flashlight in her hands. “I’m having a crisis here, Scout, and you’re talking to me about turning on a light?”

I could see the frustration in her face, in the clench of her hands. “I didn’t turn on the light,

Lily.”

“So what?”

She put her hands on her hips. “The light is on, but I didn’t turn on the light, and there’s only one other person in the room.”

I lifted my head, raising my gaze to the milk-glass light shade that hung above our heads. It glowed a brilliant white, but the light seemed to brighten and fade as I stared at it—da dum, da dum, da dum—as if the bulb had a heartbeat.

The pulse was hypnotic, and the light seemed to brighten the longer I stared at it, but the rhythm didn’t change. Da dum. Da dum. Da dum.

“Think about your parents,” Scout said, and I tore my gaze away from the light to stare at her.

“What?”

“I need you to do this for me. Without questions. Just do it.”

I swallowed, but nodded.

“Think about your parents,” she said. “How they lied to you. How they showed you a completely false life, false careers. How they have some relationship with Sterling that’s going on around us, above our heads, that gives the SRF some kind of control over your parents’ actions, what they say, how they act toward you.”

The anger, the betrayal, burned, my throat aching with emotion as I tried to stifle tears.

“Now look,” Scout said softly, then slowly raised her gaze to the light above us.

It glowed brighter, and the pulse had quickened.Da dum. Da dum. Da dum.

It was faster now, like a heart under stress.

Myheart.

“Oh, my God,” I said, and the light pulsed brighter, faster, as my fear grew.

“Yeah,” Scout said. “It’s strong emotion, I think. You get freaked out, and the light goes on.

You get more freaked out, and the light gets brighter. You saw it kind of dims and brightens?”

“It’s my heartbeat,” I said.

“Well,” she said, turning for the door, “I guess you have a little magic, after all.”

She glanced back and grinned. “Twist!”

In no mood for study hall, we found a quiet corner of the main building—far from the administrative wing and its treasonous folders—and camped out until it was over. We didn’t talk much. I sat cross-legged on the floor, my back against cold limestone, eyes on the mosaic- tiled ceiling above me. Thinking. Contemplating. Repeating one word, over and over and over again.

One word—maybe the only word—momentous enough to push thoughts of my parents’ secret life out of my head.

Magic.

I hadmagic .

The ability to turn on lights, which maybe wasn’t such a huge deal, but it was magic, just the same.

Magic that must have been triggered somehow by the shot of firespell I’d taken a few days ago.

I didn’t know how else to explain it, and that mark on my back seemed proof enough. I’d somehow become one of them—not because I’d been born into it, like Scout said, but because I’d been running in the wrong direction in the basement of St. Sophia’s one night.

Because I (apparently) had magic, and we were out and about instead of hunkered down in the file vault behind Foley’s office, I was focusing on staying calm, controlling my breathing, and trying not to flip whatever emotional switch had turned me into Thomas Edison.

When study hall was over, we merged into the crowd leaving the Great Hall and returned to the room, but the brat pack beat us back. I guessed they’d decided that torturing us was more fun than spending time in their own rooms. Regardless, we ignored them— bigger issues on our plates—and headed straight for Scout’s room.

“Okay,” she said, gesturing with her hands when the door was closed and locked behind us, and a towel stuffed beneath it. “I need to check theGrimoire and see what I can find, but so I know what I’m looking for, let’s see what you can do.”

We sat there in silence for a minute.

“What am I supposed to be doing?” I asked.

Scout frowned. “I don’t know. You’re the one with the light magic. Don’t you know?”

I gave her a flat stare.

“Right,” she said. “You didn’t even know you’d done it.”

There was a knock at Scout’s closed bedroom door. She glanced at the closed door, then at me.

“Yes?”

There was a snicker on the other side. “Did you find anything interesting in that little folder?”

I nearly growled at the question. As if on cue, the room was suddenly flooded with light—bright light, brighter than the overhead fluorescents had any right to be.

“Jeez, dial it back, will ya?”

I pursed my lips and blew out rhythmic breaths, trying to calm myself down enough to dim the lights back below supernova.

“What?” M.K. asked from the other side of the door. “No response?”

Okay, I’d had enough of M.K. for the day. “Hey, Scary Katherine,” I said, “don’t make us tell Foley that you invaded her vault and stole confidential files from her office.”

As if my telling her off had been cathartic, the lights immediately dimmed.

Scout glanced over appreciatively. “Why does it not surprise me that you have magic driven by sarcasm?”

There was more knocking on the door. “Scout?” Lesley tentatively asked. “Are you guys okay in there? Did you set the room on fire?”

“We’re fine, Barnaby,” Scout said. “No fires. Just, um, testing some new flashlights. In case the power goes out.”

“However unlikely that appears to be now,” I muttered.

“Oh,” Lesley said. “Well, is there anything I can, you know, help with?”

Scout and I exchanged a glance. “Not just right now, Lesley, but thanks.”

“Okay,” she said, disappointment in her voice. Footsteps echoed through the common room as she walked away.

Scout moved to a bookshelf, fingers trailing across the spines as she searched for the book she wanted. “Okay, so it was triggered by the firespell somehow. We can conclude that whatever magic you’ve got is driven by emotion, or that strong emotions bump up the power a few notches. It’s centered in light, obviously, but it’s possible the power could branch out into other areas. But as for the rest of it—” She stopped as her fingers settled on an ancient book of well-worn brown leather, which she slid from the shelf after pushing aside knickknacks and collectibles.

“It’s going to take me some time to research the particulars,” she said, glancing back at me.

“You want to grab some books, camp out here?”

I thought for a second, then nodded. There was no need to add academic failure to my current list of drama, which was lengthening as the day wore on. “I’ll go grab my stuff.”

She nodded and gave me a soft smile. “We’ll figure this out, you know. We’ll figure it out, go back to the enclave, get you inducted, and all will be well.”

“When you say well, you mean I can start spending my evenings torturing soul-sucking bad guys and trying not to get shot in the back by firespell again?”

“Pretty much,” she agreed with a nod. “But think about how much quality time you and Jason can spend together.” This time, when she grinned, she grinned broadly, and winged up her eyebrows, to boot.

The girl had a point.

Later that night, when I was back in my room in pajamas, and calm enough to dial their number,

I broke out my cell phone and tried again to reach my parents. It was late in Munich, assuming that’s where they were, so they didn’t answer. I faked cheerful and left a voice mail, still avoiding the confrontation and because of that, almost glad they hadn’t answered. There were too many puzzle pieces—Foley, my parents, and now the SRF—that I still had to figure out. And if they thought keeping me in the dark was safer for all of us, maybe letting them think they’d kept their secret was the best thing to do. At least for now.

That didn’t stop the hurt, though. And it didn’t stop me from wanting to know the truth.

At lights-out, I turned out the overhead lights, but snapped on a flashlight I’d borrowed from Scout, and broke out my sketch pad and a soft-lead pencil. I turned off the left side of my brain and scribbled, shapes forming as if the pencil were driven by my unconscious. Half an hour later,

I blinked, and found a pretty good sketch of Jason staring back at me.

Boy on the brain.

“And just when I needed more drama,” I muttered, then flipped off the light.

Tuesday went by in a haze. My parents had left a voice mail while I’d slept, a hurried message about how busy they were in Munich, and how much they loved me. And again, I wasn’t sure if those words made me feel better . . . or worse.

Mostly, I felt numb. I’d pulled a navy blue hoodie, the zipper zipped, over my oxford shirt and plaid skirt, my hands tucked into pockets as I moved from class to class, the same two questions echoing through my head, over and over and over again.

First, what was I?

Let’s review the facts: An entourage of kids with magical powers was running around Chicago,

battling other kids with magical powers. A battle of good versus evil, but played out by teenagers who’d only just become old enough to drive. One night I was hit by a burst of magic from one of those kids. Skip forward a couple of days, and I had a “darkening” on my back and the ability to turn on lights when I got upset. So I had that going for me.

Second, what were my parentsreally doing in Germany? They’d told me they’d been granted permission to review some famous German philosopher’s papers, journals, and notes—stuff that had never before been revealed to the public. It was a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity, they’d told me, a chance to be the first scholars to see and touch a genius’s work. He’d been a Michelangelo of the world of philosophy, and they’d been invited to studyDavid firsthand.

But based on what I knew now, that story had been at least partly concocted to satisfy me,

because they’d been directed to tell me that they were on a sabbatical. But if that’s what they were “supposed” to tell me, what were they actually doing? I’d seen the plane tickets, the passports, the visas, the hotel confirmation. I knew they were in Germany. But why?

Those questions notwithstanding, the day was pretty dull. Classes proceeded as usual, although Scout and I were both a little quieter at lunch. It was a junk food day in the cafeteria—corn chip and chili pies (vegetarian chili for weirdos like me)—so Scout and I picked over our chili and chips with forks, neither saying too much. She’d brought a stack of notes she’d copied out of theGrimoire the day before, and was staring at them as she ate. That tended to limit the conversation.

As she read, I looked around the room, watching the girls eating, gossiping, and moving around from group to group. All that plaid. All those headbands. All those incredibly expensive accessories.

All those normal girls.

Suddenly, the theme fromFlash Gordon began to echo from Scout’s bag. Putting down her forkful of chips and chili, she half turned to pull the messenger bag from the back of her chair,

then reached for her phone.

I arched an eyebrow at the choice of songs, as lyrics about saving the universe rumbled through our part of the cafeteria.

“I love Queen,” Scout covered, her voice a little louder than the phone, the explanation for the folks around us. The song apparently signaling a text message, she slid open the keyboard and began tapping.

“Flash Gordon?” I whispered, when the girls had returned to their lunches. “A little obvious,

isn’t it?”

Pink rose on her cheeks. “I’m allowed,” she said, still thumbing keys. She frowned, her lips pursed at the corner. “Weird,” she finally said.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Scout said. “We’re supposed to meet tonight at five o’clock—we’re doing some kind of administrative meeting—but they want me to come down now. Something’s gone down with one of our targets. A kid from one of the publics. That means I need to . . . run anerrand .” She winged up her eyebrows so I’d understand her not-so-tricky secret code.

Around us, girls began to put up their trays in preparation for afternoon classes. Scout had never been interrupted during classes, as far as I was aware. “Right now?”

“Yeah.” There was more frowning as she closed the phone and slipped it back into her bag. She turned around again, hands in her lap, shoulders slumped forward, face pinched as she stared down at the table.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked her.

She started to speak, then shook her head as if she’d changed her mind, then tried again. “It’s just weird,” she said, lifting her gaze to mine. “It’s way early for them to page me. They never page me during school hours. It’s part of the whole, ‘You need an education to be the best’ ”—

she looked around, then lowered her voice—“ ‘Adept you can be.’ ” I frowned. “That is weird.”

“Well, regardless, I need to go back to the room.” She pushed back her chair, pulled off her bag,

and settled it diagonally over her shoulder, the skull and crossbones grinning back at me. “Are you going to be okay?”

I nodded. “I’ll be fine. Go.”

She frowned, but stuffed her phone and books into her bag, stood up, and slung it over her shoulder. Then she was off, plaid skirt bobbing as she hustled through the cafeteria.

She didn’t come back during fourth period. Or fifth. Or sixth. Not that I blamed her—European history wasn’t my favorite subject, either—but I was beginning to get worried.

When I got back to the suite, I dumped my bag on the couch and headed for her door.

The door was cracked partially open.

“Scout?” I called out. I rapped knuckles against the wood, but got no answer. Maybe she was in the shower, or maybe she’d run an errand and didn’t want to bother with the lock. But given her collections and the stash of magic books, she wasn’t the kind to leave the door unlocked, much less open.

I put a hand on the door and pushed it open the rest of the way.

My breath left me.

The room was in shambles.

Drawers had been upended, the bed stripped, her collections tossed on the floor.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. I stepped inside, carefully stepping around piles of clothes and books. Had this been waiting for her when she’d come back to the room?

Or hadthey been waiting?

“What happened in here?”

I glanced back and found Lesley in the doorway, her cheeks even paler than usual. She was actually in uniform today. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just got here.”

She stepped into the room, and beside me. “This has something to do with where she goes at night, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

My gaze fell upon the bed, the sheets and comforter in disarray. And peeking from one edge,

was the black strap of Scout’s messenger bag.

I picked over detritus, then reached out an arm and pulled the bag from the tangle of blankets,

the white skull on the front grinning evilly back at me.

My stomach fell. Scout wouldn’t have gone anywhere without that bag. She carried it everywhere, even on missions, the strap across her shoulder every time she left the room. That the room was a disaster area, her bag was still here, and she was gone, did not bode well.

“Oh, Scout,” I whispered, fear blossoming at the thought of my best friend in trouble.

The overhead light flickered.

I stood up again, decided now was as good a time as any to learn control, and closed my eyes. I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth, and after a few moments of that, felt my chest loosen, as though the fear—the magic—was loosing its grip.

“Ms. Parker. Ms. Barnaby.”

Jumping at the sound of my name, I opened my eyes and looked behind me. Foley stood in the doorway, one hand on the door, her wide-eyed gaze on Scout’s room. She wore a suit of bone-

colored fabric and a string of oversized pearls around her neck.

“What happened here?”

“I found it like this,” I told her, working to keep some of my newfound animosity toward Foley —who knew more about my parents than I did—at bay.

“She left at the end of lunch—said she had to come back to the room for something.” I skipped the part about why she’d come back, but added, in case it was important, “She was worried, but I’m not sure what about. The door was open when I got here a few minutes ago.” I looked back at the tattered remains of Scout’s collection. “It looked like this.”

“And where is Ms. Green now?” Foley finally glanced at me.

I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her since lunch.”

Foley frowned and surveyed the room, arms crossed, fingers of her left hand tapping her right bicep. “Call the security office. Do a room-to-room search,” she said. I thought she was talking to me, at least until she glanced behind us. A youngish man—maybe twenty-five, twenty-six—

stood in the doorway. He was tall, thin, sharp- nosed, and wore a crisp button-down shirt and blue bow tie. I guessed he was an executive assistant type.

“If you don’t find her,” Foley continued, “contact me immediately. And Christopher, we need to be sensitive to her parents’ being, shall we say, particular about the involvement of outsiders. I believe they’re in Monaco at present. That means we contact them before we contact the police department, should it come to that. Understood?”

He nodded, then walked back toward the hallway door. Foley returned her gaze to the remains of Scout’s room, then fixed her stare on Lesley. “Ms. Barnaby, could you excuse us, please?”

Lesley looked at me, eyebrows raised as if making sure I’d be okay alone with Foley. When I nodded, she said, “Sure,” then left the room. A second later, her bedroom door opened and closed.

When we were alone, Foley crossed her arms over her chest and gazed at me. “Has Ms. Green been involved in anything unusual of late?”

I wanted to ask her if secret meetings of magically enhanced teenagers constituted “unusual,” but given the circumstances, I held back on the sarcasm.

“Not that I’m aware of,” I finally said, which was mostly the truth. I think what Foley would consider “unusual” was probably pretty average for Scout.

Then Foley blew that notion out of the water.

“I’m aware,” she said, “of Ms. Green’s aptitude as, let’s say, a Junior Varsity athlete.”

I stared at her in complete silence . . . and utter shock.

“Youknow ?” I finally squeaked out.

“I am the headmistress of this school, Ms. Parker. I am aware of most everything that occurs within my jurisdiction.”

The ire I’d been suppressing bubbled back to the surface. “So you know what goes on, and you let it happen? You let Scout run around in the middle of the night, put herself in danger, and you ignore it?”

Foleys’s gaze was flat and emotionless. She walked back to Scout’s door, closed it, then turned to me again, hands clasped in front of her—all business. “You presume that I let these things happen without an understanding of their severity, or of the risk that Ms. Green faces?” She’d spoken it like a question, but I assumed it was rhetorical.

“I will assume, Ms. Parker, that you are concerned about the well-being of your friend. I will assume that you are speaking from that concern, and that you have not actually considered the consequences of speaking to me in that tone.”

My cheeks bloomed with heat.

“Moreover,” she continued, moving to one of Scout’s bookshelves and righting a toppled paper house, “regardless of what you think of my motivations or my compassion, rest assured that I understand all too well what Ms. Green and her colleagues are facing, and likely better than you do, your incident in the basement notwithstanding.”

The house straightened, she turned and looked at me again. “Do we understand each other?”

I couldn’t hold it back any longer, couldn’t keep the words from bubbling out. “Where are my parents?”

Her eyes widened. “Your parents?”

I couldn’t help it, potential danger or not. “I got . . . some information. I want to know where my parents are.”

I expected more vitriol, more words to remind me of my position: Me—student; Her—authority figure. But instead, there was compassion in her eyes.

“Your parents are in Munich, Ms. Parker, just as they informed you. Now, however, is not the time to be distracted by the nature of their work. And more important, you should put some faith in the possibility that your parents informed you of the things they believed you should know.

The things they believed it was safest for you to know. Do you understand?”

I decided that whatever they were involved in was unlikely to change in the next few hours; I could push Foley for information later. Scout’s situation, on the other hand, needed to be dealt with now, so I nodded.

“Very well.” And just like that, she was back to headmistress. “I cannot forgo calling Ms.

Green’s parents forever, nor can I forgo contacting the Chicago Police Department if she is, in reality, missing. But the CPD is not aware of her unique talents. Those unique talents—and the talents of her friends—provide her with certain resources. If the state of her room indicates that she is in the hands of those who would bring harm to people across the city, then those friends are the best to seek her out and bring her back.” She raised her eyebrows, as if willing me to understand the rest of what she was getting at.

“I can tell them,” I said. “Scout said they’re meeting at five o’clock.”

Foley smiled, and there seemed to be appreciation in her eyes. “Very good,” she said.

“The only problem is,” I said, “I don’t know exactly where they are. I’ve only been to the,

um,meeting room once, and I don’t think I could find it again. And even if I did,” I added, before she could interrupt, “they don’t think I’m one of them.” That might change once they discovered my fledgling power, but I doubt Scout had had time to update them. “So even if I can get there,

they may not listen to me.”

“Ms. Parker, while I understand the nature of their work, I, like most Chicagoans, am not privy to the finer details of their existence. I am aware, however, that there are markers—coded markers—that guide the way to the enclave. Just follow the tags. And once you arrive,make them listen.” She turned around and disappeared into the common room. A second later, I heard the door to the hallway open and close again.

It was three forty-five, which gave me time to get to the enclave, except for one big problem.

“Just follow the tags?” I quietly repeated. I had no clue what that was supposed to mean.

But, incomprehensible instructions or not, I apparently had a mission to perform . . . and I needed supplies.

I grabbed Scout’s messenger bag—proof that she was missing—then left the room and shut the door behind me. When I was back in my room, I grabbed the flashlight I’d borrowed from Scout,

dumped the books out of her messenger bag and stuffed the flashlight inside. In a moment of Boy Scout-worthy brilliance, I grabbed some yellow chalk from my stash of art supplies and stuffed it, and my cell phone, into her bag, as well.

Hands on my hips, I glanced around my room. I wasn’t entirely sure what else to take with me,

and I didn’t really have a lot of friend-rescuing supplies to choose from.

“First aid kit,” said a voice in the doorway.

I glanced back, found Lesley there, already having ditched the uniform for a pleated cotton skirt and tiny T-shirt. In her hands was a pile of supplies.

“First aid kit,” she repeated, moving toward me and laying the pile on my bed. “Water. Granola bars. Flashlight. Swiss Army knife.” She must have seen the quizzical expression on my face, as her own softened. “I said I wanted to help,” she said, then returned her gaze to the bed. “I’m helping.”

The room was quiet for a minute as I took it all in.

“Thank you, Lesley. I appreciate it. Scout appreciates it.”

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled absently, then moved toward the door. “Just make sure you tell her I helped.”

“As soon as I can,” I murmured, just hoping I’d have the opportunity totalk to Scout again. I stuffed the supplies into the bag, and had just closed the skull-and-crossbones flap when visitor number two darkened my doorway.

“So your weirdo friend’s gone AWOL?”

I glanced behind me. M.K. stood in the doorway, arms folded across a snug, white button- up shirt and the key on a silver chain that lay across it. She must have upgraded from ribbon.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I turned around again, picked up Scout’s bag, and slid the strap over one shoulder.

M.K. huffed. “Everyone is talking about it. Her room is trashed, and she’s gone. We all thought she was a flake. Now we have proof. She obviously went postal. She’s probably tearing around downtown Chicago in that gigantic coat, raving about vampires or something. I mean, have you seen her room? It was practically a fire hazard in there. About time someone cleaned it out.”

I had to press my fingernails into my palms to keep the overhead light from bursting into flame.

“I see,” I blandly responded, turning and heading for my bedroom door. “Excuse me,” I said,

when she didn’t move. After rolling her eyes, she uncrossed her arms and ankles and stepped aside.

“Freak,” she muttered under her breath.

That was the last straw.

With no fear and no thought of the consequences, I turned on M.K., stepping so close that she pressed herself back into the wall.

“I’m not entirely sure how you finagled your way into St. Sophia’s,” I said, “and I’m not entirely sure that you’ll be able to finagle your way out again. But you might want to think about this—threatening the girls you think are freaks isn’t really a good idea, ’cause we’re the kind of girls who will threaten you right back.”

“You can’t—,” she began, but I held a finger to her lips.

“I wasn’t done,” I informed her. “Before I was interrupted, I was making a point: Don’t mess with the weirdos, unless you want to lie awake at night, wondering if one of those weirdos is going to sneak a black widow into your bed. Understood?”

She made a huffy sound of disbelief, but wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I’d actually scared the bully.

“And M.K.,” I said, stepping away and heading for the hallway door, “sleep well.”

She didn’t look like she would.

I took the route to the basement that Scout and I had taken a couple of days before. I wasn’t sure how many paths led to the enclave, but I figured I had the best chance to get there if I stuck to the one I (almost) remembered.

I found the side hallway and the basement door, then took the steep stairs to the lower level.

This part was more of a challenge. I hadn’t been smart enough the last time to play Gretel or Girl Scout, to lay down a trail of crumbs or blaze a path back to the railcar line and the Roman numeral three.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t learn from my mistakes. And there were plenty of mistakes, my luck having apparently exhausted itself. Fortunately, I’d left early, giving myself plenty of time to get to the enclave, because it took me half an hour to find the metal door that led to the railcar tunnels, and I had to backtrack two or three times. Each time I found the right route (read: eliminated another dead end from my list of routes to try), I made a little mark on the corridor wall with the yellow chalk from my bag. That way, if I made it through the evening without being beaten down by Adepts, I’d be able to find my way upstairs again.

The possibility that I wouldn’t be coming back—that I was about to dive into something nasty in order to save my new BFF—was a thought I kept pretty well repressed. The risk didn’t matter, I decided, because Scout would have come after me. She’d have come for me.

I’d heard someone say that bravery was doing the thing you were afraid to do, despite your fear.

If that was true, I was the bravest person I knew; the lights that flickered above me as I walked through the hallway—an EKG of my emotions—were proof enough of that.

At the metal door, I reached up on tiptoes and felt for the key Scout had pulled down on our first trip to the enclave. I had a moment of heart- fluttering panic when I couldn’t feel anything but dust above the threshold, but I calmed down a little when my fingertips brushed cold metal. I grabbed the key, slipped it into the lock, and unlocked the door.

It popped open with awhoosh of cold, stale air. My stomach rolled nervously, but I battled through it. I pulled out the flashlight, flicked the button, and took the step.

But I left the door open behind me, just in case.

“All right,” I muttered, swinging the beam of the flashlight from one side of the tunnel to the other, trying to figure out the message Foley had given me.

Look for the tags, she’d said.

While I was willing to do a little backtracking in the tidy limestone basement, backtracking through musty, dirty, damp, and dark tunnels wasn’t going to happen. I needed the right route the first time through. And that meant I needed an answer.

“Tags, tags, tags,” I whispered, my gaze tracking from railcar tracks to concrete walls to arched ceiling. “Gift tags?” I wondered aloud, even at a whisper, my voice echoing through the hall.

“Clothing tags?”

The circle of light swung across the curvaceous graffiti that swirled across one of the walls. I froze, my lips tipping up into a smile.

Turned out, Foley hadn’t meant the gift kind or the clothing kind or the HTML kind.

She’d meant the spray paint kind.

Graffititags.

The walls were covered in them—a mishmash of pictures and words. Portraits. Political messages. Simple tags: “Louie” had been here a lot. Complicated tags: Thick, curvalicious letters that wrapped around one another into amoebas of words I couldn’t even read. However abandoned these tunnels seemed now, they’d been the site of a lot of spray painting, a lot of artistry.

I walked slowly down the first section of the tunnel, moving the circle of light from one wall to the other, trying to find the key that would decipher the code. It was hard enough to read them,

much less to decipher them, the letters intertwined, the tags overlapping.

My eye caught a short tag in tidy, white letters, which was centered over an arch-shaped opening that led to the left.

MILLIE 23, it read.

I stilled the flashlight and stared at the tag.

St. Sophia’s was located at 23 East Erie, and I’d bet money that Millie was short for Millicent—

Scout’s first name.

I peeked inside the tunnel and aimed the flashlight beam at the arches at the end of that part of the tunnel. One was blank.

The other, the one on the right, was tagged MILLIE 23.

“Very clever, Scout,” I said, and stepped inside.

Thirteen tags, thirteen tunnels, and twelve minutes later, I emerged into the final corridor,

stopping before the arched, wooden door of Enclave Three.

I wet my lips, tightened my fingers into a hand, and opened the door.

Heads turned immediately, their expressions none too friendly.

Smith stared at me, eyes wide, fury in his face, hair matted to his forehead. “What the hell are you doing here? And where’s Scout?”

“She’s gone,” I said. “And I need your help.”

“Gone?” asked a skeptical voice. Katie stepped beside him, her slim figure tucked into capri-cut jeans and layered V-neck T-shirts beneath a leather letterman jacket. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

“She’s been taken.” I ignored their gazes and looked to the folks more likely to actually believe me.

“She got a page at noon,” I told Michael and Jason, both in uniform, both moving closer to me as I began to explain. “She thought it was strange, but she went anyway. Said she had to go back to her room. She didn’t come back to class, and when I got back to the suite after school, her room was trashed.”

“Trashed?” Michael asked, a pale cast to his face. “What do you mean, ‘trashed’?”

“She has all sorts of collections—books and sculptures and these little houses. All of it was on the floor. Her pillows were slashed. Someone tore the sheets off the bed, emptied her drawers.

And then there’s this.”

I rearranged her messenger bag on my shoulder, revealing the skull and crossbones. “It was still in her room. She never goes anywhere without this bag.”

Michael slowly closed his eyes, grief in his expression. “They lured her out.”

“Wait,” Jason said, “Just wait. Let’s not jump to conclusions.” He looked at me. “She didn’t say anything about meeting someone somewhere? About where she was supposed to be going?

About what the emergency was?”

I shook my head.

“What about her cell phone?” asked one of the twins—Jamie or Jill, I wasn’t sure—stepping forward. She brushed a waterfall of auburn hair over her shoulder, as if preparing to get down to business. “Do you have it?”

I glanced down at Scout’s messenger bag. It had seemed empty after I’d taken her books out, but there was no harm in checking. I slipped a hand into the side pockets, then the interior pocket.

Nothing, until I heard something clank against the snap that kept the front flap closed. I looked closer, found a small slit in the flap, and when I reached in a hand, touched cold, hard plastic. My heart sinking, I pulled out Scout’s cell phone. Too bad I hadn’t found it before, but at least I had it now.

“See who called her,” Jamie quietly said. “See what the message said.”

I slid the phone open and scanned her recent calls, recent texts, but there was nothing there.

“Nothing,” I announced. “She must have deleted it.”

“We usually do,” Michael said softly. “Delete them, I mean. To protect the identities of the Adepts, to keep the locations to ourselves. Simpler that way.”

Unfortunately, that meant we wouldn’t be able to figure out who’d sent Scout the text. But if she’d erased it as part of her standard Adept protocol, then she’d assumed the message was from another Adept.

Had the person who’d sent it, who’d lured her out, been in this room?

“They’ll use her,” Michael said. “They’ve taken her, and they’ll use her.” He walked to the other end of the room, picked up a backpack, and slung it over one shoulder. “I’m going after her.”

Smith stepped in front of him. “You will not go after her.”

The room got very quiet, and very tense.

“She’smissing ,” I interjected into the silence. “Like Michael said, she was lured out of her room, she’s been taken by one of the evil Reaper guys, and we need to find her before this messed-up situation gets any worse!”

Smith nailed me with a contentious glare. “We?You are not one of us.”

“Really not the point,” Michael said, stepping forward. “We can debate her membership later.”

“She doesn’t havepower ,” Katie put in. “She’s not one of us, and she shouldn’t even be down here, much less giving us orders.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “Whether she has power or not is irrelevant.”

Smith made a disdainful sound. “You aren’t in charge here, Garcia.”

“If one of our own is in danger—”

“Hey,” I said, interrupting the fight. “Internal squabbling can wait. Scout’s gone, and we need to get her back now.Now , and not after you guys have gone a couple of rounds about the enclave hierarchy.”

Smith shook his head. “We can’t worry about that right now.”

Michael made a sound of disbelief, as if words of shock and awe had caught in this throat. I took the lead on his behalf.

“We can’t worry about that?” I repeated. “She’s one of you! You can’t just leave her . . . wherever she is.”

When no one spoke up, I glanced around the room, from Paul, to Katie, to the twins, to Jason.

Guilty heads dropped around the room. No one would look me in the eye.

I put my hands on my hips, the fingers of my right hand tight around Scout’s phone, my link to her. “Seriously? This is how you treat your teammates? Like they’re disposable?”

“Getting dramatic isn’t going to solve anything,” Katie said, crossing her arms over her chest.

For a cheerleader type, she managed a bossy, condescending stare pretty well. “We appreciate that you care about Scout, but it’s not that simple.”

I arched my eyebrows. “The hell it’s not.”

“Katie’s right.” Those words from the boy I’d almost decided to have a crush on. As Jason stepped forward, I was glad I’d stuck to “almost.”

“If we go after her,” he said, earnestness in his blue eyes, “we put ourselves, the city, the community around us, at risk. Being a member of the team means accepting the possibility that you’ll become the sacrifice. Scout knew that. Understood it. Accepted that risk.”

My heart tumbled, broken a little that this boy was so willing to give up our friend for the sake of people I wasn’t sure were worth the sacrifice. And that included him.

“Wow,” I said, honestly surprised. “Way to play well with others. Your whole existence is about saving people from Reapers, but you’re willing to let her be a ‘sacrifice’? I thought being Varsity, being Junior Varsity, being an Adept, was about being part of something bigger?

Working together? What about all that talk?”

Smith shook his head. “It’s just talk—only talk—if we dump our current agenda—the kids who need protecting—to find her. Think about it, Lily—they’ve managed to lure Scout into their clutches. They’re probably using her as a lure for the rest of us. To pull us in.” Smith shook his head. “If we’re lucky, they’d just try to indoctrinate us. If not”—he glanced over, green eyes slitted shut—“the Reapers would be setting us up for a nasty night. In which we play the role of toast.”

I couldn’t argue with the logic—it probablywas a trap.

But still. It wasScout .

I shook my head. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe this. All that talk, and you bail when someone needs you. Trap or not, you make an effort. You make a plan. Youtry .”

Smith looked away. There might have been a hint of guilt in his eyes, but not enough to force him to act. “I’ll call the higher-ups and alert them,” he said. “But that’s all we can do. We aren’t authorized to send out a rescue team. It’s not done.”

“It can’t be,” Katie put in, this time quietly. “We just can’t do it.”

Guilt—and maybe grief—hung in the silence of Enclave Three.

“You should probably go,” Jason said. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You know your way back?”

It took me a minute of staring daggers at all of them, a minute to overcome the disappointment that tightened my throat, before I could speak. “Yeah.” I nodded. “Yeah. I can find my way back.” My way back to the school and straight into Foley’s office. If the Adepts wouldn’t act, I’d go back to the principal. She’d know something—a source, a contact, a meaty guy with an attitude who could push through surly teenagers to rescue my BFF.

“It was nice knowing all of you,” I said, slipping Scout’s phone back into her bag, and putting the bag on my shoulder, then heading for the door. “No,” I said, glancing back and arching an eyebrow at the blue-eyed werewolf in front of me. “I take that back. It actually wasn’t.”

I walked out and slammed the door shut behind me, its hinges rattling with the effort.

Time for Plan B.

I was roasting—not because of the heat (the tunnels were rocking a pretty steady fifty degrees or so), but because emotionally, I was livid.

Seven people had the power to help Scout—better yet, themagical power to help Scout. What had she called them? Elemental witches? A reader? A warrior?

So far, I wasn’t impressed. Granted, I didn’t know them very well, and their reticence to help her could have been the impact of poor, emo-inspired leadership, but still.

I stopped in the middle of the corridor, water splashing beneath my feet. These guys—these guys who wouldn’t put their butts on the line to save her—they were the best we could do for good and justice? For rebels, they were pretty picky about obeying the rules. Even Smith’s first reaction had been to tell me that I wasn’t one of them—a rule that meant I didn’t have the right to talk to them, much less make demands.

I stopped.

No way was I going out like this.

I turned around.

I went back.

After I pushed open the door, I opened with a biggie. “I can turn on lights.”

Silence.

“You can what?”

“I can”—I had to stop and clear my throat, my voice squeaking nervously, and start over—“I can turn on lights. Dim them, turn them on, turn them off. I’m not sure if that’s it, or if there’s more, but that’s what I know now.”

Smith, standing before his troops, crossed his hands behind his head. “You can turn on lights.”

His voice could hardly have been drier—or more skeptical.

“I can turn on lights,” I confirmed. “So you can pretend I’m an outsider, look at me like I’m crazy, but I’m not just someone off the street. I am”—I had to pause for a minute to gather up my courage—“an Adept like you. So you might want to pack away the attitude.”

“Whatever,” he muttered, as if I’d lied about the power thing just to win points with him.

Seriously—if I’d been faking it, wouldn’t I have faked something a little more interesting?

The rest of these repressed Adepts might have been intimidated by the floppy hair and attitude,

but as they’d so recently reminded me, I wasn’t one of them. And he wasn’t the boss of me.

I held up an index finger. “Yeah, I may be an Adept, but I’m not a member of your enclave, so I’m not really here to talk to you.” I turned my gaze to Paul, then to Jamie and Jill, then to Michael, then Jason. “My best friend—your fellow Adept—is missing. Although I’m not entirely full up on the details, I’m betting you all know what could happen to her out there if she’s withthem . She said something about siphoning spells, right? So even if she’s only with the teenage Reapers, the ones that still have power, they could be stealing her energy—her soul—for the rest of them to use.” I shook my head. “Unacceptable.”

They looked at one another, shared glances.

“This is your chance to step forward,” I said, my voice low, earnest. “The chance to do theright thing, even if it’s thehard thing.”

“The rules—,” Katie began, but Jason (finally!) shook his head.

“It’s too late for that,” he said. “For rules. We’re losing this battle. Today, we risk losing a spellbinder. We can’t afford that.” More softly, he added, “Not as Adepts, not as friends.”

He walked to me, then reached out his hand and slipped his fingers into mine. A spark slid up my arm at the contact, and I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

“He’s right,” Michael said, then glanced around from Adept to Adept. “They’re both right, and you know it. All of you know it. It’s time to do things differently. To do the hard thing. Who’s with me?”

Soft sounds filled the room as Adepts looked around, shuffled feet, made their decisions.

“I’m in,” Paul said, then smiled cheekily at me. “And, for the sake of having said it, it’s nice to meet you.”

I smiled back.

Jamie and Jill exchanged a glance, then stepped forward. “We’re in,” Jamie said.

Hands on my hips, a satisfied grin on my face, I glanced back at Katie and Smith, who now stood together, eyes narrowed, fury in their expressions.

“This is not how we operate,” she said. “These are not the rules of the game.”

“Then the rules need to change,” Jason said, then looked over at me. “Let’s go get your girl.”

“I was going to find you,” Jason whispered, his fingers still laced through mine as we left the enclave, two angry Varsity Adepts in our wake. But instead of walking toward St. Sophia’s along the Millie 23 path, we moved deeper into the tunnels.

“As soon as I could get away, I was going to find you so we could get Scout together. But I couldn’t say that in front of everyone else.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I vaguely said, not entirely sure I was ready to forgive him for not taking my side the first time around. Of course, I wasn’t so unsure that I let go of his hand.

“Okay,” he said, “then how about this—if you don’t believe me, then consider this my one screw-up.” He looked down at me. “I should have—we all should have—stuck up for her like you did in there. So let me make it up to you now. To both of you.”

I squeezed his hand.

When we reached a crossroads—a union of four tunnels, the ceiling arched above us—we stopped.

“All right,” Jason said, “we’re here, and we’ve got a goal. Now we need a plan.”

Paul snorted. “You mean now that we’ve thoroughly pissed off Varsity?”

“He’s right,” said the slightly taller of the twins. “We’ll get a lecture supreme when we get back.”

“If we get back,” Michael muttered, then lifted worried eyes to Jason. “How are we going to manage this?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out.”

I held up a hand. “First things first. Where are we going?”

“There’s a sanctuary,” Michael said, hitching a thumb toward one of the tunnels. “It’s near here —the Reaper lodge for this part of Chicago. It’s also where they store their vessels.”

“Vessels?” I asked.

“The people—humans or Adepts—the older ones feed from. The ones the younger Reapers siphon energy from.” So a sanctuary was a room of would-be zombies, their lives dripping away because members of the Dark Elite were too self-centered to let go of their magical gifts.

“My God,” I muttered, my skin suddenly crawling. I glanced behind me in the direction of the tunnel we’d come from, suddenly unsure if walking into a trap was a good idea, rescue mission or not.

But then I looked down, my fingers skimming the fabric of Scout’s messenger bag, and got an idea.

“The Reapers probably think we’ll come for her,” I said, looking up at Jason, spring blue eyes staring back. “That we’ll storm the castle, this sanctuary, to get her back.”

“Probably,” Jason agreed, then tilted his head, curiosity in his expression.

“Well, if that’s what they expect, then we should do the thing they aren’t expecting. We flank them—create a distraction. Pull them out and away from Scout. And when they’re distracted, we send in a team to sneak her out again.”

There was silence for a moment, and I had to work not to shuffle my feet.

“That’s actually not bad, Parker,” Jason said. “I’m impressed.”

“I ate a good lunch today.”

“So who does what?” Paul asked.

“I can read the building,” Michael said. “I can read it, figure out where she is.” I guessed that meant Michael was preparing to use his powers.

“In that case, how about Jamie, Michael, and Parker go in, find Scout, get out.” Jason looked at Paul. “You, me and Jill will play the distraction game. Are you guys up for a little snow and ice?”

The twins looked at each other and broke into precocious grins. “Absolutely,” said the taller one, her aqua eyes shining. “Snow and ice are right up my alley.”

Jason nodded managerially. “Then let’s talk details.”

Like the enclave, the Reaper sanctuary was housed underground in the cavelike innards of a former power substation, still connected to the tunnels beneath the city. We’d use two entrances —the main door, where Jill, Paul, and Jason would create their distraction—and the back door,

where Jamie, Michael, and I would sneak in, hopefully undetected, find Scout, and get out again.

I was solely support staff—Michael and Jamie would handle any Reapers, while I’d help take care of Scout and get her safely from the building. We’d all rendezvous in the crossroads again,

hopefully with one additional—and healthy—nose-ringed Adept in tow.

The plans and our cues established, we prepared to split up.

“Are you all right with this?”

I looked over at Jason, my heart quickening at the concern in his eyes, and nodded. “Turning on lights isn’t much, but it’s something. Maybe I can figure out a way to contribute.” Assuming I could learn to control it in the next ten or fifteen minutes, I silently added.

He tilted his head at me. “You were serious about that—the lights?”

I smiled ruefully. “Turns out, the darkening wasn’t a fake.” I raised my hands and shook them in faux excitement.“Yay .”

“All right,” Michael said. “Everybody ready?”

“Ready,” Jason said, then leaned down and whispered, his lips at my cheek, “You take care, Lily Parker. And I’ll see you in a little while.”

Goose bumps pebbled my skin. “You, too,” I whispered.

“All right,” he said, his voice echoing through the tunnels. “Let’s do this.” He nodded at Paul and Jill, and they started on their way, moving through the tunnel to the left.

Michael, Jamie, and I shared a glance, nodded our readiness, and headed to the left.

The walk wasn’t short, but the tunnels allowed us to move swiftly beneath the hustle and bustle of downtown Chicago to find the place where Reapers conducted some of their soul sucking. A few turns and corridors, and then the tunnel opened onto a platform, a set of stairs of corrugated iron leading up to a rusty metal door.

We stopped just inside the edge of the tunnel—Michael signaling quiet with a raised fist—and stared at the platform. No movement. No sound. No indication of surly, magic-bearing teenagers.

“Let’s go,” Michael whispered after a moment, and we crept toward the stairs—Michael in front, me in the middle, Jamie behind. Since Jill was going to be making ice for Jason’s distraction, I assumed Jamie was the twin with fire powers. I still wasn’t sure what a reader or fire witch could do, but I hoped that whatever it was could help us find Scout.

We took the steps to the door, but Michael, in the lead, didn’t open it. Instead, he pressed his palm to it, then closed his eyes. After a moment of silence, he shook his head.

“Pain and loss,” he said. “All through the building, through the steel, the brick, the city above.

The pain leaks, fills the city. All because they won’t make the sacrifice.”

Another few seconds of silence passed. I stared at him, rapt, as he communed with the architecture. Suddenly, he yanked his hand back as if the door had gone white-hot. He rubbed the center of his palm with his other hand, then glanced back at us. “She’s in there.”

Jamie smiled softly at Michael “We’ll find her.”

At Michael’s nod that he was ready to move, we tried the door, found it unlocked. It opened into a hallway that led deeper into the building. The hallway was empty. We stood in the threshold for a moment, gazes scanning for Reapers.