Hexbound

For SHB, because sometimes you find the greatest things when you least expect them.

“Diamonds are forever. Magic, not so much.”

—Scout Green

I stayed absolutely still, my eyes closed, the sun warm on my face. As long as I didn’t fidget too much, the noon sun was just strong enough to cancel out the chilly October breeze that blew through our part of downtown Chicago.

I guess there was a reason they called it the Windy City.

It was a Sunday afternoon at St. Sophia’s School for Girls, and I was squeezed into a tiny square of sunshine on the lawn with my friend Scout. She sat beside me with her arms stretched out behind her, eyes closed and head tipped up to the sky.

I sat cross-legged, art-history book open in my lap. Every few minutes we’d inch our legs a little farther to the left, trying to take in the last warm bit of fall.

“This totally beats sitting in class,” Scout said. “And wearing uniforms.”

Scout was dressed in a black skirt and shirt she’d sewn from two White Sox T-

shirts. It was quite a change from the navy-and-yellow private school plaid we usually wore. And then there were the shoes (Converses she’d coated in gold glitter), the hair (a short blond bob with dark tips), and the silver nose ring. There was no mistaking Scout Green, even in the uniform, for the average “St. Sophia’s girl.”

“You are totally rocking those clothes today.”

Scout opened an eye and glanced down at her jersey skirt. “I appreciate your appreciation of my obvious good taste. Besides, someone had to rock it out. This place is like a dismal swamp of bleh.”

I put a hand over my heart. “Thank God you’re here to save us, Saint Scout.”

Scout snorted and crossed one ankle over the other, her shoes glinting in the sunlight.

“And now I know why I keep finding glitter on my bedroom floor.”

“Whatever. My shoes do not shed.”

I gave her a dubious look.

“Seriously. That’s just . . . um . . . horn dust from the unicorns that braid your hair while you sleep.”

Scout and I both looked at each other. Unfortunately, while I didn’t remember waking up with any mysterious braids, we couldn’t exactly rule out the unicorn part.

Oh, did I mention Scout could do magic?

Yeah, you heard me. And I know what you’re thinking: “Lily Parker, there’s no such thing as magic. The tofu is starting to go to your head.”

You’re going to have to trust me on this one. See, as it turns out, Chicago is home to an underground world of magicians battling it out while the rest of the city is asleep. And those magicians included the girl, who was now humming a song from High School Musical 3, beside me.

Scary, right?

Millicent Green, aka Scout, was actually an Adept and a member of Enclave Three.

And here’s the second twist—so was I.

See, I was actually from upstate New York, but when my parents decided to head to Germany for a research sabbatical, they figured St. Sophia’s, deep in the heart of Chicago, was the best place for me to spend my junior and senior years of high school.

They said parents knew best. To my mind, the jury was still out.

I didn’t come to Chicago with any powers, at least not that I was aware. And my parents certainly weren’t doing magic in their free time.

Again, at least not that I was aware. But with a secret trip to Germany? Who really knew? I’d been told by Marceline Foley, the headmistress of St. Sophia’s,

that their work had something to do with genetics. She’d changed her tune later on,

but there was no unringing that bell—or the fact that their European vacation was related to a place called the Sterling Research Foundation. For their safety, I’d made a promise to let my parents’ secrets, whatever they were, stay secret.

Anyway, it took a trip into the basement of St. Sophia’s—and a shot of magic from one of the bad guys—to trigger my own magic.

Firespell.

To be honest, I’d been an Adept for only a few weeks, and I was still fuzzy on the details. But firespell had something to do with light and power—manipulating it and throwing it back at the bad guys.

And that was exactly how I’d ended up with firespell—a shot from Sebastian Born. He might have been tall, dark, and handsome, but he was also a Reaper. A teenager who refused to give up his magic when the time came—and it came for everyone—and who now spent his time recruiting kids the older Reapers could feed from.

As it turns out, magic’s only a temporary gift. We have it for only a few years,

from puberty to age twenty-five or so. After that, the magic begins to degrade you,

to devour your soul like some kind of rangy tentacle monster.

As Adepts, we promise to give up our magic, to give it back to the universe before it turns us into soul-suckers. Reapers don’t. And in order to keep their suddenly hungry power from devouring them from the inside out, they have to feed from the souls of Adepts or humans.

So, yeah. Reapers—or, as they called themselves, the Dark Elite—weren’t going to win any congeniality awards.

That put us pretty squarely against each other, like a football rivalry but with much higher stakes. So by day, we were high school juniors—wearing our plaid uniforms,

doing our homework, ignoring our brattier classmates, and wishing we were in a public high school without a two-hour mandatory study hall.

And by night, we were dueling Adepts.

Scout suddenly sighed, a long, haggard breath that made her entire body shudder. She still looked a little pale, and she still had blue circles under her eyes.

A wounded Adept.

These were the scars left over from her own experience with the Reapers. She’d been kidnapped, and her room had been ransacked. It had been me and the other Junior Varsity Adepts from Enclave Three—and very little help from the Varsity Adepts, the college-age kids—that had fought to get her back from the Reaper sanctuary where Jeremiah, the baddest of the baddies, had begun the process of stripping away her soul.

It was days before she could sleep without nightmares, nearly a week before she was mostly back to her old self. But I still saw shadows from her time in the sanctuary—those moments when she disappeared into herself, when her mind was pulled back into the empty spot the Reapers had created.

Regardless, she was here now. We’d gotten her back.

Not everyone was so lucky. Sometimes we discovered too late that a Reaper had been befriending someone, too late for Adepts, friends, family, coaches, or teachers to pull him or her back from the brink.

Sometimes, fighting the good fight meant losing a battle or two.

That was a hard lesson at almost-sixteen.

“Lils, any thoughts about running away and joining a circus?”

I smiled over at Scout. “Are we talking pink poodles and clowns stuffed into a car,

or creepy freak show?”

Scout snorted. “Since it’s us, probably freak show. We could travel around the country from city to city, putting up one of those giant red-and-white-striped tents and sleeping in a silver trailer shaped like a bullet.” She slid me a knowing glance.

“You could bring along your own personal freak show.”

This time, it wasn’t just the sun that heated my cheeks. “He’s not my freak show.”

“He’d like to be.”

“Whatever. And he’s not a freak show.” I glanced around to make sure we were alone. “He’s a werewolf.”

“Close enough. The point is, he’d be your werewolf if you let him.”

It was the “letting him” that was the hard part. Jason Shepherd, the resident werewolf of Enclave Three, was definitely interested. He was sixteen years old and, like Michael Garcia, another Adept with a massive crush on Scout, was a student at Montclare Academy, St. Sophia’s brother school. I’d learned Jason had been born in Naperville, a suburb west of Chicago, listened to whatever music happened to be on the radio at the time, and was a devoted White Sox fan. He didn’t like football and loved pepperoni pizza. And, of course, there was the werewolf thing.

I guess I was interested back, but spending nights fighting evil didn’t exactly make it easy to get to know a boy.

“It’s too soon,” I told her, trying to make my voice sound as casual as possible.

“Besides, you’re the one who warned me away from him.”

“I did do that,” she quietly said. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.” Problem was,

she wouldn’t tell me why she thought that might happen. She kept saying I needed to hear it from him, and that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that made a girl feel comfortable about a boy.

“There’s always something,” I whispered. As if on cue, a grim-looking cloud passed over the sun, a dark streak in the sky that sang of impending rain. The breeze blew colder, raising goose bumps on my arms.

Scout and I exchanged a glance. “Inside?” I asked.

She nodded, then pointed at her shoes. “The glue’s not waterproof.”

Decision made, we gathered up our books and walked back across the campus’s side lawn and around to the main building. The school—a former convent —was dark and gothic-looking, a weird contrast to the rest of the glass-and-steel architecture in this part of downtown Chicago.

That was what I was thinking when I happened to glance across the street . . . and saw him.

Sebastian Born.

He stood on the sidewalk in jeans and a dark polo shirt, his hands tucked into his pockets. His blue eyes gleamed, but not like Jason’s eyes gleamed. Jason’s eyes were spring-bright. Sebastian’s were darker. Deeper. Colder.

And those eyes were focused on me.

The Reapers obviously knew Scout attended St. Sophia’s, since they’d kidnapped her from her room. And another Reaper, Alex, had seen all of us one day in the concrete thorn garden behind the school. But that didn’t make me any less weirded out by the fact that Sebastian was standing across the street,

perfectly still, gaze on yours truly.

“Lily?”

At the sound of my name, I looked back at Scout. Frowning, she moved toward me. “What is it?”

“I think I just saw Sebastian. He was right . . .” By the time I’d pointed to the spot on the sidewalk where he’d stood, he was gone. “There,” I finished, wondering if I’d actually seen him, or if I’d just seen some tourist with the same dark hair and blue eyes and I’d imagined it was him.

I wasn’t crazy about either idea.

“Sebastian? Out here? Are you sure?”

“I thought so. I mean, I thought he was right there—but maybe not.”

Scout put her hands on her hips and frowned as she scanned the street.

“There’s no sign of him now. I can text Daniel”—he was the newish leader of Enclave Three—“and let him know something’s up.”

Gaze scanning the street, I shook my head. “That’s okay. Maybe I imagined it. It was only for a second—maybe I just saw someone who looks like him.”

“Simplest explanation is usually the truth,” she said, then put an arm around my shoulders. “No more sunshine for you. You’ve been indoors so much, I think the sun actually makes you crazy.”

“Maybe so,” I absently said. But I had to wonder—was I losing it, or were the Reapers watching us?

I had a dark-haired, blue-eyed boy on my mind.

This was a bad idea for two reasons.

First, I was in European-history class, and said dark-haired boy wasn’t a king or soldier or historical figure of any type.

Second, the boy I’d been talking to was definitely not dark-haired.

The boy, of course, was Sebastian. And the obsession? I don’t know. I’m sure he was on my mind in part because I’d (maybe?) just seen him. But it also felt like we had unfinished business. In a couple of glances and whispered instructions,

Sebastian had taught me how to use firespell—that it wasn’t about controlling the power, but trusting the power enough to let it control me. It was about letting the power move, instead of trying to move the power.

But why had he helped me? He was a Reaper, and I was an Adept, and at the time we’d been trying to rescue Scout and escape the Reaper sanctuary. There was no reason for him to help me, which made the act that much stranger . . . and meaningful?

“Ms. Parker.”

I mean, not only had he helped me, but he’d helped me in the middle of a battle against him and his Reaper friends. Was there a chance he was really . . . good?

“Ms. Parker.”

Finally hearing my name, I slammed my elbow on the top of my desk as I bolted upright and glanced up at Mr. Forrest, our civics teacher. “Yes? Sorry?”

The classroom burst into snickers, most of it from the three members of St.

Sophia’s resident brat pack: Veronica, Mary Katherine, and Amie. Veronica was the queen bee, a blond Gossip Girl wannabe currently wearing a pair of thousand-

dollar designer ballet flats and at least a couple of pounds of gold around her neck.

Veronica and I had tried being friends one Sunday afternoon after I’d first seen my Darkening—a mark on my lower back that pegged me as an Adept. I had been in denial about my new magic, and in the middle of a misunderstanding with Scout, so I’d offered Veronica a shot as best friend.

She didn’t make the grade.

M.K. was the haughtiest of the crew. Today she was dressed like a goth-prep mash-up—a navy shirt and cardigan over her plaid skirt; knee-high navy socks; and black platform heels with lots of straps. Her long hair was tied in long braids with navy ribbon, and her lips were outlined in dark lipstick.

Amie was the quiet one—the type who seemed to go along to get along. She was also a roommate, sharing a suite with Scout, me, and a cello-playing, mostly quiet girl named Lesley Barnaby.

“Is class a little too difficult for you today, Parker?” M.K. snickered.

“Since you were apparently absorbed in your own thoughts,” Forrest said,

“anything you’d like to share with the class?”

“Um, I was just”—I glanced up at the scribbled text that filled the whiteboard at the front of the room and tried to make sense of it—“I was just . . . thinking about federalism.”

More snickering, probably deserved. I swear I was smart, even if I was still adjusting to the run-all-night, study-all-day schedule.

“And did you reach any conclusions about federalism, Ms. Parker?”

Deer in headlights, much? “Well,” I slowly said, trying to buy time to get my mental gears moving, “it was really important to the founding of the country and . . . whatnot.”

There was silence until Forrest huffed out a sound of intellectual irritation and looked around the room. “Does anyone have anything more enlightening to add to the conversation?”

Veronica popped a hand into the air.

“Ms. Lively. Can you contribute to our conversation?”

“Actually, I need to make an announcement to the class.”

He looked suspicious. “About what?”

“Well,” Veronica said, “regarding our upcoming girls-only health-education class,

if you get my drift.”

Forrest’s cheeks flushed pink. He nodded, then cleared his throat, and after tapping some papers together on the podium, headed for the door. “For tomorrow,” he said on the way, “finish chapter two.”

With Forrest on his way out, Veronica rose and moved to the podium, Amie beside her. Veronica tucked her hair behind her ear, her gaze on the door until Forrest was out of the room. As soon as it clicked closed, she turned her attention to us.

“It’s time to begin planning our annual holiday festivities.”

The girls began to hoot like boys at a frat party. I glanced back at Scout, who rolled her eyes and propped her hand on her chin. I have to admit, I was mostly relieved I wasn’t going to have to listen to Veronica drone on about sex ed. I mean,

surely St. Sophia’s could afford an actual teacher for that kind of thing.

“And when I say holiday, I obviously mean this year’s Halloween Sneak. As you know, it’s up to the junior class to plan the Sneak. This year’s theme will be Glam Graveyard.”

“Gravestones and glitter,” Amie added.

“Precisely,” Veronica said. “Our first planning committee meeting will be tomorrow. You can sign up on the sheet outside the door. Weirdos need not apply,” she snarkily added, haughty gaze pinpointed at Scout.

“She’s just so high school,” Scout muttered behind me. I bit back a smile.

“Anyone interested in the planning committee has to swear not to squeal about the location of the Sneak, because the final location won’t be revealed to the rest of the class until it’s time to go. Any questions?”

M.K. raised a hand. “Will there be boys there?”

Veronica smiled smugly. “We’re playing sister school to Montclare Academy again.”

That smug look on her face worried me. Jason went to Montclare, but I wasn’t so much worried about him. Michael, however, was a different matter. While Michael had a pretty big crush on Scout, she was playing very hard to get. Veronica, on the other hand, seemed determined to take her place. Veronica had made a point of asking Scout about Michael one day, hinting around that she had a thing for him.

The interest was understandable. Michael was totally cute. Dark, curly hair. Big brown eyes. A huge smile that was impossible to ignore . . . unless you were Scout Green. She managed pretty well. Of course, if Scout didn’t ask Michael, then technically he was fair game.

The bell rang. Veronica made a little curtsy before she and Amie were joined by M.K., and they headed out the door. I waited for Scout to gather up her books.

“So,” I began, “exactly how uncool would it be if I wanted to be on the Sneak committee?”

Scout pulled her messenger bag over her shoulder and gave me a sideways glance. “Purposefully involve yourself in brat drama? Why would you want to do that?”

“Decorating and design and stuff is right up my alley,” I reminded her. “My art studio hasn’t started yet, and I really need a creative outlet, even if it does involve the brat pack.”

“Don’t you already have a creative outlet?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sure I’d call what we do ‘creative.’ ”

“Have you ever done it before?”

“Well, no.”

Scout grinned at me. “Then it’s creative.”

Drama notwithstanding, I concluded I was going it alone on the planning committee front. But as we walked down the hall toward our lockers, I decided to try something else Scout might be interested in. “Do you think Veronica asked him?”

“Asked who?” She sounded completely unconcerned, but I knew her better than that.

“I know your real first name, Scout. Don’t make me use it.”

“Fine, fine. Don’t have a conniption. Yeah, she probably asked Garcia. Or she will, if she hasn’t already. It’s just the kind of thing she’d do.”

“Maybe he wants to ask you.”

“Then it serves him right for waiting,” she muttered.

I slid her a glance. “So if he asks you, you’ll say yes?”

“Just because I don’t trip over him every time he comes into the room doesn’t mean I don’t, you know, appreciate him.”

“I knew it,” I said, a grin breaking out. “I knew you had a thing for him. So, are you going to tell him? Are you two going to start dating? Officially, I mean? This is huge.”

“Pump the brakes,” she warned, heading into the bay where our fancy wooden lockers were located. “Pump the brakes, or I tell Amie you want decorating advice.

You’ll have to wear shades just to sleep in your room.”

Virtually everything in Amie’s room was an eye-scarring shade of Barbie pink.

“Now, that’s just rude.”

“I’m not above rude, Parker. You keep that in mind.”

I took her word for it, which is why I snuck back alone to sign up for the Sneak committee. An artist had to do what an artist had to do, right?

A dozen or so hours later, we’d ditched our plaid for jeans and boots, tonight’s uniform of the Adepts of Enclave Three.

It would have been cool to say we dressed that way because we were out pummeling Reapers into oblivion. But for now, Enclave Three was acting more like an Adept advance unit. Daniel tended to give us two kinds of assignments—trying to bring back kids who we thought had been targeted by Reapers, and patrolling the cold, damp tunnels beneath Chicago to keep an eye out for Reapers and, if necessary, battle them back.

There weren’t any Reaper targets at St. Sophia’s right now, at least not that we’d identified. (Although the soul-sucking would have explained a lot about M.K.’s personality.) So really, the boots were mostly to protect our feet from dingy water while we were on patrol. On the other hand, Jamie and Jill, auburn-haired twin Adepts with elemental fire and ice power, had been gone a lot recently, spending their evenings befriending a sad-eyed boy from their high school and trying to keep him from completely disappearing into himself as the Reapers used him to sate their hunger.

Tonight we were walking the tunnels that connected Enclave Three to St.

Sophia’s to make sure they were Reaper free. Unfortunately, they often weren’t. I’d had my first run-in with Sebastian in these tunnels, and the Reapers had used the tunnels to kidnap Scout and to snag her Grimoire. Since they hadn’t managed to grab it, odds were they’d try again.

We walked two by two, Scout and Michael in the lead, me and Jason behind. It’s not like the tunnels were superplush or anything—they used to hold the tracks for small railroad cars that ran between downtown buildings. They carried stuff into the buildings, and carried out ash from the boilers. Now they looked pretty much exactly how you’d expect abandoned miniature railcar tunnels to look.

On top of that, of course, the threat of Reapers was always there. But even with all that, there was something a little romantic about walking along in flashlight-lit tunnels together.

Scout looked back at me, determination in her eyes. “Lights on,” she ordered.

From what we knew so far—since I was the only local Adept with firespell—my magic was all about power, the raw force of the universe. That meant I could throw out shock waves of power that would knock people down and out, and I could manipulate electricity. But I still wasn’t entirely sure about the “how” of it.

I stopped walking, clenched my eyes shut, and concentrated on filling the tunnel with light. It was a matter of allowing the energy to flow into me, letting it pool and fill my veins with warmth, and then sending it out again.

“Very nice, Lil,” Scout said. But I knew it had worked before she’d spoken, the insides of my eyelids turning red from the sudden glare in the frosty corridor. I opened my eyes, squinting against the sudden gleam of the cage-wrapped lightbulbs that hung above us. I was getting a little better at controlling it, learning to spark the light and douse it again by concentrating, instead of only when my emotions became overwhelming.

Scout hopped across one of the rails in the concrete floor, flashlight in her hand,

her signature messenger bag—with its grinning skull and crossbones—bouncing as she moved.

“All right,” she said. “Off again.”

I blew out a breath, and pulled the power back out again. It was like turning the lights on, but in reverse—letting the power release again, freeing it from the bulbs in which it was bound. For a moment, the lights wavered, then went dark.

Jason took my free hand and laced our fingers together. “Your control is seriously improving.”

“Only because I’ve been working on it like two hours a day.”

Scout glanced back, her features thrown into strange relief by the flashlight beneath her face. “Hobbies are fun, aren’t they?”

“In this case, they would be more fun if I had any clue what I was doing.”

Jason leaned toward me. “You’re doing great, Lily,” he said, squeezing my hand.

I squeezed back.

“I’m doing better than I was,” I agreed. “But I’d feel a whole lot better if I could do it on command every time. I’m still a little unpredictable.”

“One of these days,” Jason said. Since his eyes were on Scout and Michael,

who were walking side by side in front of us, Michael’s arm around her shoulders, I assumed Jason was no longer talking about me.

“One of these days,” I agreed. “They’ll be good for each other. They are good for each other.”

“Yes, they are,” he said, before his gaze shifted back to me again. “But enough about them. You know, we haven’t had a lot of time to talk. To get to know each other.”

The warmth on my cheeks was a weird contrast to the chilly tunnel air. “That’s true,” I said, my heart suddenly thudding in my chest. What was it about this guy that made me feel like a nervous kid? I hated feeling that way, so I took the lead.

“So, say something.”

“Something.”

I bumped him with my shoulder. “I’m serious.”

“So was I. Maybe you just don’t appreciate my sense of humor.” But when I gave him a flat stare, he laughed. “Okay, okay. So, um, what is Sagamore like compared to Chicago?”

“Oh. Well, it’s beautiful,” I told him. “It’s a small town, kind of in the country. Trees everywhere, rolling hills. Our neighborhood was on a hill, so when you looked outside in the fall, you could see the fog over the valley. It was like living in a fairy land.”

“Wasn’t ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ supposed to take place in New York?”

I frowned. “I don’t know. Was it?”

“I wanna say we learned that last year in English.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.

Could be wrong. Anyway, if it was, probably says a lot about upstate New York,

right?”

“Are you suggesting I was living in a fairy land?”

“Well, at least a land with headless horsemen.” He dropped my hand and half turned around, fingers arched into claws. “Headless horsemen who cut the heads off fair maidens in the night!” He tweaked my waist, just enough to make me yelp. I batted his hands away.

Scout glanced back, eyebrow arched. “What’s going on back there?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Some dork is trying to scare me with tales of murderous creatures.”

She snorted. “What, ’cause that’s so different from an average Monday around here?”

“Seriously, right?”

“People,” Jason said, “I’m busy trying to work my mojo.”

Michael turned around and offered Jason his fist, and they did a manly knuckle-

bump thing.

Scout and I simultaneously rolled our eyes. But before I could respond, Jason grabbed my hand again and pulled me to a stop. My stomach fluttering, I kept my eyes on Scout and Michael, who continued in front of us, flashlights bobbing until they realized that we weren’t following behind.

Scout looked back. “What’s up, peeps?”

“Could you, maybe, give us a minute?” Jason asked.

“You are not serious.”

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find time to kiss an Adept?”

Scout blew out a dramatic breath that puffed out her cheeks, grabbed Michael’s hand, and pulled him down the hall. “Fine. Have a hot make-out session. But we’re going to be like twenty feet down the hallway. I hope they get eaten by one of those headless horsemen,” she muttered. “Or the Chicago version, anyway.”

As they walked down the hallway, I kept my gaze on them, still too nervous to look at Jason.

“What would that be exactly?” I heard Michael ask.

“What would what be?”

“The Chicago version of the headless horseman?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a fangless vampire? Or—or a werewolf with mange?”

“We can still hear you!” Jason called out. “And werewolves don’t get mange!”

That earned him a huff from Scout. I finally screwed up my courage and looked back at Jason.

He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. But they weren’t royal blue or the blue you’d see in the middle of a rainbow. They were so blue they were nearly turquoise,

the color so deep it seemed that he stared out with precious jewels instead of irises.

Currently, those crazy eyes were trained on me. His lips curled, the dimple at the corner of his mouth puckering as he smiled.

My nerves tumbling, I kept things light.

“So you’re trying to kiss an Adept?”

“Very, very diligently,” Jason said. Before I could get out a snarky answer, he was dipping his head. His lips found mine, his mouth soft and warm. He put his hands at my waist and kissed me until I felt a little light-headed, until my heart fluttered in my chest. I’d been kissed before, sure, but I hadn’t been kissed like this.

Not by him, since we’d been interrupted when he’d tried to kiss me before. And not like my feet were going to lift off the ground and I was going to float right up to the ceiling.

I almost opened my eyes to make sure that hadn’t happened—I mean, we were Adepts, after all.

Jason sighed and wrapped his arms around my back, and we kissed in the darkness beneath Chicago.

At least until Scout let out a “Holy crap!” that poured through the tunnel.

We separated and ran full out, relieved when we saw Scout and Michael still standing at the edge of the next segment of tunnel.

“What happened?” Jason asked, his gaze scanning the two of them. “Are you okay?”

“There,” Scout said, swinging her flashlight across the tunnel in front of us.

It took me a minute to process exactly what I was seeing. The floor of the tunnel and part of the walls were coated in some kind of clear slime, five or six trails of it from one end of the corridor to the next.

“Wait,” Jason said. “Is that—Is that slime?”

“Appears to be,” Michael said. “It looks like they filmed Aliens in there.”

Jason kneeled down, found a piece of metal on the tunnel floor, and stuck it into the goo. When he raised it again, he pulled up a long, stringy strand of slime.

“Eww,” Scout said. “That is heinous. That’s even worse than the time we fought off that nematode.”

“What’s a nematode?” I asked.

“I’m not going to tell you,” she said. “I think you should have the joy of looking it up on the Internet and seeing the kind of pictures I had to see.”

“So what did this come from?” I asked. “Some kind of animal?”

“Maybe not,” Michael put in. “Maybe there’s a leak somewhere. Some kind of—I don’t know—industrial fluid or something?”

We all looked up. The ceiling of the tunnel looked old and nasty, but not even a little slimy.

“Hmm,” Jason said, then tossed the metal into a corner. “That’s definitely new.”

“What do we do now?”

Scout put her hands on her hips. “Since the exit is in that direction, I guess we should see how far it goes.”

“Lily and I will take the lead,” Jason said, stepping forward into the tunnel. When I snapped to face him, shocked that we’d be going first, his expression was apologetic.

“Firespell,” he explained. “Just in case we need it.”

It was definitely an adjustment to play the lead heroine, but I sucked it up, nodded,

and stepped beside him.

With flashlights aimed before us and Michael and Scout behind us, we took one tentative step into the tunnel. And then another. And then another.

“I’m not seeing anything,” Scout said, flashlight beam circling across the ceiling of the tunnel as she searched out whatever had slimed the corridor.

“One tunnel at a time,” Jason said. My hand in his, we took the lead, walking to the end of the corridor.

I was scanning the walls, bouncing my flashlight beam along them, looking for a hint of slime. So when Jason came to a full stop, I almost tripped forward, but he pulled my hand—and me—back.

That was when I saw them—and screamed.There were five of them—half walking, half crawling toward us. They were human-shaped, but a little smaller than your average adult. They were bald, with pointed ears and milky eyes, and their fingers were thin and tipped by long, pointed white nails. They scowled and snorted as they moved toward us. Their naked skin glistened in the light, a trail of slime on the ground beneath and behind them.

“What—” I began, but Jason shook his head. “Scout, Michael. Stop walking, and move backward. Just a few feet.”

Scout and Michael began to move behind us. With each step they took, we followed suit until the four of us stood in a cluster a dozen feet or so away from the creatures. Still, they lurched in our direction, their movements coordinated like a school of nasty, pasty fish.

I could feel my chest tightening as panic began to take over. Staring down a group of hell-bent teenagers was one thing. This was . . . completely out of my league.

“What the hell are those?” I whispered.

“No clue,” Jason said. “But they don’t exactly look friendly.”

One of them hissed, revealing long fangs amid an entire row of sharp teeth. “Are they some kind of vampire?” Michael asked.

“I’ve never seen a vamp that looked like that,” Scout said.

Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe they were offended by what she’d said.

Either way, one of them decided it was time for action. It put its front hands on the ground, then pushed off and leaped toward us.

Okay, not just us—toward me.

But there was someone there to save me.

It started with fur—thick and silver—that sprouted across Jason’s body,

replacing his clothes like they were nothing more than an illusion. Then he went down on all fours and stepped in front of me. His nose elongated into a snout, and his hands and feet became long, narrow paws. His tail extended, and the rest of his fur grew in, and by then there was no mistaking what he was—a silvery wolf, bigger than any I’d seen at a zoo.

Every survival instinct I had kicked in, and I had to lock my knees to keep from running away. Jason lifted his head and looked at me for a moment, his head tilted to the side like a dog, his eyes now spring green.

I stood frozen in place, my gaze locked on his—on this wolf that suddenly stood before me.

That look only took a second, but that was long enough for hell to break loose.

The creature apparently wasn’t intimidated by Jason’s new form, and it didn’t stop running toward me. It continued its galloping gait, taking air in the last couple of feet and landing with an attack on Jason’s muzzle.

“Jason!” I screamed, but Michael pulled me back. I’m not sure what I would have done, but someone had to do something. Jason was taking an attack meant for me, and I didn’t want him hurt on my behalf.

I looked back at Michael with panic in my eyes. “We have to help him.”

Michael’s answer was nearly instantaneous. “Firespell it.”

I reached down, could feel the quiet hum of energy, and nodded at him. “I think I can knock them down. But you have to get Jason out of the way or I’ll take him out,

too.”

Michael nodded. “We’ll get him focused. You get ready to firespell. The timing on this one’s gonna be close. When I give the word, you send it out.”

I nodded, then looked back. Jason and the monster were rolling on the ground,

but at least its friends were smart enough to stay back. Jason was getting in nips at the creature’s arms and legs, so the thing’s yips and yelps were probably warning enough to the rest of them. It opened its mouth and screamed, revealing rows of tiny sharp teeth and clawing at Jason’s muzzle as Jason tried to get a grip with his own teeth.

“Jason!” Michael yelled out. “Get clear so Lily can take a shot.”

Jason let out a yip as the thing bit down on one ear and raked its claws across Jason’s back. Jason shook the creature off, but it kept coming, clawing and biting as it attemped to take him down.

“Use the tunnel walls!” Scout yelled out. “Ram him!”

I made myself close my eyes. It was hard to shut out Jason when he needed me,

but if I kept watching, I wouldn’t be able to prep the firespell. I blew out a breath, and then began to slowly breathe in again. And as I inhaled, I pulled in as much power as I could, letting it rise through my body from my feet to my hands.

The tunnel shook from impact—I assumed that was the sound of Jason ramming a monster into the wall. I heard a wolfish yip and squeezed my hands into fists to keep from launching myself forward.

I heard scuffling as the power rose. I waited as long as I thought we could risk it,

until I held the power—which ached to be loosed into the tunnel—by a thin string of energy.

“Anyone who doesn’t want to end up on the floor needs to be behind me right now!”

More scuffling. As soon as the sounds moved behind me, Michael yelled out,

“Now, Lily!”

I opened my eyes—and with a final check to make sure there were no Adepts in front of me—I lifted my hands and pushed them forward, moving all that power toward the monsters that were now only a few inches away.

The firespell moved forward, warping the air as it traveled, a vertical plane of green light and haze that shot out from my hands. It hit the creatures like a shock wave, knocking them all backward, the rest of the energy vibrating the walls of the tunnel as it moved forward.

I probably should have given a little more thought to whether using firespell in a century-old underground tunnel was a good idea. But there was nothing to do about it now.

The five of them lay on the floor, definitely down, but still twitching a little. I hadn’t knocked them out completely.

First things first, though.

My heart still pounding from the exertion, I glanced back. Michael and Scout were crouched together on the floor. Jason sat in front of them, back in human form,

blood seeping from a wound at his ear. There were scratches on his face and hands, but he looked pretty good otherwise.

I crouched in front of him. “Are you okay?”

Jason glanced up at me, a twinkle in his turquoise eyes. “Are you kidding me?

That’s the most fun I’ve had all night. Well, except for kissing you, of course.”

Not a bad answer from a werewolf, I guess.

Jason held out his hands. I stood up, then took his hands and pulled him to his feet.

“You know,” he said, “if you’re open to a little constructive criticism, you cut it a little close there.”

“Maybe next time you should be a little more careful where you fight.”

He rolled his eyes, but he was grinning when he did it.

“Thanks for taking the hit,” I said, pulling off my hoodie and pressing the sleeve to his ear, wiping away some of the blood.

Jason shrugged. “The wolf wanted to fight. And maybe I like rescuing the damsel in distress.”

“Just to clarify, I did rescue you back.”

He slid me a sly glance. “Then that makes us even. For now.”

I grinned back, then checked out Michael and Scout. “You two okay?”

They nodded, then helped each other up.

“Well done,” Michael said, then looked at Jason. “You good?”

Jason nodded.

“You okay, Lils?”

I nodded at Scout, but the relief at putting them down—and keeping us all relatively safe—gave way to exhaustion. I suddenly felt like I was about to get the flu—body aching, drained of energy. I needed warm soup and an equally warm bed.

Instead, I still had five twitching slimy things to deal with.

“That’s all I’ve got,” I quietly said. “I can walk out of here, but that’s about the only thing I’m going to be able to do. And we still have a problem.”

We looked back at the creatures.

Jason stepped beside me. “At least they stopped moving closer. That’s something.”

“Since we’ve taken them out, can we please get out of here?” Scout asked.

“We still have to get past them,” Michael pointed out. “And we can’t just leave them here to roam the tunnels. God only knows where they’d end up.”

“Or who they’d attack,” Jason said. “That means we need a plan for part two. We need to get these things out of here, and we need it really quicklike. Scout? Got anything in the hopper?”

“I don’t—I don’t know—”

“You don’t have to kill ’em,” Michael said. “Maybe you can just transport them or something? I mean, since we aren’t sure what they are?”

“What?” Scout said, a thread of panic in her voice. “Because those claws and teeth are for eating carrots? These aren’t happy, fuzzy bunnies we’re talking about.”

I knew that sound in her voice. I’d heard that panic before, when she’d been taken by the Reapers to their sanctuary. I turned around and looked her in the eyes, and saw the terror there. She was panicking again, and God only knew what kinds of things she was remembering.

“You can do this, Scout.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t remember how.”

“Michael, Jason, and I are here. And those creatures aren’t Reapers. They aren’t going to use magic against you.”

She sniffed. “They might eat us.”

I put my hands on my hips. “You honestly think a werewolf is going to let those things eat his girl and her best pal? You’ve already seen him in action. And that was just an appetizer.”

She only blinked.

“Look,” I said, bravado bubbling up from somewhere I hadn’t known existed. “We only have to kick a little butt here. You love kicking butt. And if nothing else, Jason can shift and we can let his wolf have an early breakfast.”

“Not that I don’t appreciate that offer,” Jason muttered, “but I have no interest in eating those things, wolf or not.”

Scout’s eyes were still frozen on the creatures on the floor.

I tried again. “Scout.” I waited until she made eye contact, then leaned down and put my hands on the sides of her face to make sure she was looking at me.

“Scout, you and Jason saved me from Sebastian and Alex, and we came and got you out of the sanctuary. Whatever our weaknesses, we are a team. And we’re here, now, together. You can do this. I believe in you.”

“I’m not sure what to do.”

Michael snapped his fingers. “I’ve totally got it. Scout, you could flutterby them.”

She blinked at Michael. “What?”

“Flutterby them. Use a transmogrify spell like you did on that Frankenstein thing last year. Remember?”

Scout was quiet for a couple more seconds. “I can’t use a flutterby down here. I don’t have anything. I don’t have an incantation prepared.”

Michael grinned over at her. “Scout, you are an Adept extraordinaire. If anyone could do a transmog spell off the cuff, it would be you.”

For a moment, there was silence. And then she reached out and grabbed his cheeks and planted a kiss right on his lips. “You are brilliant,” she said.

When she let him loose again, his cheeks were flushed bright red, his eyes wide.

Probably the best part of his day, I figured.

“You’re right,” she said. “I can totally do this. But it’s going to take a few minutes,

and I need space to work.”

We all looked down at the creatures, which were beginning to stir again, heads lolling as they fought off the firespell.

“First off,” Scout said, “let’s all back up a little.”

Carefully and quietly, we took a few more steps backward, putting space between us and them.

“And now for something a little more formal,” Scout said. She looked around at the floor of the tunnel, which was relatively dry compared to some of the other areas we’d been in.

“Protection circle?” Jason asked.

“Protection circle,” she confirmed with a nod.

“What’s a protection circle?” I asked.

“It’s like a safety bubble,” Scout said, fumbling around in her messenger bag.

“Like a little snow globe of happiness that will keep us safe from them.” She pulled out a small zip-top case. She opened it, then pulled out a small plastic hourglass filled with bright orange sand.

“You keep an hourglass in your messenger bag?” I wondered.

“Found it at a thrift store. Kept it for just such an occasion. Keep an eye on the biters.”

I made sure Jason and Michael were doing just that, then turned back to watch Scout work her juju. No way was I going to miss this.

She pulled a small screwdriver from the case and pried off the end of the hourglass. And then, starting behind us, she began to pour the sand in an arc around me. She completed most of a six-foot circle, but stopped when a gap of about a foot separated the two ends.

“Everyone inside,” she said. Michael and Jason both stepped carefully over the sand circle. When we were all inside, she went to her knees, put her hands on the floor, and pressed her lips to the gap in the circle.

“What’s she doing?” I whispered to Michael.

“She’s starting the Triple I,” he answered without looking back. “It stands for

‘intent, incantation, incarnation. ’ The three parts of a major spell.”

Okay, magic had officially become school.

“We ask a wish,” Scout said, sitting back on her heels. “We ask for peace. We ask for space between us and those who would harm us.”

She held the hourglass in her hands, then closed her eyes.

After a moment of silence, I leaned toward Michael again. “Is this part of it?”

“This is the part where I have to draft a spell on the fly since I haven’t poured a circle in forever,” Scout huffed. “It’s also the part where it helps if Adepts don’t ask questions while I do it.”

I zipped up my lips, just in time for Jason and Michael to take a step backward,

bumping into me a little.

“They’re moving, Scout,” Michael said. “Draft faster.”

I glanced back. The things were starting to stumble their way to their feet.

Scout cleared her throat, then began her incantation. “Silence, serenity, solitude,

space. We ask for protections inside of this place. Empower this circle with magical grace, and keep us all safe . . .”

She stopped. I looked over and saw the blank expression on her face.

“. . . and keep us all safe,” she repeated, desperation in her voice. She couldn’t seem to find the right phrase to end the poem.

“Hurry up, Scout.”

At Jason’s harried tone, I looked up again. All five of the creatures were on their feet, and they looked pretty angry. There were only ten or fifteen feet between us,

and they were lumbering forward, fangs bared, claws beginning to scrape the concrete like nails on a chalkboard.

“Don’t listen to them,” I told her, “and don’t worry—you can do this.”

“And keep us all safe . . .”

Michael glanced back. “Anytime now!”

She snapped her fingers. “—in this circle we trace!” She poured the rest of the sand in a line, just as claws struck out at Michael. He jumped back, but she’d finished the circle just in time—the creature was out of luck.

The bubblelike shield shimmered as the creature made contact with it, then disappeared again when it yanked back its claw with a fierce whine. The pain didn’t deter it or the rest of them. They all began to attack. We stood there and watched them claw and scrape at the energy to get at us. The shield shimmered a little every time they made contact, but it held.

“Just in time,” Scout finally said.

Jason nodded. “You did good. Now, are you actually going to transmogrify them?”

Scout nodded, then knelt on the floor and began to pull stuff from her messenger bag. “A woman’s work never ceases.”

Scout Greene was a taskmaster worthy of any St. Sophia’s professor. She folded a piece of paper from a notebook into an origami cup in the shape of a bird, and started quizzing us to find stuff to put into it.

So far, I’d offered up a chunk of granola bar and three drops of water from my bottle. Jason and Michael didn’t have man purses, so she took stuff from their pockets—sixty-two cents, a ball of stringy blue jeans lint, and a tube of lip balm.

Together, all that stuff was supposed to represent our sacrifice of various bits of earth—water, metal, food, etc.

When everything was in the paper cup, she folded the top carefully again, then scribbled out what I assumed was an incantation on another piece of paper. While she drafted, the monsters poked around the bubble, looking for a weak spot.

Although they weren’t successful, from what I could tell, the shield wasn’t going to last forever.

When Scout had the finished incantation in one hand and the closed paper cup in another, she glanced around at each of us. “Are we ready?”

“I’ve never been more ready to climb into bed,” I told her. Michael and Jason nodded in agreement.

“Here’s the plan.” She held up the piece of paper. “I’m going to repeat the incantation, and as soon as I’m done, I’m gonna wipe out the circle and throw the charm. If I’ve done this right, the spell will trigger as soon as the charm hits.”

Michael pulled the cell phone from his pocket.

“Really,” Scout said flatly, “you’re going to make a call right now?”

Michael aimed the phone toward the creatures and began snapping. “I’m going to take pictures of these things in the likely event Smith and Katie don’t believe what we saw.” Smith and Katie were Varsity Adepts and the former leaders of Enclave Three. They’d held the reins when Scout had been kidnapped. Good riddance, if you asked me.

“Oh. Well, good call,” Scout allowed.

Michael smiled sweetly at her. “I’m entitled to a few good ideas, you know.”

She blushed.

When Michael was done and the cell phone was tucked away again, Jason clapped his hands together. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road. Everyone in the back of the bubble. Puts more space between us and them when the circle goes down,” he explained.

When we’d stepped back, Scout glanced at each of us in turn. “Are we ready?”

When we’d all nodded, she did the same. “Then here goes nothing.”

Michael, Jason, and I each put up our fists, like we were heading into a schoolyard fight.

Scout closed her eyes and held the crane in her lifted hands. “Beauty comes in many sizes, but these guys just aren’t prizes. Give them all a new disguise, and make them change before our eyes!”

She cocked back her arm to throw the bird. “And three . . . two . . . and one!” She used her toe to push some sand out the circle. As soon as it was breached, the shield gave one final shimmer and dropped away. They lunged forward, and Scout threw the paper bird into the middle of the group.

The tunnel exploded into noise and white light.

I dropped down, hands over my head, waiting for an attack—that didn’t come.

I opened an eye. The air was filled with a thousand tiny white paper cranes, all of them flapping their little paper wings as they spun around us. The creatures were nowhere to be seen.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“She transmogrified them,” Michael said, surprise in his voice.

I stood up, waving a hand in front of my face so that I could see through the cranes. After a moment, they formed a long V and flew past us down the tunnel,

leaving us alone, the floor littered with bits of origami confetti.

Michael stared openmouthed at the birds as they disappeared into the next chunk of the tunnel. “This is just . . . fricking amazing! You did it! You actually did it!”

He picked Scout up and spun her around in the air, just like in the movies.

I grinned at the look of total shock on her face. Considering the fact that she’d actually kissed him a few minutes ago, my math said Garcia, two. Scout, zero.

“It was teamwork,” she said, adjusting her shirt when he finally put her down again. Her cheeks were pink, but I could tell she was trying really hard not to smile.

Before I could say anything to her, Scout jumped at me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“Can’t breathe,” I said, patting her back. “Dial it back.”

When she finally loosened up, I rubbed my neck. “What was that for?”

“You believed in me,” she said simply, and then put an arm around my shoulders.

“Of course I did. Now, shouldn’t we tell somebody about those things?”

“On it,” Michael said, tapping the keyboard on his phone. “Gave Daniel the heads-up,” he said, then nodded when the phone beeped only a second later.

“Enclave tomorrow night for the debriefing.”

“Then I think that means our work here is done,” Scout said. “Let’s go home.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Just in case there were any more nasties lumbering around, Jason and Michael escorted us to the door into St. Sophia’s. And then, wolfless, Scout and I made our way back through the main part of the convent and the Great Hall, where we studied during our mandatory two-hour study hall (I know, right?), to the building that housed our suite. The common room was dark when we unlocked the door and tiptoed inside, as was Lesley’s room.

But Amie’s door was open. The bedroom light was off, but Veronica was standing in the doorway.

My stomach turned.

Veronica took a step forward, closing Amie’s door behind her. She was dressed for bed in yoga pants and a tank top, her hair long and styled straight, circles beneath her eyes. She looked us over.

“Where have you two been?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning back against the doorway.

I glanced between mine and Scout’s rooms, which faced each other across the suite, the doors wide open. That was an obvious signal that we weren’t tucked in like we were supposed to be—and hadn’t been for a while.

But Scout stayed calm. “We couldn’t sleep,” she said, “so we walked around for a little while.” She walked toward her room. When Veronica didn’t budge, Scout stopped and looked back at her. “What are you doing in our suite anyway?”

Veronica took a step forward and closed Amie’s door behind her. “We were studying. Unlike the two of you.”

Her voice rose at the end, like she was asking a question—or daring us to prove her wrong.

“I mean, it’s pretty weird,” she said. “You two just heading out to walk around or whatever. It doesn’t even look like you’ve been in bed at all.”

Scout and I exchanged a glance. This was going to be tricky. If we stuck to our

“we were just walking around” story, she might think we were lying and do some investigating that would only inconvenience both of us.

We obviously couldn’t exactly tell her what we’d really been doing. But maybe if we told her something a little bit bad, we might answer her questions . . . and keep her from asking too many more.

“I went to meet my boyfriend,” I threw out. Okay, so I was fudging about our status, but the rest was true enough. “And Scout went with me. To, you know, prop the door open so I wouldn’t get locked out.” That sounded legit to me, anyway.

“You haven’t been here that long. You don’t have a boyfriend.”

I managed a bored eye roll. “That you know of.”

“Who is it?”

I made a little mental apology to Jason for outing our almost-relationship, but figured he’d get over it. “Jason Shepherd.”

Veronica’s eyes widened, and she uncrossed her arms. “From Montclare?”

I nodded.

“Isn’t he, like, John Creed’s friend?”

I opened my mouth to answer yes—Creed was a friend of Jason’s, a guy I’d met when Veronica and I had had our afternoon of friendship. He’d shared a flirty moment with Veronica at the store where we’d met them. Creed had dark hair and dark eyes, and just looked wealthy. It was obvious in the way he carried himself, in the way he talked. He was just comfortable in a way that said, “The world is at my feet.” But most important, he had a unique look. Funky designer watch, square-toed shoes, that kind of thing. I’d known rich kids who were joiners—who dressed just like everyone else—and rich kids who were so rich they didn’t have to be joiners.

He was the nonjoiner type.

And Creed seemed friendly enough, but there was still something—I don’t know —odd about him. Something shadowy. Not like Reaper shadowy—I didn’t think he had magic, and he didn’t strike me as the type to run around in dark and damp tunnels in the middle of the night.

But I closed my mouth again. Had we just jumped from being in trouble for sneaking out to Veronica asking about Creed? Scout and I weren’t out of the woods yet, and we could probably use that.

Trying to play it cool, I just shrugged. “I guess they’re friends, yeah. Why?”

“No reason,” she said, but her cheeks blossomed pink. “Was he here?”

“Creed? No, just me and Jason and Scout.” I saw no need to also drag Michael into this. Besides, maybe Veronica had actually decided to turn her attentions elsewhere. Creed seemed more her speed anyway.

Veronica’s expression went flat again. “And where, exactly, did you meet Jason?”

“Admin wing,” Scout offered. “The very same door M.K. uses when she sneaks out to meet her boyfriend.”

Well, that was information I didn’t need.

Veronica’s eyes flashed, but since she didn’t move from her spot in the doorway,

I guess the threat against M.K. hadn’t been all that effective. Scout tried again.

“They were in there, like, forever,” she said, sliding me a look of disgust. I tried to look guilty, shuffling my feet a little for good measure.

“That’s against the rules, you know.”

“Yeah, whatever.” I looked away, tucked some hair behind my ear and faked an attitude. “I’m almost sixteen. I do what I want.”

“She is from the East Coast,” Scout said. “They mature differently out there.”

“Well, whatever. It’s against the rules.”

“So’s spending the night in someone else’s suite,” Scout pointed out. “And I know you don’t want to get in trouble for that. So why don’t we all just go to bed and get in a good night’s sleep?”

Veronica’s lip curled, but she spun on her heel, walked into Amie’s bedroom, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Almost immediately, the door beside Amie’s opened. Lesley, our third roommate,

glanced out. She was dressed in rainbow-striped pajama bottoms and a T-shirt with a pot of gold on it. Lesley knew about our midnight ramblings because—just as I’d done to Scout—she’d followed us into the basement one night. But she’d offered to help us, and she’d helped me out the night Scout disappeared. So as far as I could tell, she was one of the good guys. Or good girls. Whatever.

Lesley offered a thumbs-up.

Scout gave her back a thumbs-up. Apparently satisfied with that, Lesley popped back into her room and closed the door behind her.

Scout glanced over at me. “Next time you decide you want to make out with your boyfriend, call someone else.” Her voice was just a shade too loud—it was another scene in our little play for Veronica.

She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue, then turned on her heel and walked to her bedroom door. “Good night, Parker.”

“Good night, Green.”

I went to my own room and shut and locked the door behind me. My messenger bag hit the floor, and I threw on pajamas that might have matched, but probably didn’t. My room, with its stone walls and floor, was always cold, so I went for warmth over beauty.

Grateful that I’d made it safely back—slimy monsters notwithstanding—I grabbed my cell phone and checked for messages from my parents. My father and mother had each sent me a text. Both of them said they loved me. My mother’s text message was straight and to the point: “HOW WAS YOUR MATH TEST? R U EATING PROTEIN?” I was a vegetarian; she usually just said I ate “weird.”

My dad always tried to be funny. That was his thing. His message read: “R U BEING GOOD IN THE WINDY CITY? SANTA WILL KNOW.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t nearly as funny as he liked to think he was. But he was my dad, you know? So I typed out a couple of quick texts back, hoping they were somewhere safe and could actually read them.

After I’d pulled on thick, fuzzy socks, I climbed into bed and pulled the St.

Sophia’s blanket over my head, blocking out the dull sounds of Chicago night traffic and the faint glow of plastic stars on the ceiling above my head.

I was asleep in minutes.

When my alarm clock blared to life, I woke up drenched in sweat, my St. Sophia’s blanket pulled completely over my head.

I’d had a nightmare.

I sat up and pushed the damp hair from my face, my heart still racing from the dream. I was awake, sure, but I hadn’t yet recovered. I still felt like I was there . . .

I’d dreamed that I’d been home in Sagamore. I’d been upstairs in my room reading a book. The house had been quiet; I think my parents had been downstairs watching television or something. I’d heard the front door open and close again,

and out of curiosity, I’d put down my book and walked to the window, pushing the blinds aside.

Two men in black suits had gotten out of a boxy sedan. They’d looked at each other before walking toward our front door. They’d adjusted their suit coats as they’d moved, and I’d seen the glint of metal in one of their coat pockets.

I’d heard the doorbell ring, and the front door open and close, and the low murmurs of conversation that filtered upstairs.

And then the conversation had gotten louder. I’d heard my father demand the men leave.

I’d put my cell phone into my pocket—just in case—and I’d begun to walk toward my bedroom door. But with each step I’d taken, the door had gotten farther and farther away. My bedroom had expanded exponentially until the door was just a small rectangle in the distance. My heart had pounded in my chest, and my vision had narrowed until everything was fuzzy at the edges and the door was a tiny glint at the end of a tunnel.

That was when the yelling had begun.

I’d reached out for the door, but it was too far away. I’d begun to run, but each step felt like I was running through molasses. And even though I wasn’t going anywhere, my chest tightened like I’d been running a marathon. With no means to get to the door, I’d turned around and stared at the window like it was my only means of oxygen.

I’d run to the window—which stayed in place—and thrown it open. The men had walked outside again. One man had gotten back into the car on the driver’s side.

The other had stopped and looked up at me. Our stares had locked, and there had been an evil glint in his narrowed eyes. He’d mouthed something I couldn’t catch—

but there’d been no mistaking the symbol on the side of his car.

It was a quatrefoil—four circles stacked together like a curvy cross.

The symbol of the Reapers—of the Dark Elite.

The entire scene played in my mind like a movie. Just as real—the sounds and sights and smells of home the same. And that was the scariest part. Something about the dream felt familiar—familiar enough that I wasn’t sure if it had been a dream . . . or a memory. But I couldn’t remember seeing two men in black suits in an old-fashioned car arriving at the house. I didn’t remember yelling on the first floor or being unable to check on my parents. But still, something rang true. And I was afraid that something had something to do with the Reaper symbol on the car.

Shaking it off, I pulled on my robe, grabbed my shower kit, and headed down the hallway to the bathroom. I stood under the spray for a good, long while, but I couldn’t erase the feeling that I was still in the dream. That I’d try to turn the shower handle but it would move out of reach, or I’d return to the suite and find the man in black outside my door.

When I was dressed—skirt and St. Sophia’s polo under a hoodie—I walked across the suite to Scout’s room and knocked on the door. She answered with a

“Yo!”

I opened the door and found her standing beside her bed, stuffing books into her messenger bag. At the sight of me, her expression fell. “Geez, you look awful.

What happened?”

“Nightmare.”

Frowning, she glanced at the clock, then patted the bed beside her. “We’ve got a couple minutes. Bring her in for a landing.”

We both sat down on the bed. I told her about the dream. She listened patiently while I rehashed the details, occasionally patting my knee supportively. When I was done, I let out a slow breath, trying to remind myself that it had been just a dream . .

. except it didn’t really feel that way.

“I think that’s the thing that bothers me the most,” I told her. “I mean, I know I didn’t see any of that stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone yell at my parents.

But it felt real.”

“Dreams can do that, you know. This one time, I dreamed I was being booed off the stage at this outdoor concert where I was playing the French horn. I don’t play the French horn, nor do I aspire to play the French horn. Couldn’t even pick one out of a lineup, probably. But when I woke up, I still felt like I was up there. I’d been humiliated in that dream, and the whole rest of the day I felt like I’d just walked off that stage.”

“French horn in hand?”

“Exactly.” Scout stared blankly ahead for a few seconds, like she was reliving the memory. “I knew it was just a dream—I mean, logically I knew it. But that didn’t make it feel any less real. It took a while to, like, shake off the psychic funk or whatever.” She grinned a little and bumped me with an elbow. “You just need to shake off your psychic funk.”

“You know, you are a pretty good friend. Those things they say about you are hardly true.”

Scout snorted, stood up, and shouldered her messenger bag. “They say I’m fabulous. And it’s crazy true. Now let’s go chow.”

It was just common sense that Adepts who spent their evenings fighting evil needed a good breakfast to start their day. Unfortunately, there was only one route to breakfast, and that was in the cafeteria through the horde of teenagers already in line for their own breakfasts.

Scout and I muscled into line.

Okay, that might be overstating it. Our evening adventures were one thing. Down there, we ruled the night with magic and firespell and flirted with werewolves. We had supernatural muscle.

But up here, we were the weirdish girl and her weirder friend—just two high school juniors trying to get enough credits for graduation while avoiding as much brat-pack drama as possible.

Not that that was easy.

Scout and I had just taken breakfast (hot tea and giant muffins) to a table when they walked in, Veronica in the lead, M.K. and Amie behind. They wore the same skirts that we did, but you could still tell they were different. They had swagger.

They sauntered across the room like every eye was on them—and they usually were—and like there was no doubt in the world who they were, what they wanted, or what they were going to get.

The attitude aside, you kinda had to admire the confidence. Even Amie, who was a worrier, moved like the cafeteria was her personal catwalk.

“If you keep staring, your head’s gonna get stuck that way.”

I glanced back at Scout and stuck my tongue out at her, then nibbled on a giant blueberry from my muffin. “I can’t help it. They’re like a really rich, super-put-

together train wreck.”

Scout rolled her eyes. “I’ve totally taught you better than that. The brat pack is to be ignored. We rule the school around here.”

“Mm-hmm. If that’s true, why don’t you head on over to the front of the room”—I pointed out a perfect spot—“and tell them that?”

“Oh, I totally could if I wanted to. But right now”—she bent over her muffin and began to cut it into tiny squares with a knife and fork—“I am totally focused on nourishment and noshing.”

“You’re totally focused on being a dork.”

“You better respect me, Parker. I know where you sleep.”

“I know where you snore.”

After a few minutes of quiet munching, the bell rang, our signal that it was time to play goodly St. Sophia’s girls for the next few hours. “You know what’s crazy true?”

I said, standing up and grabbing my messenger bag.

“That summer vacation can’t come fast enough?”

“Bingo.”

“I am a genius,” Scout said. “Ooh—do you ever worry I’ll become an evil genius?”

“The thought hadn’t really crossed my mind. You’re a pretty good kid. But if you start moving toward the dark side, I promise I’ll pull you back over.” We headed into the throng of teenagers heading for the cafeteria door.

“Do it,” she said. “But pull me back onto Oak Street Beach in the summertime,

when everyone else is at work.”

“Consider it done,” I said, and we disappeared into the plaid army.

This time, the interruption came during European-history class. Mr. Peters had his back to us, and was filling the whiteboard with a chronology of Renaissance achievements.

The intercom beeped in warning, and then the message began. “Instructors,

please excuse the planning committee members for a meeting in classroom twelve.

Thank you.”

“Not much of a ‘sneak’ if they’re making announcements, is it?” Scout whispered behind me.

“It gets me out of history class,” I reminded her, giving her a wink as I grabbed my books and bag. I smiled apologetically at Peters as I followed M.K., Amie,

Veronica, and a couple of girls I didn’t know well—Dakota and Taylor, maybe?—to the front of the room. None looked happy that I was joining them, but we filed out of the room without argument. That was good enough for me.

The brat pack walked down the hall, and then into a small room at the end.

It was a conference room with an oval table surrounded by office chairs.

We filed down one side of the table. I took a chair a couple of seats from the end beside Dakota or Taylor (whichever they were) while M.K. flounced dramatically into her own chair and pasted a bored expression on her face. Amie took a seat beside Veronica near the head of the table, then arranged her pink pen and notebook just so.

And on the other side of the table, something much more pleasant—a contingent from Montclare. Michael, Jason, and John Creed—of the dark brows and moody dark eyes—sat in a line, all spiffy and perfect in their sweaters and button-up shirts.

All three boys smiled when they saw me, but Michael’s smile flattened pretty fast,

probably when he realized Scout wasn’t following me into the room.

“She’s not much of a party planner,” I quietly explained.

“Party pooper,” he muttered.

I smiled at him, and then at Jason, my cheeks warming a little at the secret smile on his face and the glow in his sky blue eyes. I felt like a nervous little kid, my stomach full of butterflies. Here I was—only a few weeks out of Sagamore, and I was talking to a boy who turned into a wolf at will. A boy who’d jumped in front of me to keep me safe. Was it crazy cool? Yes. And unexpected and strange, and still a little bit nerve-racking. We hadn’t really gotten to that point of comfort yet, where you just sink into the relationship, where you’re actually just dating , instead of thinking about the possibility and constantly analyzing it.

Veronica cleared her throat, then gazed at us expectantly.

“Now that we’re all here,” she said, “let’s get down to business. Our theme for this year’s Halloween Sneak, already decided, is Graveyard Glam.”

John gave three loud claps. “I like it already. Meeting dismissed.”

Veronica gave him a half smile. “Keep your pants on, Mr. Creed. The theme is only the first item on the checklist.”

Did Adepts even get Halloween off? It seemed like that would be a busy night for us.

“Last year’s Sneak was held at Navy Pier.”

There were oooh’s and aaah’s from the other girls. I knew what Navy Pier was—

an amusement park-type complex deal a few blocks away—but I hadn’t yet been there.

“This year, we want to do something a little more mysterious.”

Dakota/Taylor popped up a hand. “How about the Art Institute? Plenty of secret corners in there.”

“Already done,” Veronica said. “Two years ago.”

“Pritzker Pavilion?” Taylor asked. “We could have it outside?”

M.K. huffed. “Have you been outside in Chicago in October? Nobody’s gonna want to wear a Marchesa mini in the 312 when it’s rainy and fifty degrees.”

“It was just an idea.”

“And we’ve ixnayed it,” Veronica matter-of-factly said. “Next?”

Creed raised a hand.

Veronica gave him a catty look. “Do you have something substantive to add?”

“Only that my father has a yacht.”

Figured.

Veronica crossed her arms. “I’ve seen your father’s yacht, John Creed. It’s not enough boat for all of us.”

“Are you insulting the size of my father’s boat?”

“Only in reference to Sneak. Other ideas?” Veronica scanned the room, and her gaze stopped on me. “Parker?” she asked, with a challenging bob of her shoulders.

“Um, I really haven’t been in Chicago very long.” And more important, you don’t want any part of the things I’ve seen.

“Great. You’re all clearly going to be a huge asset to getting this thing off the—”

“Field Museum.”

Veronica stopped midinsult, then tilted her head at Jason. “What do you mean,

Field Museum?”

“The Chicago Field Museum.” He leaned forward and linked his hands on the table. “I went to a bar mitzvah there once. You can rent out the main hall. I’m sure it’s not cheap”—he shrugged—“but we can party with Sue. That might be sweet,

especially for Halloween.”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be jealous or not. “Who’s Sue?”

“Sue,” Jason said, “is Chicago’s favorite Tyrannosaurus rex.” He mimicked claws and bared his teeth. “Very scary.”

“I’m not afraid of dinosaurs,” I assured him. “Trust me, I’ve seen worse.”

Personally, I thought that was true, but I crossed my fingers just in case I was jinxing myself.

“Grizzly bears?” Jason asked.

“What about grizzly bears?”

“Have you seen worse things than, let’s say, grizzly bears?”

I smiled slyly. “Yeppers.”

“What about wolves?”

“Those aren’t even a little scary.”

“Hmm,” he said, smiling slyly back. “Good to know.”

Veronica tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “Excuse me? Can we ixnay the bizarre wild kingdom flirting—assuming that’s what this is—and get back on topic?”

“Seriously,” M.K. said, putting a hand to her stomach. “It’s making me nauseous.”

I bit back a smile. Sure, Jason and I weren’t exactly being subtle, but this time I’d been the one to create drama for the brat pack, instead of the other way around.

That made a nice change.

“I like the Field Museum idea,” Veronica said. “I have to check with the boosters about the price, but it shouldn’t be a problem. One or two of them might even be on the board of directors.”

The “boosters,” I assumed, were the St. Sophia’s alumni who’d be donating a pretty penny so the juniors and seniors could have a luxe fall formal.

“Make the call,” John said. “And let us know.”

“Rest assured that I will,” Veronica said, then glanced at the clock on the wall behind her. “That didn’t take nearly as long as it should have. Anything else we should discuss right now, unless any of you are dorky enough to want to go back to history class?”

I guess I wasn’t supposed to be flattered that M.K. turned and looked at me.

“Drinks. Food. Transportation. Dress code,” Amie recited.

Veronica rattled off responses: “Drinks and food will depend on the location. The Field Museum probably has some kind of contract with a caterer. Limos for the transpo, and the dress code will be formal.”

“Looks like you have things well in hand,” John said.

“I always do. If there aren’t any more questions, let’s break into subcommittees and get into the details.”

We all just looked at each other. Even M.K. looked confused. “V, you haven’t assigned any subcommittees.”

“They’re DIY subcommittees,” she said. “And if you don’t DIY, we have to go back to class.”

She stood there for a few seconds to let the implication sink in.

“Subcommittees it is,” John said, pushing back his chair and standing up. “My subcommittee’s meeting over here.”

“And what’s your subcommittee?” Amie asked, pen in hand.

“That would be the subcommittee on rocking. Rocking hard.”

I bit back a snort.

The girls divvied up their committees—decorations, food, etc.—and then everyone began milling around. I walked over to the Montclare side of the table.

After all, how often did we get a daytime visit from the boys in blue?

John Creed smiled in his way: a lazy half smile. “Hello, Sagamore.”

“Hello, Chicago.”

“You and Jason became fast friends.” He slid a glance to Jason, who was talking to one of the other girls. Since I’d been in Adept-denial at the time, I’d pretended not to know Jason the day I met John Creed. (I know, I know. I’d apologized later.)

“We’ve gotten to know each other,” I said vaguely. “I’m surprised you’re into party planning.”

“I’m into skipping class and spending time with private school girls.”

Mm-hmm. “Well, good luck with that.”

“Are you two going to Sneak together?”

I tried for a casual tone. “I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about it.”

His thick eyebrows lifted. “Really? Weird.”

“Have you invited someone?”

He scanned the girls in the room. “I’m keeping my options open. One never knows when opportunity is going to come knocking.” When his gaze landed on M.K., I tried not to grimace. I also bet money that Veronica was not going to be happy with that.

With perfect timing, Jason interrupted further discussion of whatever brat-pack

“knocking” John was going to pretend to hear.

“So,” Jason said, “if you’re handing out rides on the yacht . . .”

“We can probably arrange something,” John said, then glanced at me. “Have you been out on the lake yet?”

“There’s a lake?”

It took him a second to realize I was joking. “Tell me they let you out more than that.”

“They let me out plenty.” Just not usually aboveground, and usually after the sun went down. “And no, I haven’t been on the lake yet. Or the river either, actually, now that I think about it.”

“We definitely need to remedy that. It won’t be long before winter’s here and the boat’s in dry dock. And then you’ll get to experience your first Chicago winter.”

“Winters in Sagamore were plenty wintry,” I pointed out.

“I’m sure. Add thirty-miles-per-hour wind to that, and you’ll get closer to Chicago.”

He watched M.K. brush her hair over her shoulder, and then he was off, heading right for St. Sophia’s least saintly girl.

I glanced over at Veronica, and watched her face tighten with the realization that her crush had picked a different victim.

“Hello, Sagamore.”

I glanced up at Jason, and his mocking of John Creed’s apparent nickname for me, and smiled. “Hello, Naperville.” I gestured toward Creed. “Are you two friends?

I can’t get a read on him.”

Jason shrugged. “We’re friends of a sort, I guess. We’ve known each other for a long time, but we’re not close like Michael and I are. Creed’s the kind of person who pretty much always has an agenda. That doesn’t exactly make for a strong friendship.”

“More like a business alliance,” I said.

John lifted M.K.’s wrist to take a look at her watch. Since he had his own undoubtedly expensive version, I figured it was just an excuse to touch her.

“Looks like he’s getting along with her pretty well,” Jason said.

I nodded. “That’s M.K. Problem is, I think her BFF has a thing for him.” I gestured toward Veronica, who was talking to one of the other Montclare boys while sliding secretive glances at Creed. She definitely had it bad. On the other hand, Garcia definitely seemed to be off the hook.

“Bummer,” Jason said. “Nobody likes to be the one left out.”

“Unfortunately true,” I said, anticipating what Scout liked to call “TBD”—Total Brat Drama. If there was anything likely to be worse than the brat pack left to their own devices, it was internal brat-pack squabbles.

Nothing good could come from that.

When the bell rang, everyone began to gather up their goods. Jason leaned down and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “See you tonight at the Enclave?”

“With bells on,” I whispered back. “And firespell in hand.”

“I look forward to seeing that,” he said. And with a wink, the Montclare boys left St. Sophia’s once again.

Scout was in her room, granola bar and magazine in hand, when I made it back to the suite. She looked up when I walked in.

“You look like the cat that ate the canary.”

“As a vegetarian, I object to that metaphor.”

Scout grinned teethily at me. “As a carnivore, I object to your pickiness. Now spill the goods.”

“There were Montclare boys at our party-planning committee.”

She rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were flushed. “Like I care.”

“Oh, you care. Jason was there, and Michael, of course, and their friend John Creed.”

She spun a finger in the air like she was twirling a party favor. “I know who John Creed is.”

“Did you know Veronica has a thing for him? But that he has a thing for M.K.? I feel like that’s information we can use to our advantage.”

Slowly, she looked up and grinned. “I knew there was a reason I liked you,

Parker.”

What, you might ask, was the best thing about being forced to attend an all-girls’ boarding school? Was it the lack of cute boys? The bratlets? The complete lack of a social life?

Maybe. But the mandatory study hall was right up there on the list.

Scout and I were seated beside each other in the Great Hall, a giant room of stained-glass windows and books. We sat across from Colette, another girl in our class, at one of the dozens of tables, the room around us full of plaid-wearing teenagers in varying levels of study comas.

Since I’d already filled Scout in about the party-planning meeting, I was actually doing my trig homework. Anyone who passed by the table might think Scout was reading up on European history . . . or the comic book that was stuck in between the pages of the textbook.

They’d be wrong.

The comic was actually a cover for Scout’s Grimoire, her main book of magic.

She’d worked a charm to make it look like a racy comic book featuring a big-busted heroine with long hair and longer legs. I thought that was a dangerous disguise,

especially if one of the dragon ladies who roamed the room decided it needed to be pitched. But Scout was smart enough to think ahead—she had disguised the book in the first place—so I assumed she had a clever magical backup plan.

Personally, I was waiting for the day the comic book characters appeared in 3D at our suite door, ready to perform their magic at Scout’s command. Geeky, sure,

but that still would have been sweet.

Scout had her faux comics, and I had my sketchbook. I loved to draw, and I was supposed to start studio classes anytime now. I could do still lifes—drawings of real objects—but I preferred to lose myself in the lines and let my imagination take over.

I kept a stash of favorite pencils in my messenger bag. And since my parents apparently felt guilty about sending me to Chicago while they did whatever they were doing in Germany, I also had a new stash of sweet German notebooks they’d mailed out last week. When I finished with the trig problems, I pulled one from my bag, grabbed my pencil case, and set to work.

I was in a roomful of characters—rich girls in plaid, weird girls in plaid, and the dragon ladies who patrolled the room and made sure we were doing homework instead of flipping through Cosmo. I was also in a room of cool architecture, from the dozens of stained-glass windows to the huge, brass chandeliers that hung above us. Each chandelier was made up of slender statues of women—ancient goddesses, maybe—holding up torches.

I opened the first notebook—a thin one with a pale blue cover—and touched the pencil lead to the slick paper. I picked a goddess from the nearest chandelier and started drawing. I started with a light line to get the general shape of her body, just to make sure I had the proportions correct. As I worked on the drawing, I’d darken a final line and fill in the details.

It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t trig. And best of all, the dragon ladies couldn’t complain.

I was studying, after all.

I’d just finished the sketch when the Great Hall went silent. It was usually pretty quiet, but there was always an undercurrent of sound—papers shuffling or low whispers as girls tried to entertain themselves.

But this was quiet quiet.

Scout and I glanced up simultaneously. My first thought had been that a spindly-

legged monster had walked into the room. But it was just the headmistress.

Marceline Foley strode confidently down the aisle in a trim suit and the kind of heels an adult would call “sensible.” Her eyes scanned the room as she moved,

probably taking in every detail of the students around her.

Foley was still a mystery to me. She was the first person I’d met when I arrived at St. Sophia’s a few weeks ago, and she’d given me a very cold welcome to Chicago. She’d also been the one who’d suggested my parents weren’t who they seemed to be. She had changed her tune, but when I had tried to talk to her about what was really going on, she’d convinced me to let things lie. Foley knew my parents, and she seemed convinced that they’d had a reason for not telling me what was really going on.

A reason that put their safety at risk.

What else could I do but believe her?

Tonight, she held a stack of small cards—like index cards—in her hands. As she walked past the tables, she occasionally stopped and handed a card to one of the students at the table. And then she stepped forward, and she handed one to me.

“Instructions for your studio art class,” she said.

I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until I let it out again. I’d been fighting tunnel-crawlers, but it was the principal who really tied my stomach in knots. I’m not sure what that said about me.

I took the card from her. It was a schedule for the studio classes, which were supposed to start tomorrow. I’d have class in the “surplus building.” Didn’t that sound glamorous?

I glanced up again. Foley stayed at the edge of the table for a moment, the rest of her cards in hand, looking down at me. I waited for her to speak, but she stayed silent. After a nod, she moved along to the next table.

“That was weird,” Scout said. “What did she give you?”

I flipped the card her way so she could see it.

“Huh. Looks like you’ve found your creative outlet.”

I’d only just stuffed the card into my notebook when noise erupted across the room. We all looked over to see Veronica standing at a table, her chair now on the floor, her face flushed and eyes pink. M.K., arms crossed over her chest, stared back, a single eyebrow arched at Veronica.

“Things just went nuclear,” Collette muttered.

“You are a witch,” Veronica hissed out, then stepped over the chair and ran to the door.

You could have heard a pin drop in the Great Hall.

M.K. rolled her eyes and leaned toward the girl beside her, gossiping together while one of her best friends ran away from her. A dragon lady moved to the table and picked up the chair Veronica had knocked over. A low rumble of whispering began to move across the room.

“At least that’s over with,” Colette said. “Can we all get back to studying now?”

Scout and I exchanged a glance, and I read the same thoughts in her face that I had in mine: Could it really be that easy?

A few hours later we were back in the tunnels, Scout and I making our way back to the arched wooden door to Enclave Three, its status as an Adept HQ marked by the “3” above the door and the symbol on the door—the letter Y inside a circle, a symbol Scout had told me could be seen across the city of Chicago. It was the mark of an Adept.

Sure, putting symbols on buildings and bridges across the city wasn’t exactly in line with the Adepts’ idea of keeping their work under the radar. On the other hand, I got the feeling the symbols were a kind of reminder that they were here. That they fought the good fight, even if no one else knew about the war.

Scout opened the door, and the Junior Varsity Adepts of Enclave Three looked toward us: Michael Garcia, Jason Shepherd, Jill and Jamie, Riley, and Paul Truman. Each of them had their own unique magical talent. Michael was a reader,

which meant he could “read” the history of a building just by touching it. Jamie and Jill were the elemental witches. Jamie could manipulate fire, and Jill could manipulate ice. Paul was a warrior. His magic gave him the ability to adapt his fighting style to whatever man or monster faced him. Paul was tall with skin like rich coffee. He was also cute and lanky enough that it was hard to imagine him in some kind of ferocious battle, but the determination in his eyes gave him away. As lanky as he was, he may not ultimately have the strength to beat that monster, but his magic always gave him a fighting chance.

We walked into the giant room—big, vaulted ceiling and tile-covered walls—

toward Jill and Jamie, who stood apart from the guys. But that didn’t stop Jason from winking at me, or Michael from making doe eyes at Scout. She rolled her eyes, but there was a hint of a smile on her face.

“What’s up, Adepts?” Scout asked.

“Just waiting for the head honcho to get started,” Jill said, nodding toward Daniel.

Daniel was our new leader, a guy sent down from the bigwigs to keep an eye on Katie and Smith. Daniel, let’s say, was easy on the eyes. He was tall and blond,

with strong shoulders, blue eyes, and one of those chin dimples. He was talking to Katie, who was cheerleader-cute and very petite, and Smith, an emo-wannabe with greasy hair and clothes that were always a couple of sizes too tight. Katie and Smith were the Varsity Adepts who’d refused to send someone to rescue Scout; that was why Daniel had replaced them. I’d been the one begging them to go after her, and I’d seen the stubborn looks on their faces when they’d said no. That was the kind of thing that made me question exactly who the “good guys” were. I was still wary of them.

Scout smiled at Daniel with big, wide eyes. “I’d be happy to help out Daniel with any special projects he has in mind.”

I rolled mine. “I’m guessing he’s not going to take you up on that offer since he’s four years older than you. And in college.”

“Don’t rain on my parade. I know he’s a little out of my league, but he’s just kind of . . . dreamy, don’t you think?”

“He’s not bad,” I allowed, “in a gorgeous, totally platonic, ‘Let’s get this magical show on the road’ kind of way.”

“You know those movies where the blond girl walks by—and time slows down?

She swings her hair back and forth”—Scout gave me a demonstration, her short hair hardly moving as she shook her head—“and all the guys stare. I feel like Daniel could pull that off.”

“He could pull off staring?”

“No—the time-slowing-down part. I mean, just watch him.”

We were probably a pretty entertaining sight—four high school juniors, two of us in smokin’-hot plaid uniforms, staring down a college sophomore. But she really did have a point. Daniel walked across the room to talk to Smith, and there was something about the way he moved—like he wasn’t just walking, but making a statement.

Daniel also had swagger.

“Okay, he’s impressive,” Jamie said.

“I so told you.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Michael’s head popped between us, gaze shifting left and right as he waited for details.

“None of your beeswax, Garcia.”

I could see the sting of defeat in his eyes, but he kept a smile on his face. “You know what you need?”

Ever so slowly, Scout turned her head to look at him, one eyebrow arched. Her expression was fierce. “What?”

“You need a man who respects you. Who treats you like his equal.”

Not bad, I thought. But Scout wasn’t buying. Sure, there was a little surprise in her eyes, but that was all she gave back to him.

She put a hand on his arm. “The problem, Garcia, is that no one’s my equal. I’m the most ass-kickingest spellbinder in Chicago.”

I rolled my eyes, but really didn’t have much reason to disagree.

Before Michael could retort, Daniel clapped his hands together. “All right, kids.

Let’s get this show on the road.”

We all clustered together, the Junior Varsity members of Enclave Three. Katie and Smith—still Adepts but not quite like us—stood a little farther away. They both looked miffed to have been replaced. Katie’s arms were crossed over her chest as she glared daggers at Daniel, while Smith whipped his head to the side to throw his bangs out of his eyes. Given how many times I’d seen him do that in the last couple of weeks or so, I almost volunteered to grab scissors from my room.

“First matter of business,” Daniel said. “Tell me what you saw last night.”

Scout popped a hand into the air. “Things. Big, nasty, naked, crawly things. They had pointy teeth, and they moved weird.”

“Like a school of fish,” I put in.

“Like barracudas,” Jason put in. “We found this slime in one of the corridors near St. Sophia’s, and next thing you know they were coming at us. It took a dose of firespell, a protection circle, and”—he glanced at Scout—“what did you call it?”

“A flutterby spell,” Scout offered.

“A flutterby spell to take them out.”

Katie rolled her eyes. “It was probably just Reapers.”

“No,” Scout said, her fierce expression not allowing argument. “First, they were naked. Second, they weren’t Reapers or trolls or anything else we’ve seen before.

They were something new. Something outside my Grimoire —I spent study hall today looking it up.”

I held up my right hand. “She did. I totally saw her reading.”

“They looked like something that walked straight off Dr. Moreau’s island,” Jason added.

Paul crossed his arms over his head. “And you’re sure they weren’t sewer rats?

Those things can go nuclear after a while.”

“Only if rats grow to five feet tall and began to walk upright. Well, mostly upright.”

She bumped Michael with an elbow. “Show ’em what you got.”

Michael pulled the cell phone from his pocket, tapped around for a few seconds,

and handed it to Daniel.

Smith peeked over Daniel’s shoulder to look. It was very satisfying to watch that smug expression fall right off his face. “What is that?”

“I don’t have a clue,” Daniel said, frowning down at the phone, then rotating it to get a different perspective. “Where were you exactly?”

“One of the utility tunnels,” Jason said. “Maybe ten or twelve corridors from St.

Sophia’s?” He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded.

“And the slime?” Daniel asked.

“Mostly floor,” Michael said, “but it wasn’t contained there.”

“There was a lot of it,” Scout confirmed.

Frowning, Daniel ran his hands through his hair. Beside me, Scout actually sighed.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the slime,” Daniel said.

The room went silent.

“Excuse me?” Scout said. “This isn’t the first time? There’ve been others, and no one bothered to tell us?”

Even Katie and Smith looked surprised. All eyes turned to Daniel.

“It was only slime,” he said, “and it was just last week. We had no idea what it was or where it came from. There were no signs of any new creatures—just the stuff. And we’ve seen slime before.”

There were reluctant nods of agreement.

“Ectoplasmic slime,” Michael began to rattle off, “auric slime, that half-fish thingy that slimed the tourist boat at Navy Pier, that time the Reaper used the allergy spell and Adepts were all dripping snot like water all over the city—”

“Point made,” Daniel said, holding up a hand. “And now that we know what it is—

and where it’s coming from—it’s time do something a little different.”

Just like he’d scripted it, a knock sounded at the Enclave door.

Katie hustled over, turning the handle and using her small cheerleadery stature to pull open the door.

Two girls stood in the doorway. One was tall with whiskey brown eyes and cocoa-

kissed skin, a cloud of dark hair exploding from a slick ponytail. There was something ethereal about her, and something slightly vacant in her expression.

The second girl was shorter, a petite blonde with a shaggy crop of pale,

shoulder-length hair. She wore an outfit appropriate for a punk stuck in Victorian England: short poofy black skirt; knee-high black boots; a locket necklace; and a thin, ribbed gray T-shirt beneath a complicated black leather jacket that bore panels of thick black fur. In her black-gloved hands was an old-fashioned leather doctor’s bag.

“Yowsers,” Michael muttered, earning him an elbow in the ribs from Scout.

Daniel waved them in, and the girls stepped inside. Katie closed the door behind them.

“Enclave Three,” Daniel said. “Meet Naya Fletcher—” The taller girl offered a wave.

“—and Bailey Walker.”

“I go by Detroit,” the blonde corrected, offering a crisp salute.

“Oh, I’m going to like this one,” Scout murmured with a grin. “She’s got sass. Kind of like you, Parker.”

“I am quite sassy,” I agreed.

“Detroit,” Daniel corrected, then gestured toward Naya. “Naya is a caller. For the newbies among us, that means she speaks to the recently deceased.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Ghosts?”

Naya lifted a shoulder. “That’s how they’re generally known by the public, but they prefer ‘recently deceased.’ Calling them ‘ghosts’ makes it sound like they’re a different species. Like vamps or werewolves or the fey. They’re still human.

They’re just . . . well . . . less breathy than we are.”

“And Detroit is a machinist.”

There were mumbled sounds of awe around the room. Being a “machinist” didn’t mean anything to me, but it clearly meant something to the rest of the Adepts.

“That means she gadgets,” Scout whispered.

“Detroit and Naya have seen the slime in other tunnels,” Daniel explained. “As you know, Enclave Two is an enclave of information, of technology. They aren’t used to battling it out with Reapers.”

When he paused, I knew exactly where this was heading. My stomach sank.

“Tonight,” he continued, “you’ll be escorting them out to determine if their slime is our slime—”

“And if there are more creatures out there,” Katie added.

The Enclave went silent.

“Detroit has mapped out a passage from here to their slime spot,” Daniel continued, “so she and Naya will play compass on this one. Jill, Jamie, and Paul—

take point and travel in front of them. Once you get to the halfway point, you’ll stop there to give everyone a green zone so they can get back. Michael will do what reading he can. Lily and Jason are on offense if necessary.”

We waited for more, but Daniel didn’t say anything else.

Scout and I exchanged a glance. He hadn’t said her name.

“What about me?” she asked.

Daniel looked at her for a few seconds, then turned back to Detroit and Naya.

“Ladies, if you’ll give us just a minute, I’d like to talk to Enclave Three.”

They nodded, then disappeared out the door. When it shut behind them, all eyes turned to Daniel.

“It’s your decision,” he told Scout, “but I’d like you to consider sitting out for this one.”

The room went silent.

“Sitting out?” she asked.

“You’ve had a pretty rough go of it lately, and last night took a lot out of you—

physically, magically, emotionally. Enclave Three’s job will be to protect Enclave Two if the creatures pop up, not to—”

“Oh, no,” Scout said, holding up a hand. “You are not going to go there. Varsity or not, you are not going to suggest that I can’t go on a mission because my team-

mates, my Adepts, don’t have time to babysit me.”

I grimaced on Daniel’s behalf.

“Scout, let’s be reasonable—”

“I am being reasonable,” she said, picking up her messenger bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “These people rescued me. They risked getting sucked dry by Reapers and they went to the sanctuary and they rescued me. No mother-trucking way are they going out there without me at their back. Not going to happen.”

Michael took a step forward to stand behind Scout. “She doesn’t go, I don’t go.

And you know what I can do at the place.”

There was silence for a moment as Daniel considered their position. Finally, he looked at Scout. “You’re ready?”

“I’m ready,” she confirmed.

“Okay,” he said. “Then get to it.”

Everyone gathered up their bags and supplies and headed for the door—and the Adepts waiting for us outside.

I glanced back at Daniel, saw a sneaky smile on his face. I realized he’d done it on purpose—baited her on purpose—in order to rile her up, to get her ready to face whatever we might find in the tunnels.

No wonder he was sent in to supervise Katie and Smith. He was good. Sneaky,

sure, but good.

Daniel caught my glance and nodded at me, then pointed at the door. “Get to it,

Lily.”

I got.

There might have been sun outside, but the tunnels were still cold and damp.

“Do you ever wish you were an Adept in Miami or Tahiti?” I whispered to Scout,

zipping up the hoodie I’d pulled over a St. Sophia’s oxford shirt.

“You mean instead of this moist, cold Midwestern underbelly?”

I hopped over the other side of the rail to avoid a puddle of rusty liquid.

“Something like that, yeah.”

Since I’d given him an opening, Michael snuck between me and Scout, then slung an arm over my shoulder. “You know, if you’d been in Miami, you wouldn’t have met us.”

Scout rolled her eyes. “And what a crime that would have been.”

“Whatever. You know you love me.”

“I beg to differ, Garcia.”

He faked a smile, but it was easy to tell he’d been hurt. Stung, he moved back to walk alongside Jason.

“You’re being kind of growly with Michael,” I whispered to Scout when he was out of hearing range.

“He’s being kind of annoying.”

“He’s just being himself.”

She rolled her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m just—I don’t know. Maybe Daniel was right and I’m not ready for this, you know? I mean, I did freak out last time.”

“Maybe you should tell Michael that. Let him comfort you instead of pushing him away.”

“No more daytime television for you, missy.”

“Oh, my God. Did I just give you relationship advice?”

“Yeppers.”

“Sorry. Won’t happen again.”

“I knew you were teachable.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Are you guys always this chatty?” asked Detroit. She walked with determination,

her arms crossed against the chill.

“We try to keep it light,” Scout said. “There’s more than enough darkness in the world as it is.”

“The dark isn’t as dark as you’d think.” We all glanced over at Naya, who was walking with arm extended, the tips of her fingers trailing against the wall.

“What do you mean?” Scout quietly asked.

She glanced back at us, her cloud of coffee-colored hair bobbing as she moved.

“We aren’t the only ones here, or there, or anywhere. They’re all around us. They live in the gray land—the not-quite world—all around us.”

I swallowed thickly, goose bumps lifting on my arms as I fought the urge to look around me, scanning the near darkness for shadowy figures.

“Can you see them?” Scout quietly asked, and Naya shrugged.

“Sometimes. Mostly, I call to them. Talk to them. It takes a lot of energy to become visible. Sound is easier. Temperature is lots easier.” Suddenly, she stopped, eyes wide. “Have you ever been somewhere dark and quiet, and you felt a cold chill? Like the wind had blown right through your soul?”

I nodded, eyes wide, like a kid around a spooky camp-fire. I also wondered about that first time—the first time she’d seen them, or heard them, or called them. Can you imagine what it would have been like to learn about the other in the world by hearing, suddenly one day, the living dead?

I decided learning a weird tattoo and a little electricity was a pretty good way to go.

Detroit glanced over at Scout. “So Daniel said you were a spellbinder?”

“Yeah,” Scout said. “Why?”

“I heard you were a spellcaster. And I thought, wow, big whoop, spellcaster, dime a dozen.”

“Dime a dozen?” Scout asked. “I thought spellcasters were a myth?”

“Do you know what a spellcaster is?”

I lifted a hand. “I actually don’t.”

Detroit held out her hand. “Okay, so there’re the three I’s, right?”

“Intent, incantation, incarnation,” I offered up.

“Right. So it takes intent and incantation to get to the incarnation part. Writing the incantation is basically the spellbinding. You’re putting the right words together in the right order to create a spell. So when you’re looking through your Grimoire—

you’re looking at a flip book of spells, which are the result of the spellbinding.”

“Following you so far,” I added (helpfully).

“Once you get to saying the incantation, using the intent of it to make an incarnation of some kind happen, you’ve got the spellcasting. Making the magic take life. Spellcasters just work from Grimoires that have been passed on to them.

Or the Internet.”

Scout lifted her eyebrows. “They get spells from the Internet?”

“Well, not all of them.”

Okay, apparently the Internet was a magical forest just waiting to be explored.

Detroit waved her hand. “But you’ve got something special, Scout. You can do more than just repeat some words and make magic happen. You can bind the spells in the first place. You can transmute them from letters and words into magic.”

“That’s why the Reapers were so interested in you,” I said. “You said they mentioned that, right, when you were at the sanctuary? That they were after your Grimoire , and that they were talking about the difference between spellcasters and spellbinders?”

Scout nodded. “That would explain why they came after me, and why they wanted my book.”

“That makes sense,” Detroit agreed. “It’s a rare power. And if the whole point of your organization is to support the use of magic, finding someone who can actually make new spells would be huge.”

“Wicked huge,” Scout agreed. “I had no idea. I mean, I just assumed I did what everyone else did, you know? Writing spells, then actually making the incantations work.”

“Wow,” I said. “For once, you were actually being too modest.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. Probably I deserved that.

We eventually came to a fork in the tunnels and took the path to the left. This one sloped upward, and continued on for only a few dozen yards.

We stopped at a jagged hole that had been ripped into the brick.

“In there,” Detroit said.

Scout gave the hole in the wall a suspicious look. “What do you mean, ‘in there’?

Where does that thing lead?”

“Into a janitor’s closet, actually,” Detroit said. “We have to switch over from the railway tunnels to the Pedway.”

I leaned toward Scout. “What’s the Pedway again?”

“Stands for pedestrian walkway,” she said.

“The Pedway is a set of walkways through buildings in the Loop,” Detroit said.

“Some aboveground, some underground. It’s supposed to give people a way to get around downtown when it’s too cold to walk outside. It’s also lit and a lot less damp.”

Scout looked weirdly unhappy about the possibility of walking through what I assumed were aboveground, carpeted hallways. “We usually try to avoid the Pedway,” she said.

Detroit nodded solemnly. “I know.”

I made a mental list of the things we might be trying to avoid: security guards,

security cameras, locked doors. Or maybe anyone who thought a band of teenagers running around Chicago in the middle of the night was a little off.

“Vamps patrol the Pedway at night,” Scout complained.

Well, I obviously forgot to mention them. “What do you mean ‘vamps’?”

“The usual,” Scout said with a dismissive gesture. “Goth, fangs, death by crucifix,

never see ’em eating garlic bread. Vampires aren’t friendly with Adepts.”

“They aren’t friendly with anybody,” Detroit said. “It’s not personal. And we might not even see any. The covens stick to quiet parts of the Pedway. The odds we’d actually run across them are pretty low.”

Scout didn’t look impressed with the logic.

“Look,” Detroit said. “The Pedway is a shortcut. It takes a lot longer if we stick to the tunnels. And we’ll only be in the corridor for a few blocks before we drop back into the tunnels anyway.”

We stood there for a few minutes, the Adepts of Enclave Three exchanging glances as they figured out what to do. Since I was still a newbie, I figured I’d leave the decision-making to the more experienced members.

Jason looked at Jill, Jamie, and Paul. “What do you think?”

“Well,” Paul said, “I’m not crazy about having vamps between us and wherever we’re going, but I like the idea of being in the tunnels for as short a time as possible. Besides, if we have trouble on the way in, we can always take the long way back.”

“Good enough for me,” Jason said.

And so it was decided. One by one, Jamie and Jill in the lead, we ducked into the hole in the wall. We emerged, just as Detroit had promised, into a janitor’s closet.

All nine of us stuffed into a tiny, dark room among push brooms, mops, and buckets on wheels.

“Would you like some light?” I whispered.

“Let’s keep it dark,” I heard Jill say. “At least until we figure out if anyone is out there. Michael—you wanna fill us in?”

“On it,” Michael said. I heard shuffling, probably as he squeezed through to get to a wall.

“Echoes of business,” he finally said. “Busy. Always walking, moving. Faster.

Faster. The world spins, and the feet keep moving.” He paused. “That’s all I got.”

“Hmm. Doesn’t tell us much about whether the vamps are out there,” Detroit said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Jason agreed. “But we’ve got to get out there regardless.”

I heard shuffling; then a glow lit the room from something in Detroit’s hand. It was the locket she’d worn, now open in her palm. She swiveled it until it projected a complicated map onto one of the closet’s walls.

We oooohed and aaaahed at the sight.

“Gadgets are my gig,” Detroit matter-of-factly explained. “Now, when we open the door, we’re going right. We stay straight until the corridor ends; then we take a left. Halfway down that corridor there’s an emergency stairwell. I’ve got to pop the sensor on the door, and then we’re in. We take the stairs all the way down, and we’re back in the tunnels. Everyone got it?”

“We’ve got it,” Paul said. “Let’s do this.” He cracked open the door and peeked through it, light slicing through the darkness.

“Clear,” he said, and one by one we slipped into the Pedway.

It looked exactly like you’d expect a pedestrian walkway to look. This part of the corridor was wide and made of concrete, and the floor was made of chips of stone and tile stuck into concrete. Not much to look at, but it would certainly keep you out of the snow.

We all run-walked through the corridor toward our next turn until Paul, panicked expression on his face, motioned us back against the wall. My heart suddenly pounding, we flattened against it.

I blew out a nervous breath, my ears straining to hear whatever had triggered Paul’s concern, but heard nothing. The hallway was silent except for the hum of the fluorescent lights above us.

And then the voice behind us.

“Well, well, well. What have we here?”

Slowly, I turned around. There were three of them—a tall and dark-haired boy stood in the front; two girls stood behind him. All three wore gray and black clothes in complicated layers over bodies that were supermodel—or maybe just anorexically—thin. By the look of them, I would have guessed they were about my age. But then I got a look at their eyes—dark, dilated, and definitely not young.

Better yet, none of them looked happy to see us, and they were positioned between us and the janitor’s closet. Our escape route.

“Vampires,” Jason murmured. He glanced back at me. “Be ready,” he said and then stepped forward. Paul stepped behind him. I reached out and grabbed Scout’s hand. She squeezed back.

“You’re out late, aren’t you?” asked the vampire in front. He had a low, heavy accent, and when he talked I could see the tips of his fangs.

One of the girls behind him hissed like a cat, her fangs gleaming in the overhead lights. She took a half step forward. I pushed back against the wall a little more, my muscles suddenly straining to run. It was like my body knew they were bad—and wanted to get away from them as quickly as possible.

“We’re on our way out of your territory,” Jason said. “All we ask is safe passage for a few hundred yards.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “We only want to go as far as the next corridor. Just to the stairwell, then we’re out of your way.”

The vampires spread out, forming a line—and now a total barrier to the closet.

“Safe passage is expensive,” said the one in front. “You want to dance with the devil, you have to be prepared to pay the price.” The female who’d hissed stepped toward him, then draped herself along his side like a languid cat, one hand on his shoulder, the other across his stomach. She made a low growl. There was something very disturbing about watching these kids play at being monsters.... It didn’t help that they actually were monsters.

The other girl pulled a wicked-looking knife from her knee-length gray vest. Its blade gleamed in the overhead lights. She licked her lips.

I guess blood was the price they wanted us to pay.

“We pay the price every day,” Jason said darkly. “You know who we are?”

The boy in front scanned each of us in turn, his dark eyes judging and evaluating.

“I know,” he agreed after a moment. “But your sacrifice doesn’t pay the fee. This is my land. My territory.” He slapped a hand to his chest. “If we let you move through our land, the thieves begin asking questions of us. And we don’t like questions.”

I couldn’t help it. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

“The thieves?” I asked. Scout called my name in warning, but it was too late. All their eyes—dark and dilated—were fixed on me. The boy in front tilted his head and let his gaze slip up and down my body.

Gooseflesh lifted on my arms. Scout squeezed my hand harder and moved incrementally closer, like she could protect me just by being nearer.

“Your magic is young,” he said. “Untested.” He sounded intrigued by the idea,

maybe by the possibility that someday, someone would test it. That thought wasn’t exactly comforting.

I may not have been thrilled to have his attention, but I wasn’t going to cower.

Vampire or not, he wasn’t going to bully me. “It’s been tested enough,” I assured him. “Who are the thieves?”

He blinked slowly, like a drowsy tiger. “I believe you call them ‘Reapers.’ We refer to them as the thieves of life.”

I almost pointed out that he and his crew were vampires. I wasn’t sure how they could drink blood without a little thieving of their own.

“And our passage?” Jason asked, getting the vampire back on track.

“I believe I mentioned the expense?”

“Name your price.” I could hear irritation rising in Jason’s voice . . . and in the new one that chimed in.

“I don’t think the price is yours to name, iubitu.”

We all turned to look behind us. At the other end of the corridor—the one we needed to get to—stood another group with the same dark hair and the same black eyes, the same young skin and very old eyes. But these vampires wore lighter colors, and their clothes were all old-fashioned. Pencil skirts, red lipstick, and short fur coats for the girls; greased-back hair and long trousers for the guys. They looked like they’d stepped right out of the 1940s.

At the front of the group was a girl with long blond hair that fell in tight curls across her shoulders. She was the one who’d spoken.

The boy in black spoke again. “This is not your concern, Marlena.”

“Oh, but it is my concern,” Marlena replied. “You’re here, entertaining guests, in my territory.”

Oh, great. Not only were we standing in the middle of a mess of vampires, we’d walked into some kind of fangy landgrab.

The boy showed his fangs to Marlena, and my heart began to thud in my chest like a bass drum. I felt like I was standing in a room with a wild animal . . . or a pack of them.

“Your territory stops three blocks back, Nicu.”

“My territory stops where I say it stops.”

I leaned toward Scout. “Are they arguing about a couple of blocks of industrial carpeting?”

“Not just carpeting—entrances and exits to the tunnels. They control getting in and getting out from the Pedway. That means Adepts, Reapers, and anyone else who uses them. That’s why we avoid the Pedway.”

“Guess they’re a little fuzzy on the boundaries right now.”

“Sounds like it,” she agreed.

“Lily?” Jason asked, without turning around. “Can you do something if we need it?”

“Yes,” I told him, answering the unspoken question—could I use firespell to take them out? “But it’s a lot easier if they’re standing together.”

“Perhaps now is not the time to have this discussion,” Nicu said. “Not when there are Adepts in our midst.”

Marlena barked out a laugh. “I don’t care anything about Adepts, iubitu. Nor, I think, do they care for us.” She put her hands on her hips, her short red nails tapping against her skirt. “Are you scared?”

This time, the bravado came from Paul. “Hardly. But we do have things to do tonight. So if you’ll give us passage, we’ll get out of your way.”

Marlena and her crew took a step forward, their movements synchronized.

“Vampires do not give. Vampires take.”

Paul made a sarcastic noise. “You think no one will notice if you harm us here?

You think no one will care if you spill Adept blood in your hallways?”

“I think I find it amusing you believe we would spill your blood.” She ran the tip of her tongue across one of her inch-long canines. “Oh, to be young again.”

Ironic, I thought, since she looked like she was barely older than me.

“Lily?” Jason prompted.

“I’m not sure I have enough juice to take two shots,” I whispered. Even if I took out Nicu’s crew, that left another set of vampires who clearly weren’t conflicted about drinking from well-intentioned teenagers.

“No worries, Shepherd,” Scout quietly said. “I got this one. Parker, rile them up.

I’ll keep them talking. And when I give the word, lose the lights.”

Scout’s lids fell, and she began to mouth words. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it must have been a spell. I also had no idea what she was planning, but I trusted her. She’d been an Adept longer than I’d been in high school, so I ignored the panicked roll in my stomach, sucked in a breath, and took a step to the left—

directly into their line of sight.

“Hi,” I said, waving until all eyes were on me. “So, Nicu, what were you saying earlier about this being your land? I think you said this was your territory?”

Just as I’d predicted, Marlena wasn’t thrilled by that. She let out a low, threatening growl. “Your kingdom? Such hubris from someone so undeserving of it.”

The woman who’d wrapped herself around Nicu untwined her arms and pulled out her own set of weapons—some kind of sharp, round blades that fit over her knuckles. Nothing you wanted to run into in a dark ally—or even a well-lit pedestrian walkway.

“And what have you done to deserve it, you harpy?”

“Me? I honor our memories, our traditions. You, on the other hand, are an embarrassment to the vampyr,” Marlena said. “You and yours are pitiful. And we know that you are weak.”

The vampires around Nicu began to hiss and show their fangs. He glared across at Marlena, his eyes half-hooded. “Never forget, Marlena, who made me vampire.”

“Mistakes,” she growled out, “can be remedied.”

Scout was still mouthing her spell. With each word she spoke, the vampires seemed to become more and more angry. Soon they were screaming at each other in a heavy language I didn’t understand.

I stood at the ready, hands at my sides, wiggling my fingertips as I waited for Scout to give me the signal to douse the lights.

“Three,” she finally said, “two, and one.”

I tugged on the power, and the lights went out above us. The vampires began to yelp. I wasn’t sure if they could see any better in the dark than we could, but they clearly weren’t happy about being plunged into darkness while enemies were in their midst.

On the other hand, they seemed to think their fellow vampires were the only enemies that mattered. As the groups rushed each other to wage their battle, we became irrelevant.

I felt a hand at my elbow. “Go,” Jason said, and we moved in a tight knot, staying close to the wall as we ran for the next corridor. They ignored us, but the sounds of a fight—ripping flesh, bruising strikes—erupted behind us.

We ran full out in the darkness. When we made it to the next corridor, Detroit finagled a light to lead the way. It was a glowing ball that bounced through the hallway, leading us to the end of the corridor and then to the left until we reached the gunmetal gray fire door. The stairwell was lit from within, and it cast an orange glow into the hallway. The bouncing light disappeared into the puddle of light.

Paul pushed at the long bar across the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Locked,” he said, glancing back at us.

“There’s an access pad,” Jill said, gesturing toward the small white box that sat beside the door. “You need a card to open the door.”

Scout pointed at Detroit, before casting a nervous glance back at the hallway.

“Can you do something, or do we need to have Paulie rip the thing off its hinges?”

“I’m on it,” Detroit said. She moved to the wall and elbowed the panel. Just like in the movies, the plastic cover popped off. She whipped out a set of tiny tools from her leather jacket, and then she was working. A tiny screwdriver in each hand, she began to pick and pluck at the sensor’s insides.

“You okay?”

I looked over and found Jason behind me, worry in his eyes. “I’m good.”

He touched a fingertip to my thumb. “Good. Otherwise, I’d have to run back and take a bite out of crime, if you know what I mean.”

“Show-off.”

He winked.

“Got it,” Detroit announced. She pressed the plastic cover back into place, then waved her giant black watch over the pad.

For a moment there was silence, and then the door clicked as the mechanism unlocked.

Detroit pushed through the door.

“Nice job,” I said, passing by as she held the door open.

“It’s not firespell,” she said, “but it works for me.”

No argument there.

Detroit and Paul stayed by the door until we were done, then pulled it closed until it clicked shut again behind us. We filed down the stairs. A steel bar stretched across the final landing, probably to keep folks out of the basement and the tunnels. We hopped over it to reach the tall, metal fire door that punctuated the dank bottom of the stairwell and waited while Detroit jimmied the lock on a chain on the door.

I’ll admit it; I was impressed. Detroit had skills that made caper movies look low budget. But I wasn’t the only one pleased with our trek so far.

“Nice job back there,” Scout said, nudging me with her elbow. “I’m calling that Adepts, one. Vampires, zero.”

“Agreed,” I said, holding up a hand. “I’m gonna need some skin on that one.” She reached out and high-fived me.

It took only a couple of seconds before Detroit tripped the tumblers and was pulling the chain away. “All right,” she said. “Last part of the trip.”

“And this was supposed to be a shortcut,” I muttered.

“At least we got to spend some quality time together.”

I gave Jason a dry look. “Be honest. You were hoping I’d use firespell. You wanted to see it.”

“Well, if you want me to be honest, then yeah. I wanted to watch you work your mojo.”

“Jeeeez, you two,” Scout said. “Make out somewhere else.”

“Spoilsport,” I told her.

The fire door led back into the railway tunnels. Maybe the Pedway architect figured they’d put be put back into use someday.

“We’ll stay here and watch your back,” Paul said, pointing between himself,

Jamie, and Jill. “We can ice out the vamps if they make it in, make sure you have a clear path back to the Enclave.”

“Especially since we’re taking the long way home,” Jason advised.

Detroit grumbled, but seemed to get his point.

From there, it was only a couple hundred yards before we reached a ramshackle wooden door.

“This is it,” Detroit whispered, opening the door and giving us a peek of a walkway between our wooden door and a set of metal double doors at the other end of a long corridor. The walkway’s ceiling was covered by grates, and we could hear the sounds of music and engines above us as cars passed by.

“This is what?” Jason asked, confusion in his expression as he surveyed the hallway. “What are we supposed to be seeing?”

Naya’s face fell. “It’s gone.”

“The slime,” Detroit said. “This is where we saw it.”

“I definitely don’t see any slime,” Scout said, cramming beside me in the doorway. She was right. I mean, we were underground, so it wasn’t like it was sparkling clean in there, but there was definitely no slime.

Detroit looked crestfallen. “I don’t understand. This is really where we saw it. It couldn’t have just disappeared.”

Jason gestured toward the double doors at the other end of the corridor, which were marked with those pointy biohazard stickers. “No,” he said. “But someone could have cleaned up the slime.”

“Reapers?” I wondered. “You think the Reapers know something about the creatures?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “After all, we didn’t, not until we saw them last night.” He looked at Michael. “What can you tell us?”

Michael nodded decisively, then rubbed his hands together like he was getting ready to roll some dice. He stepped forward into the corridor, put a palm flat against the wall, and closed his eyes.

“It’s muddy,” he said. “Unclear. So many coming and going. So much birth and death. Change . . .” But then he shook his head.

“I can’t read anything else clearly.” When he opened his eyes again, there was defeat there. “I can’t see anything else.”

“What does that tell you?” Scout asked, tilting her head at him. “What does it mean if you can’t read anything?”

Michael shook his head, clearly flustered by whatever he’d seen—or hadn’t seen. “Could be that too much went on—too much magic for any one message to filter through. Or could be some kind of blocking spell.”

“We’ve seen those before,” Detroit agreed. “Spells to erase the magic’s fingerprints, scramble the magic’s DNA. Reapers use obfus for things like that.”

I lifted a hand. “Sorry. What’s an ‘obfu’?”

“Obfuscator,” Detroit explained. “Something that obfuscates—makes it hard for Michael to get a read on the building.”

“Any chance you’ve got a magic detector in your bag of tricks?” Scout asked.

“Oh!” Detroit said, fumbling through the pockets of her leather jacket until she pulled out something tiny and black that was shaped like a pill. She held it up between two fingers.

“Magic smoke,” she said. After Scout pulled Michael back into the doorway,

Detroit leaned forward and tossed the pill into the hallway.

It hit the concrete floor and rolled a little, finally settling against the double doors.

“Four, three, two, and—” Before she could say “one,” the pill emitted a puff of blue smoke. As it rose through the far end of the corridor, we could see pale green lines crisscrossing the air, like dust highlighting a laser beam.

“What is that?” I wondered.

“Trip wires,” Scout said. “Magical trip wires. And I have got to get one of those spells.”

“I’ve got a box at the Enclave,” Detroit whispered. “I’ll bring you a couple.”

“We are now besties,” she whispered.

“What do they do?” Michael asked.

Scout pointed toward the smoke. “They set wards,” she said. “They’re like trip wires. If we breach one as we try to cross the door, whoever set the spells them gets a signal. Like an alarm bell.”

“And I bet Reapers would be on us in nothing flat,” Jason predicted. “This has got to be their handiwork. I mean, it’s got to be someone with magic, and if this was an Adept hidey-hole, we’d know about it.”

“Well, we’re definitely not going in there looking for slime,” Michael said. “What’s plan B?”

“I am,” Naya said. “I will call someone.”

“One of the recently deceased,” Detroit clarified, gesturing toward Naya. She took a step out of the crowded doorway into the corridor, blew out a slow breath and moved her hands, palms down, in front of her as she exhaled like she was physically pushing the air from her body.

Jason bumped my arm. “Let’s set up a protective area while she’s getting ready,” he said, then pointed to each of us in turn. Michael and Scout made a line between Naya and the wooden door into the tunnels, and Jason and I stepped around them all to create a barrier between Naya and the trip wires. Two lines of Adept defense in case something nasty popped through either way.

Once in position, we waited silently, gazes skimming nervously around the corridor, waiting for something to happen.

As if the air conditioner had suddenly kicked on, the temperature in the room dropped by ten or fifteen degrees. I stuffed my hands into my pockets. “It’s super-

chilly down here today.”

All eyes turned to me. Understanding struck, and the hair at the back of my neck lifted. The corridor felt like a field of power lines, abuzz with potential energy.

“That wasn’t just a breeze, was it?” Michael whispered.

The sidewalk grates began to vibrate, then clank up and down in their moorings as something moved into the corridor. The air got hazy, and a cold, thick fog sank down among us.

“She’s here,” Naya whispered.

Jason muttered a startled curse, then reached out for my hand. I laced my fingers with his and squeezed. Michael and Scout were also holding hands. About time.

The mist swirled, but didn’t take shape.

“She is having trouble heeding the call,” Naya said. “The energy . . . is scattered.”

“Is that why we can’t see her?” I whispered to Detroit. The question seemed rude —like this poor girl could help that she didn’t have a body—but important nonetheless.

“It takes a lot of power for the spirit to make contact, to penetrate the veil between the gray land and ours. Making herself visible would take more power than she’s got. But that won’t stop him or her from reaching out, or helping us.”

Naya finally opened her eyes. “Her name is Temperance Bay. She was one of us, an Adept. Her skill was illusion. She could change the physical appearance of an object. She died—was taken—by a Reaper at nineteen. Ten years ago.” Naya shook her head. “That’s all she can tell me—and she had trouble getting that much across. The energy down here is bad. Noisy.”

“That explains why I couldn’t get a good read,” Michael said.

“What would cause that?” I asked.

Jason pointed up. “Could be the trip wires. Could be because we’re down here in a hole. Could be because of whatever went on in this place before we got here.”

That didn’t exactly bode well.

“Hey,” Detroit said, looking at me curiously. “You’ve got firespell, right?”

“Um, yeah. Why?”

“Well, firespell is power magic. So maybe you could send her some firespell power, like an amplifier?”

Was she kidding? I barely knew how to turn the lights on and off. “I wouldn’t know how to do that.”

Undeterred, Detroit shook her head, then began tapping at the screen of her big black watch. “No, I think we can do this. It’s just a matter of energy. Of plugging you in, I guess.”

I looked at Scout, who shrugged, then Jason.

“This one’s all you, kiddo. You’re the only one who knows what it feels like. Do you think you could do it?”

I frowned, then looked at Naya. “Can you ask Temperance if she has any idea how to do it? How that might work? I don’t want to hurt her. I mean, could I hurt her?”

“Of course you could,” Naya said. “She’s deceased, not nonexistent. Her energy remains. If you unbalance her energy, she’s gonna feel it.”

“So no pressure,” Scout added from across the room.

No kidding, but I was an Adept, and I knew what needed to be done. “Okay,” I said. “Ask her what I need to do.”

Naya nodded, then rubbed the saint’s medal around her neck. Her expression went a little vacant again. “Temperance, we await your direction. You have heard our plea for assistance. How can we help you make manifest?” Her eyelids fluttered. “Nourish her with the energy,” she said, “to help her cross the veil. She says that I can bridge the gap to help you focus it. To help you direct it.”

I nodded again. I didn’t fully understand what Temperance was, but I had an idea of how it could work. Temperance was basically a spirit without a body. Naya was the link between us, the wire for the current I could provide. If I pretended Temperance was like a lightbulb in the tunnels, I might be able to give her some energy.

The only question was—could I do it without killing both of us?

“Give me your hand,” I told Naya. She reached out and took my palm, and I squeezed our fingers together. “With your other hand, can you—not touch—but somehow reach Temperance? Like, have her center herself near you?”

Naya nodded, and Temperance must have moved, because I felt the spark of energy along the length of our arms.

“Here goes,” I said, and closed my eyes. I imagined the three of us were a circuit, like the connected wires in a circuit board. I pulled up the well of energy, and instead of letting it flow into a bulb above me, tried to imagine it twisting, funneling from my extended arm into Naya’s, slinking softly through her, and into the ghost at her side.

I felt my hair rise and lift around my head as energy swirled and Naya’s fingers began to shake in my hands.

“Holy crap,” I heard Scout say.

My eyes popped open, and I glanced at Naya. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes were clenched closed. “I’m fine. Just keep going.”

“I saw her.”

I looked back at Scout, her face pale, her eyes wide, and the key around her neck—something worn by every girl at St. Sophia’s—lifting in the currents of magic.

“I saw her. She wore a brown skirt. You were doing it. Keep going.”

I nodded, then closed my eyes again and imagined a long cord of energy between the three of us—two current Adepts and an Adept from a former time. I pushed the energy along the current, not too much, just a little at a time, narrowing in as it spindled between us, like a fine thread being spun from a pile of frothy yarn.

I imagined the energy moving through Naya, slipping past her again, into the whirl of energy that was Temperance Bay. I tried to fill her with it, and with Naya acting as a conduit, I could feel her on the other side—her ache to be heard by the world around her, to be seen and remembered once again. It was a hunger, and as I offered her the energy, I felt her relief. When that hunger eased, I pulled back on the power again, slowing it to a trickle, and finally cutting it off.

Our hands still linked together, I opened my eyes. Everyone’s gazes were focused to my right, past Naya, at the girl who stood beside her, gaze on me.

She wasn’t quite solid—more like an old movie projection than an actual girl. But even still, there she was. She had wavy brown hair that fell nearly to her waist, and she wore a simple, straight brown skirt and long-sleeved sweater. Her eyes were big and brown, and although she wore no makeup, her cheeks were flushed pink,

like she’d just come in from the cold.

Maybe she had. Maybe the gray land was cold.

She moved toward me, her image flickering at the edges as she moved, her body transparent. She held out her hands. I let go of Naya’s hand and extended both of my shaking hands toward Temperance.

And then we touched.

I couldn’t hold her hands—but I could feel them. Their outlines. Their edges. She was made of energy and light, coalesced into a form we could see, but still not quite real.

“Temperance Bay,” she said, her voice soft and barely audible.

“Lily Parker.”

She smiled back at me. I knew she was thanking me, so I returned her smile.

“How long will it last?”

“Not long,” she said, then turned to look at Naya, who nodded at both of us.

“Temperance,” she said, “we think that building was used by the enemy, but we aren’t sure why. We need to know what went on in there, and we need to know if anyone is still using it. Can you move through it? Take a look and see what kinds of things they were doing? We need to know if there are computers or papers—

documents of any kind that might be useful.”

Temperance nodded, then walked toward the doors, one slow step at a time. She moved right through the trip wires and then the doors—and then she was gone.

“And now we wait,” Naya said.

“Waiting” meant sitting cross-legged on the ground, the others chatting while I waited to get a little of my own energy back. It hadn’t occurred to me that filling Temperance up with power meant draining some of my own. My arms and legs felt heavy, like I’d run a marathon or was coming down with the flu. Jason sat beside me, eyes scanning the corridor as he offered me granola bars and water to boost my energy.

For Detroit, “waiting” meant working her mechanical magic. While we crouched in the entryway, she pushed the buttons on the sides of her giant black watch. After a second, a coin-shaped piece of black plastic popped out like a CD being ejected from a laptop.

“What’s that?” Scout asked.

“Camera,” Detroit whispered, then gestured toward the double doors. “I figure since we’re here, we might as well be proactive. The pictures aren’t fabulous, but it’ll give us eyes on the doors without risking Adepts.”

She glanced around, her gaze settling on the concrete eave at our end of the corridor. “That’ll work. Should give us a clear view.” She looked around. “Could anyone help me get a lift up?”

“I’ll help,” Jason said. He went down on one knee, the other propped up like a step, and held out a hand. Without hesitation, Detroit took his hand for balance,

stepped up onto Jason’s propped knee, and pressed the plastic coin into the concrete.

“Now I have a way to check in on whatever this is at the lab,” Detroit said.

“You guys have a lab?” Scout asked.

Detroit looked up, surprise in her face. “Sure. Don’t you?”

“You’re joking, right?”

Detroit just blinked at Scout. “No.”

“Uh, yeah, that room we met in earlier? That’s our entire Enclave.”

“No way. You guys are running a low-budg operation. We’ve got a lab,

conference rooms, kitchenette, nap rooms. I mean, it’s not lush or anything—it’s a bomb shelter built in the nineteen sixties or something.”

“Not lush, she says, but they have a nap room.” Scout made a noise of disgust,

then glanced at me. “You know what we need? A benefactor.”

“Aren’t your parents, like, superwealthy?” I wondered.

“We need a generous benefactor,” she clarified. “My parents are pretty Green-

focused. Ah! I made a pun.”

Detroit offered Scout an arch look, like she didn’t appreciate the use of humor in dire Adepty situations. I was beginning to wonder how they ran things over in Enclave Two. So far, it seemed like a pretty (up)tight ship.

“You know, I hate that we’ve come this far—and through a gauntlet of fangs—

and we aren’t even going to take a look inside that building.”

We all looked at Michael, who shrugged. “I’m just saying. I mean, I know there’s bad juju there, but I hate to have come all that way for nothing.”

“Not nothing,” Naya pointed out. “You’ll find out what’s inside when Temperance returns.”

“She’s right,” Jason said. “And we don’t need to go looking for more trouble. We have to tell him about the vamps, and we’ve already got a black mark against the Enclave. We don’t need another one.”

“Yeah, we heard about that,” Detroit said. She opened a pocket in her jacket,

then pulled out a pack of gum. After pulling out a stick, she passed it around the room. I took one, unwrapped the foil, and popped it in my mouth. It was an odd flavor—something old-fashioned that tasted like spicy cloves—but it wasn’t bad.

Scout frowned at Detroit. “What exactly did you hear?”

“Just that you guys had some internal issues. That you didn’t follow Varsity’s lead on some mission. You’re kind of a cautionary tale now.”

Scout’s features tightened. “Varsity’s lead was to leave me locked down in a Reaper sanctuary while Jeremiah and his minions ate me for lunch.”

Detroit’s lips parted. “I’m—oh, my God. I’m so sorry. That’s not what they said and I hadn’t heard—” Scout held up a hand. “Let’s just drop it.”

“I’m really, truly sorry. I didn’t know. They didn’t tell us the whole story.”

Scout nodded, but the hallway went silent, and the tension in the air wasn’t just because of the secret building next door.

It was another fifteen or twenty minutes before our ghostly spy made her way back to the doors where we waited. By that point, she was mostly a cold mist, a fuzzy outline of the girl we’d seen a little while ago.

“She’s fading,” Naya said, standing up as Temperance came through the door—

literally.

Temperance tried to speak, but the sound was a tinny whisper.

“She’s communicating that the place is big,” Naya said. “She saw only a little of it,

but thinks there’s more to see.”

Temperance suddenly pulsed—her light completely fading before she popped back into the visible world again.

I looked around. “Should we try another dose of power?”

Jason stepped beside me, gaze on Temperance. “I’m not crazy about that idea,” he said. “You’re still pretty drained, and we still need to get back to the enclave. If you totally burn out now, that leaves us without even a chance of firespell on the way back. And we’re taking the long way back.” He gave Detroit a pointed look.

“I can fix this,” she said. She opened her bag and pulled out a small black box.

She put the box on the floor, then fiddled with it until it began to hum, and the top slid open. A lens emerged from the top and a cone of pale, white light shined upward toward the ceiling.

Detroit frowned at it, probably tuned in to some kind of mechanical details the rest of us couldn’t even see, then sat down on her knees beside it and began to adjust dials and sliding bars on the side. “I wasn’t really keen on using it this go-

round—it’s a new prototype. But since we can’t use firespell, might as well try it out.” She sat back on her heels and glanced up at Naya. “Okay, you’re ‘go’ for launch.”

Naya nodded, then closed her eyes and offered an incantation. “By the spirit of St. Michael, the warrior of angels and protector of spirits, I call forth Temperance Bay. Hear my plea, Temperance, and come forth to help us battle that which would tear us asunder.”

The light flickered once, but nothing else happened.

I glanced sideways at Scout, who shrugged.

“Temperance Bay,” Naya called again. “We beseech you to hear our request.

There is power in this room. Power to make you visible. Come forth and find it and be seen once more.”

A rush of cold air blew across our little alcove, the box vibrating with the force of it. My hair stood on end, and I clenched Jason’s hand tight. However helpful Temperance might have been, she carried the feeling of something wrong. Maybe it wasn’t because of who she was, but of what she was, of where she’d come from.

Whatever the reason, you couldn’t deny that creepy feeling of something other in the room.

“The power is here, among us,” Naya said.

The air began to swirl, the cone of light flickering as Temperance moved among us trying to figure out how to use Detroit’s machine. The light began to flicker wildly like a brilliant strobe before bursting from the box.

And it wasn’t just light.

Temperance floated above us in the cone of light, again in her brown skirt and sweater. I wondered if those were the clothes she’d worn when she died—if she was doomed to wear the same thing forever.

She began to talk, and we could hear the staticky, far-away echo of her voice from Detroit’s machine. “I am here—here—here,” she said, her words stuttering through the machine.

“Temperance,” Naya asked, “what did you see?”

“It is a sanctuary,” she said.

I gnawed on the edge of my lip. That was so not the news we wanted.

“How do you know it’s a sanctuary?” Scout asked. Her voice was soft.

“The mark—mark—mark of the Dark Elite is there, but dust has fallen. The building is quiet. Quiet.”

“Keep going,” Naya said, her voice all-business. Not a request, but a demand.

Her own magic at work.

“It’s like a clinic,” Temperance said.

“What do you mean, a clinic?” Michael asked.

“Instruments. Machines. Syringes.”

“That can’t be right,” Jason put in. “The Reapers don’t need medical facilities.

Their only medical issue is energy, and they’ve already got that covered.”

A sudden breeze—icy cold and knife sharp—cut across the corridor.

Temperance’s image glowed a little brighter, her eyes sharpening. Without warning,

her image blossomed and grew, and she was nine feet tall, her arms long and covered in grungy fabric, her hair streaming out, her eyes giant dark orbs. “The unliving do not make mistakes.”

There were gasps. But I remembered what Naya had said—Temperance was an Adept of illusion. The image, however creepy, wasn’t real. Naya’s eyes were closed again, probably as she concentrated on keeping Temperance in the room,

so I took action.

“Temperance,” I said.

She turned those black eyes on me. I had to choke down my fear just to push out words again.

“He didn’t mean to offend you. He’s just surprised. Can you drop the illusion and tell us more about what you saw?”

The giant hag floated for another few seconds, before shrinking back to by Temperance’s slightly mousy appearance. “There are needles. Bandages.

Monitors. It looks like a clinic to me.”

I bobbed my head at her. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome, Lily.”

“Well, that’s definitely new,” Scout said, frowning. “What could Reapers need with medical facilities?”

“The Reapers get weaker over time,” Jason pointed out. “Maybe they’re trying to figure out some way to treat that?”

“Maybe so,” I said. I liked the idea of Reapers turning to medicine—instead of innocent teenagers—to solve their magical maladies.

But I still had a pretty bad feeling about it.

We couldn’t avoid a return to the Enclave. Not with that kind of information under our belts. We also couldn’t risk another trip through the Pedway, so after meeting up with Jamie, Jill, and Paul, we took the long way back, Detroit checking her locket every few hundred feet to make sure we were on track. The route was definitely longer, but it was also vampire-, Reaper-, and slime-free. Thumbs-up in my book.

Daniel, Katie, and Smith jumped up from the floor when we walked in, their smiles falling away as they took in our expressions.

“It’s all bad news,” Scout said. “Might as well cop a squat again.”

When we were all on the floor—the JV Adepts exhausted, the Varsity Adepts in preparation for the shock—we laid out the details. We told him the slime was gone,

but the Reapers had been there. We told him about the new sanctuary—the medical facility—and the other things Temperance had seen.

Daniel rubbed his forehead as we talked, probably wishing he hadn’t taken over the unluckiest of the Enclaves.

“We didn’t see anyone the entire time we were there,” Jason pointed out. “And Temperance said the building looked unused. So that means they’re gone, right?”

“Not necessarily,” Daniel said. “Sometimes they rotate sanctuaries, especially if humans get too close. They move around to decrease the odds they get discovered, so an empty sanctuary doesn’t mean an abandoned sanctuary.”

“We planted a camera,” Detroit said. “We’ll have Sam call you if there’s anything to report.”

“Sam?” I asked.

“Sam Bayliss. Head of Enclave Two—and Daniel’s girlfriend,” Detroit helpfully threw in. All eyes went to Daniel; Scout let out a low swear. So much for her happily ever after with Daniel.

“Thank you,” Daniel grumbled. “If that’s all—” Scout held up a hand. “Before you send Enclave Two off into the sunset, you’ll probably want to hear the rest of it.”

“The rest of it?”

“I’m gonna throw a word at you.” She mimicked throwing something at him.

“Vampires.”

Daniel’s expression turned stone cold. “Spill it.”

“Well,” Scout said, “as it turns out, we needed to use a little, tiny, eentsy bit of the Pedway, and ran into a couple of warring nests of vampires. Long story short, I used a charm to rile them up against each other; then Lily doused the lights so we could escape back into the tunnels. Oh—and Detroit’s great with locks and such.”

“Warring nests of vampires?”

“Turf war,” Jason said. “Two covens. Nicu and Marlena. I think she said she made him.”

Daniel frowned. “She must have made him a vampire. He was in her coven, then broke off to start his own. Covens don’t split very often. That’s probably not good news.”

“Especially if we want to use the Pedway,” Detroit mumbled. “Double your vamps,

definitely not double your pleasure.”

Daniel made a sound of agreement.

“You know,” Scout said, “those things that attacked us had fangs. First we see them, and now we find out vampires are in some kind of turf war? That’s a lot of fangs for a coincidence.”

“That’s a good point,” Daniel said. “Not a happy one, but a good one.” He looked at Smith. “Do some research. Figure out what you can about the vamps, about the coven split.”

Smith flipped his hair out of his eyes, an emo “yes.”

“And us?” Jason asked. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll be in touch,” Daniel said. “In the meantime, stay away from fangs.” He rose,

then walked to the Enclave door and opened it.

“Go home,” was all he said.

I knew they were busy. I knew they had lessons to prepare and exams to write. But what was no excuse.

What made teachers think having students grade each other’s trig homework was a good idea? My carefully written pages were now in the hands of the brattiest of the brats—Mary Katherine—who kept giving me nasty looks as our trig teacher explained the answers. By some freak accident of desk arranging, this was the third time she’d ended up with my paper. She took notes every day with a purple glitter pen, so my trig homework came back with huge X-marks on my wrong answers . . . and nasty little notes or drawings wherever she could find room.

Seriously—she was such a witch.

And not the good kind.

When the time came to pass back everyone’s answers, I noticed she’d added a special note this time: “Loser” in all caps across the top of my page, right next to the total of wrong answers. Since I’d gotten only one wrong—and I also knew how many M.K. usually got wrong—I held up my paper toward her, and batted my eyelashes.

She rolled her eyes and looked away, but the paper on her desk was dotted with X-marks. I guessed she was going to have to find a tutor soon, ’cause money or not, I couldn’t imagine Foley would be happy about her failing trig.

Between classes I checked my phone and found a message from Ashley, my BFF from Sagamore. She was still in the public school back home since my attempt to move in with her and her parents—or have her parents ship her out here—failed pretty miserably. I felt a little guilty when I saw the message. Ashley and I hadn’t talked as much since I’d started at St. Sophia’s. There was the usual adjustment period, sure, but she had her own stuff in Sagamore, and I had a lot of paranormal (and brat-pack) drama. Add those to mandatory study hall, and I didn’t have a lot of texting time.

But that didn’t make it any less fun to hear from her, so I tapped out a quick response. I’d actually gotten halfway through asking her to come visit me until I realized what a truly horrible idea that was. I added “hard to have non-Adept friends” to my list of Adept downsides. You know, in addition to the Reapers and lack of sleep and near-death experiences.

I settled for “I MISS YOU, TOO!” and a quick description of Jason. Well, minus the werewolf bit. No sense in worrying her, right?

When the bell rang for lunch, Scout and I stuffed our books into our lockers and headed to the cafeteria.

“I’ve got a surprise for you today,” she said, her arm through mine as we joined the buffet line.

“If it crawls or bites, I don’t want to know about it.”

“Hey, what you and Shepherd do on your own time is up to you.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “What do you mean, me and Shepherd?”

She did a little dance. “We’re going to have lunch in the park with Jason and Michael.”

“You arranged a double date?”

“Not if you’re calling it a double date. You can scratch it right off your list. But we are sharing in a communal meal, or whatever fancy East Coast terminology you folks like to use.”

“I’m not sure upstate New York qualifies as ‘East Coast.’ But either way, we call it lunch.”

“Lunch it is.” She grabbed two paper bags from the buffet. Since our lunch hour was one of the only times the powers that be at St. Sophia’s let us off campus (at least as far as they knew), they were pretty good about stocking brown-bag lunches. According to their decorator-perfect labels, one held a turkey sandwich,

and the other held a Greek wrap with hummus. Being the resident vegetarian, I assumed the wrap was for me.

“Nothing for the boys?” I wondered, pulling two bottles of water from an ice-filled tub.

“The boys are bringing their own lunch. I told you it wasn’t a date.”

“Well, not a fancy date anyway.” Unless, of course, you counted Scout’s rainbow-esque ensemble. She’d paired her blue-and-gold plaid with red wool clogs,

a lime green cardigan, and thin orange-and-purple head-bands to hold back her hair. Whatever you might say about Scout, her wardrobe was definitely not boring.

With my blue cardigan and yellow Chuck Taylors, I felt practically preppy.

Lunch in hand, we passed the brat pack and their snarky comments and thousand-dollar messenger bags and went through the school to the front door of the main building. The fresh air was a relief, especially after spending most of my days moving between the classroom building and the suite, and most of my evenings in damp tunnels.

It was a gorgeous fall day. The weather was crisp, and the sky was infinitely blue,

the color reflected across the glass buildings that surrounded our gothic campus in downtown Chicago.

We walked up the street and past St. Sophia’s next-door neighbor, Burnham National Bank. The bank was housed in a fancy glass skyscraper. It was a pretty building, but still a strange sight—it looked like a giant kid had stacked glass boxes on top of one another . . . but not very well.

My heart sped up as we reached the next building. It was a pretty, short brick thing—like the slightly mousier older sister of the bank building. It was also the home of the Sterling Research Foundation, the other link in the chain that connected my parents to Foley and St. Sophia’s. While I’d basically promised Foley not to ask any questions that would hurt my parents, I didn’t think checking into the SRF was going to hurt anyone. I just had to figure out how to do it on the sly.

For a moment, I thought about walking to the front door and peeking inside,

maybe offering up some excuse about it being the wrong building. I chewed the edge of my lip, considering the possibilities.

“Lils?”

I glanced back, saw that Scout was waiting at the corner, and nodded my head.

“I’m right behind you.”

We slipped into the alley that separated the two buildings, and then to the left when the alley dead-ended. No—we weren’t meeting Jason and Michael in a dirty alley among Dumpsters and scattered bits of trash.

The alley held a secret.

Well, actually, it was the grass just beyond the alley that held the secret—a secret garden of lush grass and concrete thorns. It was a hidden refuge that was technically just beyond the wall of St. Sophia’s, but it carried the same sense of mystery as the convent itself.

We slithered in between the concrete columns and found Jason and Michael in the middle, sitting on a fleece blanket they’d stretched over the grass. Both of them wore their Montclare Academy uniforms. The plaid skirts were bad enough, but at least our school didn’t make us dress like accountants.

They’d already spread their lunch—or what passed for lunch for sixteen-year-old boys—on the blanket: fast food burgers, fries, and foam cups of pop.

“Welcome to paradise!” Michael said, lifting a cup. It was a high school toast, I guess.

“Shepherd. Garcia,” Scout said, kneeling down on the blanket. I joined her. Jason leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips.

“Hello there,” he whispered.

I got a full and complete set of goose bumps. “Hello back.”

Michael munched on some fries. “How’s life at St. Sophia’s today?”

Scout unwrapped her sandwich. Little fringes of turkey peeked from between the layers of bread. “Pretty much the same as every day. Brat pack. Teachers. Lily getting her learnin’ on.”

Jason smiled and his dimple perked up. “Her learnin’?”

“Thomas Jefferson,” I said, nibbling a black olive that had fallen out of my wrap. “I do a lot of thinking about federalism.”

“It’s true,” Scout said. “She is all up in the federalist period.”

“Mad props for checks and balances,” I said, offering her knuckles. She knuckled back.

Jason snorted. “How did you two survive before knowing each other?”

“That is one of the great mysteries of the universe, amigo,” Michael said. “But since we’re all here together, maybe we should talk about the other mystery.”

“Not a bad idea,” Jason said. He half unwrapped his burger and arranged the paper so it made a sleeve, then took a bite. “At least Daniel believed us about the —what are we calling them? Rat things?”

“That’s close enough,” Scout said. “And Daniel is definitely an improvement. So far, I approve of him.”

“I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear it,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you’re crushing on him, too?” Jason asked, mouth full and eyebrow arched. Scout’s cheeks flushed.

She popped a corner of her sandwich in her mouth. “I don’t crush. I appreciate.”

“You should appreciate someone your own age,” Michael muttered.

Scout humphed.

Our phones chose that moment to simultaneously start ringing. If we were all getting a call, it must have been a message about Adept business.

Michael made it to his phone first. “Daniel’s called off tonight’s meeting. He’s still figuring out what to do about the vampires.”

“So we don’t end up in the middle of a turf war?” Scout asked.

“That would be my guess.”

Scout sighed, then pulled another chunk from her sandwich. “Sometimes I dream of lying in bed and spending my nights—and hold on to your hats, ’cause this is pretty crazy—sleeping.”

“At least it’s not every night,” Michael said.

“Yeah, but it’s more on the nights we do go out. More monsters, more Reapers,

more ‘operations,’ ” she added with air quotes.

Michael patted her shoulder. “Someday I’ll take you on a trip, and we’ll spend our days relaxing in luxury.”

“Hawaii?”

“I’m on scholarship. How about Kenosha?”

Scout shrugged. “That works, too.” She looked down and began plucking through the paper bag and empty sandwich wrapper. “What happened to the other half of my sandwich?”

“You just ate it,” Michael said.

“Nah, I couldn’t have. Not that fast.” She put a hand to her stomach, then pressed a little. “I do feel full. But I seriously don’t even remember eating it.”

“Maybe you’re also distracted.” Michael winged up his eyebrows for effect.

“You ate it, didn’t you? You ate my sandwich?”

Jason leaned toward me. “Whatever you might say about Scout, the girl’s tenacious.”

“That she is. Did you eat her sandwich?”

He made a huff. “A gentleman does not take a lady’s sandwich.”

“Are you a gentleman?”

“I am a gentlewolf. I did rescue a beautiful damsel in distress, after all.”

“You did do that. And I appreciate it very, very much. Being alive rocks.”

He lifted a hand and brushed a lock of hair from my face. His eyes were the same color as the wickedly blue sky. “Of course I did. I think you’re pretty cool, you know.”

My toes practically curled from the heat in his eyes.

Scout cleared her throat. Loudly. “Hey,” she said, bumping Michael with her elbow. “Could I talk to you for a sec?”

“I didn’t eat your sandwich.”

Scout made a sound of frustration, then grabbed Michael by the hand and helped him to his feet. “I know you didn’t eat my sandwich, but we need to talk,” she said,

then pulled him between the thorns until they disappeared from view.

“What’s that about?”

“I am not entirely sure.”

We sat quietly for a minute.

“You know, we haven’t known each other very long, and we met under kind of strange circumstances.”

I glanced over at him. This sounded like some kind of relationship talk. Was he going to ask me to Sneak? My heart sped up, but I went for a casual tone. “That is true.”

“I just—I guess I think we should, you know, actually go out sometime.”

I was a little disappointed I hadn’t gotten an invite to the Sneak, but I guess an actual date of any kind would work for now. I managed a smile. “We could probably make that happen.”

“I was thinking Saturday.”

Okay, a definite date helped. “Saturday works.”

“Cool.”

Scout and Michael popped out from between the thorns. His curly hair was standing up; her cheeks were flushed. I had to bite my lip to keep from saying something snarky.

“All right, Parker. You ready for school?”

I nodded. “Let’s do it.”

I picked up the remains of our lunch, then stood up so Jason could fold up the blanket.

“We’ll walk you,” Michael said, extending his crooked elbow toward Scout. She rolled her eyes, but took it.

Jason glanced at me with amusement.

“Don’t even think about it,” I warned him, but didn’t object when he entangled our fingers together.

We walked back through the alley and past the SRF and bank building, then hit the Erie Avenue sidewalk back toward the school.

That was where we found John Creed, standing beside the low stone fence that contained the St. Sophia’s grounds, his heavy eyebrows pinched together as he gazed at the phone in his hands. He looked up when we approached, then slid his phone into his pocket.

“I didn’t know we had plans,” Jason said.

“We don’t. I had to drop by Franklin’s. That’s my dad,” he explained, gaze on me.

“He’s got an office up the street.”

“How is Franklin?” Jason asked.

“Knee-deep in money.” Creed looked at Scout. “And you are?”

“Scout Green,” Michael said. “She’s another St. Sophia’s girl.”

“Swell to meet you, Scout Green, St. Sophia’s girl.”

“Ditto,” Scout said.

“I figured I’d wait so we could walk back together. But you weren’t at the school.”

His gaze followed the sidewalk to the spot where we’d emerged onto the street.

“What’s over that way?”

“Just a shortcut,” Jason said, squeezing my hand as if to keep me quiet. I guess he wanted to keep the thorn garden to himself.

Creed looked doubtful, but nodded anyway, at least until we lost his attention.

M.K. and Veronica crossed the street toward us, steaming paper coffee cups in hand. Figured. They seemed like the expensive-coffee type.

“I guess they made up,” Scout whispered to me.

“Guess so.”

Creed stuck his hands into his pockets. “Afternoon, ladies.”

“Hello, again,” M.K. said, giving him a catty look.

Veronica smiled at Creed, but the smile drooped a little when she realized that he was slumming with us. “You’re far from home,” she said. “Paying a visit to the convent?”

Creed smiled. “Waiting for my brothers-in-arms.”

“Cute,” M.K. said, giving Scout and me a dirty look. “And they’re just tagging along?”

“Sagamore and Scout are friends of Jason’s,” Creed said with a big smile. “And that makes them friends of mine.”

Jason leaned toward me. “Just a warning, friendship with Creed comes with a lengthy disclaimer.”

“Funny man,” Creed said. “Very funny.” He glanced over at Veronica. “How’s the party planning coming?”

“Good,” she said. “It’s going to be pretty sweet when it’s all said and done.”

He nodded dutifully at Veronica, then slid M.K. an inviting glance that deflated Veronica’s smile—but strengthened the resolve in her expression.

“Um, so how’s the boat?” Veronica asked.

“My father’s? Still pretty good, I imagine.”

The church bells began to chime, signaling the end of lunch.

“We should go,” Jason said, untangling our fingers. “We’ll see you later.”

“Later,” I said with a smile.

“Oh, crap,” Scout exclaimed. “I forgot to grab my chemistry book.” She gave me an apologetic look. “I’m gonna run to my locker. I’ll see you in class.”

I’d barely nodded when she took off running down the sidewalk and toward the front door.

“I’ll catch you ladies later,” Creed said, taking a position next to Jason and Michael. They started down the street, their escape leaving me, M.K., and Veronica standing awkwardly on the sidewalk.

“Give us a minute, M.K.,” Veronica said.

M.K. arched a questioning eyebrow.

“I’ll meet you inside.”

Apparently knowing when an order had been given, M.K. shrugged and started for the door.

When she was gone, Veronica looked back at me. “So you and Creed are friends?”

“We know each other. I wouldn’t say friends.” At least not before I heard Jason’s disclaimer. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought you didn’t know him.” Her voice was snotty, like I’d been keeping John Creed locked away from her on purpose.

“I know who he is. That’s it.”

“Mm-hmm.” There was obvious doubt in her voice. Why did she care if I knew him or not? She’d seen me holding hands with Jason. “He calls you ‘Sagamore’ like you two are close.”

“You were with me the first time I met him. You heard him call me Sagamore.”

That didn’t seem to stop her. The thing she apparently had for Creed must have been shorting her logic circuits, as it didn’t seem to compute.

“Yeah, well. I just think you need to stop playing coy.”

I almost called her out, almost reminded her that it was her best friend—M.K.—

who seemed to have an in with John Creed, not me.

But before I could speak, someone else jumped in.

“Is there a problem?”

We looked behind us to where he stood on the sidewalk in jeans and a long-

sleeved T-shirt, stormy blue eyes trained on Veronica.

Sebastian. Reaper . . . and now stalker?

My heart began to pound in my chest, and my fingers began to tingle with anticipatory magic. The Darkening on my back warmed, maybe from my proximity to him, my heart suddenly thudding in my chest. I’m not going to lie—I was scared out of my mind. This guy was a Reaper. I mean, I didn’t think he was going to blast me right here on the sidewalk, but I could still remember how much the firespell had hurt. I really didn’t want to go through that again.

Of course, now I had firespell, too.

“What?” Veronica stuttered out, her gaze moving between me and Sebastian.

“I asked if there was a problem.” His voice was cold and smooth like marble, his steely eyes on the brat in front of me. I wasn’t sure if I should applaud him . . . or feel sorry for her.

“No.”

“Great. Probably you should get to class, then.”

She started to argue, but before she could get out word one, he’d dropped his head a quarter of an inch, leveling his gaze at her.

“We’re done,” she said, evil eyes on me, before turning and hurrying toward the gate. Since the first bell had already rung, I needed to do the same thing. But before I could bolt, he put a hand on my arm.

A shiver trickled down my spine.

“Get your hand off me.”

“I’m not done with you.”

I made myself look back at him, made myself look him in the eyes. “We’re on the street. You can’t do anything here.”

“Sure I could,” Sebastian said. “But I won’t.” He glanced back at Veronica’s bobbing form. “Is she giving you trouble?”

“You’re giving me trouble,” I told him. “I knew I saw you on the street the other day. Why are you following me around?”

“Because we need to talk.”

At least he wasn’t going to deny it. “We have nothing to talk about.”

“We have firespell to talk about.”

“No,” I corrected, “we have firespell, period. End of story. There’s nothing that needs to be talked about.”

“Really.” His voice couldn’t have been drier. “Because you’re an expert in using it? In manipulating it? In creating the spark?”

“In creating the—”

“The spark,” he interrupted. “You know nothing about your power. And that’s ridiculously dangerous.”

I crossed my arms and huffed out a breath. “And what—you should be the one to teach me?”

The look he gave back suggested that was exactly what he thought he should do.

But then his eyes clouded. “The world isn’t nearly as black and white as you believe, Lily.”

I’d actually begun to ask him what he meant until I remembered who he was and whose side he was on. That made me turn my back and start down the sidewalk again. I wouldn’t run away from him. Not again. But that didn’t mean I was stupid enough to stand around with a sworn enemy.

“Quit following me,” I called back, loud enough for him to hear. “We’re done.”

“No, we’re not. Not by a long shot.”

I shook my head, forcing my feet to the ground even as my knees wobbled. But that didn’t stop me from glancing back when I was inside the gate.

This time, he was gone.

I kept my head down in class, my eyes on my books, glad that Scout sat behind me.

I wasn’t sure I should tell her about Sebastian—either that he had been following me, or that he’d tried to save me from Veronica.

He’d tried to intervene.

What was that about?

I mean, he was a Reaper. The sworn enemy of Adepts, the folks who thought it was okay to buy a few more years of magic with someone else’s soul.

And yet he was also the guy who’d given me the clue to using firespell and who’d stepped into a near-fight with Veronica.

Something strange was going on. I wasn’t sure what—I certainly didn’t think he was some kind of Robin Hood of magic—but whatever it was, I wasn’t ready to tell Scout.

No, this was going to need a little more time.

I hoped I had it.

Dinner was Tex-Mex food, which St. Sophia’s managed pretty well for a snotty private boarding school in the middle of downtown Chicago. And as a vegetarian, it was usually a favorite of mine. Tex-Mex at St. Sophia’s meant tortillas and beans and peppers and cheese, so it was usually easy to whip up something meat-free.

We had an hour after dinner before study hall for Scout and, according to Foley,

art studio for me, so we headed back to our suite for some time off—and so I could get my materials together.

When we got in, Amie’s door was open, the light off. Lesley’s door was shut,

cello music drifting from beneath the door. She played the cello and spent a lot of time practicing. Luckily, she was really good at it, so it was kind of like having a tiny orchestra in the room. Not a bad way to live, as it turned out.

When Scout and I walked in and shut the door behind us, the music came to a stop. A few seconds later, Lesley emerged from her room. She wore a pale green dress with a yellow cardigan over it, her blond hair tucked behind her ears, her feet tucked into canvas Mary Janes. She stood in her doorway for a moment, blinking blue eyes at us.

Lesley was definitely on our side, but she was still a little odd.

“What’s up, Barnaby?” Scout asked, dropping onto the couch in the common room. “Sounds like the cello playing is going pretty well.”

Lesley shrugged. “I’m having trouble with some of the passages. Not as vibrant as I want them to be. Practice, practice, practice.”

I took a seat on the other end of the couch. “It sounds good to the plebeians.”

“Ooh, nice use of today’s Euro-history lesson,” Scout complimented.

“I am all up in the vocab.”

Lesley walked around the couch and sat down on the floor, her skirt fluttering as she moved. She wasn’t an Adept, but she was pale and blond and had a very old-

fashioned look about her. It wasn’t hard to imagine that she’d stepped out of some fairy tale and into modern-day Chicago.

“How’s it going with your secret midnight missions?”

Although she wasn’t totally up to speed on the Adept drama, she knew Scout and I were involved in something extracurricular at night.

“The missions are going,” Scout said. “Some nights are better than others.” She bobbed her head toward Amie’s door. “Amie’s little minion saw us coming in on Monday night. Has she said anything about it to you?”

Lesley shook her head. “Not to me. But I heard Veronica tell M.K. and Amie about it. She said Lily was out with a boy.” Lesley looked at me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Kinda,” I said, my cheeks heating up.

“They say anything else?” Scout asked. “Or did they believe us?”

Lesley shrugged. “Mostly they wondered who the boy was. They didn’t think you’d been here long enough to meet a boy.”

“Our Parker moves pretty fast.”

I kicked Scout in the leg. “Stifle it,” I said, then smiled at Lesley. “Thanks for the update.”

“I could do some opp research if you want.”

Scout and I exchanged a puzzled glance. “Opp research?” she asked. “What’s that?”

“Opposition research. I could follow them around, eavesdrop, take notes. Maybe find something you could blackmail them with?”

“For a nice girl, Les, you’ve definitely got a dark side.”

Lesley smiled grandly—and a little wickedly. “I know. People look at me and they don’t really think I’m up to it. But I’m definitely up to it.”

“We will mos’ def’ keep that in mind,” Scout said. “But for now, since we’ve got an hour”—she paused to pick up the remote control for the small wall-mounted television—“how about a little oblivion?”

I gave her forty-five minutes before I headed back to my room to assemble my supplies.

I had no idea what we’d be doing in art studio—drawing, painting, ceramics,

collage—so I put together a little of everything.

First step, of course, was to take stock of the supplies I’d brought with me from home. A couple of sketch pads. Charcoal. Conté crayons. My favorite pencils, a sharpener, and a couple of gummy erasers. A small watercolor box with six tiny trays of color and a little plastic cup for water. Three black microtip pens I’d nabbed at the Hartnett College bookstore, where my parents had been professors.

(College bookstores always had the best supplies.)

I tried not to think about Sebastian or the things he wanted to talk to me about,

and instead focused on the task at hand. I put the supplies into a black mesh bag,

zipped it up, and threw the whole shebang into my messenger bag.

When I was ready to go, I headed out and locked my door behind me. The common room was empty again. Scout’s door was shut, and when I tried the knob,

it was locked.

Weird. Since when did Scout lock her door?

I knocked with a knuckle. “Hey, you okay in there? I’m heading out for studio.”

It took a second before she answered, “I’m good. Just about to head to study hall. Have fun.”

I stood there in front of her door for a few seconds, waiting for something more.

But she didn’t say anything else. What was she up to?

I shook my head and walked toward the hallway. I definitely did not need another mystery.

The surplus building was a steeply roofed box that sat behind the classroom building. The classroom building was pretty new, but the surplus building was definitely old—the same dark stone and black slate roof as the main building.

Maybe it had been a stable or a storage building when the nuns still lived at St.

Sophia’s.

I had to walk around the building to find the door. And when I opened it, I stared.

Small or not, the building definitely had pizzazz. It was one big room with an open ceiling all the way up to the pitched roof. Skylights had been cut into one side of the ceiling, so the room—at least earlier in the day—would have been flooded with light.

One wall was made of windows, the ceiling a high vault with huge crisscrossing wooden beams. A dozen or so standing wooden easels made a grid across the floor.

“You can take an easel, Parker.” I turned and found Lesley behind me, a canvas tote bag brimming full of supplies in her hand. For anyone else, I would have thought it strange that she hadn’t mentioned she was in art studio when we were in the common room. For Lesley—not so much.

She walked to an easel, then began pulling supplies and sketchbooks out of her tote and arranging them on a small shelf beneath her easel. I took the one beside hers.

“You’ll keep your easel for the year,” she said, arranging empty baby food jars and cups of pencils and brushes. “So you can unload your stuff and come back after study hall. The TAs usually keep a still life ready so you can practice drawing forms, or whatever.” She inclined her head toward a table at one end of the room.

“What’s a TA?” I asked, pulling out my own bag of pencils and sketch pads.

“Teaching assistant. They usually get an art major from Northwestern or Illinois Tech or whatever to teach the class.”

With great care, she organized her supplies, creating a little nest of tools around her easel. I didn’t have much to arrange, but I placed everything within arm’s reach,

put my bag on the floor, and took a seat on my stool.

The room filled after a couple of minutes, the rest of the small studio class taking their own easels. Just like in any other high school, the room was a mix of types.

Some looked preppy, some looked average, and some looked like they were trying really hard not to look preppy or average. There were girls I didn’t know, who I assumed were in the classes behind and ahead of me.

And when everyone had taken an easel and arranged their things, he walked in.

I kept blinking, thinking that my eyes were deceiving me, until he walked by—as if in slow motion—and gave me a tiny nod.

Daniel was my studio TA.

I bit back a grin as he walked to the front of the room, and began thinking of ways to break the news to a very jealous suitemate. And she wasn’t the only ones with eyes for His Blondness. The other girls’ gazes followed him as he moved, some with expressions that said they’d be happy to spend an hour drawing his form.

He turned to face us, then stuck his hands in his pockets. “So, welcome to studio art. I’m Daniel Sterling. I’ll be your TA this year.”

“There is a God,” whispered the grateful girl beside me.

“We’re going to spend the first few weeks on some basic representational exercises. Still lifes. Architecture. Even each other.”

Lesley and I exchanged a flat glance. It looked like she was as thrilled at the idea as I was—namely, not at all. I was perfectly happy with my body, but that didn’t mean I needed it to be the source of other people’s art.

“Today we’re going to start with some basic shapes.” He began to pick through a plastic milk crate of random objects, then pulled out a small lamp and its round lamp shade, a couple of wooden blocks, and three red apples. He draped a piece of blue velvet over the table, setting the blocks beneath it to create areas of different heights. Then he put the lamp and apples on the table and organized them into a tidy arrangement.

When he was done, he turned back to us. “All right,” he said. “Use whatever media you choose. You’ve got two hours. Let’s see what you’re made of.”

Drawing was a strange thing. Probably like other hobbies—basketball or cello playing or baking or writing—there were times when it felt like you were going through the motions. When you put pencil to paper and were aware of every dot,

every thin line, every thick shade.

At other times, you looked up from the page and two hours had passed. You lost yourself in the movement, in the quiet, in trying to represent on paper some object from real life. You created a little world where there’d only been emptiness before.

This was one of those times.

Daniel had come around a couple of times to offer advice—to remind me to draw what I actually saw, not just to rely on my memories of what the objects looked like,

and to remind me to use the tip of my pencil instead of mashing the lead into the paper—but other than those trips back to the real world, I spent the rest of the time zoned out, my gaze darting between the stuff on the table and the sketchbook in front of me.

That was why I jumped when he finally clapped his hands. “Time,” he said, then smiled at us. “Great job today.” When everyone began to pack up their supplies, he held up a hand.

“You didn’t think you were going to get out of here without homework, did you?”