Hexbound

There were groans across the room.

“Aw, it’s not that bad. Before we meet again, I want you to do a little Second City appreciation. Find a building in the area and spend an hour getting it on paper. You can use whatever materials you want—paint, ink, pencil, charcoal—but I want to see something representational when you’re done. I want you to think about line and shadow. Think about positive and negative space—what parts of space did the architect choose to fill? Which parts did he decide to leave empty?”

We waited for more, but he finally bobbed his head. “Now you’re dismissed.”

The girl beside me grumbled as she stuffed a small, plastic box of watercolors into her bag. “I liked him a lot better when he was just the pretty new TA.”

“Ah,” he said, suddenly appearing to walk past us. “But that’s not going to make you a better artist, is it?”

She waited until he’d passed, then raised hopeless eyes to me. “Do you think that’s going to hurt my grade?”

I glanced back at Daniel, who’d paused at the threshold of the door to talk to a student. He held her sketch pad in one hand and used the other one to point out various parts of her drawing.

“I think he’s going to be pretty fair,” I decided. What I hadn’t yet decided was whether he was here by accident . . . or on purpose.

I practically ran back to the suite after class was over, then slammed into Scout’s room.

I probably should have knocked.

She was on her bed and wearing gigantic headphones. She’d already changed into a bright green tank top and pajama bottoms, and in her hand was a hairbrush she was using as a microphone to belt out a Lady Gaga song at the top of her lungs.

I slapped my hands over my ears. Was Scout generally cool? Yes.

Unfortunately, she was also pretty tone-deaf.

She yelped when she saw me, then fell to her knees on the bed. She dropped the brush and whipped off the headphones. “Seriously—knocking?”

I chewed my lips to keep from laughing.

“Parker, if you so much as snicker, I will bean you with this brush.”

I turned my head into my shoulder to stifle the snort and winced when the brush hit my shoulder. “Ow,” I said, rubbing it.

Scout sniffed and put the headphones on the floor. “I spend my days in class and most of my nights saving the world. I’m allowed to have a little Scout time.”

“I know, I know. But maybe you could, you know, focus it in a more productive direction. Like drawing.”

“I don’t like to draw.”

“I know.” I shut the door behind us. “But you know who does like to draw?” Don’t you love a good segue?

“You?”

I rolled my eyes. “Other than me, goofus.”

“I give up.”

“Our intrepid leader. Daniel’s my studio teacher.”

“No. Freaking. Way.”

“Totally.” I dropped my bag and sat down on the edge of her bed. “He walks in,

and I was like, ‘Holy frick, that’s Daniel.’”

“You would say that. Is he good at drawing?”

“Well, I didn’t see a portfolio or anything, but since Foley hired him, I’d assume so.” And then I thought about what I’d just said. “Unless she hired him because he’s an Adept. Would she do something like that?”

Scout frowned. “Well, she does know about us. I wouldn’t put it past her to offer an Adept a job. On the other hand, the board of directors would have her head if she hired anyone less than worthy of her St. Sophia’s girls.”

“True. I can tell you this—he likes to give out homework in studio just like he does in the Enclave.”

“What do you have to do?”

“Draw a building downtown.” I pulled up my legs and crossed them. “I had an idea —I’m thinking about drawing the SRF building.”

“Really?” I saw the instant she realized what I was up to. “Your parents,” she said. “You think you might learn something?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. And Foley basically told me not to ask questions about my parents. But it seems like a way to get a good look at the building, maybe glance around inside, without causing trouble.”

Scout bobbed her head left and right. “That is true. I don’t know how they could connect you back with your parents, anyway.” She gestured toward my skirt. “They might guess you go to St. Sophia’s, but they’re practically next door. They probably see the uniforms all the time, so they wouldn’t think too much of it.”

“That sounds reasonable. You can actually come up with pretty good ideas when you put your mind to it.”

“Even though I’m not going to win a talent contest anytime soon?”

“Well, not at singing anyway.”

She hit me with a pillow. I probably deserved that.

“So, at lunch today, Jason didn’t ask me to Sneak.”

“Lils, you’ve barely even planned Sneak yet. Give it time. He’ll get there.”

“He did ask me out on Saturday.”

“OMG, you two are totally getting married and having a litter of babies. Ooh, what if that’s literally true?”

I gave her a push on the arm, then changed the subject. “Did Michael ask you to Sneak?”

“Not exactly.”

She sounded a little odd, so I glanced over at her. “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? Did it come up?”

“Yeah, I mean, we talked about it . . .”

It took me a minute to figure out what she was dancing around. “You asked him,

didn’t you?”

Her cheeks flushed. “Maybe that was discussed in a general sense.”

I poked a finger in her shoulder. “Ha! I knew you had a thing for him!”

I’d expected a look of irritation; instead, she was blushing.

“Oh, my God,” I said, realization hitting. “You guys totally made out behind the concrete things.”

“Oh, my God, shut up,” she said.

We spent the next couple of hours like true geeks. We studied trig, then rounded out the night with some European-history review, and I sent messages to my parents. I walked a weird line between missing them, worrying about them, and trying—like Foley had suggested—to keep them out of my mind. But I was surrounded by weirdness, and that just made me think of them even more. There was so much I wanted to tell them—about Scout and Jason, about being an Adept,

about the underground world I’d discovered in Chicago.

Maybe they already knew some of it. Foley had hinted around that they might know about the Dark Elite. But they didn’t know about Jason or firespell, and they certainly couldn’t know how my life had changed over the last couple of weeks. I wasn’t going to break it to them now—not over the phone or via text message and not when they were thousands of miles away. For now I’d trust Foley. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to check out the SRF building. After all, how much trouble could drawing a building get me into?

When it got late enough that my eyes were drifting shut, I packed up my stuff to head back to my room.

“You can sleep here if you want,” Scout said.

I looked up at her from my spot on the floor, a little surprised. I’d slept over before, when Scout had had trouble sleeping after her rescue. But I hadn’t done it in a few days, and I wondered if everything was okay. “You good?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m fine. We’re teenagers,” she reminded me. She uncurled her legs, then bent over the side of her bed and pulled out a thick blanket in a boxy plastic wrapping. It was the same one she gave me every time I bunked over.

“We’re not setting a precedent here or anything.”

“And they definitely don’t do bed checks or anything.”

“M.K. thanks her lucky stars for that,” Scout muttered.

“Seriously—that is grade A disturbing. I don’t want to think about the extracurricular field trips she’s taking.” I hitched a thumb toward the door. “I’m going to go throw on some pajamas.”

“Go for it.” Scout punched her pillow a couple of times, then snagged a sleeping blindfold from one of the bedposts. She slid it on, then climbed under the covers.

“Nice look.”

She humphed. “If I’m asleep when you come back, let’s keep it that way.”

“Whatever. You snore.”

“I am a very delicate sleeper. It complements my delicate beauty.”

“You’re a delicate dork.”

“Night, Lils.”

“Night, Scout.”

I woke up suddenly, a shrill sound filling the air. “What the frick?”

“Whoozit?” Scout said, sitting up in bed, the sleeping mask across her eyes. She whipped it off, then blinked to orient herself.

I glanced around. The source of the noise was one of the tiny paper houses on her bookshelves. It was fully aglow from the inside, and it sounded like a fire alarm was going off inside it.

Scout let out a string of curses, then fumbled out of bed. And I do mean fumbled —she got caught in the mix of blankets and comforters, and ended up on the floor,

half-trapped in quilts, before she managed to stand up and pluck the house from the bookshelf.

“Oh, crap,” she intoned, lifting up the house to eye level so that she could peer into it. When she looked back at me, forehead pinched, I knew we were in trouble.

“That’s my alarm. My ward got tripped.”

I stood up and walked toward her. “What does that mean, ‘My ward got tripped’?”

Scout closed her eyes, then pursed her lips and blew into the house’s tiny window. By the time she opened her eyes, the house was silent and dark again, as if its tiny residents had gone back to sleep.

She put it carefully back on its shelf, then looked at me. “Daniel’s been teaching me how to ward the basement doors—it’s supposed to keep the nasties out or send out an alarm if they make it through. You know, since they kidnapped me and all.”

“I do recall that,” I agreed supportively—and wondered if that was what she’d been working on in her room.

“This house was keyed to the vault door in the basement—the big metal one with the locks and stuff?”

“So the house is, what, some kind of alarm?”

She nodded, then grabbed a pair of jeans from her closet. “Pretty much. Now, go get dressed. We’re going to have to handle this.”

My stomach knotted, nerves beginning to build. “What do you think it is?”

She blew out a breath. “I don’t know. But I’m guessing it’s not going to be pretty.”

Unfortunately, I guessed she was right.

We’d both pulled on jeans, shirts, and sneakers to make our way downstairs. We’d decided we didn’t want to be captured by Reapers or rescued by Adepts—or worse —in silly pajamas. The school was quiet as we moved through the hallways,

probably not a surprise since it was nearly two o’clock in the morning. On the other hand, I half expected M.K. to jump out from behind a corner. I figured her being out on some secret rendezvous was only slightly less likely than the possibility that we’d soon be staring down half a dozen creeping monsters.

We made it through the Great Hall and labyrinth room, then through the door that led to the stairs. We stayed quiet until we’d made our way into the locked corridor that led down, after two staircases and a handful of hallways, into the basement. I’d taken this route before—the first time I’d followed Scout on one of her midnight rambles, actually. And we all knew how that had ultimately turned out.

“Do we have a plan of action here?” I quietly asked, tiptoeing behind Scout.

She adjusted the strap of her messenger bag. “If I’m as good as I think I am, we don’t need one.”

“Because your ward worked.”

“Not exactly. This was only my first time warding, so I’m not expecting much. But I also worked a little magic of my own. And if that works—I am officially da bomb.”

“Wow. You really went there.”

“I totally did.”

“What kind of magic did you work?”

“Well, turns out, Daniel’s a protector.”

“You are seriously stalking him, aren’t you?”

“Ha. You’d be amazed what you can find on the Internet. Anyway, a protector is a guardian angel type. His magic’s all about protecting breaches. But his magic works more like an alarm. I like to be a little more walk and a little less talk. A little less conversation and a little more action.”

I guessed her endgame. “You booby-trapped it, didn’t you?”

“Little bit,” she said, then stopped short. She glanced back at me and put a finger to her lips as we neared the final corridor. “I’ll go first,” she whispered. “You follow and firespell me if my hex didn’t work.”

I nodded. “Good luck.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said, and we moved.

The door was nearly twice as tall as I was. The entire thing was edged in rivets, and a huge flywheel took up most of the middle of the door, as did a giant steel bar.

But the bar and the flywheel and the fact that the door itself weighed a ton hadn’t stopped the two girls who lay on the floor in front of it, arms and legs pinned to their sides, rolling around on the floor.

I couldn’t stop my mouth from dropping open. “What the—”

“Oh, nice,” Scout smugly said. She walked into the corridor, hands on her hips,

and surveyed the damage. One of the girls wore a green-and-gold cheerleading uniform, her wavy, dark blond hair spilling out on the floor as she rolled around,

trying to unglue her arms and legs. The second girl was curvier and wore an oversized dark T-shirt and jeans over big, clunky shoes. She was pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

Realizing they weren’t alone, the Reapers took the opportunity to blister our ears with insults. Scout rolled her eyes. “Hey, this is a convent, Reapers. Watch your language.”

“Unmake this spell, Millicent Green,” spat out the cheerleader, half sitting up to get a look at us. “Right now.”

“You couldn’t pay me enough to unmake it, Lauren Fleming.” There was equal venom in Scout’s voice. Obviously, she and Lauren were acquainted. “What are you doing in our territory?”

The second girl lifted her head from the floor. “What do you think we’re doing here, genius?”

“Being completely and totally hexbound would be my first guess. Lily?”

Technically, I had no idea what “hexbound” was, but Scout had said she’d done a hex, and these two girls seemed like they were tied up with some kind of invisible magic, so I made an educated guess. “Certainly looks that way. How do you two know each other?”

“Millicent remembers the agony of defeat,” the second girl put in.

Scout’s lip curled. “There was no defeat. I forfeited the game because Lauren locked me in the green room.”

“Like that mattered. You would have lost anyway. I’d been training for six weeks straight.”

“Because your mom was your coach.”

“At least my mom was in the state at the time.”

The room went silent, and my gaze darted back and forth between the two of them. I was waiting for Scout to growl or hiss or reach out to rake her nails across Lauren’s face.

“So, what game?” I asked. “Basketball or softball or . . . ?”

“Quiz Club,” they simultaneously said.

I had to bite back a snicker, and got a nasty look from Scout.

She walked closer and prodded Lauren’s cheer shoe with a toe. “How did you get through the door?”

“How do you think? Your wards are crap.”

“It was locked the old-fashioned way.”

“Hello?” said the second girl. “I’m a gatekeeper? I pick locks?”

Lauren made a sound of irritation. I got the sense she wasn’t friends with her uncheerleadery teammate. On the other hand, Reapers probably didn’t care much about friendship when teaming up for infiltrations. They were evil, after all. Being BFFs probably didn’t figure into it.

“Frick,” Scout muttered. “I didn’t know they had a gatekeeper.”

“Clearly,” snarked out the apparent gatekeeper.

Scout rolled her eyes. “Let’s recall who’s spindled on the floor and who’s standing victoriously over you, shall we? Geez. There’s a hierarchy, ladies.”

“Whatever,” Lauren said petulantly.

“Yeah, well, you can ‘whatever’ this, cheer-reaper.” Scout began to clap her hands and stomp her feet in rhythm, her own little cheer. “Hey,” she said, “it’s getting cold in here. There must be some Reapers in the at-mo-sphere.”

Lauren made some really offensive suggestions about Scout’s mom. Did she cheer with that mouth?

“I’m going to ignore those very classless suggestions about my parentals,” she said. “Why don’t we go back to my first question? Why were you trying to break into St. Sophia’s?”

“We didn’t just try,” said the gatekeeper. “We accomplished .”

“Two feet inside the door hardly qualifies as accomplished, mi amiga. Unless you’d like your mouths hexbound as well, I suggest you talk.” Scout held up her hands and closed her eyes and began to recite some magical words. But since those words were “abracadabra” and “mumbo jumbo” and “hocus pocus,” I guessed she was playing chicken.

“You know why we’re here,” the gatekeeper quickly answered, her voice squeaking in her effort to get out the words.

“Me and my Grimoire?”

“Like you’re so freakin’ special,” Lauren muttered.

Scout squared her shoulders. “Special enough. My Grimoire is out of reach, and even if you got me, I’m sure as hell not going to go willingly. Did you two think you could just walk in here and carry me out?”

Lauren laughed. “Um, yes? Hello, hypnosis power?”

Scout moved closer and peered down at Lauren. “Ah, there it is,” she said,

pointing down at Lauren’s neck. I took a closer look. Around Lauren’s neck was a small, round watch on a gold chain.

“Have you ever seen those old movies where some evil psychiatrist hypnotizes someone by swinging their watch back and forth? She can do that.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s a pretty narrow power.” Not that it made me any less happy that her hands were bound. These two seemed like the type to write “loser” on your forehead in permanent market once they’d gotten you down.

“Very narrow,” Scout agreed with a wicked grin. “And you know what they say about girls with very narrow powers?”

“What’s that?”

Scout paused for a minute. “Oh, I don’t know. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d make it all the way through the joke.”

Lauren did a little more swearing. Gatekeeper girl tried to join in, but she just wasn’t as good at it.

“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted. “How can someone be dumber than a baguette?”

“It means you’re stupid.”

I thought back to my nearly perfect trig homework. “Try again.” But that just reminded me that we had class—including trig—in a few hours. Exhaustion suddenly hitting me in a wave, I worked to get us back on track. “What do you want to do now?”

Scout looked back at me. “Well, we’re in the convent, and they’re in the convent.

That’s two too many people in the convent.”

Five minutes later, we were dragging two squirming girls through the vault door and into the corridor behind it—and out of St. Sophia’s. They were hard to move, not just because they were fidgety, but because every time we gripped them near the shoulders they tried to bite us.

“Isn’t there a better way to do this?” I wondered, standing over Scout. “I mean, if you’d knocked them completely unconscious they’d be a lot easier to move.”

“Yeah, but we’d be leaving them completely at the mercy of whatever else might roam the tunnels at night. And that would be such a Reaper thing to do.”

Lauren growled.

We finally managed it by dragging them by their hexbound feet into the tunnel. But it wasn’t pretty, and the swearing didn’t get any better. Neither of them—especially not the cheerleader—was thrilled to be dragged through five or six feet of underground tunnel on their backs.

When they were on the other side of the door, Scout put her hands on her hips and looked down at them. “And what did we learn today, ladies?”

“That you suck.”

Scout rolled her eyes. I raised a hand. “While we’re here, I have a question.”

“Go for it, Lils. All right, cheer-reaper and gatekeeper—”

“I’m in the band.”

“Sorry?”

“You call her cheer-reaper, I figure you should call me by my title, too. I’m in the band. I play the French horn.”

Scout and I shared a grin.

“’Course you do,” Scout said. “Okay, cheer-reaper and French hornist, my friend here has a question for you.”

“Thanks,” I offered.

“Anytime.”

I turned toward them. “Have you two seen anything weird in the tunnels lately?”

“Oh,” French horn said, “you mean the rat thingies?”

I blinked. I hadn’t thought it was going to be quite that easy. “Well, actually, yeah.

You know anything about those?”

The French horn player huffed. “Well, of course we do. We—” She was interrupted by Lauren’s screaming. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!” And she didn’t stop there. She kept screaming and screaming. Scout and I both hitched back a little, then shared a wary glance. That kind of noise was surely going to attract attention.

“Shut it, Fleming,” Scout said, kicking her toe a little, then glancing at me. “That may be our cue to depart.”

“They know something,” I pointed out.

“I know something, too. I know we’re going to attract a lot of unwanted attention if they keep screaming. And then we have to make up some ridiculous explanation about how we heard screaming through the vents in our rooms, and we followed the sound back to the basement, and we found these girls lying on the ground and pretending to be tied up by invisible rope because they’re practicing for the regional mime championships.”

I blinked at her. “Is that explanation more or less believable than we woke up because two girls who are actually evil magicians tripped a magical alarm wired to a door in the basement we aren’t supposed to know about?”

Scout paused for a minute, the nodded. “Point made. Let’s go home. Ladies,

have a pleasant evening.”

Not surprisingly, Lauren stopped screaming. But that just meant the curses were a little less loud than they had been before.

We left a flashlight on the ground between them, then slipped through the door again. When we were both on the other side, we used all our weight to push the thing closed again, muffling the sounds of cursing that were coming from the other side. I took a step back while Scout spun the flywheel and slid the security bar into place, metallic cranking and grinding echoing through the corridor.

“They’ve seen the rat things,” I said.

“And if Lauren’s screaming means anything, they’ve done more than just that.

They know more than just that, which means the Reapers and the rats are definitely tied together. It wasn’t a coincidence that Detroit and Naya saw the slime outside that sanctuary.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at the closed door. “I also guess I have to try to ward the door again.”

“You can do it!” I said, giving her a chipper thumbs-up.

“Daniel could do it,” she said. “And without a spell. Me? He says, ‘Go for it,

Scout,’ and I have to rough out a few lines—hardly have time to pay attention to the meter, to the melody, the rhythm—ugh,” she said, and the irritation in her voice was really the only part of the monologue I understood.

“So, what does that mean? Dumb it down like you’re talking to a girl who’s only had magic for, like, a few weeks.”

She smiled a little, which had been the point. “You’ve seen me work my magic.

Putting together an incantation is hard work, and wards are harder than most.

There’s no physical charm—like the origami I used on the thingies—to boost the words. Daniel didn’t give me a lot of direction, and he certainly didn’t give me time to do it well. The ward won’t really keep out anyone with any skill, and the hex isn’t going to last much longer.” She glanced down at her watch. “Fifteen minutes or a half an hour, tops?”

Probably not enough time to find Daniel and get him into the basement, even if he was already in the Enclave. A blast of firespell wasn’t going to do much to the door,

and opening up the door again to firespell the Reapers into unconsciousness would just be a waste of time. They’d eventually wake up, and we’d still have doors with breach problems.

We needed stronger wards, and we needed them now.

I grinned slowly, an idea blossoming. “Maybe I can do for you what I did for Naya and Temperance.”

Scout tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, if I could funnel energy through Naya, maybe I could funnel it through you.

To strengthen the wards, I mean.”

“Huh,” she said, then looked at the ground, frowning as she considered the possibility. “So you’re thinking the trouble isn’t that the wards didn’t work, but that they weren’t strong enough to keep the Reapers out.”

I nodded. “I mean, you’re the expert on wards so you’d know better than me, but if we pump up the power, wouldn’t it make the ward harder to break through?”

“It might,” she said with a nod. “It definitely might. Do you need to recharge or whatever?”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“I’ll assume that’s a general yes, so we’ll do this and go back to sleep. What do I need to do?”

“What do you have to do to work your magic?”

“Remember the triple I?”

“Um, intent, incantation, incarnation?”

She nodded and held out a hand. I took it in mind. With her free hand, she pressed her palm to a flat spot on the door. She closed her eyes, and her lips began to move with words I couldn’t hear. The door began to glow, pale green light filling the corridor.

“Now,” she quietly said, her eyes still closed.

I closed my own eyes, and tried to imagine the power around me, the atomic potential in the air. I imagined it flowing through my fingers, then my arm, then across my body. I felt her jump when it reached her, and her fingers tightened on mine.

“You okay?”

“Keep it coming,” she gritted out.

“Try not to flinch,” I said, “and don’t try to fight it. Just let it flow across you and into the door. Let me do the work.”

Scout let out a muffled sound, but she kept her fingers tight on mine. She kept the current intact.

A low hum began to fill the air. I opened my eyes a little. The hum was coming from the rivets as they vibrated in their sockets. The green glow was also deeper now, the light more intense as Scout transmitted the magic into the door.

“How’s it coming?”

“I think we’re . . . almost there. I can feel it filling up. Sealing. Closing up the cracks.”

That was great, but it was late, and I was exhausted, and Scout wasn’t exactly a finicky magic eater. I could feel her capacity power, like a cavern of magical potential.

And that potential liked firespell.

“Okay, I think we’re done, Lily.”

I tried to pull back, to slow down the flood of power to a trickle, but it didn’t want to stop. Scout’s magic kept sucking more power, and I couldn’t close that door.

“Lily, we’re done here.”

“I can’t make it stop, Scout.”

The door began to pulse with green light. Off and on, off and on, like the world’s largest turn signal.

“Lily, I need you to do something. This is starting to hurt.”

I looked over at Scout. Her hair was standing on end, a punky blond-and-brown halo around her head.

“I’m trying, I swear.”

“You can do it, Lily. I believe in you.”

I closed my eyes and pretended the magic was a faucet and I was turning one of the knobs. Unfortunately, that imaginary knob felt like it had been welded closed. “I can’t get it!”

“Then we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way!”

I opened my eyes and looked at Scout. The door was beginning to emit a pulsing noise. Each time it glowed it put out an electrical roar. I had to yell over the sound to be heard. “What old-fashioned way?”

“On three, we pull ourselves apart! Agreed?”

I swallowed, but nodded. “On three!”

She nodded back, and we began the countdown. “One—two—and three!”

We yanked our hands apart, but it wasn’t easy. It felt like I was pulling back a twenty-pound concrete block. I managed to untangle my fingers from hers, but the power was still pouring out, and it wanted to move. Since it couldn’t flow into Scout anymore, it pushed her away—and me with it.

I flew down the corridor and hit the floor five or six feet away. I heard the echoing thump as Scout hit the floor in the other direction.

“Ow.”

Very slowly, I sat up, hands braced on the ground to push myself upright. “Oh,

crap, that hurt.”

“Seriously,” she said groggily, sitting up again, a hand on her forehead. It took a moment before she turned her head to look at me. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better. Are you okay?”

She checked her arms and legs. “Nothing broken, I think.”

One hand on the wall for support, I stood up, but had to wait until the room stopped spinning. “I have to say, that totally sucked.”

Scout tried to flatten down her hair, which was still sticking up in odd angles. “I guess our magics hate each other.”

“Or really like each other, since we had trouble prying ourselves apart. Either way, I don’t think we should do that again.”

“And we also probably should not tell Katie or Smith or Daniel that just happened.

Lecture,” she added in explanation.

Very, very slowly—my bones aching from the fall—I moved back to the door and reached out a hand to Scout.

“Definitely don’t need a lecture,” I agreed as I pulled her to her feet. “I do need fourteen or fifteen hours of sleep and a giant cheeseburger.”

“Aren’t you a vegetarian?”

“That’s my point.”

When we were both on our feet, we looked back at the door. It still pulsed like a severed heart in a horror film.

“You know, that’s really gonna be noticeable if someone comes down here.”

“I guess we could try to ward the door upstairs to keep people from coming down.”

I gave her an exceptionally dry look. “No way am I going through that again. Got a better idea?”

“Well, the firespell fades over time—I mean, people wake up after they get knocked unconscious with it. You did, anyway.”

“I love being a cautionary tale.”

“So maybe it works the same way here, too. Cop a squat.” Without waiting for me to move, she turned her back to the wall across from the door, crossed one foot over the other, and sat down on the floor.

“We’re going to wait it out?” I could hear the grumpy sleepiness in my voice. I felt bad about it, but it was late. I wanted to be curled up in bed—or even in a wrinkled blanket on Scout’s floor—fast asleep.

“Just until we’re sure the green is fading,” she said. “If we know it’s fading, that means it’s going back to normal. And if it’s going back to normal, we’ll sleep a lot better later.”

She had a point. And it would have been pretty irresponsible to just walk away.

Adepts were supposed to be a secret, but it wouldn’t be long before anyone who saw the door started asking questions.

“Fine,” I said, and sat down on the floor beside her. She immediately pulled out her cell phone and began texting.

“Daniel?” I wondered.

“Daniel,” she agreed. “We need to tell him about the breach, and we definitely need to tell him the Reapers know about the creatures. That raises all sorts of nasty questions.”

“Like?”

“Like whether they’re trying to domesticate them to use as some kind of weapon.”

I grimaced. “In the interest of my ever sleeping well again, let’s pretend that’s just not possible.”

When the texting was done, Scout put her phone away. She sighed, then dropped her head to my shoulder. “Does the door look any different to you now?”

“Not really. You?”

“Not yet.”

“We’ll just give it a few more minutes.”

If only.

There are nightmares, and then there are nightmares. You know the dream where you’re in class, but you totally forgot to take a shower and stuff? How about the dream where you wake up beside your best friend in the basement of a private school fifteen minutes before classes start?

Long story short, that dream ends with you running through the school in yesterday’s clothes in front of pretty much the entire junior and senior classes.

Luckily, the fact that we were nearly late for class kept us from having to explain to the dragon ladies what we’d been doing in the main building so early. But I heard Scout yell “Fell asleep studying!” three or four times before we were back in our rooms.

There was no time for a shower, so I cleaned up the best I could, brushed my teeth, and pulled on my uniform—plaid skirt, button-up shirt, fuzzy boots, and a cardigan. I pulled my hair into a topknot. My only accessory was the classic—my room key on its blue ribbon.

I met Scout in the common room, both of us pulling on messenger bags and hustling through the door. I handed over a smushed granola bar. She ripped into the plastic with her teeth, then stuffed the wrapper into her bag.

“If only the brat pack knew how glamorous we truly were,” she muttered, taking a huge bite of the bar. With her wrinkled skirt, untucked shirt, and mismatched sneakers, she didn’t look much better than I did.

“Yeah, it definitely looks like you were in a hurry. It’s not like you’d wear mismatched sneakers on purpose.”

She gave me a dry look.

“Okay, except in this particular instance because mismatched shoes look awesome,” I amended. “Truly an amazing fashion choice. You’re quite the trendster.”

Scout rolled her eyes and started down the hall again. “One of these days, you’re going to respect me.”

“Oh, I totally respect you. It’s your wardrobe I have issues with.”

Issues or not, I did a pretty good job of dodging the chunk of granola bar that came my way.

We stood there for a moment, horrified, our mouths gaping, but unable to look away.

It was a Thursday lunch in the St. Sophia’s cafeteria.

It was also the near end of what had been a long and unfortunately creative week in the St. Sophia’s kitchen: meatloaf with wasabi mustard sauce; vegetable mix with parsnips, whatever those were; and roasted potatoes—the funky purple ones.

Unfortunately, the end of the week meant leftovers. And, unfortunately, leftovers at St. Sophia’s meant “stew.”

The stew was one of the first things Scout had warned me about (yes—even before the Reapers and soul-sucking). This wasn’t your average stew—the stuff your mom made on a snowy weekend in February. It was a soupy mix of whatever didn’t get eaten during the week. Today, that meant parsnips and funky potatoes and chunky bits of meatloaf.

I was a vegetarian, but even I hadn’t been spared. There was a veggie version of the “stew” that included beans and rice and some kind of polygon-shaped green thing that didn’t look all that edible.

And the worst thing? It was only Thursday. Over the weekend, it was actually going to get worse. We had three-day-old Sunday stew to look forward to.

I pointed to a green thing. “What do you think that is?”

“It looks like okra. I think the stew is supposed to be gumboey.”

I curled my lip. “I’m not sure I’m up for brave food today.” I grabbed a piece of crusty bread and a bowl of fruit salad. Compared to my other options, I figured they were pretty safe. And speaking of bravery, I should probably get started on my drawing of the building.

“Hey, I’m going to head outside after class. I need to get my drawing in.”

“You still thinking about drawing the SRF building?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure what it’ll accomplish, but it’s the least I can do. I know I have to stay low-key in terms of investigating my parents, but I still have to do something

, right?”

Scout shrugged. “I think that’s up to you, Lils. You’re not even sixteen. You’re entitled to believe your parents told you the truth about themselves and their work—

that they told you everything you needed to know. I don’t think you have any obligation to play Nancy Drew for the Parker family, you know?”

“That’s pretty great advice.”

“I have my moments.”

“Hmm. Well, anyway, did you want to head outside with me?” I bobbed my head toward the window and the strip of blue fall sky I could see through it. “It looks pretty nice out there. Might be fun to get some fresh air.”

She shook her head. “Nah, that’s okay. I need to get some work done.”

“Schoolwork? Did I miss something in class?”

Crimson crossed her cheeks. “No. I’m just working on something.”

The words sounded casual, but the tone definitely didn’t. I didn’t want to push her,

but I wondered if this was going to be another one of those locked-door nights for Scout. If so, what was she doing in there? Not that it was any of my business . . . until she decided to tell me, anyway.

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll see you before dinner.”

“Go for it. And if you decide to break into the SRF building to figure out the goods on your parents, take your cell phone. You never know when you’re going to need it.”

A few minutes later, I stood on the front steps of St. Sophia’s, my sketch pad and pencils in my bag, ready to walk to the Portman Electric Company building and begin my investigation. I mean, my sketch.

But that didn’t make my feet move any faster. I felt weird about going there—not just because I was trying to be sneaky, but because I recognized I might learn things I didn’t want to know.

What if my parents were involved in something illegal? Something unethical?

Something that shamed them so much they had to hide it from me? Foley certainly thought it was something that could get them in trouble. At the very least, it was something I wasn’t supposed to know about . . . or talk about.

Problem was, my imagination was doing a pretty good job of coming up with worst-case scenarios on its own. St. Sophia’s was practically next door to the SRF,

and I’d seen the letter in which they tried to convince my parents to drop me off at St. Sophia’s. Plus, the SRF did some kind of medical research, and Foley had said my parents did genetic research.

And now . . . the Dark Elite had a medical facility?

That was the rock that sat heavy in my stomach, making me rethink all the memories of my time with my parents. After all, if they’d lied about their work, what else had they lied about?

I shook off the thought. That was just insecurity talking. They were my parents.

They were good people. And more important, they loved me. They couldn’t be wrapped up with the Reapers.

Could they?

I know Foley told me to keep my mouth shut. I know I wasn’t supposed to ask questions, to put them at risk. But I had to figure out what was going on. There was too much on the line. That was why I kept putting one foot in front of the other, until I was outside the stone wall that separated St. Sophia’s from the rest of the world and walking down the sidewalk toward the SRF building . . . at least until someone stepped directly in front of me.

I looked up into blue eyes.

Sebastian.

He spoke before I could even think of words to say.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Get out of my way.”

Instead of answering, he took a step forward. This was the closest I’d been to him, and being closer just made the effect that much more powerful. Maybe it was because he was one of the bad guys, but there was something undeniably wicked about him.

But I’d seen enough wicked. I gave him a warning look. “Don’t take another step.”

“I swear I won’t hurt you,” he said. “And we both know that if I’d wanted to hurt you, I could have already done it.” Ever so slowly, he lifted both hands, as if to show he wasn’t holding a weapon. But as long as he had firespell, his weapons were his hands.

“Why are you following me?”

“I told you why. Because we need to talk.”

“We have nothing to talk about.”

He glanced around, gaze scanning the sidewalk like he expected Adepts to attack any minute. And maybe they would. He was in our territory. “Not here. We have to talk somewhere more private.”

“You want me to go somewhere alone with you? Are you high?”

“No, I’m not high.” His voice was flat. “But I am serious.”

“So am I. I also know which side you’re on, and it’s not mine. Give me one reason why I should do anything other than blast you right where you’re standing.”

“I’ll give you two. First, we’re standing in the middle of a public sidewalk. You and I both know you aren’t going to do anything here. Second, I’ve already saved your life once, and I came to your rescue yesterday. I’ve given you a reason to trust me.”

He would play that card. And while I still didn’t trust him any farther than I could firespell him, I did wonder what he was up to.

“I’m going to need a better reason than ‘you didn’t kill me when you had the chance.’ ”

“Because there are things you need to know about firespell. And if it will ease your mind, I’ll use this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a flat, gleaming dog tag on a thin chain.

“A dog tag?”

“It’s a countermeasure,” he said, slipping the chain over his head. When the flat of the metal hit his shirt, he squeezed his eyes closed like he’d been hit with a shock of pain. When he looked up at me again, his stormy eyes seemed dull.

“It neutralizes magic,” he said, his voice equally flat. If he was telling the truth,

then it was like the magic had actually permeated his personality. Take the magic away, and the spark disappeared.

“It’s more effective as a protective measure if you’re the one wearing it,” he explained, “but I’m guessing you’re just suspicious enough to say ‘no’ if I ask you to put it on.”

“I’m careful enough,” I corrected. “Not suspicious.”

“Then both,” he said. “I can appreciate that.”

I gave him a look that I figured was plenty suspicious, partly because this guy was just likable enough to make me nervous. He wasn’t supposed to be likable.

Scout might have been the one to pull me into the world of Reapers, but Sebastian was the one who made sure I couldn’t get out again.

“Ten minutes, Lily,” he repeated.

I took a moment to consider his offer, then blew out a breath. One way or another, I was going to have to get off the street. If Scout—or anyone else from St.

Sophia’s or Montclare—saw me talking to him, there were going to be lots of questions.

“I’ll give you five minutes. And if I don’t like what you have to say, you can kiss consciousness good-bye.”

“I think that’s fair.” He glanced around, then nodded toward a Taco Terry’s fast food restaurant across the street. The restaurant’s mascot—an eight-foot-high plastic cowboy, lips curled into a creepy smile—stood outside the front door.

“Why don’t we go over there?”

I looked over the building. The cowboy aside, there were a lot of windows and a pretty steady stream of customers in and out—tourists grabbing a snack, or workers out for lunch. I doubted he’d try anything in the middle of the day in the middle of the Loop, but still—he’d supported Scout’s kidnapping and he’d put me in a hospital for thirty-six hours.

He must have seen the hesitation in my eyes. “It’s a public place, Lily. Granted, a public place with paper napkins and a really, really disturbing cowboy out front, but a public place. And it’s close.”

“Fine,” I finally agreed. “Let’s try the cowboy.”

Sebastian nodded, then turned and began to walk toward the crosswalk,

apparently assuming I’d follow without blasting him with firespell along the way.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my skirt and made the turn from the school grounds onto the sidewalk on Erie Avenue. I was willingly walking toward a boy who’d left me unconscious, without even a word of warning to my best friend.

But curiosity won out over nerves, and besides—in between his leaving me unconscious and asking me here, he had managed to save my life. In a manner of speaking, anyway.

The only way to find out what was up and why he’d helped me was to keep moving forward. So I took one more step.

We made our way across the street in silence. He held the door open for me, and we maneuvered through the tourists and children to an empty table near the window and slid onto white, molded plastic seats. Sebastian picked up the foot-high bobble-

headed cowboy—that would be Taco Terry—that sat on every table beside the plastic salt and pepper shakers. He looked it over before putting it back. “Weird and creepy.”

Not unlike the Reapers, I thought, and that was a good reminder that it was time to get things rolling. “I don’t have a lot of time. What did you need?”

“You have firespell.”

“Because of you,” I pointed out.

“Triggered by me, maybe, but I couldn’t have done it alone. You had to have some kind of latent magic in the first place.”

He lifted his eyebrows like he was waiting for me to confirm what he’d said. Scout had told me pretty much the same thing, but I wasn’t going to admit that to him, so I didn’t say anything. Besides, this was his gig. As far as I was concerned, we were here so he could give me information, not the other way around.

“How is your training going?”

If he meant training with firespell, it wasn’t going at all. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. “I’m doing fine.”

He nodded. “Good. I don’t want you to get hurt again because of something I’d done.”

“Why would you care?”

He had the grace to look surprised. “What?”

I decided to be frank. “Why would you care if I was hurt? I’m an Adept. You’re a member of the Dark Elite or whatever. We’re enemies. That’s kind of the point of being enemies—hurting each other.”

Sebastian looked up, his dark blue eyes searing into me. “I am who I am,” he said. “I stay with Jeremiah because I’m one of his people. I’m one of them—of us.

But you are, too.” But then he shook his head. “But we’re more than magic, aren’t we? Sure, it’s the very thing that makes us stronger—”

“But it also makes us weaker,” I finished for him. “It tears you down, breaks you down, from the inside out. I don’t know what Jeremiah tells you about that, but whatever superhero vibe you’re rocking now, it won’t last forever.”

“And how do you know that?” he asked. “Have you seen a member of the Dark Elite break down?”

I opened my mouth to retort that I didn’t need to see it, that I trusted Scout to tell me the truth. But while that was true, he made a good point. “No. I haven’t.”

“I’m not saying it happens or not. I’m just saying, maybe you should figure that out for yourself. In our world, there’s a lot of dogma. A lot of ‘this is how it is’ and ‘this is how it should be.’” He shook his head. “I don’t know how it works for your people,

and I’m not saying we’re going to be best friends or anything. I’m just offering some advice. Take the necessary time to figure out for yourself what’s good and bad in the world.”

We looked at each other for a few seconds, the two of us staring across a plastic table, until I finally had to look away. His gaze was too personal, too intimate,

even for a secret lunch hour meeting at Taco Terry’s.

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Part of it. I also wanted to warn you.”

That brought my eyes back to him. “About what?”

“I hear you stepped into the turf war between the vampires. Between the covens.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you stepped into the middle of something you shouldn’t have. But I also know you need to go back.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “I am not going back. They nearly tore us to pieces the last time.”

Sebastian shook his head. “You need to go back. And you need to ask the right questions.”

“The right questions about what?”

He looked away quickly, apparently not willing to share everything. But he finally said, “Find Nicu. Ask him about the missing.”

Scout had been kidnapped by the Dark Elite—was that what he meant? Had the Reapers taken more Adepts? “What do you mean, the missing?”

“That’s what you need to find out. I can’t ask the questions for you.”

“If you’ve hurt someone, I swear to—” He gave me a condescending look. “I’ve helped you. I’m helping you again.

Remember that.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “You just told me to go back to see the vampires while they’re in the middle of a turf war.”

“For your own good.”

I doubted that, but I had questions of my own. Might as well take this opportunity.

“While you’re being helpful, tell me about the new monsters in the tunnels. Slimy things? Naked? Pointy ears?”

“I know nothing.”

I shook my head; he’d answered too fast. “You’re lying. I know they have some connection to the Reapers.”

“I’m not part of that.”

“Wrong answer. You’re one of them,” I reminded him. “We know the monsters have been in at least two spots in the tunnels. Where are they coming from?”

He looked away. “Just talk to Nicu.”

That made me sit up a little straighter. “Nicu knows about the monsters?”

“That’s all I can tell you. I have my own allegiances to protect.”

“Well, at least you’re done pretending to be a good guy.”

Sebastian looked back again and leaned forward, hunching a little more over the table. “This isn’t a game, Lily. This is our world, and we are different from the rest of them. From the rest of the humans.”

“No,” I said. “We aren’t different. We have a gift—a temporary gift. It doesn’t make us different. It only makes us lucky.”

Shaking his head, he sat up straight again. “We have a temporary gift now. Did you know that? That the magic hasn’t always been temporary? We’ve been losing it, Lily. Over time. Slowly but surely, each generation has their magic for a little less time than the generation that came before it. And maybe that’s because we’re blending with humans. Maybe it’s some kind of magical evolution.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I do know we want a different future. We don’t want to just give up something that has the potential to help so many people.”

“You mean something that has the potential to hurt so many people.”

He shook his head. “All of this magic—have you thought about what it could do for humanity? Do you know the things we’ve already done for humanity? All those moments in human history where someone gets some amazing insight—the polio vaccine, the understanding of relativity—you think those moments are an accident?” He shook his head. “No way.”

“That doesn’t justify what you have to do to keep the magic. If we’re losing it,

we’re losing it. We need to accept that and be done with it. It’s not an excuse to use people to keep the magic longer than nature wants you to have it.”

“You think no cost is worth the price,” he said. “I disagree.”

“Your cost is the lives of other humans.”

“The cost for our good deeds—for saving millions by our contributions—is a bit of one person. The many are more valuable than the one. We believe that.”

I just shook my head. There wasn’t much chance I was going to agree with him however well he justified it. I looked up at him again. “Lauren and some gatekeeper girl paid us a visit last night.”

His eyes went hugely wide. “Last night?”

I nodded. “You want to tell me why?”

“I don’t know,” he began, but before I could object, he held up his hands. “I don’t.

It could be Scout. Jeremiah was interested in her.”

“Because she’s a spellbinder?”

“Maybe.”

“She’s off limits. Permanently,” I added, when he looked like he was going to object. “I’ve got firespell, and I know how to use it. Any more Adepts come sniffing around St. Sophia’s looking for her or her Grimoire or whatever else, and we won’t just leave them hexbound in the tunnels.”

“You’ve turned vicious.”

“Like you said, this isn’t a game.”

“At least you’re listening to part of it,” he muttered. Then he lifted the countermeasure and pulled it over his head, relief clear in his face when he placed it on the table. “I want to show you something. Hold out your palms.”

I gave him a dubious expression, which lifted a corner of his mouth.

“You’re being guarded by a plastic cowboy, and we’re in a restaurant full of people.” He put his hands on the table, opening and closing them again until finally,

eyes rolling, I relented.

And felt a little bit guilty about it.

I put my hands on the table, palms up. Slowly, he cupped my hands in his long fingers, then curled my fingers into fists. My skin went pebbly, the hair at the back of my neck lifting at his touch.

“You have to learn to control firespell,” he said, voice low. “But when you can,

you’ll harness elemental powers.” His hands still wrapped around my fists, my palm began to warm from the inside.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m teaching you.” His voice was low, lush, intimate again. Slowly, he began to lift his hands from mine, like he was making a shield over my hands.

“Open your palms.”

A centimeter at a time, I uncurled my fingers. There, in each of my hands, was a tiny jumping spark of green. Aware of our surroundings, I stifled a gasp, but raised my confused gaze to his as he continued to shield the sparks from public view.

“You’ve seen the broad shot firespell can give you,” he said. “You’ve learned how to fan the power out. But you can pinpoint the power, as well.”

He tilted my hands so that my palms were facing, and the edges of my hands were against the table. And then, ever so slightly, he began to move my hands from side to side. The sparks followed suit, the momentum pushing them back and forth between my hands like the birdie in a game of badminton.

And just as quickly, it was over. He pressed my hands together again, the two sparks—like they were just a quirk of static electricity—somehow dissipating. He pulled his hands away again. I opened my palms, rustling my fingers as I searched for some hint of the spark.

“The power is yours to control,” he said, sliding the countermeasure into his pocket again. “Yours to manipulate. But you must be open to the power and your authority over it. It’s not always an easy burden to bear, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t wield it.”

He looked at his watch. “I have to go.” He slid to the end of the booth and stood up.

“I still don’t know what you did. How you gave me that spark.”

“The spark is yours. I just brought it out. Remember that. You are different, you know.”

Stubbornly, I shook my head. “Not different,” I said again. “And only lucky for a little while. We’re willing to let it go. Are you?”

He looked away, but I had one more question. “Sebastian.”

He glanced back.

“How did you know I was going to be outside?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t. I just got lucky.”

Without elaborating, he turned and walked into the crowd of men, women, and children waiting for their tacos. The crowd—and then the city—swallowed him up again.

I sat there for a moment just processing the meeting, rubbing the tips of my fingers against my palm. I could still feel the tingle there, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I rubbed my hands against my skirt, as if to erase the feeling. Something about it—

about him—just made me uneasy.

“Probably has something to do with the fact that he’s my sworn enemy,” I mumbled, then slid out of the booth myself. I walked back across the street and toward the school.

I couldn’t help but wonder about Sebastian’s motivations. He said he was concerned about me—but he didn’t really have any reason to be. Was he flirting? I doubted it, and even if he was, no, thank you.

Was it because he’d given me firespell? Had the magic created some kind of bond between us that I didn’t know about? I made a mental note to ask Scout about it . . . without telling her why I was asking. I might eventually need to spill Sebastian’s interest in me, but I wasn’t going to do that now. There was no reason, as far as I could see, to raise the alarm bells.

By the time I returned, my secretly empty sketchbook in hand, Scout was in the common room, ready to head out for dinner.

To be honest, seeing her made me nervous. I still wasn’t sure what I should tell her. After all, I’d willingly had a meeting with a Reaper. Granted, a Reaper who’d saved my life, but given her experiences, I wasn’t sure she’d care much about the difference. I didn’t want to keep a secret from her, but I also didn’t want the lecture.

So I decided to let it ride. I kept the dinner convo light, and steered away from all things darkly elite.

Study hall followed dinner, and as soon as we got back to the suite, Scout hied off to her room. She walked in, and with an apologetic glance back at me, started closing her door.

“Everything okay?”

“Yep. Just some work to do.”

Okay, this was, what, the second time this week she’d locked herself in her room? “What are you working on?”

“Just some spells. Nothing personal. I just need quiet and . . . you know . . . to concentrate.”

“Okay,” I said. I watched her disappear into her room, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. Was I supposed to worry about her? Give her privacy? Break down the door to make sure she was okay? I mean generally, I’d be all for having time to oneself, but this girl had been kidnapped. I didn’t want to leave her alone if she was in there being held at spell-point by a Reaper.

“She’s fine, you know.”

I glanced back. Lesley stood in her doorway, the bow to her cello in hand.

I didn’t want to talk about Scout within earshot, so I walked over to Lesley’s room.

“What do you mean?”

She plucked a tiny piece of lint from the bow. “She did the same thing earlier. She seems fine, though.”

“Huh,” I said. “Did you notice anything odd?”

“She has a nose ring. And her hair is dyed two colors.”

Okay, Lesley did have a point there.

“But I’m not sure how you are.”

My eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

She tilted her head to the side and gave me an up-and-down look. “You look weird. What’s going on?”

Was she really that astute? Or was I sending out some kind of “I just had a secret meeting with a Reaper” vibe? I shrugged and hoped it looked nonchalant.

“Nothing. Just. You know. Being me.”

She didn’t look convinced, but when she shrugged, I figured she was moving on.

In any event, time to change the subject. “So, I’m gonna work on my drawing for studio. How’s yours coming along?”

Lesley shrugged. “I’m done.”

“Already? We don’t have class again until next week.”

“I’m not running secret missions at night. I had time.” She turned on her heel and headed back into her room. “And now it’s time for practice,” she said and shut the door behind her.

You had to admire that kind of focus.

Since Amie’s room was empty and Lesley’s cello-playing made a pretty good soundtrack to creativity, I grabbed my sketchbook and started drawing. Sebastian might have interrupted my afternoon plans, but he wasn’t going to take over my evening.

Scout’s room was empty when I woke up the next morning. I showered and pulled on my plaid, grabbed my bag, and headed to the cafeteria. I found her at the end of a long table, surrounded by empty chairs. There was a tray in front of her, and a half-eaten muffin on the tray. A couple of notebooks were open beside it.

I plucked a box of chocolate milk and a carrot-raisin muffin from the buffet, then took the seat across from her. “You got an early start.”

She glanced up from the notebook. “Yeah. Sorry—was I supposed to wait for you?”

I pulled out a raisin from the muffin and dropped it on the tray. I liked carrots, but raisins were just weird. Like little wrinkly fruit pebbles. No, thank you.

“Well, we didn’t have a contract or blood oath or anything, but you usually wait for me. Should I ask what you’re working on, or is it secret, too?”

She blew out a breath. “Not secret. Just a spell.”

Three more raisins hit the deck. “I see,” I said, although I really didn’t. “How’s it coming along?”

“I’m not really sure.”

Since she wasn’t playing chatty, I finished cleaning out my muffin and downed the bit that remained. When the bell rang, we grabbed our books, dumped our trash,

and headed out to pretend to be normal high school juniors.

I thought about Sebastian pretty much all morning long. I didn’t mean to; he just kept popping into my head. I felt pretty weird about that. I was talking to Jason, after all.

And when I got a text message from Jason with the deets about our first official date, I felt that much worse.

“FOR OUR DATE SATURDAY—HOW ABOUT LUNCH?” he asked.

“LUNCH WORKS,” I texted back.

“ANY PREFS?” he asked.

I thought about it for a second, but decided I wasn’t picky. As long as we got out of St. Sophia’s, I’d be happy. “UR PICK,” I told him.

“IF I COULD, I’D PICK YOU,” he said. I swooned a little.

And speaking of secrets, since I’d been interrupted yesterday, I still had art studio homework and Sterling Research Foundation business. Mom and Dad business.

After morning classes, I invited Scout to head outside with me. She said no again, and since she was pretty well focused on whatever spell she was working on, she didn’t seem that worried about the fact that I was leaving her alone at lunch again. And this time, I really did plan to be alone. I put a couple of sketch pads and my watercolor kit into my bag, firmed up my courage, and headed out.

The sky outside was overcast, like a gray blanket had been tossed over the city.

And because of the clouds, there weren’t any shadows. It made everything seem a little weird—a little flatter than before. The St. Sophia’s flag hung limply above the school, no wind to stir it up.

I started down the street, walking past the bank and slowing when I reached the STERLING RESEARCH FOUNDATION Sign. For a couple of minutes, I stood outside and made myself focus on the architecture. The shape of the windows. The lines of the building. The little details that the original architect had put into it.

Because I really did have an assignment to do, I made myself think about shapes and shades, and not about the stuff that might lurk inside it.

The information.

But I was here, and I had a chance. I made a split-second decision, then brushed my fingers against the SRF sign, like that little touch could give me luck. And then I walked inside.

A bell rang when I pulled open the front door. The receptionist, who sat behind a long wooden desk, glanced up. She looked pretty young, with short, curly blond hair and blue eyes. The nameplate on her desk read LISA. She took in my plaid skirt and St. Sophia’s hoodie, then smiled kindly.

“Hi there. You must be from the school down the street?”

I nodded, walking slowly toward the desk so that I could get a sense of the reception area. Although the building was squat and old-school on the outside, the interior was bright and modern, with lots of sharp lines and edgy furniture. There was a closed door behind the reception area, and another one on the left side of the room behind an L-shaped sofa.

I reached the desk, then tugged on my satchel. “Yeah, I am. I’m Lily. I’m in an art studio, and we’re supposed to study a building in the neighborhood. Would it be okay if I draw yours?”

“Oh, sure, that’s fine.”

“I just didn’t want you to think I was snooping around or anything.” Although I totally am, I silently added.

“It’s no problem. I’m Lisa, so if anyone gives you any trouble, just find me, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks a lot.” I felt a prickle of guilt that she was being so nice.

It’s not like I had bad intentions, but I wasn’t being exactly truthful, either.

After we exchanged a smile, I began walking to the front door. But then I stopped,

and I didn’t know what I was going to say until the words were out of my mouth.

“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, what kind of things do you research here?”

“Oh, we don’t actually do research. We’re a foundation—we sponsor other people’s research.”

Nerves lit through my stomach. I was getting closer, and I knew it. “Oh, yeah?

That sounds cool.”

“It’s very interesting,” she agreed. “We fund scientific research projects all over the world.”

Of course they do, I thought, then smiled again. “Thanks again for your time.”

“Anytime,” she said, then looked over at her computer monitor again.

That was when Lisa’s phone rang. “Wow,” she said after she’d picked it up. “You finished faster than I thought you would. I’ll be right up to get it.” The handset went down, and she slid out of her chair and from behind her desk, then trotted to the stairs, where she disappeared through a second-floor door.

I glanced back at her desk.

Crap. You only live once, right?

When the upstairs door closed behind her, I made my move. I skittered behind her desk, put a hand to the door behind it, and peeked inside.

It was an office, and a nice one. My heart thudded when I read the nameplate on the desk: WILLIAM PERRY.

Someone named William had signed the letter to my parents on SRF letterhead —the letter that encouraged them to send me to St. Sophia’s and not tell me what they were working on. If this was his office, he was an SRF bigwig—the head of the foundation, maybe.

I wasn’t sure how much time I’d have before Lisa came back, so I glanced around to see what could be checked quickly. There were framed diplomas on one wall, and the opposite wall held a desk with a tall credenza behind it.

There was a computer on the desk.

“Bingo,” I quietly said. I peeked back into the hallway to make sure the coast was clear, then moved in for a look at the computer monitor.

None of the programs was on, but the guy had a really messy desktop. There were icons everywhere, from files to Internet links to random programs. I scanned them quickly—I surely had only a moment before she came back downstairs again —and decided on his e-mail program.

When it loaded, the first message in the queue was from Mark Parker—my dad —and the subject line read, “DNA Trials—Round 1.”

My hand shaking, I opened it.

“Dear William,” it read. “To follow up from our last call, we’re beginning to pull in the data from the first round of trials. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing the DNA combinations we’d hoped to see. We’re still hopeful some adjustments in the component samples will give us positive results in this round, but adjustments mean more time. We don’t want to push the schedule back any further than necessary,

but we think the investment of time is worth it in this case. Please give us a call when you have time.” The message was signed “Mark and Susan.”

Somehow, over the thudding of my pulse in my ears, I heard the clacking of Lisa’s footsteps in the lobby. I closed the program, ran away from the desk, and held up my paintbrush.

She looked inside Perry’s office, worry in her expression. “What are you doing in here?”

I smiled brightly and held my paintbrush up. “Sorry. I pulled this out and dropped it.

It rolled in here. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly relieved. “Well, let’s get you back into the lobby.”

When I was back in her safety zone, she took a seat behind the desk and gave me a thin smile. “Good luck with your drawing,” she said, but she didn’t sound very enthused. I might have had an excuse for being in the office, but some part of her wasn’t buying it. Time to get out.

“Sure. Thanks again for your help. Have a nice day.” I practically skipped out of the building, even though the urge to run back into the room was almost overwhelming. My parents had been on the computer in Perry’s office, talking about research—and clearly not the philosophical kind.

I walked outside, heart still beating wildly, and headed to an empty covered bus stop bench. I took a seat and took a moment to process what I’d seen.

Fact—my parents knew Foley. She admitted they knew each other, and I’d seen a letter they’d written to her.

Fact—that letter had been written on SRF stationery. That meant my parents were connected to the foundation, and that connection was strong enough that they got to use the letterhead.

Fact—my parents had talked to William Perry about “DNA” and what sounded like experiments. That meant my parents and Perry were still in contact, and they were giving him updates about their work. Whatever that was.

Conclusion—my parents weren’t just philosophy professors, and they were definitely researching something.

But what? And even if you put all those facts together, what did they mean? And what did they have to do with my being at St. Sophia’s?

And then the lightbulb popped on.

There was one more fact I hadn’t considered—Scout and I had snuck into Foley’s office one night to return a folder stolen by the brat pack. While we were there, we found the letter from William to my parents. He’d also written something like he’d “inform Marceline.”

William knew Foley, which meant that if I wanted more facts, she was the next person on my list. And although she’d cautioned me about digging too deeply, it could hardly hurt to talk to her about things, could it? After all, she was in the middle of the mystery just like I was. Realizing my next step, I walked out of the bus stop and back toward the convent. The school bells began to ring just as I reached the front door of the convent, but I ignored them.

I wasn’t going to class.

I walked through the main building and into the administrative wing. Her office was at the end of the hall, MARCELINE D. FOLEY Stenciled across the open door in gold letters. A sturdy-looking woman stood inside, dressed in black, clipboard in hand. One of the dragon ladies.

I made eye contact with Foley, who sat behind her desk, and stood a few feet away while she and the woman finished their discussion—something about tuition billing issues. When they were done, the woman walked past me. She looked at me as she passed, but didn’t offer a smile, just a tiny nod of acknowledgment.

My stomach knotted, but I made myself walk to the threshold of the door. I stayed there until Foley looked up at me.

“Ms. Parker. Shouldn’t you be in class right now?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“About?”

“My parents.”

Alarm passed across her face, but only for a second. And then she looked like the headmistress once again. “Come in, and close the door behind you.”

I walked inside and shut the door, then sat down in one of the chairs in front of her desk, my bag across my lap.

“I know you told me to think hard before I asked too many questions about my parents. But like we talked about, I know they’re connected to the Sterling Research Foundation.” I paused, gathering my courage to make my confession. “I went there a few minutes ago. I’m going to draw the building for my studio class. I went inside to ask permission, and kind of got a glance at a computer.”

“Kind of?” she repeated, suspicion in her voice.

I ignored the question. “I found an e-mail about my parents. It was to William, the head of the SRF, and it was all about their research. Something about DNA results and trials and what they were going to do in the future.”

Foley waited for a moment. “I see,” she said. “Anything else?”

“Anything else? Isn’t that enough? I mean, I’ve confirmed they’re not doing philosophical research. Or not just doing philosophical research. They talked about DNA, so I guess that means genetic research.”I stopped. “They’ve been lying to me.”

“They’ve been protecting you.”

I shook my head. “They’re in Germany, but even if they were here right now, I’d feel so far away from them.”

“Lily.” Her voice was kind, but stern. “I am not privy to the details of your parents’ work. But I know that they’re doing important work.”

“What kind of important work?”

She looked away. A dark knot of fear began to curl in my belly, but I pushed it down. “They work for the SRF?”

“The SRF funds their research.”

“Why did the SRF give them advice about sending me here?”

“It suggests the SRF rendered advice about protecting you from the nature of their work or the circle of those who also engage in it.”

That knot tightened, and I had to force out the words. “Why would they do that?”

She gave me a flat look.

“Because it has something to do with the Dark Elite.”

Her lips pursed tight.

My legs shook so badly I had to lock my knees to stay upright. The Dark Elite were doing some kind of medical procedures. My parents were doing some kind of DNA experiments. Were they part of the Dark Elite?

“Do they know I have firespell?” I asked, and I could hear the panic in my voice.

“Do they know I’m involved now?”

She sighed. “They receive regular updates about you and your safety.”

“And that’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“That’s all I can tell you. That’s all I’m allowed to tell you,” she added, as I started to protest. “Just as there are rules of engagement for you as an Adept, there are rules of engagement for me as—”

“As what?”

“As the headmistress of this school,” she primly said.

I shook my head and glanced over at one of the walls of books as tears began to slide down my cheeks. “This really sucks.”

“Ms. Parker—”

“No, I’m sorry, but it sucks. They’re my parents. I know less about them than half the people on this block in fricking Chicago, and the stuff I do know is all lies and secrets and half-truths.”

Her jaw clenched. “I believe it’s time for you to return to class, Ms. Parker,

before you say things that you’ll regret and that will result in demerits and punishment.”

I opened my mouth, but she was up and out of her chair before I could say anything.

She tapped a finger onto the desktop. “Regardless of your concerns about your parents, you are at my institution. You will treat this institution and this office with respect, regardless of the circumstances that brought you here. Is that understood?”

I didn’t answer.

“Is. That. Understood?”

I nodded.

“Life, Ms. Parker, is very often unfair. Tragedies occur every second of every minute of every day. That your parents saw fit to protect you with certain omissions is not, in the big scheme of things, a substantial tragedy.” She looked away.

“Return to class.”

I went back to the classroom building. But I walked slowly. And before I even made it out of the admin wing I ducked into one of the alcoves and pulled out my phone.

Sure, I was equal parts mad at my parents, worried for their safety, and sad about whatever it was they were doing—and that they’d lied to me about it—but mostly I felt very, very far away from them.

“ARE YOU OKAY?” I texted my dad.

I sat with the phone in my hands, staring at the screen, wondering why they weren’t answering. Were they hurt? In the middle of doing evil things . . . or debating whether to tell me the truth about those evil things?

Finally, I got a message back. “WE’RE GREAT. HOW ARE CLASSES?”

I gazed down at the screen, trying to figure out what to ask him, what to say, how to form the right question . . . but I had no clue what to say.

How do you ask your parents if they’re evil?

I closed my eyes and rested my head against the cool stone behind me. You didn’t ask, I finally realized. You held off until you knew the right thing to say, until the question couldn’t be delayed any longer. You held off so you weren’t creating unnecessary drama that was only going to cause trouble for everyone.

Tears brimming again, I set my thumbs to the keyboard. “BORING. TTYL.”

“LOVE YOU, LILS,” he sent back.

Nobody ever said growing up was easy.

Scout could see something was wrong when I walked into class. But it was Brit lit,

and Whitfield, our teacher, watched us like a hawk. She took it as a personal insult if we weren’t as enthralled by Mr. Rochester as she was. So she skipped the notes and conversation, and instead pressed a hand to my back. A little reminder that she was there, I guess.

When we were done with class for the day, we headed back to the suite, but I still wasn’t ready to talk about it.

“SRF?” she asked, but I shook my head. I was still processing, and there were things I wasn’t yet ready to say aloud.

We did homework in her room until dinner, and she let me pretend that nothing had happened, that my afternoon hadn’t been filled with questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.

I took what Foley said about real tragedy to heart. I knew what she meant, totally got her point. But if my parents were members of the Dark Elite, how could things get worse than that? If they were helping some kind of medical work or research for the DE—if they were trying to help people who were hurting kids—how was I ever supposed to be okay with that?

I had no idea. So I kept it bottled up until I could figure out a plan, until I could figure out the questions to ask, or the emotions I was supposed to feel.

Eventually, we went to dinner. Like I predicted, you know what was worse than Thursday lunch at the St. Sophia’s cafeteria?

Friday dinner in the St. Sophia’s cafeteria.

We stood in line, trays in hand, for a good minute, just staring at the silver dish of purple and brown and white and orange mess, grimaces on our faces.

Without a word, Scout finally grabbed my tray, stacked hers on top of it, and slid them both back into the stacks at the end of the line. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to be a few inches taller with, like, crazy long legs, but there’s no way I hate myself enough to put that stuff in my body again.”

I didn’t disagree, but my stomach was rumbling. I’d skipped lunch for my SRF visit. “So what now?”

She thought for a second, then bobbed her head. “Mrs. M,” was all she said, and away we went.

I had no clue what that was supposed to mean. I still had no clue when she dragged me into Pastries on Erie, a shop a few blocks down from St. Sophia’s.

(Thank God for Friday nights and a respite from the convent . . . at least during the daylight hours.)

One entire wall of the bakery was filled by a long glass case of cakes, desserts,

tarts, and cookies of every shape and size. A dozen people stood in front of it,

pointing to sweets behind the glass or waiting to make their orders.

“Pastries?” I wondered quietly. “I was hoping for something a little more filling.”

“Trust me on this one, Parker,” she whispered back. “We’re not buying retail today.” She waved at the tall teenager who was dishing up desserts. “Hey, Henry.

Is your mom around?”

The boy waved, then gestured toward a back door. “In the back.”

“Is she cooking?” Scout asked hopefully.

“Always,” he called out, then handed a white bakery box over the counter to a middle-aged woman in a herringbone coat.

“Din-ner,” Scout sang out, practically skipping to the beaded curtain that hung over the door in the back of the bakery.

I followed her through it, the smell of chocolate and strawberries and sugar giving way to savory smells. Pungent smells.

Delicious smells.

My stomach rumbled.

“Someone is hungry,” said a lightly accented voice. I looked over. In the middle of an immaculate kitchen stood a tall, slender woman. Her hair was long and dark and pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wore a white jacket—the kind chefs wore on television.

“Hi, Mrs. M,” Scout said. “I brought someone to meet you.”

The woman, who was dropping sticks of butter into a giant mixer, smiled kindly.

“Hello, someone.”

I waved a little. “Lily Parker.”

“You go to school with our Scout?”

I nodded as Scout pulled out a chair at a small round table that sat along one wall.

“Cop a squat, Parker,” she said, patting the tabletop.

Still a little confused, I took the seat on the other side of the table, then leaned forward. “I thought we were going to dinner?”

“Keep your pants on. Now, Mrs. Mercier is Henry’s mom. She’s also part of the community.”

That meant that while Mrs. Mercier wasn’t an Adept, she knew Adepts and Reapers and the rest of it existed.

“And,” Scout added, “she’s one of the best chefs in Chicago. She was trained at some crazy-fancy school in Paris.”

“Le Cordon Bleu,” Mrs. Mercier said, walking toward us with a tray of flatbread.

“And she enjoys feeding Scout when her parents are out of town. Or when St.

Sophia’s serves stew.”

“And when you add those together, you get pretty much always,” Scout said matter-of-factly, tearing a chunk from a piece of bread. “Warm, warm,” she said,

popping it between both hands to cool it off.

“Which is pretty much always,” Mrs. Mercier agreed, smoothing a hand over Scout’s hair. “I have three boys. Scout did a favor for my youngest, so I do favors for Scout.”

I assumed that favor was why she’d become a member of the community.

Scout handed me a chunk of bread. I took a bite, then closed my eyes as I savored it. I think it was naan—the kind of flatbread you found in Indian restaurants —but this was hot, fresh, right-out-of-the-oven naan. It was delicious.

“Anything particular you’d like to sample tonight?” Mrs. Mercier asked.

Scout did a little bow. “You’re the expert, Mrs. M. Whatever you’ve got, we’d love to sample. Oh, and Lily’s a vegetarian.”

“You’re in luck,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the stoves behind her.

There were pots and pans there, which must have been the source of the delicious smells. “We made dal with potatoes. Lentils and potatoes,” she explained. She put a hand on my shoulder and smiled kindly. “Is that okay with you?”

“That sounds really great. Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome. Any friend of Scout’s is a friend of mine.”

Mrs. M plated up a heaping mound of rice topped by the saucy lentils and chunky potatoes, and brought us glass cups of dark, rich tea that tasted like cinnamon and cloves. She pulled up a chair as we ate, crossing her long legs and swinging an ankle, arms crossed over her chef jacket, as Scout filled her in on our last few weeks of adventures. The dinner was amazing—even if stew hadn’t been our only other option. And it felt normal. Just the three of us in the kitchen of a busy bakery,

eating dinner and catching up.

It was clear that Mrs. M loved Scout. I’m not sure what specific thing had brought them together—although I assumed the youngest Mercier had been targeted by a Reaper and that Scout had helped. That was, after all, the kind of thing we did in Enclave Three.

When we were done with dinner, Mrs. Mercier walked us back to the front of the bakery. The workday was over, so the bakery was closing up. The OPEN sign on the door had been flipped, and Henry stood in front of the case, spraying it with glass cleaner and wiping it down.

Mrs. M gave Scout a hug, then embraced me as well. “I need to get a cake ready for tomorrow. Take back some snacks for yourselves and your suitemates, if you like.” She disappeared into the back room, leaving me and Scout staring at a good twenty feet of sugar-filled glass cases.

“Holy frick,” I said, trying to take in the sight. I wasn’t really even hungry, but how was I supposed to pass up a choice like this? I thought of my dad—it was just the kind of decision he’d love to make. He probably would have spent ten minutes walking back and forth in front of the case, mulling over flavors and calories and whether such-and-such would be better with coffee or wine.

A stop at a doughnut place usually took twenty minutes, minimum.

Scout looked equally serious. Her expression was all-business. “Your mission,

Parker, should you choose to accept it, is to select an item from the bakery case.

It’s a difficult choice. The perils are many—”

“You are such a geek,” Henry said, the glass squeaking as he wiped it down.

“Whatever,” Scout said, tossing her head. “You’re a geek.”

“Mm-hmm,” he said doubtfully. He put his bottle of cleaner and a wad of paper towels on top of the bakery case, then walked around behind it. “All right, doofus.

What do you want for dessert?”

Scout leaned toward me. “Whatever you get—I’m eating half of it.”

“Good to know,” I said, then pointed at a sandwich made of two rings of pastry stuffed with cream and topped with almonds. “I’ll take one of those.”

“Excellent choice,” Henry said. “You have better taste than some people.”

Scout snorted.

Henry packed it in a small white box, taped it closed, and handed it over with a smile. Then he turned to Scout. “And you, little Miss Geek? What do you want?”

“I am not a geek.”

“Okay, dork. What do you want?”

This time, Scout stuck out her tongue, but that didn’t stop her from pointing to a small tart that was topped with fruit and looked like it had been shellacked with glaze. “Tartlet, please,” she told Henry. He boxed one up for her, and after teasing her with the box for a minute or two, finally handed it over.

“You kids have a great weekend,” he said, as Scout and I headed for the door.

“You, too, geeko.”

The door chimed as we walked through it and emerged back into the hustle and bustle of Chicago. Couples heading out to dinner and tourists getting in some final shopping hurried up and down Erie. Even though the workweek was officially over,

the city didn’t seem to slow down. I wondered what it would take for Chicago to be as quiet and calm as my small town of Sagamore . . . and I bet freezing winter winds and a few inches of snow probably did that just fine.

“They’re good people,” Scout said as we crossed the street.

“They seem great. The youngest son—”

“Alaine,” she filled in.

“Was he a Reaper target?”

She nodded. “He was. He went to school with Jamie and Jill. They tagged him when he was pretty far gone—depressed all the time, not interacting with his family.

And how could you not interact with that family? They’re awesome.”

“They seem really cool,” I agreed. “And Mrs. M clearly loves you.”

“I love her back,” Scout admitted. “It’s proof that sometimes people come into your life you didn’t expect. That’s how a family is made, you know?”

Having been dropped off by my parents at a school I wasn’t crazy about—and having met Scout on my first day at St. Sophia’s—I definitely knew. “Yeah,” I said. “I get that. You and Henry get along pretty well.”

“Ha,” she said. “Henry’s a secret geek. He just doesn’t want to admit it. He watches every sci-fi movie he can find, but wouldn’t tell his friends that. He plays baseball, so sci-fi isn’t, you know, allowed or whatever.”

We walked quietly back down the block, pastry in hand.

“Are you ready to talk about whatever it is you’re not talking about?”

I trailed my fingers across the nubby top of the stone fence around St. Sophia’s.

“Not really.”

“You know I’m here for you, right?”

“I know.”

She put an arm around my shoulders. “Do you ever wish that sometimes the world would just stop spinning for a few hours to give you a chance to catch up?”

“I really do.”

She was quiet for a second. “At least we have dessert.”

That was something, I guess.

It wasn’t until hours later, when Scout and I were in her room, listening to a mix of music from the 1990s, that I finally felt like talking.

“Jump Around” was blasting through the room. Scout sat cross-legged on her bed, head bobbing as she mouthed the rhymes, her Grimoire in her lap. Since my plans to sketch the SRF still hadn’t worked out, I sat on the floor adding details to a drawing of the convent, filling in the texture of brick and jagged stone while I picked at my pastry. And Scout had been right about that—maybe it was the whipped cream (the real kind!), or maybe it was the sugar (lots of it), but it did help.

I finally put my sketchbook away, put my hands in my lap, and looked up at her.

“Can we talk about something?”

She glanced up. “Are you going to break up with me?”

“Seriously.”

Her eyes widened, and she used the remote to turn off the music. “Oh. Sure. Of course.” She dog-eared a page of her Grimoire, then closed it and steepled her fingers together. “The doctor is in.”

And so, there on the floor of her room, I told her what I’d seen in the SRF, and what I’d learned in my follow-up visit to Foley’s office.

And then I asked the question that scared me down to my bones.

“They’re doing some kind of secret genetic research that they had to stick me in a boarding school and leave the country to work on. And we know the Reapers were using the sanctuary for some kind of medical stuff. What if—” Scout held up a hand. “Don’t you even say that out loud. Don’t even think it. I don’t know your parents, but I know you. You’re a good person with a good heart,

and I know they raised you to care about other people. Otherwise, you’d be hanging out with the brat pack right now instead of resting up for whatever is coming down the pipeline tomorrow—doing the right thing. The scary thing. I don’t know exactly what your parents are doing right now, Lily. But I know one thing—they are not helping Reapers. There’s no way.”

“But—” She held up a finger. “I know you want to say it so that I can disagree with you.

But don’t. Don’t even put it out there. There’s no way. It’s a coincidence, I’ll admit,

that we’ve run across two mentions of medical or genetic hoo-ha this week, but even coincidences usually have rational explanations. And you’re not thinking rationally. Your parents are not like them. You know that, right?”

It took a moment—a moment while I thought about all the stuff I didn’t know about my parents right now—but I finally nodded. She was right: Whatever questions I had about the details of their work, I knew them. I knew my dad had floppy hair and loved to make breakfast on Sunday mornings and told horrible, horrible jokes. And I knew my mom was the serious one who made sure I ate green vegetables, but loved getting pedicures while she read gossip magazines.

I knew their hearts.

She must have seen the change in my face.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Little more enthusiasm there, Parker.”

“Okay.”

“You’re probably going to find out your parents are in Germany working on some kind of top-secret new mascara or something. Ooh, or spy stuff. Do you think they’d be doing spy stuff?”

I tried to imagine my dad playing Jason Bourne, or my mom playing a secret operative. “Not really. That’s not really their bag.”

“Mascara, then. We’ll just assume they’re working on mascara.”

My phone picked that moment to ring. I snatched it up, wondering if my parents’ timing was truly that excellent. But it was Jason. Still pretty excellent.

“Hey. How’s your Friday night going?”

“Pretty uneventful,” I told him. Which was mostly true. “What’s happening at Montclare?”

“Poker night. Except none of us has any money, so we’re playing for Fritos.

Which Garcia keeps eating—Garcia. Lay off my stash, man. How am I going to go all in with four Fritos?”

In spite of myself, I smiled a little. Scout rolled her eyes and flopped down on her bed. “Ugh. Young love makes me totally nauseous.”

I stuck my tongue out at her.

“So, about tomorrow. How about I swing by at noon?”

“Noon works. What should I wear?”

“Normal Lily stuff. Minus the plaid skirt. I mean—you should definitely wear a skirt or some kind of pants, but you don’t have to wear your plaid skirt since it’ll be a Saturday—”

“You’ve been hanging around with Michael too much.”

He chuckled. “Anyway, you two girls have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay. Good night, Jason.”

“Good night, Lily.”

I hung up the phone and cradled it in my hands for a few seconds. Guilt settled like a rock in my stomach.

Scout rolled over and looked at me. “Oh, cripes. What now?”

I wet my lips. Might as well finish the confession since I’d started it.

“Remember the other day when I went out to draw over lunch?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Well, I didn’t actually end up drawing anything. I kind of got distracted.”

“Distracted by what?”

“Sebastian Born.”

Scout sat up straight, blinking like she was trying to take in the statement. “I did not expect to hear that.”

“He found me on the sidewalk. He said he’d wanted to talk to me.”

“About what?”

“About firespell. He feels responsible, I think, that I have magic. I told him I didn’t want to talk to him, that we weren’t friends. But then he asked me to go somewhere and talk.”

“Well, you’re not going to do it. You’re certainly not going to go somewhere and talk with him—” Her face fell as realization struck. “Oh, Lil. You already did it, didn’t you?”

“We walked across the street to the taco place.”

“Taco Terry’s?”

I nodded.

“You met with a Reaper at a Taco Terry’s?”

I shrugged.

She looked down at her lap, brow furrowed while she thought it over. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t either.”

“I’m not sure if I should ring your neck for going, or congratulate you for the opposition research.” She gave me a sideways glance. “I want more info before I decide whether I’m totally peeved.”

“He gave me a speech about being a Reaper. About how it’s not as bad as people think. About how magic can be a force of change in the world, even if it means sacrificing people.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

I gave her a flat look. “I think the sacrifice argument would be a little more believable if they could point to anything decent they’d actually done in the world.”

“Fair enough. But what was the point? Was he trying to sway you to their side or something?”

“I don’t know. I feel like he’s playing some kind of game, but I don’t know all the rules. But I think he definitely believes there’s—I don’t know—merit to what they’re doing.”

“That’s the Dark Elite ploy,” she said. “That’s how they build their Reaper army.

‘Think of all the wonderful things we could do with all this magic!’ But when was the last time you saw any of those things?”

I nodded. “He also showed me how to do something.”

“Something?”

“He showed me how to spark my magic—how to create this little molecule of energy.”

“And he showed you this at the Taco Terry’s?”

I nodded.

She shook her head. “That is just . . . bizarre.”

We sat there quietly for a minute.

“Are you totally peeved?”

It took her a really long time to answer.

“I’m glad you’re safe. And I could sit here and yell at you about not being careful,

but you did exactly what I’d do.” She looked over at me. “You didn’t just go with him because he’s hot, did you?”

I gave her a flat look.

“Hey,” she said, holding up her hands. “I’m not blind. Just because he’s completely evil doesn’t mean he doesn’t have that tall, dark, and handsome vibe. At least tell me you took the opportunity to interrogate him.”

“Tried,” I said, “but didn’t get much. He denied knowing about Lauren and—

what’s the other girl’s name?”

“The French hornist?”

I nodded.

She tilted her head up, eyes squeezed closed. “Joanne or Joley or something?

Let’s just say French hornist.”

“Anyway, I asked him about them. He confirmed our Grimoire theory.”

Scout paled a little. “They’re looking for me?”

“They are. Or at least your spell book. But I think I put the fear into him.”

There was some pretty insulting doubt in her expression. I batted her with a pillow. “I can be fierce when necessary.”

“Only because you have a wolf at your beck and call.”

“He’s not at my beck and call. And we’re getting off track. Sebastian denied knowing anything about the monsters, but here’s the really weird thing—he told me to go see the vampires. He said something about the ‘missing,’ and said we needed to talk to Nicu to figure out what’s going on.”

“A Reaper sending us into the arms of warring vampires. Yeah, that rings a little more true.”

“What about the missing thing?”

“What about it?”

I rearranged my knees so that I was sitting cross-legged. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not really. I mean, other than me being kidnapped and all.” Her voice was dry as toast.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. He did say Jeremiah was interested in you.”

Scout went a little pale. “I gotta tell you, that does not thrill me.”

“We’re quite the pair, aren’t we? They’re after you ’cause you’re some kind of wonder sorceress, and I’m some kind of crazy, firespell-wielding Adept.”

“You know, we could totally turn that into a comic book.”

“Who’d want to read about pimply teenagers with boy issues and magic problems?” We looked at each other before bursting into laughter.

A knock sounded at the door. “It’s open,” Scout said.

The knob turned, and Lesley stood in the doorway, blinking wide eyes at us. “I need to show you something,” she said.

“What?” Scout asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think it falls into your jurisdiction.”

Without so much as a word, apparently trusting that Lesley had seen something important, Scout gathered up her messenger bag.

“Let’s go.”

“Let’s go,” of course, was easier said than done when we were being stalked by the brat pack. The three of us emerged into the suite to find Veronica walking into Amie’s room, stack of magazines in hand. She wore the kind of grubby clothes that beautiful girls could get away with—flip-flops, blond hair in a messy knot, rolled-up sweatpants, and a tank top.

Veronica stopped, free hand on the doorknob, and looked us over. “What are you doing?”

We bobbled forward as Scout pulled the door shut behind us and hitched up her messenger bag. “We’re going to find a quiet place to study. What are you doing?”

Veronica held up the magazines. “Self-explanatory?”

“Excellent,” Scout said. “Good luck with that.”

“I know something’s up,” she said. “I don’t know what it is, but I know there’s something.”

“Something like how M.K. sneaks out at night to meet her boyfriend, you mean?”

I smiled innocently at Veronica.

She all but growled, but kept her eyes on me. “Are you going to meet Jason?”

she asked.

“Of course not,” I said, but I could feel the blush heating my cheeks. I’d never been a very good liar, and while I’d been mostly honest—we weren’t planning to meet him—who knew what the night would hold?

“What about John Creed?”

There it was again. Veronica was clearly obsessed with Creed. Why not just call the boy and ask him out?

“We’ll be studying,” Scout repeated. She opened her messenger bag to show Veronica her art history book. “You want to join us?”

Veronica watched us for a minute. “No, thanks,” she said.

She didn’t say anything else as we headed out the door, but I could feel her eyes on us as we left.

Lesley led us through the Great Hall and then into the main building. When we got there, she led us down into the basement along the route we used to get to the vault door.

“It’s down there,” she said, pointing down the stairs.

“What is?” I asked, nervousness building in my chest.

“You’ll see.”

“Do me a favor?” Scout asked. “Could you stay up here?”

Lesley didn’t answer, but Scout apparently took her silence as agreement, as she pulled my elbow and tugged me down the stairs.

We found what Lesley had seen when we reached the corridor just ahead of the vault door—a trail of thick, ropey slime that led all the way back to the vault door,

which stood wide open. There was no glow from the wards.

“Oh, crap,” Scout said.

“You think it’s from—”

“Where else would it come from?” She frowned and surveyed the goop. “It has to be the creatures. Maybe the wards didn’t hold.”

“Temperance faded after a while,” I pointed out. “Even with the power boost, the wards might not have held forever. Maybe those Reaper girls broke through them again, and the rat thingies followed them in.”

“And then the rats ate the girls?” she asked hopefully.

“Or they’re working together.”

Scout froze. “That would be very, very bad. Reapers are awful. Reapers with minions are far beyond awful.”

“What’s the other option?”

“Maybe they just skipped in after the girls.”

We both looked up. Lesley stood at the end of the hallway, arms crossed over her chest.

Scout gave her a look of disapproval. “We told you to wait upstairs.”

Lesley lifted her nose, and with a voice I’d never heard her use before, gave that attitude right back to Scout. “I am not a child, so don’t talk to me like that.”

It took Scout a moment, but she backed off. “You’re right,” Scout said. “I’m sorry —but that doesn’t mean—” Lesley cut her off with a hand. “I told you I’d help you,” she said. “And I’m not going to leave just because things get slimy. Literally.”

It took Scout a moment to respond. I understood why—even after I’d taken firespell, she hesitated to bring me into the fold. She’d worried about my safety; after all, if a Reaper thought I had information about Adepts, they might use me to get to them. It was probably the same fear she had for Mrs. M and for her friend Derek, who worked at a bodega near the school.

“It’s dangerous,” Scout finally said, “to know too much.”

Lesley took a step forward. “I know what people think about me. That I’m weird.

That I study or practice my cello, but can’t do anything else.” She shook her head.

“Just because I’m not a social butterfly doesn’t mean I’m not smart or capable. I am,” she insisted. “And I’m loyal. I just want a chance to be something more than the weird girl, even if you two are the only ones who know it.”

We stood quietly for a minute. I’m not sure what Scout was thinking, but I was impressed. How many friends did you have who offered themselves up—to danger,

to the unknown—because they wanted to help? Not because they wanted anything in return, or because they’d get credentials or fame out of it, but because it was the right thing to do?

“And the danger?” Scout asked.

Lesley rolled her eyes. “Take a step back.”

“What?”

“Take a step back.”

We did as she asked, and just in time. Without any more warning, Lesley twisted on one heel and kicked so high she would have knocked the ring out of Scout’s nose if she’d been standing any closer.

Scout’s jaw dropped; mine did, too.

“How—where?”

“I’m a black belt.”

Scout extended a hand. “You are so in. Welcome to the community.”

Lesley waved her off. “First things first. What do we do about this—stuff?”

“The trail ends at the corridor,” I pointed out, “so it looks like they didn’t get any farther than that. Maybe they peeked in, didn’t find what they wanted, and left again.”

“That’s something,” Scout said. “First of all, let’s get some help.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m going to tell Daniel what’s up. He’ll have to come through and reward the doors since they found a way to break through our spell. And we’re probably going to have to clean up the slime.”

Lesley raised her hand. “Could we lead the brat pack down here first?”

Scout gave her a pat on the back. “You’re good people, Barnaby.”

Things I didn’t sign up for when I hopped the plane to O’Hare to attend St. Sophia’s School for Girls: firespell; werewolves (but still lucked out there); brat packers; Reapers; snarky Varsity Adepts.

And slime. Lots of slime that had to be mopped up by Lesley, Scout, and me.

’Cause what else would a sixteen-year-old girl rather be doing than mopping goo off a basement floor?

But we had to erase the evidence. Someone else finding the trail would only lead to questions Scout didn’t want to answer. Besides—if we had to come back down to battle anyone, it was a safety hazard. The stuff was really slippery.

We’d found a rolling bucket and mop in a janitor’s closet a few corridors away and pushed it down to the slimy corridor. Scout and I swabbed down the slime, and Lesley used an old towel to dry down the floor.

It took twenty minutes to clean it all up, but when we were done you could hardly tell it had been the sight of paranormal activity.

Scout put her hands on her hips and surveyed our work. “Well, I think it looks pretty fabulous.”

“At least it doesn’t look like the room got slimed. What’s next?”

Scout looked at Lesley. “Can you head back upstairs?” Before Lesley could protest at the slight, Scout held up a hand. “I don’t mean back to the suite. I mean stand guard upstairs. It’s unlikely anyone would find their way down here, but stranger things have happened.” When she gave me a pointed look, I stuck my tongue out at her. Not that she was wrong.

“Can you keep an eye on the basement door and make sure we have time to get it closed down again?”

With a salute, but without a word, Lesley headed down the corridor.

Scout watched her walk away. “Okay, is it wrong that I really like the fact that she saluted me?”

“It probably means that you’re destined to be Varsity so you can have JV Adepts at your beck and call.”

“Do you really think I’d have them at my beck and call?”

Scout had once told me that she wanted to run for office one day. Given the sound of her voice, I had a sense she wanted to head up Enclave Three one day,

as well.

“Well, as much as you’re at Katie’s and Smith’s beck and call.”

“I’m not at Katie’s and Smith’s anything. Wait—what is a beck and call exactly?”

“I think that’s when you do their bidding whenever they want.”

She grimaced. “I guess I am that, then. All for one and one for all, and all that.”

Her phone beeped, and Scout pulled it out of her bag again.

“Daniel’s on his way. Should be here in fifteen.”

“So we’re camping out in the basement again?”

She blew out a breath, then crossed her legs and sat down on the stone floor. “I don’t suppose you brought any cards?”

Daniel’s estimate had been a little low. It actually took him twenty minutes to get to us. He came in through the vault door, huffing like he’d run all the way through the tunnels.

“Sorry. Got here as fast as I could.” He put his hands on his hips. He wore jeans and a smoky orange T-shirt beneath a thin jacket. He glanced through the corridor.

“You got the mess cleaned up.”

“Indeedy-o.”

“How much? I mean, how far into the building did they go?”

Scout showed him where the trail had led. “They didn’t get far,” she concluded.

“Although I’m not entirely sure why.”

Daniel frowned, then paced to the end of the corridor and back again. “First the girls, now the rats and maybe the girls,” he said. “They keep returning to St.

Sophia’s. But why?”

“Same reason they pinched Scout?” I offered. “They want her Grimoire?”

He seemed to think about that for a minute, then nodded. “That’s the best theory we have right now. Let’s assume that’s true and build our defenses accordingly.”

He walked back to the door, then began looking it over. “The wards didn’t hold,

huh?”

Scout shook her head. “Not even. Can you work it so they’re permanent? Like,

they’d let Lily and me get through, but not anyone or anything else?”

Daniel pressed a hand to the door and closed his eyes in concentration. “Yeah, I could probably work that.”

It looked like he was getting started, but I still had a question. “Aren’t we going to go after them, or at least see how far they got? I mean, we can’t just let the rats run loose in the tunnels.”

He glanced back, only one eye open. “All the Adepts are accounted for, tucked safe and sound into their beds, with the exception of you two.” He didn’t say

“trouble-makers,” but I could hear it in his voice. “So there’s no immediate risk. Not enough that would justify sending you out on a hunting mission.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic.

While Daniel prepared to fire up his ward, Scout sent a message to Lesley to let her know that her work was done for the night, and that we’d be up as soon as Daniel was done.

His method of magic was quite a bit different from Scout’s . . . or anything else that I’d seen. She’d said he was a protector. Maybe they had their own special brand of mojo. After he’d communed with the door, he pulled a short, cork-

stoppered clear bottle from his jacket pocket and held it up to the light, checking it out. A white cloud swirled inside it, like he’d bottled a tiny tornado.

Daniel sat cross-legged on the floor, facing the door. He pressed his lips to the bottle’s cork, then pulled out the stopper. The mist rushed out. Daniel closed his eyes, smiling happily as it expanded and circled him, swirling around like a magical version of Saturn’s rings.

“What is that?” I whispered to Scout.

She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

The rings still circling and his eyes still closed, Daniel put hands on his knees and offered his incantation. “Solitude, sacrifice in blackness of night. Visitor—enemy of goodness and light. Hear the plea of this supplicant, protector of right, and quiet the halls of this reverent site.”

For a second, there was nothing, and then the door flashed with a brilliant, white light that put huge dots in my vision. It took me a few seconds to see through the afterimages. By the time I could focus again, the mist was gone and Daniel had recorked the bottle.

Scout squeezed her eyes closed. “Little warning about the flash next time,

Daniel?”

He stood up and put the bottle back into his pocket. The door’s glow faded back to normalcy. No buzzing, no pulsing, no vibrating rivets.

“That should hold,” he said, “at least until they find a work-around. As Adepts,

you’ll be able to come and go at will. It’ll only keep out Reapers—and whatever else they try to drag in here.” He pointed toward the other end of the corridor. “That the way back to St. Sophia’s?”

Scout nodded, and we all headed off in that direction.

“What was in the bottle?” she asked as we took the stairs to the second floor.

Daniel slid her a glance. “You’ve never seen sylphs before?”

Scout pointed at his jacket. “That was a sylph?”

Surprisingly, I actually knew what a sylph was—or what it was supposed to be.

My parents had given me a book of fairy tales when I was younger. There was a fable about three sylphs—winged fairies—who’d tricked proud villagers into giving the sylphs all of their youth and beauty. I think “Vanity gets you in trouble” was supposed to be the moral of the story. I always got the sense they looked basically like smallish people—not clouds of mist.

As if in answer to Scout’s question, Daniel’s pocket vibrated a little. “That was many sylphs,” he said, “and since I can still feel them rattling around, I think you offended them.”

They must have been snowflake-small to fit into that tiny bottle, I thought,

wondering what else the underground had in store. What other creatures were hiding in plain sight, living among Chicagoans even though they had no idea?

“Sorry, sylphs,” Scout half shouted. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You probably don’t need to yell.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the one who offended the sylphs, are you? One can never be too careful.”

“I’d agree with that if I didn’t think you were being crazy sarcastic. I’m assuming you’re actually leading me out of this building?”

“Of course,” Scout said. “We’re taking the bad-girl exit.”

Daniel lifted his eyebrows. “The ‘bad-girl exit’?”

“Walk and talk, people. Walk and talk.”

Lesley was gone when we emerged upstairs, and the main building was quiet.

Scout silenced Daniel with a finger to her mouth, and we tiptoed across to the administrative wing where the offices—including Foley’s—were located. “We’re taking the secret exit without the alarm. This is how some of St. Sophia’s busier girls, if you know what I mean, sneak in and out at night.”

“No way,” Daniel said.

Scout nodded. “Welcome to the glamorous world of boarding school. Where the things that go bump in the night are either horrific creatures—”

“Or equally horrific teenagers,” I finished.

We followed Scout through the main administrative hallway and into a narrower corridor that led from it. The offices looked dark . . .

“Students,” a voice said suddenly behind us.

We froze, then turned around. Foley stood in her open doorway, a candle in one of those old-fashioned brass holders in her hand.

“I believe it’s past curfew.” She slid her gaze to Daniel. “Mr. Sterling.” It took me a moment to remember Foley knew Daniel because he was our studio TA.

“Sorry for marching through your territory,” he apologetically said, “but we were on a bit of a mission.”

“A mission?”

“Interlopers,” Scout said. “There were Reapers at the gates, so to speak. Daniel here warded the door, and now we’re escorting him out.”

We stood in the corridor silently for a moment, Foley probably debating whether to let us go. Since she didn’t rush to call the cops about the man standing in the middle of her girls’ school in the middle of the night, I assumed she knew about Daniel’s magical tendencies.

Her voice softened. “You’re being careful?”

“As much as we can, ma’am,” Daniel said. “And—I was sorry to hear about your daughter. She was a good friend—and a good Adept.”

I snapped my gaze back to Foley and the grief in her expression. She’d had a daughter who was an Adept? And she’d lost her?

Foley actually seemed to make more sense now. But before I could say anything,

her expression went bossy again. She nodded at Daniel, then turned and walked away. “Get back to bed,” we heard.

We were quiet for a moment until I looked at Scout. “Did you know?”

She shook her head. “I mean, I suspected, given the fact that she was in the community, but I didn’t know she’d had a kid—or lost her.”

We both looked at Daniel. His brow was furrowed. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories. Her name was Emily. She was a green thumb Adept—she could grow trees and vines that practically encapsulated buildings.” He paused. “We think it was a Reaper attack.”

“I had no idea,” Scout quietly said.

Guilt settled heavy in my stomach. “I didn’t either. And I was pretty hard on her earlier today.”

“We do the best we can with the information we have,” Daniel said. “For now,

let’s focus on the things we can change. Such as getting me out of here.”

Scout nodded, then gestured down the hall. “This way,” she said. We continued the walk in silence, and didn’t speak again until Scout paused in front of an old wooden door.

She jimmied the ancient crystal knob. “There’s no light in here, but you can use flashlights when the door’s shut.”

We stepped inside, shut the door, and pulled out our flashlights. The room was big and mostly empty, and the ceiling arched above it. The floors were made up of old wooden boards, and along one side was a fireplace that took up almost the entire wall. It was made of rough, pale stones that were still stained with soot. A simple wooden chair, the kind with rails across the back, sat beside the fireplace.

I shivered. There was something creepy about this place—the empty chair in the otherwise deserted room. I could imagine Temperance living here alone, waiting for someone to conjure her up. I shivered, then wrapped my arms around my shoulders.

“What is this?” Daniel whispered.

Scout walked to a corner of the room and began feeling around on the floor. “Not sure. I think it was the original kitchen for the nuns before they built the new wing.

Mostly no one comes in here anymore.”

“Except bad girls,” I pointed out.

“Except that,” Scout agreed. She lifted up a ring, then pulled open an old door that was set into the floor. “Root cellar,” she explained when we walked over. She pointed down into it. “There’s a door to the yard, and from there you can just walk out the front gate. No alarms or anything.”

Daniel headed into the cellar, disappearing into darkness. I followed him down,

and Scout followed behind me.

The root cellar looked exactly how you’d expect a root cellar to look. It was dark and damp, and it smelled like wet soil and plants. The ladder into it was wooden and rickety, as was the door that led to the side lawn. Had the folks who’d changed the convent into a school with fancy classrooms failed to find the rickety door—or had Foley left a secret exit for any Adepts that needed it?

Yet another question, but I was already full up for the night.

The evening was cool, so I tucked my hands into my hoodie pockets and followed Daniel and Scout to the street.

“Thanks for the help,” he said. “I might find some Varsity kids and ask them to take a walk through the tunnels. I think you’ve already had enough close calls for the week.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Scout said. We said our final good-byes, and Daniel took off at a jog toward the street, then turned and headed out of view.

“This has been quite a week,” she said as we headed back up the ladder and into the building. “First teethy monsters, then vampires, and now Reapers.”

I stopped. “What did you say?”

Scout glanced back, then blinked. “What?”

“Just then. What did you say?”

“Oh, uh, teethy monsters, vampires, Reapers?”

“Teethy monsters,” I repeated. “You said it the other day—the rat things had fangs. And vampires have fangs, too, right?”

“Yeah, but so what?”

I frowned. “I’m not exactly sure.”I was on the edge of something.... I just didn’t know what.

She pointed toward the door. “Come on. You can sleep on it and let it percolate in your dreams, or something.”

“Actually, I have a better idea.”

“And that is?”

“I think we need to go visit the vampires.”

“You want to what?”

“I want to go see Nicu,” I said. “Monsters with fangs, monsters with pointy little teeth. I mean, I know it’s kind of a long shot, but my gut tells me something’s going on there. Besides, Sebastian said we needed to talk to Nicu.” I shrugged. “Maybe this is why.”

Her look wasn’t exactly friendly. “So now you’re following Sebastian’s advice?”

“I’m following the only lead we’ve got.”

She was quiet for a moment. “The vampires weren’t exactly friendly the last time we saw them.”

“And they may not be friendly this time, either. But what other choice do we have? I say we visit the coven and skip the turf war bit altogether.”

“Oh, you just want to traipse into a coven of blood-sucking fiends and beg them for help?”

I shook my head. “Not beg, but definitely ask. Do you remember what Marlena said about Nicu’s coven being weak? What if that wasn’t just talk? Sebastian said something about the ‘missing.’ What if the Reapers aren’t just targeting Adepts?”

Her expression softened. “You think they’re taking vampires, too?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But if we find the vampires, and if we offer to help them

. . .”

“They might not make breakfast out of us.”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

She whistled. “That’s risky. And even if it doesn’t get us eaten, we don’t know where the coven actually is.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t. But we know who probably does.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were in the back of a dark green cab with GYPSY printed on the door in white cursive letters. We were heading for Buckman’s, one of those old-fashioned multilevel department stores a few blocks from St. Sophia’s. I wasn’t entirely sure why we were meeting at a department store, but when the girl with the map tells you to jump, you ask how high.

The cab ride was short, probably not even a mile. But I stared out the windows the entire time, taking in a view of Chicago I hadn’t seen before—I hadn’t yet been aboveground in the dark. We drove past soaring sky-scrapers, including two that looked like a pair of concrete corncobs, cars stuck into parking spaces right against the edge like tiny steel kernels. We crossed an iron bridge over what I assumed was the Chicago River, and then we passed the marquee of the Chicago Theater—

“Oh, my God,” I said, turning to stare as we passed it by. “Did you see that?”

“What?” Scout asked.

“In the theater sign—in the marquee. There’s a circle inside a Y behind the word

‘Chicago.’ ”

“Folks say that Y is supposed to stand for the branches of the river,” said the cabdriver, glancing up at his rearview mirror to look at me. “You see ’em all over the city, including over by the theater. Kind of a weird deal, I guess, that they’re on buildings and such, but there you are. Probably somethin’ to do with politics. It’s Chicago, after all.”

Scout and I exchanged a glance. I wondered if she wanted to speak up—to tell the driver that the symbol wasn’t just on the buildings for decoration, that it represented the places where Adepts had fought for the soul of Chicago. But if she wanted to, she didn’t say anything.

We pulled up outside a tall, squarish building, a clock extending out over the sidewalk.

“The shops are closed, ya know,” the cabbie said as Scout pulled money from her messenger bag.

“We’re just meeting our parents,” she said, passing the money over and opening the car door. “They went to see a show.”

That seemed to work for the driver, who took the money with a nod and watched in the rearview mirror as we scooted across the bench and out of the car.

We found Detroit outside beneath the clock. She was wearing a brown vest over a long-sleeved shirt, brown suspenders connecting the vest to a pair of wide-

legged pants with lots of pockets. The map-making locket was around her neck,

and she had an old-fashioned, silver-tipped walking stick in her hand.

“Thanks for meeting us,” I said when we reached her.

“No problem. It’s in everyone’s interest to deal with the monsters, and if vampires are the way to do it, that’s the way we do it.” She shrugged. “What exactly is the plan?”

“We’re going to talk to Nicu,” I said, offering up the explanation I’d come up with in the cab (the one that didn’t involve a Sebastian-related confession). “There’s no way the rats could move around the city without intersecting with the Pedway at some point. And if they’ve been on the Pedway, the vamps know about them.”

“So you want to talk to Nicu,” she said. “But why Nicu instead of Marlena?”

“He seemed a little friendlier,” Scout put in, after giving me a silencing glance.

“So we’re trying him first.”

Apparently buying the explanation, Detroit nodded, then walked toward the building and peered inside one of the glass doors. She knocked on the glass.

“I am now officially confused,” Scout said.

“Me too. What are we doing here?”

“The Pedway runs through the basement,” Detroit explained, as a guard in a tidy blue suit and cap walked toward the door.

“Closed,” the guard mouthed, pointing at his watch.

Detroit, apparently undeterred, flashed the guard a peace sign. It took a second,

but the guard nodded, then began the process of unlocking the door with a key from a giant loop.

“He supports peace?” Scout wondered.

“I made a Y,” Detroit explained, showing Scout the sign again. “It’s recognized by the community. And Mr. Howard here is very much a member of the community. So be nice to Mr. Howard.”

But Scout was too busy with her new trick to be mean—she’d made a peace sign and was staring down at her fingers. “Genius,” she said, eyes wide with excitement.

“You’ll have to teach that to Derek and Mrs. M,” I pointed out, and she nodded back.

Mr. Howard held open the door while we moved inside. Once in, he locked it tight again. “You on the hunt for Reapers tonight?” he asked politely.

“Not quite,” Detroit said. “But we appreciate the help, sir.”

Mr. Howard nodded, then gestured toward a set of elevators. “Basement level, if you’re headed into the Pedway.”

“Thank you,” Detroit said, and we were off again.

“Seriously, I want to go see Derek right now just to show him this. I know it’s not a big deal, but it’s like having a secret handshake. Haven’t you always wanted to have a secret handshake?”

“Not that I can recall right at this minute,” I said, as we followed Detroit through displays of makeup and perfume. “But I’m excited you’re excited.”

The main lights were off, but it was clearly a department store—floors of merchandise around an atrium in the middle. Although the stuff in the store was modern, the rest of it was old-school fancy. I stared up at the atrium. Fancy gold balconies ringed the floors above us like architectural bracelets, and the entire thing was capped by a pillow of frosted glass. The floor looked like marble. This place must have been really interesting in its heyday.

We followed the marble path to the elevators. There were two of them; both had brass doors engraved with flowers.

“They really spared no expense back in the day, did they?” Scout asked.

“I was just thinking that.”

When the elevator arrived, we stepped inside. Detroit mashed the button for the basement. The one-floor trip was short but jarring. The elevators were definitely old-school, and the jumpy ride felt like it.

We emerged into an area with lower ceilings and signs for restrooms and customer service areas. A giant sign reading PEDWAY hung on a corridor in front of us.

“Does it ever feel like we spend at least thirty percent of our Adept time just traveling around?” I wondered aloud.

“Oh, my God, I was just thinking that, too! We are totally psychic today.”

“You two are definitely something today,” Detroit said. She flipped open her locket, then projected the map hologram against one of the walls of the corridor.

This chunk of the Pedway was actually much nicer than the last one I’d seen—the floors were fancy stone with glittering chips in it, and long wooden flower planters lined the sides. The ceiling above us was a single, long, glowing rectangle, like a superhuge fluorescent light.

The Pedway diagram looked like a subway map, with red marks in the shape of droplets—blood, I assumed—at certain points along the way.

Detroit scanned the route, then nodded. “Yeah, a couple more blocks, and we’re there.” She snapped the locket shut again, then turned on her heel and started walking, her giant pants making a shush-shush sound as she walked. The outfit wasn’t exactly covert, but then again, walking into a home of vampires probably wasn’t all that stealthy, either.

We walked in silence for a couple of blocks, occasionally going up or down a small ramp but generally staying in the basement level. After a few minutes, the scenery changed to “disco office chic.” The floors became orangish industrial carpet, the walls dark brick.

Detroit stopped in front of a glass door with a long handle across the front—the kind you might see in a strip mall office. She looked back at us. “This is it. You’ll probably want to be ready with the firespell and stuff.”

When we nodded, she pushed open the door. A set of old mini-blinds hanging on the inside of the glass clanked against it like an office wind chime. A haze of gray dust swirled through the air.

I glanced around. We’d walked into an abandoned office, the fabric-covered cubicle walls still standing. But instead of separating the room into little mini-offices,

they made a maze that led farther back into the building. Bass from music being played somewhere in the back echoed through the room, vibrating loose screws in the cubicle walls. I didn’t recognize the song, but “paranoia” kept repeating over and over and over again.

“Vampires nest in old offices?” Scout whispered.

“Vamps nest in whatever space they can find in the Pedway,” Detroit explained.

“It’s lined with parking garages, offices, stores that sell to the business folks who grab lunch, whatever. When an office clears out, it gives the covens an opportunity to split. That’s what Nicu did.”

After a glance to make sure we were ready, we began to wind our way through the maze. It ringed around in what felt like a spiral, finally dumping us into a giant circle surrounded by more cubicle walls . . . and filled with vampires.

Rugs and pillows in various shades of gray were scattered on the floor, and similar fabric was draped over the cubicle walls. The vamps, still in their dark ensembles, lounged on the pillows or stretched on the rugs, but the best seat—a clear plastic armchair in the middle of the room—was reserved for the head honcho.

Nicu.

He wore a long, military-style coat and pants in the same steel gray color, and one leg was crossed over the other. He held a cut-crystal goblet in his hand, and there was no mistaking the dark crimson liquid inside of it. As I looked around, I realized the only color in the room was that same dark red that filled glasses in the hands of other vampires. That explained the coppery smell in the air.

My stomach knotted, and I moved incrementally closer to Scout, squeezing my hands into fists so the vampires couldn’t see them shaking.

Nicu gestured at us with his glass. “What do we have here?” he said, that heavy accent in his voice. “Little rebels without a cause?” The vampires snickered, and he didn’t wait for our answer. “Tell me this,” he said. “If you reject the Dark Elite,

what does that make you?”

“The huddled masses?” one vampire suggested.

Nicu smiled drowsily. “Indeed. And there can be no mistake that you have walked of your own accord into our nest, yes?” He glanced from Scout to me, the question in his eyes.

Out of instinct, I nearly nodded, but Scout held up a hand. “Don’t answer that,” she warned. “If you say yes, you agree you came here willingly. That means you came here to give them blood. We’re here for information,” she told him. “Not trickery.”

Nicu barked out a laugh. “You enter our home, you have already caused me trouble, and yet you seek to ask a favor? Danger lurks where you tread.” As if to prove his point, he took a sip. The drink left a crimson stain around his lips, which he licked away.

The vampires began to rise and shift, some of them moving around us, encircling us—and cutting off our escape route again. I swallowed down fear, but opened the channels of my mind enough to let the energy begin to rush around. If I had to use it, I wanted to be ready.

One of the vampires—a woman in a high-necked dress—moved toward us in a spiral that became tighter and tighter.

“Backs together,” Detroit whispered, and we formed a triangle. I put my hands out, ready to strike, and assumed Scout and Detroit were doing the same with the magic at their disposal.

But it wasn’t until I heard the yelp that I looked back. Detroit was wielding the walking stick—the end tipped in silver—like a weapon. And from the look of the crimson line that was beginning to trace down the female vampire’s arm, she’d gotten too close.

The vampires pulled the wounded female back into the main cluster and tended to the wound on her arm. The rest began arguing with one another, their voices high-pitched. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Some of it, I think, was in another language. But some of it was more animal than human, like the yelps of fighting cats. We huddled closer together, our shoulder blades touching.

“Silence!” Nicu finally yelled out, gesturing with his goblet, blood slipping down the sides from the movement. It took a moment, but the room finally quieted. It didn’t still, though—we’d agitated the vamps, and they slithered around as if waiting to be set loose on us again.

Nicu scowled, but nodded at us. “Get on with it.”

“We’ve been seeing things in the tunnels,” I said. “Creatures. Not quite human,

not quite animal. They’re naked. Pointy ears. Slimy skin. Lots of teeth.”

“And?”

I swallowed, but made myself say it aloud. “And they’re terrorizing the tunnels.

Someone nearly helped them breach St. Sophia’s tonight. The Reapers—the ones you call the thieves—believe you know something about them. Something about the missing?”

Nicu went silent. A vampire from the far side of the room, a tall man dressed in long black layers, rushed to Nicu, the fabric of his clothing swirling as he moved.

He knelt at Nicu’s side and whispered something.

Nicu looked away. When he finally began to speak, his voice was so quiet I had to lean forward to catch the words.

“One of our children is missing,” he said, thumping a fist against his chest. “One of my own.”

Scout and I shared a worried glance. “One of your vampires is missing?”

He nodded, then looked away, a red tear slipping down his cheek. “For two months now. We have heard nothing from her. Seen nothing of her. Her lover is bereft, and we fear she is . . . gone.”

“And you think the thieves were involved?”

“Who else would do such a thing?”

“Marlena? One of the other covens? We heard you were fighting.”

Nicu swiped at the tear on his cheek and barked out a laugh. “Vampires do not steal from other covens. We may not agree on all things, but we have honor enough.”

I nodded in understanding. Vampires might not do it, but Reapers definitely would.

And if we were right about the sanctuary, they weren’t above kidnapping someone to take what energy they could. But could that even work with vampires? “Do you know why they would have taken her?”

Nicu shook his head, but the vampire at his side prompted him with more whispers.

“We have heard rumors,” Nicu reluctantly said.

“What kind of rumors?”

Nicu met my gaze again, his eyes now fully dilated—sinking orbs of black.

“Rumors that the thieves are unsatisfied with their lot. There are rumors . . .”

Pausing, Nicu held his goblet out, and the man at his side took it. Hands empty,

he sat forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at us with terrible eyes. “There are rumors the thieves are no longer satisfied with their short human lives. They seek our blood and our secret.”

I frowned at him. “Your secret?”

“The secret of vampire immortality.”

I looked down at the fabric-covered floor, working through Nicu’s theory. He thought Reapers had kidnapped a vampire to take the vampire’s blood, thinking that if they had the blood, they had the immortality, and they could use that power to keep their magic forever.

But then I thought of what Temperance had said about the sanctuary, and I thought of the monsters. I came up with a different theory. A very, very bad theory.

A cold chill sank into my bones.

“I don’t think it was just the blood they were worried about,” I said, looking up at Nicu again. “And I think I know what happened.”

All eyes turned to me. I ignored my nerves and went for it. Vampires or not, Nicu and his band had a right to know.

“We discovered a new sanctuary, a new building where the Reapers are doing some kind of work. Medical work. And the creatures that we saw in the tunnels had similarities to vampires. Claws and”—I made myself get the last word out there

—“fangs.”

Scout turned to stare at me, horror in her eyes. “Lily, no. That’s not possible.

They couldn’t have—” I just shook my head, and let them reach their own conclusions.

“You think they took one of mine—used one of my children—to build some kind of abomination? Some kind of monster?” Nicu shook his head and waved a hand through the air. “You are no longer welcome here.”

“But we need to find them—to figure out how—”

“No!” Nicu said, standing at his throne, his jacket falling around behind him. “You are no longer welcome. Return to your domain, and never speak of this evil again.”

We didn’t waste time arguing.

We hurried back through the Pedway. Scout texted Daniel to let him know what we’d discovered—that one of Nicu’s vampires was missing, and the missing vampire might have somehow been used by Reapers to build the monsters that were trekking through the tunnels and trying to sneak inside St. Sophia’s.

Had Lauren and her gatekeeper friend been attempting to breach the doors just to let in the rats? Once inside, what were they supposed to do? If they started attacking schoolgirls, their existence was definitely out of the closet. And Scout and I would have to battle them back, which meant our magic was out of the closet, too.

Maybe that was the point. Did the Reapers hope the move would make us rejoin the Dark Elite? Like we’d go back to the mother ship for safety once we were outed as Adepts?

Frankly, I wouldn’t have put it past them. That sounded like the kind of plan Reapers would come up with. It also sounded like the kind of plan Sebastian might have known about. I made a mental note.

We reached the pretty portion of the Pedway again, walking quietly along until Scout held up her hand. We stopped, and before I could ask what she’d seen, she put a hand to her lips. We stood in the middle of the Pedway, soft jazz playing above us, waiting . . .

That was when I heard what she’d heard: movement and hard-soled shoes on the Pedway in front of us.

“Hide,” Scout said, shooing us all toward half walls that extended out on each side of the hallway. She and I squeezed behind one; Detroit ducked behind the other. We all peeked around the walls.

Vampires.

It was Marlena and her minions, sauntering through the Pedway like a queen and her entourage. But that wasn’t all.

“Oh, crap,” Scout said. “They’ve got Veronica.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked, watching two of Marlena’s minions drag a cursing Veronica down the Pedway. Her hair was falling down and her cheeks were streaked with tears and mascara, but it didn’t look like she’d been bitten.

On the other hand, total brat drama had now become Adept drama.

“What is she doing down here?” I whispered.

Scout sighed heavily. “She probably followed us into the basement one night,

then decided to play Nancy Drew. She’s been watching us like a hawk this week.”

“And she probably thinks we were with John Creed,” I realized, the puzzle pieces falling together. “She’s been interrogating me about him all week. She thinks we’re buds because he and Jason are friends.”

“Nothing to do about it now,” Scout said, taking a step into the Pedway. I followed,

and Detroit did the same.

The vampires began to hoot, the minions’ grip on Veronica tightening as she began to demand that they let her go.

Marlena stepped around her vampires, this time wearing a tweed dress, fur wrap,

and those old-fashioned stockings with the dark line up the back. She put her hands on her hips. “Did you lose something, darlings?”

“Let her go,” Scout said. “Or you get magic and firespell and a silver-tipped walking stick, and you get knocked back into the nineteen forties where you belong.”

Marlena hissed. “This is not a game, little one.”

“I am so sick of people telling me that,” I muttered, raising my hands. I relaxed and let the power begin to flow, letting it collect in my hands so that I could toss it out if necessary.

“Did you invade St. Sophia’s?” Scout asked.

Marlena arched a darkly penciled eyebrow. “We hardly have need for that, iubitu.

Not when she is wandering through the corridors alone.”

“Bingo,” Scout muttered.

“Let go of me!”Veronica screamed again, yanking at her arms as she attempted to break free.

Marlena had apparently had enough. She turned and slapped Veronica across the face, leaving a red welt across her cheek. “Silence!”

Veronica’s howls turned to silent weeping. Scout took a precautionary step forward.

“Marlena, if you have issues with us, you need to let her go. She’s not one of us,

and has nothing to do with this. She will only bring attention to your kind.”

Marlena’s expression faltered for a second, but then went stone-cold again.

“Liar.”

“She’s a normal,” I confirmed. “You keep her down here, and things get very,

very ugly for you.”

“Uh, ladies, speaking of ugly, we’ve got a problem.” We turned to see Detroit looking behind us.

I hated to turn around, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to run. Slowly, I glanced back as well.

Vampires. An entire crowd of them, moving in from behind us.

But these were a different kind of vampire. They were Nicu’s.

Nicu stepped through them to the front of the horde. He nodded at me and Scout and Detroit, then took in Marlena.

“They are children,” he said. “Let her go.”

“She is mine. My catch. My bounty. My prize.” She rolled the R in ‘prize’ like an opera singer, and the sound sent a chill down my spine.

“She is not part of this world, and your bringing her into it will not help.” He inched closer, as did the vampires behind him.

“When it’s time,” I whispered, “I’ll grab Veronica. You two jump to the right, and then we make a run for it.”

Detroit nodded, but Scout looked worried.

“Firespell,” I reminded her. “If they get me, I take them out.”

She blew out a breath and nodded, then turned her attention back to the vampires and the turf war we’d gotten stuck in . . . again.

Marlena put her hands on her hips. “You choose children over your own kind?”

“They have offered their help. They have come to us with information and have treated us as equals. In this, yes. We choose children over those who would forsake us.”

In the silence, Nicu and his vampires took another step forward, then another,

until they were directly behind us. I wasn’t thrilled about the proximity, but I trusted him a lot more right now than I did Marlena.

“Then let us decide this once and for all.”

“Not liking the sound of this,” Scout said.

“Detroit,” I whispered, hoping the myths about vampires were true, “when I give the word, point the locket at the vamps holding Veronica.”

“Got it,” she said with a nod.

“On one,” I said, leaning forward just a bit to prepare myself for the steal. “Three

. . . two . . . one!”

Detroit popped open her locket, light flashing into the corridor as she aimed it toward Marlena’s vampires. They raised their hands to their faces, hissing at the light, releasing Veronica. I jumped forward and grabbed her, then pulled her back behind the half wall, Detroit and Scout behind me.

I dumped Veronica onto the floor, looking her over for wounds. She was quiet now, shock obviously setting in. In the vacuum behind us, the covens of vampires rushed together, Nicu’s vampires scratching and clawing as they fought for the right to exist, Marlena fighting back the vampires who’d tried to escape her.

Nicu ran through the fray to reach us, stopping as he stared down at Veronica.

She looked up at him with wide eyes, and his own widened in surprise.

I glanced over at Scout, who shrugged.

A second later, Nicu blinked, then looked at me. “Run,” he said. “As fast as you can. Get her to safety and then find the monsters. Dispatch them.”

We ran.

Detroit led the way back to the Enclave. Scout and I each had an arm around Veronica, half walking and half carrying her through the dark tunnels, the light of Detroit’s locket guiding the way. Detroit used Scout’s phone to send a message to Daniel. By the time we arrived at the Enclave, we found Katie, Smith, Daniel,

Michael, Jason, and Paul waiting. The twins must have still been off on their own mission.

The mood wasn’t exactly light, and seeing Veronica didn’t help. But Daniel stayed calm. He directed Katie and Smith to help Veronica, then clustered the rest of us together.

“The vampires are missing one of their coven,” he said. “The Reapers have,

perhaps, used the sanctuary to build these monsters. They have put Adepts and vampires, the Pedway and St. Sophia’s—the whole city—at risk. This ends tonight.”

Scout and I looked at each other, but nodded. We knew what needed to be done.

We had to find them, and we had to take them out.

“We’ll deal with the girl,” he said. “You start at the sanctuary. God willing, it will still be empty of Reapers. Either way, destroy the monsters.”

“We’ll do it,” Jason said.

“You’ve got to,” Daniel advised. “If you can’t, we’re all in trouble.”

Jason took the lead, and Paul was at our back. The rest of us—Michael, Scout,

Detroit, and me—were clustered into groups in the middle.

This time, we needed speed, so we decided to try the shortcut, hoping the vampire squabble had played itself out. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary until we made it to the Pedway. But when we emerged from the janitor’s closet—

one careful Adept at a time—things got more interesting.

The hallway was empty but for five scratched and bleeding vampires—Nicu and four others.

“Is she okay?” Nicu asked.

If he’d developed a thing for Veronica, I was going to be totally freaked-out.

“She’s fine,” I told him. “She’s being cared for.”

“Will you erase her memory of these events?”

I looked over at Scout, who nodded. “She’s not the type we’d trust in the community. She might use the information against us. One of the other Adepts will work their magic, and she’ll have no memory of what transpired. It won’t hurt her,” she added, at the obvious heartbreak in Nicu’s eyes.

Did love at first sight really operate that quickly?

“Then that’s the way it must be,” he said, resigned.

“And your coven?” I asked him. “Are you okay?”

“We have survived the night,” Nicu said, “so we are now a coven in our own right.”

Oh, awesome, I thought. We’d actually helped the vampires establish themselves. I really hoped that didn’t bite us in the butt later.

“Good night, Adepts.” Nicu placed his hand over his heart, and then the entire group of them—all at once—bowed to us.

Detroit worked her magic on the stairwell doors, and we popped back into the tunnels again. If the rats were back, there wasn’t any sign of them.

“You think that means they’re gone?” Scout asked.

“I think that means they don’t shed slime all the time,” Jason said. “At least, that’s my guess.”

“And even if they were here,” Scout said, “the Reapers could have cleaned up after them. Who knows?”

When we reached the sanctuary, we peeked around the alcove and into the final corridor. The doors were closed, the lights off.

But there was a trail of slime that led from the corridor into the sanctuary.

“And they’re back,” Michael muttered.

“Honestly,” Detroit said, “I’m a little glad to see the slime. I was beginning to worry that I’d imagined it all.”

“No such luck,” Scout and I simultaneously said. Scout glanced over at Detroit.

“The trip wires,” she said. “Got anything for that?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” After searching her pants pockets, Detroit popped another black pill into the hallway, letting the magic smoke illuminate the trip wires.

Then she unzipped a long pocket along her knee and pulled out a child’s spinning top.

“Quick invention,” she said, “but I think it will work.” She crouched down and put the top on the floor, then gave it a twirl. It wobbled, but began to spin, whirring as it gathered speed and moved down the hallway toward the double doors.

And as it spun, it began to spindle both the magic smoke and the trip wires the smoke had revealed. In a few seconds, the hallway was clean, the top glowing with newly bundled magic.

“Seriously, I think that’s the coolest thing you’ve done so far.” Scout’s tone was reverent.

“Glad you like it,” Detroit said. She walked down and collected the top, then held it out to Scout. “I thought you could have it. You can unspindle the trip wires. Make them your own.”

With her eyes gleaming like it was Christmas morning, Scout accepted the gift.

“All right,” Jason said. “Now that the coast is relatively clear, let’s get this show on the road.” He stopped in front of the double doors and glanced back.

“Everybody ready?”

When we nodded, he pushed them open. One by one, we tiptoed inside.

“Lily,” he whispered. “Lights.”

I pulled the power and sent it upward. Long rows of fluorescent lights above us stuttered to life.

We were in a hallway—the kind you might see in a hospital. Wide corridor, pale green walls, doors on the right and left . . . and a long trail of slime leading back toward other rooms.

“Stay here,” Jason said, then began to move forward, peeking through the rooms on the right-hand side of the corridor. When he reached the second door, he stopped.

“What is it?” Scout whispered.

He beckoned us forward, then walked inside. We followed him . . . and gaped.

Temperance had thought the sanctuary was a clinic. But this didn’t look like any clinic I’d ever seen. The center of the room was lined with counters topped by pieces of medical equipment. And the walls were covered by whiteboards. Some with lines and lines of formulas, others with writing—theories about vampires and immortality and magic.

And how to keep it forever.

We stopped and stared at the last board.

Photographs had been stuck there with magnets—photos of Reaper works in progress. The rats, from tiny nubbins to full-grown creatures. For a second, I felt a little sorry for them.

“We were right,” I said. “They were doing experiments, and vampires were their model.”

Hands on her hips, Scout gazed at the pictures. “What were they trying to do?

Build some kind of forever-magic superbeings?”

“Maybe,” Jason said. “Or maybe just figure out if there was a source for the immortality.”

“Maybe it has something to do with the slime,” I suggested. “Maybe the slime served some kind of purpose. Like, I don’t know, some kind of immortality elixir or something.”

“That is totally rank,” Scout said, her face screwed into a look of disgust. “But I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Temperance must not have known what these were,” Detroit said. “If she had,

she’d have known this wasn’t a clinic.”

“I’m sure she did the best she could,” Scout said.

“We’ll let our guys figure out the details,” Jason said. “Scout, take pictures of the whiteboards so we can turn them over. Lily, as soon as she’s done, erase them. All of them. We’re not helping them preserve whatever ‘science’ they’ve done here.”

We followed his directions. Scout walked slowly around the room, snapping photos with her camera so we had proof of what the Reapers had been up to. I followed behind her. Each time she snapped a photo, I used my sleeve to wipe off the writing.

When the room was clean and Scout’s phone was tucked away again, we headed back into the hallway. The rest of the rooms on the mazelike floor were either research labs, or more like the medical facilities Temperance had described.

There were needles, bandages, and monitors just like she’d said, but not for healing. For experimenting.

The whole place had an awful vibe. And then we rounded a corner . . . and walked right into the nest.

The rats had taken up an entire corridor, the walls and floor coated with slime.

Dozens of them slept in a pile in one corner.

Home sweet home, I thought.

Detroit screamed.

Chaos erupted.

Jason immediately shifted, his giant silver wolf taking the attack. He pounced on the back of a rat, which began squealing and screeching and trying to throw him off.

I looked over at Michael, who stood in the middle of the room, eyes wide with fear. I pulled him away, then planted him beside the wall on the other end of the corridor. “Stay here, okay?”

He nodded, but pointed at Scout. “I think she needs help.”

Scout was throwing what looked like marbles at the rats. Each time they made impact, they sent a shock wave through the creatures—their skin wobbling in circular ripples just like on a slow-motion camera. Unfortunately, while the shock waves moved the rats back a few feet, they didn’t stop coming.

I looked around the room—and found the same problem all over. Everything we were doing was working, but only to a point.

“This isn’t doing much good,” Paul yelled, tossing one rat over his shoulder. “It’s not killing the rats!”

That was when the gears clicked into place. Scout’s spell might have worked before, but normal combat wasn’t going to do the trick. “That’s because they’re not really rats!” I yelled over the din of battle. “Scout, what takes out vampires?”

“The usual stuff!” she yelled back. “Fire, stakes, garlic, crosses, silver, and, you know, dismemberment.”

I decided to leave that one to Jason. “Remember they’re related to vampires!” I called out to everyone else. “So hit ’em where it hurts!”

I went with my best weapon. Firespell wasn’t exactly fire—it was Jamie who had that power—but it was as close as I was going to get. There was too much chaos to try an all-out burst of it—too high a chance that I’d hit an Adept. But Sebastian had said I could use it in pinpoint fashion. Might as well try that now.

I maneuvered around until I had a clear shot at one of them, then squeezed my hands into fists. I opened myself to the power, but instead of trying to throw it all back out again, I lifted a single hand, my fingers cupped, and visualized sending that single burst of magic into one of the creatures, the way Sebastian had taught me.

And then I let it go. It still warped the air, but it was focused—the firespell moving in the air in a tight spiral that ripped toward the monster and hit him square in the chest.

He went down . . . and he didn’t get back up.

Sebastian might have been evil—but he definitely had some firespell skills. And maybe because it was kind of like fire, vampires weren’t immune to it.

Together, the four of us used our magic to knock out the rats one by one. It wasn’t easy—there were so many of them, we hardly had time to get one on the floor before the next one attacked. Even with my focused attack, I’d gotten too close to their claws and had burning scratches up and down my arms and legs as I fought back the army.

I finished up the knot closest to me, then glanced over at Scout. She was using a pencil from her bag—a make-do wooden stake—to take out a rat in front of her. It worked, and he hit the ground, but the rest of them were beginning to surround her.

“Scout!” I yelled over the sounds of fighting and squealing monsters. “Duck!”

She did, and I threw out another dose of firespell, which put the creature lurking behind her on the floor. Then she popped up again, gave me a thumbs-up, and knocked out the one in front of her.

“Lily!”

At the sound of Detroit’s voice, I glanced back, expecting to see her encircled by monsters. But there was a pile of them at her feet, her silver-tipped walking stick between both hands like she was wielding a sword. For an Adept who wasn’t supposed to be a fighter, she was definitely holding her own. But she used the stick to point into the other corner—where Jason was quickly getting surrounded.

I couldn’t see Jason’s entire body, just bits of bloody fur as he leaped and rolled with the monsters.

“Jason!” I ran forward toward the melee, my hands outstretched, spiraling the firespell at each monster that jumped forward to attack him.

One of them jumped out at me, but I tossed firespell in his direction. He was too close for a shot and the bobbling air nearly bounced back to knock me down as I moved toward Jason, but I shimmied and sidestepped it.

I became a dervish, spinning and tossing firespell at anything and everything that stood between me and him. I finally reached him and helped him claw his way out of the pile. When the path was clear, he sat back on his haunches, tongue lolling as he caught his breath.

I couldn’t help but smile down at him. “Good dog.”

He might have been in wolf form, but the look he gave back was all Jason Shepherd. He shifted back, scratches on his face and arms, and looked around.

“Thanks,” he told me. I nodded and squeezed his hand.

We stood, chests heaving, in the middle of a room full of dead rats. Whatever genetic engineering the Reapers had done, they really hadn’t done much for their postmortem longevity. They were beginning to smell.

He glanced around. “Everyone okay?”

Scout wiped at her brow with the back of her hand. “I’m good.”

“I’m tired, but fine,” I added.

Michael and Paul gave waves from their corners of the room.

Detroit looked up. “I’m—I’m not” was all she got out before pulling up the knee of her pants. There was a giant bite on the outside of her calf; blood was everywhere.

Jason reached out to grab her before she went down, but didn’t quite make it. She stumbled backward into the wall—and into some kind of emergency button.

A piercing alarm began to ring through the sanctuary.

Jason let out a curse. “That might alert the Reapers,” he yelled over it. “We’ve put the monsters down, and now we have got to get out of here.”

Detroit slid onto the floor. “I’m not sure I can make it out.”

“You just need a little help,” he said soothingly, then scooped her up and into his arms. “I’m taking the lead, and I’m going as fast as I can. Stay close behind in case we missed anything.”

He began running down the hallway. Michael snatched Detroit’s walking stick and took off behind him. Scout and I followed through one corridor after another . . . at least until she stopped short. I watched Jason, Paul, and Michael disappear around another corner.

“Scout, come on! Reapers might be coming, and we need to go.” I tugged her arm, but she wouldn’t move.

She pulled her arm free. “I can’t go, Lily. I’ve been in the missing vampire’s position—being hurt and alone. And what they’ve done is awful. We can’t leave it intact and let them continue the work. We just can’t.”

“Scout, we have to go. Detroit’s injured and—”

“You don’t have to be here. I’ve been working on a spell. I can plant it alone and get out afterward. You don’t have to be here.”

That, I realized, was what she’d been working on her in room. Getting rid of the sanctuary had been her plan all along.

“I was one of them, Lily. I know how they work—how much it hurts, how bad it feels.” She slapped a hand to her chest. “I’m an Adept. I make a promise every day to help the people they try to hurt. To stop them from doing it. I can’t leave this place here for them to use at will. I can’t.”

Tears began to brim in her eyes. “I can’t.”

We looked at each other for a moment, before I nodded. “Then I stay. And I help.”

She shook her head. “You should go. You used up all your firespell.”

“I think Sebastian taught me how to make my own power.”

Her eyes went even wider. “Lily—” she began, but I shook my head.

“I’ve already kind of tried it, and I think it will work. You need it, and that’s all I need to know to try again. What’s your spell supposed to do?”

“Implode the sanctuary.”

Well, that would probably do it.

“Won’t that take down the buildings on the street?”

She shook her head. “It’s a pinpoint spell. It’ll wipe down the interior, but leave the architecture—the hardware—intact. It’s like cleaning off your hard drive—the hard drive’s still there afterward, right?”

I still wasn’t crazy about the idea—one wrong move, and we single-handedly brought down whatever building happened to be above us—but she was right—we couldn’t just leave this place intact. Decision made, I nodded back at her. “Okay.

What do we do?”

She reached into her bag and pulled out one of the tiny houses from her shelf.

“We have to set this spell. Then I give the incantation, and we run.”

“Can you take down a building this big?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t actually tried it. And even better, I’m only going to get one shot.”

An idea bloomed. I reached out my hand toward Scout. “Then we make that one shot count. Give me your hand.”

“You want to help me trigger it?”

“It worked last time.”

“It hurt last time.”

“And it’s probably going to hurt this time, too. But if that’s what we need to do, it’s what we need to do. And we’re in this together.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know. But mostly I want to get out of here. Preferably in one piece.”

She nodded, then walked into the room and put the tiny house on one of the tables. When she made it back to me, we let the door close in front of us. Scout offered her hand. I gripped it tightly in mine.

Before we could begin, Michael ran back around the corner. “What are you doing? We need to go.”

“Michael,” I said. “Run. Tell Jason to get out of the building, and tell everyone to huddle down at the other end of the corridor. We’ll be right behind you. We promise. But for now, we’ve got to take care of the sanctuary. Go now.”

I saw the hitch—he wasn’t sure if he should leave us.

Scout looked back at him. “Do you trust me?”

His face fell. “Scout—” She shook her head. “I have to do this, Michael. And I need you to trust me.

Okay?”

He ran to her and whispered something in her ear. She threw her arms around his neck and gave him a fierce hug, then pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“Run,” she said, and Michael took off. I trusted Scout just like he did, but that didn’t mean I didn’t still cross my fingers for luck.

Scout moved back, took my hand, and closed her eyes. “Your cue is ‘night.’ When I hit that, fill me up.”

“Let’s do this,” I agreed, and then she began.

“We are bringers of light.”

I closed my eyes. Instead of pulling in power from the world around us—power that I’d had trouble controlling the last time—I imagined a spark blooming of its own accord. Bright and green, shaped like a dandelion.

“We are fighters of right.”

I opened my eyes. There, in front of me, hovered a tiny green spark. Small, but condensed. A lot of power in one tiny ember.

“We must pull this place in, and make safe the night.”

I pulled the spark into both of us. It bloomed and blossomed and spilled outward. I opened my eyes, and through the window in the door saw the tiny house explode into shards of light.

And then it began.

Like a tornado had suddenly kicked up in the Chicago underground, all the stuff in the building—doors, walls, tables, medical implements—was sucked behind us.

Scout and I yanked our hands away from each other. It definitely hurt—my fingers burning like I’d stuck them into a roaring fire—but we were still on our feet.

And then we ran like the rats were still after us.

We hurdled spinning lamps and dodged computer gear, pushing ourselves against walls to avoid the doors that came hurtling toward us. Scout stumbled over an office chair, and I grabbed and pulled her along until she was on her feet again.

And the sound—it was like a freight train roaring toward us.

The walls began to evaporate, drywall and wiring sucking back toward the center of the spell. Finally, we turned a corner, and there were Jason and Michael, holding open the double doors that led out of the sanctuary.

It was getting even harder to run, like we were swimming through molasses. The nightmare flashed through my mind, the door I hadn’t been able to reach.

But this was real life, and I wasn’t about to go down in a sanctuary in some nasty tunnel. I pushed forward like I was racing for the finish line. We made it through the doors just as they were pulled off their hinges and into the current.

We ran to the other end of the corridor and hunkered down in the threshold of the tunnel with Jason, Michael, Paul, and Detroit, and then we watched it happen.

All of the stuff—everything but the concrete support columns—was sucked backward into an ever-tightening spiral. It swirled around and closed in, becoming a sphere of stuff. And then, with a pop and a burst of light, it was gone.

There was silence for a moment as we stared at the husk of the sanctuary—a place the Reapers could no longer use to hurt anyone, or try to further their own magic.

“Now that,” Scout said, “was a good spell.”

Maybe needless to say, we slept in Saturday morning. There was something about working serious magical mojo that pulled the energy right out of you.

After checking in with Scout and reading a message from Daniel (Detroit was doing fine, and Veronica’s memories of the capture had been ixnayed by Katie,

who had manipulation power), I finally managed to pull on jeans and a hoodie so I could scrounge through the cafeteria for some breakfast. I nabbed a tray and loaded it with energy: juice, yogurt, and muffins for me, and a plate of eggs, bacon,

and toast for Scout. I ignored the stares as I carried the tray back through the Great Hall. They thought I was weird, and I might have been. But I’d also worked my tail off keeping them safe, and I deserved a little weirdness now and again.

When I got back, I went directly to Scout’s room. We chowed down without speaking, finally mumbling something about being tired when we’d cleared the tray of pretty much every crumb. Although I was still contemplating a trip over to Mrs.

M’s for a postbreakfast.

And that was pretty much how the rest of the morning went, at least until we made the transition to my room.

After all, it was Saturday, and I had a date.

With a werewolf.

I know, I know. I play the unique, totally hip, magic-having, brilliant, always-

together teenager.

Of course, the “teenager” bit is the most important part of that sentence. That was the part that made me change clothes four times, flipping through skirts and jeans and tops and scarves until the floor was pretty much covered in fabric. Scout read a magazine on my bed, generally not helping.

She’d suggested I wear a “potato sack.”

What did that even mean?

The sun was out, so I settled on skinny jeans, a tank, and a half-cardigan. I shooed Scout out of my room and locked the door behind us, then settled the key around my neck. I was getting used to wearing it, and there was something about the weight of it that was kind of familiar.

Outside my door, Scout yawned again, back of her hand at her mouth. “You wanna go to dinner when you get back?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

She nodded, then began to trudge toward her door. “I’ll be in my room. Wave at the gargoyles for me.”

I snorted. “Yeah, ’cause they’re gonna wave back?”

She arched an eyebrow.

Right. We were at St. Sophia’s.

But it was also a weekend at St. Sophia’s, so the buildings were pretty quiet as I walked to the front door. Some of the girls’ parents picked them up for a weekend visit home; some of them headed outside to explore the city.

Me? I was going on a date with a werewolf.

He stood at the edge of the grounds in jeans and a tucked-in, button-up shirt in the same spring blue as his eyes. In his hand was an old-fashioned picnic basket.

“Hello, Lily Parker,” Jason said, leaning forward and pressing his lips to mine.

“Happy Saturday.”

“Happy Saturday.”

“Our goal for today,” he said, “is to pretend to be normal for a few hours. So I thought we’d spend our time outside. In the sun. And not underground.”

I smiled grandly. “Great minds think alike.” I nodded at the basket. “What’s that?”

“We’re having a picnic.”

“A picnic?”

He held out his hand. “Come on. We only have an hour.”

I looked at him for a minute, trying to figure out what he was up to, before taking his hand. “An hour before what?”

“For lunch. Then we have an appointment.”

“All right, bucko. But this better be good.”

“Bucko? We aren’t going on a date in nineteen seventy-four.”

I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t stop the grin. Taking my hand in his, he led me down the sidewalk.

Our picnic spot was a square of grass in a long, narrow park that ran between two buildings off Michigan Avenue. It was like one row in a checkerboard, squares of grass alternating with fountains and plazas with benches. Jason pulled his fleece blanket out of the picnic basket and gallantly held out a hand.

I took a seat and waited for him to unload the basket. The first thing he pulled out was a glossy white box. He unfolded the top, revealing two brownies topped with a dusting of powdered sugar.

I pulled a chunk from one of them and took a bite. “Wow. That’s really good.”

“I made them myself.”

I slid him a suspicious glance.

“Did I say ‘make’? I meant to say I bought them at a bakery on the way over here.”

“I figured. I mean, how would you have the time to bake? And you live in a dorm room, right? Do you even have a kitchen?”

“I have matches and a mug warmer.”

“Rebel.”

“And with a cause, too. Just stick with me, kid. I’m going places.”

I shook my head at the joke and pulled out another piece of brownie, trying to avoid splattering my jeans with a snowfall of powdered sugar.

For nearly an hour, we sat on the blanket in the grass, and ate our lunch. We joked. We laughed. We talked about our hometowns and the people we went to school with.

For nearly an hour, we pretended to be teenagers who had nothing more to do on a weekend than finish up homework, spend the night at a girlfriend’s house, or figure out what to wear to class on Monday morning.

We just . . . were.

And the more we sat in the grass on that beautiful fall day, the more we laughed.

Every time Jason laughed, his nose crinkled up.

Every time Jason laughed, my heart tugged a little.

If I wasn’t careful, I was gonna fall for this boy.

And yet something was . . . weird. Maybe it was the fact that I’d seen Sebastian.

Maybe it was the fact that I’d seen Jason in wolf form. Maybe he was just tired. But there was something in his eyes. Something darker than I’d seen before. Scout had said once that the summer had been long, that the Adepts were tired.

Maybe fighting the good fight was wearing on him, as well.

But I pushed the thought aside. There would be enough worry when darkness fell again. For now the sun was enough.

When lunch was done, the trash was tossed and the blanket was packed away again. Taking my hand in his, Jason led me toward our “appointment” on the other side of the river. As we crossed the bridge, I walked beside the railing, my eyes on the water beneath us.

“They dye it green for St. Patrick’s Day, you know.”

“Yeah, I saw that on TV once. It’s cool that it runs right through downtown.”

On the other side of the bridge, we took a set of steps down to a small riverside dock. I looked over at him. “What are you up to?”

“We’re taking a ride,” he said, then gestured to his right. I glanced out across the river, where a longish boat topped with dozens of chairs was gliding toward us.

“River tour,” he added. “We’re going to take a little trip.”

“I see. Thanks for keeping me posted.”

“Anytime, Lily. Anytime.”

When the boat pulled up, we waited while the passengers stepped off; then Jason handed the captain two tickets. We took seats beside each other at the front of the boat, and when the coast was clear, the captain motored us into the river. We headed away from the lake, deeper into the forest of steel and concrete.

I stared up as the towers drew nearer, growing larger. Some looked like pointy pinnacles of glass. Others were round, like giant sugar canisters.

“They call them the corncobs,” Jason said, pointing to those twin, curvy towers that were full of parked cars.

“They look like it,” I agreed, neck stretched upward as I watched them pass.

“Here, lean back against me,” he whispered, rearranging himself so that his body supported mine. I leaned back, my head against his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, and we floated down the Chicago River, the world around us. For the first time in a long while, I felt safe. Secure, like even if the world was full of ghosts and monsters and evil motivations, they couldn’t get to me. Not now. Not while we floated on inky blue water, the riveted steel of bridges above us, orangey red against the bright blue sky.

“I was thinking about the Sneak,” he whispered. “I think we should go together.”

My stomach felt like tiny birds had taken flight, and I was glad he couldn’t see the silly grin on my face. “Yeah,” I said. “That sounds good.”

He squeezed me tighter. “Life is good.”

For once, in that moment, it simply was.

But moments like that don’t last forever, do they?

We were back on land, walking toward St. Sophia’s when he pulled me toward the alley and the garden of thorns. I figured he wanted a quiet place to talk. I hadn’t expected him to unbutton his shirt. Blushing, I looked away, but I got enough of a view to see that he had the body of an athlete.

“You can look,” he said with a chuckle. “I need to show you something.”

I glanced back, my eyebrow arched suspiciously.

He held up two fingers. “Completely PG. I promise.”

I looked . . . then gaped. Across his chest were three foot-long scratches. They were well-healed now, three ripples of pinkish skin, the scars of an attack.

Instinctively, I reached out my hand to touch him, before curling my fingers back into a fist. “What happened?”

“Initiation,” he said.

I wasn’t sure if he meant it was a badge of honor for joining the werewolves, or it was a mark of how he’d become one. But then I remembered that he’d told me being a wolf was hereditary.

“When a wolf is old enough, he or she spends a night on a kind of journey. Like a vision quest. He—I—went into the woods. Some of the night is gone—the hours passed, but I don’t remember what I did. Some of it I remember, but a lot of those memories are just random sounds and images.”

“What sounds and images do you remember?”

He shook his head. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”

“Seriously?”

His expression was grim. “It’s one of the rules. My parents don’t even know what went on. Just me and”—he looked down at the scars on his chest—“me and the wolf who did this.”

“Initiation,” I repeated. “That seems kinda harsh.”

“You’re thinking like a human. Think about puppies. They learn by play fighting,

biting, clawing. That’s different from the way humans learn.” He shrugged. “Same goes for werewolves. The world is a violent place.”

“Did you”—I paused, trying to figure out how to ask the question—“did you learn anything while you were out there? Have a vision, I mean? See part of your future or whatever?”

“I guess you could say I understood what it meant to be who I am.” His eyes seemed to cloud, like whatever he’d learned, he wasn’t thrilled about it.

“Is it magic?” I wondered. “I mean, they call you an Adept, and you’re a member of Enclave Three . . .”

His expression darkened. “I’m an Adept because I’m something else, something other, and something powerful. Not because I have a talent.” He looked away. I could tell that something was bothering him—something about being a werewolf—

but I still wasn’t sure what it was.

What had he wanted to show me? The scars?

“What is it?” I asked.

“I need to tell you something. And it may mean something to you. It might not—but I need to tell you.”

My stomach rolled. Scout had tried to warn me about Jason; she hadn’t been specific, though. Now I wondered if I was about to get all the gory details. Did he have a girlfriend? Was he a Reaper in disguise? Had he seen me talking to Sebastian? I gnawed the edge of my lip. “Okay. Go ahead.”

“It’s a curse,” he said.

We were quiet for a moment.

“I don’t know what you mean about a ‘curse.’ ” He shook his head, and he wouldn’t make eye contact. “It means it’s not a gift, or magic. I’m not some kind of romantic mutant. I’m not a superhero.” He looked up at me, and his eyes shifted in color—from sky blue to chartreuse—just like those of an animal in the night. His voice dropped, became a little growlier.

“There was an ancient king named Lycaon. He was cruel to gods and men alike,

and he was punished by both. The gods punished him by turning him into a wolf—

but only halfway. So he wasn’t really a wolf, and he wasn’t really a man. He had to live in between the two worlds, never really a part of either. Humans punished him for that.”

I reached out and took his hand, slipping my fingers into his. “So that’s where it all started?”

Jason nodded. “With Lycaon and his sons. They were my ancestors and the cause of it all. I bear the curse every day, Lily, of someone else’s guilt.”

“You told me you ran away when you found out you were a wolf. Is that why you left?”

“Part of it, yeah.” He looked up and away, out toward the city.

He was quiet a long time.

“Why do I get the sense you’re not telling me all of it?”

It took a minute for him to look back again, and when he did, there was sadness in his eyes. “I like you, Lily.”

I looked away, expecting the worst.

“I’m not human,” he finally said. “I know you saw me transform, but it’s not a full moon. If you’re there, you’ll get hurt.”

“Hurt?”

“As the moon grows larger, my control gets weaker. I can be around friends, at least until the moon is full. That’s when we run.”

“Friends?”

His eyes shifted from blue to green and back again, and my heart tripped in time.

“I have feelings for you, Lily. I shouldn’t. Not when I could put you at risk. There will be a girl. A wolf my parents will choose for me.”

My head began to spin.

“That’s the real curse,” he said. “Not the fact that I transform, not even the fact that I lose control when the moon is full. The curse is the loneliness. The separation. Never really being anything except a wolf, because being something else—being human—puts everyone else at risk.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“I need you to say something.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

He dropped his forehead onto mine. “Tell me it doesn’t matter.”

I blinked back tears, but what could I say to this boy? This boy with the spring blue eyes? “I guess the lesson I’ve learned over the last few weeks is that life is rarely what we think it’s going to be. So you do the best you can. Right?”

“Does that mean we’re still on for Sneak?”

I was quiet for a minute, considering my options. Best-case scenario, we just spent time together and didn’t waste time worrying about the future.

Worst-case scenario? I fell for a boy I couldn’t have, and lost my heart completely.

But I wasn’t even sixteen yet, and the future was a long way off. With all the crazy in the world—especially in my world—why not enjoy it, right?

“Yeah,” I finally said. “We can go to Sneak.”

With a victorious groan, he pulled me tightly into his arms, his body smelling of sunlight and springy cologne. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

We held hands as we walked back to St. Sophia’s, but we didn’t speak a word. He stopped in front of the gate and embraced me again, then dropped his head to press a kiss to my lips.

After he left, I glanced back at the school. I wasn’t ready to head back inside. I looked out over the city again and spied the familiar orange moon of a coffee-

house down the street.

“There’s nothing a little overpriced latte can’t fix,” I quietly said, then headed back down Erie toward Michigan Avenue, trying to clear my head.

He was cursed.

Let me repeat that. He was cursed. And when the full moon came, if I was around, he’d rather rip me into shreds than kiss me. It did tend to discourage dating humans, I guessed.

Why did stuff like this have to happen just when things were looking so promising? When I was starting to like a boy with blue eyes who, at least until a few minutes ago, hadn’t been trying to kill me. There was a pretty big nasty in the closet,

and the burden fell on me to deal with it. What was I supposed to do? Tell him it didn’t matter?

Or worse—lie to him? Tell him we’d find a solution that thousands of years—and probably thousands of wolves—hadn’t revealed.

Tears stung at the corners of my eyes.

I crossed the street at the light. I’d dealt with getting dropped off in Chicago, with firespell, with a best friend with a magical secret, with constant doubts about my parents.

This was the straw that broke the Adept’s back.

It might be time to skip the latte and go straight for the triple hot chocolate.

“We keep running into each other.”

I glanced up. Sebastian stood in front the coffee-house, orange paper cup in hand. He wore jeans and a dark blue fleece jacket that almost perfectly matched the color of his eyes.

I swiped at the tear that had slipped down my cheek as casually as possible. “I assume it’s not a coincidence you’re a block from St. Sophia’s?”

Frowning, he held up his cup of coffee. “It is, actually. My parents have a condo.”

He gestured toward the tower above the coffee place. “I was visiting.”

It took me a second to remember that Reapers, whatever their motivations, were people, too. With parents and condos and lives beyond evening battles.

But still . . . “We aren’t going to be friends, you know.”

His eyes seemed to darken. “I didn’t expect that we were.”

“Good.”