by Chloe Neill
“One was released from First Immanuel Hospital this morning. The other is still in serious condition. She hasn’t woken up since the attack.”
The Enclave went silent.
“Not having magic is difficult for all of us,” he said. “But that is an explanation. It is not an excuse.”
“What if that happens to us?” Jill asked. “It could happen to us. We could lose it just like she did.”
“You’re not going to lose it,” Daniel said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t stay vigilant. We are all experiencing something we thought we had years to prepare for. Instead, we went cold turkey. Not everyone handles that transition well. I didn’t tell you this to scare you,” he added. “I told you this because you need to understand the risks. You have a right to understand the risks.”
He let that sink in for a minute, and then put his hands on the table. “All right. Let’s get to business. Scout, you had news?”
“Um, well, Reapers broke into St. Sophia’s today,” Scout said. “Two girls tried to steal my Grimoire. We’re assuming that’s part of Jeremiah’s plan to steal it because he thinks I had something to do with the blackout. Which, obvs, I did not.”
“Did they get it?” Daniel asked, his voice tight.
“Of course not. They wouldn’t have found it anyway, but Lily had already suggested I hide it, and I did.”
Daniel blew out a breath. “Good,” he said. “Good.”
“And, in addition to being awesome,” Scout continued, “we also have a lead on who might have something to do with the blackout. We went to Gaslight Goods. Kite told us some of the Reapers were talking about a fairy tale that involved a guy named ‘Campbell.’”
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
“Supposedly Campbell overthrew an overlord, but then went evil when he took power,” Scout said. “Kite told us Reapers were talking about the fairy tale like they thought it might be real. Lily did a little research, and it turns out Sebastian Born has a cousin named Fayden Campbell. She just moved back to town.”
Scout pulled out a copy of the article from her bag and handed it to Daniel.
“That’s a pretty big coincidence,” Daniel said, looking it over. “But it’s still only a coincidence. Do we have information tying Fayden Campbell to the blackout? Or to any Reaper activities?”
Scout looked at me.
“I’ve actually been told she’s not a Reaper,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s true.”
Daniel tilted his head in curiosity. “Where did you hear that?”
Nerves flooding me, I squeezed my hands into fists. “Sebastian Born. He’s my source in the Reapers. He helped me use firespell to rescue Scout, and he gives me information sometimes. That’s how I found out their magic was working even when ours was gone—at least at first. I saw him and Fayden on the street earlier this week. He introduced us, but he didn’t mention her last name. When Kite told us about the fairy tale, I did some Internet research and found her picture.” I left out the part about calling Sebastian to check if he knew anything about her. I was only so brave.
Without saying a word, Daniel sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his head. I was afraid to look at Jason, afraid of what emotion I might see in his face.
“You have a source in the Reapers,” Daniel finally said.
“Yeah.”
“And you talk to him often?”
“I don’t talk to him at all, really. Occasionally, he gives me information.”
“Out of the goodness of his heart?”
“Honestly, I think he thinks he can sway me to his side. Which is ridiculous,” I added. “I know who the good guys and the bad guys are.” Or I mostly did, I silently added. “But I’m not going to ignore him when he’s trying to help me out, whatever his reasoning.”
“Yeah,” Scout said. “Does this really matter? The point is, Lily has a contact in the Reapers and helped us figure out what’s going on. We need to focus on this Fayden Campbell person. We need to track her down and get some eyes on her—some Enclave Two cameras or something.”
Daniel sat forward again, crossing his hands on the table. “I’m going to need to think about this one. A source is nice, but I find it hard to believe he’d be so helpful without some secret motive.”
“That’s all you’re going to say?” All eyes turned to Jason. “Seriously. She’s suddenly friends with a Reaper, and that’s it?”
My stomach dropped. There was no doubting the fury in his gaze. He looked like I’d committed an unforgiveable sin. What if, no matter how good my reason, he couldn’t forgive me?
“Scout’s right,” Daniel said. “Whatever the source, we have to follow the lead. It could send us right to the source of the blackout.”
“There is a way we can track her, maybe,” I said, forcing myself to keep my gaze on Daniel and not think about the fury in Jason’s voice. “We went to Gaslight Goods yesterday. I asked Kite to call us if Sebastian Born came in. When he does, maybe we can follow Sebastian and see what he’s up to. It may not be much of a lead, but it’s better than nothing.”
Daniel thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Agreed. When he calls, go to Gaslight and follow him. See where he goes. Maybe the clue leads nowhere, but it’s worth the trip. And keep us posted.”
Without saying a word, or looking at me, Jason pushed back his chair, grabbed his backpack, and headed for the door.
“Jason, wait!” I pushed back my chair to follow him, but he closed the door in my face. I pulled it open and ran into the tunnel, but he kept going.
“Jason, please stop.”
Nothing.
“Please, can we just talk about this?”
He finally turned around . . . and he looked furious.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“What am I doing?” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I am trying to keep all of us safe. And it looks like that’s more than I can say for you. Talking to Sebastian? Helping out Reapers? What is that about? He’s the one who got you into this mess in the first place, and you’re talking to him?”
“That’s not what it’s like. He’s helping us. Ask Scout.”
“He’s helping you? Do you even hear yourself?”
I forced myself to stay calm. “Quit yelling at me and listen to what I’m telling you. Sebastian helped me. When we were in the sanctuary, he helped me use the firespell and get Scout out alive. And he’s helped me since then.”
“If he’s helped you, it’s because he has an ulterior motive—just like Daniel said. He wouldn’t just do it out of the goodness of his heart.”
“Because he’s evil?”
“Because he’s a Reaper, Lily, God. Haven’t you been paying attention for the last few months? Reapers are manipulative. This is how they operate. They take sane people and convince them that everything they know isn’t true.”
“Isn’t that what you and Scout did to me? Convinced me there was more to the world than just what I saw? Convinced me magic existed?”
His eyes flashed. “Sebastian convinced you of that when he hit you with firespell.”
I could see the anger in his eyes, and I knew what he thought. He thought I’d been swayed by a Reaper, convinced by Sebastian’s words. But I was still able to think for myself. I just had a different view of the world—a bigger view of the world—than I’d had before.
“He hit me with firespell accidentally,” I said. “He was aiming for Scout. And I’m not going to apologize for actually thinking about what’s happening here, instead of just accepting what you and Daniel say.”
“Great. Go think for yourself. And when I need someone levelheaded to talk to, someone who isn’t trying to screw up my family life, I guess you aren’t the person I should call. You may not even believe a word I say.”<
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“You know that’s not true.”
“No, I really don’t. I don’t think you’re the girl I thought you were. I do know I can’t handle this right now.”
He put his backpack back on his shoulder and began walking down the corridor.
“Where are you going?”
“Honestly, Lily, I’m not sure. I’ll let you know when I get there.”
With that, he disappeared into darkness.
I bit my lip to hold back tears. I didn’t want to cry in the tunnels, I didn’t want to cry over a boy, and I didn’t want to feel bad for thinking things through instead of just buying what everybody told me.
Yeah—it was scary to give up your assumptions and actually think, but wasn’t that the entire point of being an Adept?
The door creaked open, and Scout peeked her head out and looked around. “Where’s Jason?”
“He left.”
Frowning, she walked into the tunnel and closed the door behind her. “He left?”
I wiped at the tears on my cheeks. “Yeah. He’s really mad that I talked to Sebastian. He thinks I’m a traitor.”
“Aw, Lils,” she said, and held out her arms for a hug. I walked into them and sobbed my heart empty of tears.
* * *
Scout went back into the Enclave, grabbed my messenger bag, and got us excused so the other Adepts wouldn’t have to see me standing in a damp, nasty tunnel with tear tracks on my face and raccoon eyeliner eyes.
“I am definitely not going to the dance now,” I said, as Scout put an arm around my shoulder and we began walking back toward the school.
“You never know. He could come to his senses. And even if he doesn’t, do you really have time to worry about a werewolf with a bad attitude? Or a dress? You haven’t even had time to find a dress yet.”
“Do you really think he has a bad attitude?” I stopped short in the hallway. “Scout, am I making a huge mistake by even talking to Sebastian? It’s just information—he’s not going to sway me from one side to another. I’m a smart girl; I can make up my own mind.”
“I know you can. But Jason doesn’t think there’s any choice. In his mind, there’s clearly good and clearly evil and there’s no meeting in the middle. You talking to Sebastian totally crosses his wires, you know? He doesn’t see how you could do that if you were really a good guy . . .”
“Which makes him wonder if I’m really a good guy,” I finished.
“I think so, yeah.”
We started walking again. Feeling totally rejected, I kicked at a rusted chunk of metal on the ground. It skittered away into the dark.
“Do you wonder if I’m a good guy?”
It took her a scary long time to answer. “I want to think you’re a good guy. But you have to make that decision for yourself. And maybe being a good guy isn’t the same for everyone. It’s different for members of the Community than it is for us. So maybe it’s different for some Adepts than others.”
I didn’t exactly like the sound of that. But I knew how I felt. “No one has the right to take something that doesn’t belong to them,” I said. “And that includes stealing souls or energy or whatever Reapers take. But I didn’t grow up with this stuff, Scout. It’s new to me, and the only things I know come from other people. You tell me Reapers are bad, and I believe you. But I also think there’s more going on here than we know. Something more than Reapers-bad, Adepts-good. And I think we need to figure out what that is.”
I think she had a decision to make, too. I’d disrupted her world, made her think about things she probably didn’t want to—the possibility that truths she’d known weren’t entirely truth. That was the risk I took by telling her how I felt about it. I could only hope that she was strong enough to take that leap with me.
“When I first figured out that I could bind spells,” she said, “my parents were appalled. Fortunately, the Enclave found me pretty quickly after my powers popped through. They were nice to me, and what they said made sense, you know? But I was also told Reapers were bad. Always bad. Always self-centered. I don’t want to believe that it’s more complicated than that. I don’t want to believe that the world is this gigantic gray hole and you never really know wrong from right.”
She sighed, and looked back at me. “But that’s not exactly a good way to live, and it can’t be the best way to spend the few years I’ve got this power. If you’re in this, then I am, too. I don’t want to be part of a team just because it’s a team I grew up in. I want to be part of a team because it’s the right team.”
“There’s a risk it won’t be, you know. There’s a risk we’ll find out things we don’t want to.”
She nodded, and that was when I knew she was all in. “Then let’s find out.”
* * *
I knew Jason needed time and space, but that didn’t mean I was thrilled about the fact that he’d walked away. I checked my phone every few seconds, hoping I’d find a text message saying he’d rushed to judgment and was sorry he’d left me crying in the tunnel.
But my phone was silent.
When we made sure the tunnel door was locked up tight, we headed upstairs to bed.
“Long night,” she said after I followed her into her room and locked the door against nosey brat packers.
“It really was.”
“Do you think you’ll hear from Jason?”
“Right now I really don’t know.”
And I was getting so mad at him for walking away, I wasn’t sure I cared.
“You know what we should do?”
“What’s that?” I asked, but she was rifling through her messenger bag. She pulled out a cheap spiral notebook and a pen, then pulled off the cap.
“Are you starting on your novel?”
“Har har har, Parker. And someday, yes, but not today. It’s going to be called The Wicked Witch of the Midwest.”
“Promise me you’re joking.”
The expression on her face said she was dead serious. Which was sad, really, because that title was awful. “It’s, what, like, your memoir or something?”
“It will be,” she said, sitting down on the bed. “But I can’t write it, of course, until people know we actually exist.”
“So they don’t assume it’s just fiction?”
“Precisely,” she said, pointing with her pen. “But that’s not the point. We’re going to do something fun, Parker. We’re going to start a list.”
“That might be the boringest idea I’ve ever heard. A list of what?”
“Just, you know, stuff.” As if to prove her point, Scout flipped open the book and wrote THE LIST in big capital letters at the top of the first page. “It will be like our scrapbook of words. You know, instead of saving ticket stubs and homecoming ribbons and crap like that, we’ll have this list of all our memories, and stuff. You know?”
I didn’t really, but I did kind of like the idea of having a memory book for the two of us. I wasn’t sure there was a lot of my high school experience I’d want to remember—and I was hardly going to forget life as an Adept—but this would just be for Scout and me. Something to look back on in our old age . . . if we made it that long.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s try out this list thing. What do you want to put on it?”
She flicked the pen against her chin. “I feel like the first thing that goes on there should be pretty significant, you know? Something we’ll definitely remember later on.”
“Firespell? Brat pack? Reapers?”
“All good words, but so . . . common. For us, I mean. No—we need something cooler. Something better.”
“Werewolf? Sanctuary? Enclave?”
She shook her head. “Too specific.”
“You know, I’ve already named all the stuff we do on a daily basis. Pretty soon I’m just
going to be listing off nouns in alphabetical order. Aardvark. Antelope. Architecture. Avalanche. Stop me when I’m close.”
She must have thought of something, because she began to furiously scribble. And when she finally showed me the page, she’d listed down all the things I mentioned. But at the top of the list, in her scrawly handwriting, were a couple of simple words that meant a lot.
Best friends.
I bit my lip to keep my eyes from welling with tears again. “Good choice, Green.”
“I know,” she quietly said. “But that’s what this is all about, right? Now,” she said, tapping the paper, “let’s do the Adepts.”
In twenty minutes, we filled three sheets of paper.
14
Classes were bad when you were happy, when the weather was nice, or you wanted to be outside doing anything other than studying.
But they were even worse when you were depressed. When you wanted only to sit in your room staring at your phone and waiting for a call that probably wasn’t going to come. The more you wanted that phone call, the harder you waited for it, the longer it took. The slower classes became, and the more you wanted to fall down into yourself and just make the time go faster.
But, of course, it didn’t. And Jason didn’t call. He didn’t text. He didn’t contact me at all, not even to confirm that we were definitely off for Sneak.
It was total radio silence, and it drove me crazy.
Scout thought it was a good sign he hadn’t called—that if he’d really wanted a permanent breakup, he would have already told me. I wasn’t sure no news was good news, but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do about it. I wasn’t going to text or call him. He’d walked out on me, not vice versa. I’d stuck with him when he told me he was facing down a curse and his family was pressuring him. I could have told him it was too much drama for me, too much risk that I’d get my heart broken later on.
But I didn’t. I stayed.
He’d walked away because I’d gotten information from Sebastian. It’s not like I didn’t get why he was irritated, but what was the difference between me texting Sebastian and Detroit planting a camera? Not much, as far as I could see.