by Хлоя Нейл
Veronica smiled smugly. “We’re playing sister school to Montclare Academy again.”
That smug look on her face worried me. Jason went to Montclare, but I wasn’t so much worried about him. Michael, however, was a different matter. While Michael had a pretty big crush on Scout, she was playing very hard to get. Veronica, on the other hand, seemed determined to take her place. Veronica had made a point of asking Scout about Michael one day, hinting around that she had a thing for him.
The interest was understandable. Michael was totally cute. Dark, curly hair. Big brown eyes. A huge smile that was impossible to ignore . . . unless you were Scout Green. She managed pretty well. Of course, if Scout didn’t ask Michael, then technically he was fair game.
The bell rang. Veronica made a little curtsy before she and Amie were joined by M.K., and they headed out the door. I waited for Scout to gather up her books.
“So,” I began, “exactly how uncool would it be if I wanted to be on the Sneak committee?”
Scout pulled her messenger bag over her shoulder and gave me a sideways glance. “Purposefully involve yourself in brat drama? Why would you want to do that?”
“Decorating and design and stuff is right up my alley,” I reminded her. “My art studio hasn’t started yet, and I really need a creative outlet, even if it does involve the brat pack.”
“Don’t you already have a creative outlet?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sure I’d call what we do ‘creative.’ ”
“Have you ever done it before?”
“Well, no.”
Scout grinned at me. “Then it’s creative.”
Drama notwithstanding, I concluded I was going it alone on the planning committee front. But as we walked down the hall toward our lockers, I decided to try something else Scout might be interested in. “Do you think Veronica asked him?”
“Asked who?” She sounded completely unconcerned, but I knew her better than that.
“I know your real first name, Scout. Don’t make me use it.”
“Fine, fine. Don’t have a conniption. Yeah, she probably asked Garcia. Or she will, if she hasn’t already. It’s just the kind of thing she’d do.”
“Maybe he wants to ask you.”
“Then it serves him right for waiting,” she muttered.
I slid her a glance. “So if he asks you, you’ll say yes?”
“Just because I don’t trip over him every time he comes into the room doesn’t mean I don’t, you know, appreciate him.”
“I knew it,” I said, a grin breaking out. “I knew you had a thing for him. So, are you going to tell him? Are you two going to start dating? Officially, I mean? This is huge.”
“Pump the brakes,” she warned, heading into the bay where our fancy wooden lockers were located. “Pump the brakes, or I tell Amie you want decorating advice.
You’ll have to wear shades just to sleep in your room.”
Virtually everything in Amie’s room was an eye-scarring shade of Barbie pink.
“Now, that’s just rude.”
“I’m not above rude, Parker. You keep that in mind.”
I took her word for it, which is why I snuck back alone to sign up for the Sneak committee. An artist had to do what an artist had to do, right?
2
A dozen or so hours later, we’d ditched our plaid for jeans and boots, tonight’s uniform of the Adepts of Enclave Three.
It would have been cool to say we dressed that way because we were out pummeling Reapers into oblivion. But for now, Enclave Three was acting more like an Adept advance unit. Daniel tended to give us two kinds of assignments—trying to bring back kids who we thought had been targeted by Reapers, and patrolling the cold, damp tunnels beneath Chicago to keep an eye out for Reapers and, if necessary, battle them back.
There weren’t any Reaper targets at St. Sophia’s right now, at least not that we’d identified. (Although the soul-sucking would have explained a lot about M.K.’s personality.) So really, the boots were mostly to protect our feet from dingy water while we were on patrol. On the other hand, Jamie and Jill, auburn-haired twin Adepts with elemental fire and ice power, had been gone a lot recently, spending their evenings befriending a sad-eyed boy from their high school and trying to keep him from completely disappearing into himself as the Reapers used him to sate their hunger.
Tonight we were walking the tunnels that connected Enclave Three to St.
Sophia’s to make sure they were Reaper free. Unfortunately, they often weren’t. I’d had my first run-in with Sebastian in these tunnels, and the Reapers had used the tunnels to kidnap Scout and to snag her Grimoire. Since they hadn’t managed to grab it, odds were they’d try again.
We walked two by two, Scout and Michael in the lead, me and Jason behind. It’s not like the tunnels were superplush or anything—they used to hold the tracks for small railroad cars that ran between downtown buildings. They carried stuff into the buildings, and carried out ash from the boilers. Now they looked pretty much exactly how you’d expect abandoned miniature railcar tunnels to look.
On top of that, of course, the threat of Reapers was always there. But even with all that, there was something a little romantic about walking along in flashlight-lit tunnels together.
Scout looked back at me, determination in her eyes. “Lights on,” she ordered.
From what we knew so far—since I was the only local Adept with firespell—my magic was all about power, the raw force of the universe. That meant I could throw out shock waves of power that would knock people down and out, and I could manipulate electricity. But I still wasn’t entirely sure about the “how” of it.
I stopped walking, clenched my eyes shut, and concentrated on filling the tunnel with light. It was a matter of allowing the energy to flow into me, letting it pool and fill my veins with warmth, and then sending it out again.
“Very nice, Lil,” Scout said. But I knew it had worked before she’d spoken, the insides of my eyelids turning red from the sudden glare in the frosty corridor. I opened my eyes, squinting against the sudden gleam of the cage-wrapped lightbulbs that hung above us. I was getting a little better at controlling it, learning to spark the light and douse it again by concentrating, instead of only when my emotions became overwhelming.
Scout hopped across one of the rails in the concrete floor, flashlight in her hand,
her signature messenger bag—with its grinning skull and crossbones—bouncing as she moved.
“All right,” she said. “Off again.”
I blew out a breath, and pulled the power back out again. It was like turning the lights on, but in reverse—letting the power release again, freeing it from the bulbs in which it was bound. For a moment, the lights wavered, then went dark.
Jason took my free hand and laced our fingers together. “Your control is seriously improving.”
“Only because I’ve been working on it like two hours a day.”
Scout glanced back, her features thrown into strange relief by the flashlight beneath her face. “Hobbies are fun, aren’t they?”
“In this case, they would be more fun if I had any clue what I was doing.”
Jason leaned toward me. “You’re doing great, Lily,” he said, squeezing my hand.
I squeezed back.
“I’m doing better than I was,” I agreed. “But I’d feel a whole lot better if I could do it on command every time. I’m still a little unpredictable.”
“One of these days,” Jason said. Since his eyes were on Scout and Michael,
who were walking side by side in front of us, Michael’s arm around her shoulders, I assumed Jason was no longer talking about me.
“One of these days,” I agreed. “They’ll be good for each other. They are good for each other.”
“Yes, they are,” he said, before his gaze shifted back to me again. “But enough about them. You know, we haven’t had a lot of time to talk. To get to know each other.”
The warmth on my cheeks was a
weird contrast to the chilly tunnel air. “That’s true,” I said, my heart suddenly thudding in my chest. What was it about this guy that made me feel like a nervous kid? I hated feeling that way, so I took the lead.
“So, say something.”
“Something.”
I bumped him with my shoulder. “I’m serious.”
“So was I. Maybe you just don’t appreciate my sense of humor.” But when I gave him a flat stare, he laughed. “Okay, okay. So, um, what is Sagamore like compared to Chicago?”
“Oh. Well, it’s beautiful,” I told him. “It’s a small town, kind of in the country. Trees everywhere, rolling hills. Our neighborhood was on a hill, so when you looked outside in the fall, you could see the fog over the valley. It was like living in a fairy land.”
“Wasn’t ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ supposed to take place in New York?”
I frowned. “I don’t know. Was it?”
“I wanna say we learned that last year in English.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.
Could be wrong. Anyway, if it was, probably says a lot about upstate New York,
right?”
“Are you suggesting I was living in a fairy land?”
“Well, at least a land with headless horsemen.” He dropped my hand and half turned around, fingers arched into claws. “Headless horsemen who cut the heads off fair maidens in the night!” He tweaked my waist, just enough to make me yelp. I batted his hands away.
Scout glanced back, eyebrow arched. “What’s going on back there?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Some dork is trying to scare me with tales of murderous creatures.”
She snorted. “What, ’cause that’s so different from an average Monday around here?”
“Seriously, right?”
“People,” Jason said, “I’m busy trying to work my mojo.”
Michael turned around and offered Jason his fist, and they did a manly knuckle-
bump thing.
Scout and I simultaneously rolled our eyes. But before I could respond, Jason grabbed my hand again and pulled me to a stop. My stomach fluttering, I kept my eyes on Scout and Michael, who continued in front of us, flashlights bobbing until they realized that we weren’t following behind.
Scout looked back. “What’s up, peeps?”
“Could you, maybe, give us a minute?” Jason asked.
“You are not serious.”
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find time to kiss an Adept?”
Scout blew out a dramatic breath that puffed out her cheeks, grabbed Michael’s hand, and pulled him down the hall. “Fine. Have a hot make-out session. But we’re going to be like twenty feet down the hallway. I hope they get eaten by one of those headless horsemen,” she muttered. “Or the Chicago version, anyway.”
As they walked down the hallway, I kept my gaze on them, still too nervous to look at Jason.
“What would that be exactly?” I heard Michael ask.
“What would what be?”
“The Chicago version of the headless horseman?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a fangless vampire? Or—or a werewolf with mange?”
“We can still hear you!” Jason called out. “And werewolves don’t get mange!”
That earned him a huff from Scout. I finally screwed up my courage and looked back at Jason.
He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. But they weren’t royal blue or the blue you’d see in the middle of a rainbow. They were so blue they were nearly turquoise,
the color so deep it seemed that he stared out with precious jewels instead of irises.
Currently, those crazy eyes were trained on me. His lips curled, the dimple at the corner of his mouth puckering as he smiled.
My nerves tumbling, I kept things light.
“So you’re trying to kiss an Adept?”
“Very, very diligently,” Jason said. Before I could get out a snarky answer, he was dipping his head. His lips found mine, his mouth soft and warm. He put his hands at my waist and kissed me until I felt a little light-headed, until my heart fluttered in my chest. I’d been kissed before, sure, but I hadn’t been kissed like this.
Not by him, since we’d been interrupted when he’d tried to kiss me before. And not like my feet were going to lift off the ground and I was going to float right up to the ceiling.
I almost opened my eyes to make sure that hadn’t happened—I mean, we were Adepts, after all.
Jason sighed and wrapped his arms around my back, and we kissed in the darkness beneath Chicago.
At least until Scout let out a “Holy crap!” that poured through the tunnel.
We separated and ran full out, relieved when we saw Scout and Michael still standing at the edge of the next segment of tunnel.
“What happened?” Jason asked, his gaze scanning the two of them. “Are you okay?”
“There,” Scout said, swinging her flashlight across the tunnel in front of us.
It took me a minute to process exactly what I was seeing. The floor of the tunnel and part of the walls were coated in some kind of clear slime, five or six trails of it from one end of the corridor to the next.
“Wait,” Jason said. “Is that—Is that slime?”
“Appears to be,” Michael said. “It looks like they filmed Aliens in there.”
Jason kneeled down, found a piece of metal on the tunnel floor, and stuck it into the goo. When he raised it again, he pulled up a long, stringy strand of slime.
“Eww,” Scout said. “That is heinous. That’s even worse than the time we fought off that nematode.”
“What’s a nematode?” I asked.
“I’m not going to tell you,” she said. “I think you should have the joy of looking it up on the Internet and seeing the kind of pictures I had to see.”
“So what did this come from?” I asked. “Some kind of animal?”
“Maybe not,” Michael put in. “Maybe there’s a leak somewhere. Some kind of—I don’t know—industrial fluid or something?”
We all looked up. The ceiling of the tunnel looked old and nasty, but not even a little slimy.
“Hmm,” Jason said, then tossed the metal into a corner. “That’s definitely new.”
“What do we do now?”
Scout put her hands on her hips. “Since the exit is in that direction, I guess we should see how far it goes.”
“Lily and I will take the lead,” Jason said, stepping forward into the tunnel. When I snapped to face him, shocked that we’d be going first, his expression was apologetic.
“Firespell,” he explained. “Just in case we need it.”
It was definitely an adjustment to play the lead heroine, but I sucked it up, nodded,
and stepped beside him.
With flashlights aimed before us and Michael and Scout behind us, we took one tentative step into the tunnel. And then another. And then another.
“I’m not seeing anything,” Scout said, flashlight beam circling across the ceiling of the tunnel as she searched out whatever had slimed the corridor.
“One tunnel at a time,” Jason said. My hand in his, we took the lead, walking to the end of the corridor.
I was scanning the walls, bouncing my flashlight beam along them, looking for a hint of slime. So when Jason came to a full stop, I almost tripped forward, but he pulled my hand—and me—back.
That was when I saw them—and screamed.There were five of them—half walking, half crawling toward us. They were human-shaped, but a little smaller than your average adult. They were bald, with pointed ears and milky eyes, and their fingers were thin and tipped by long, pointed white nails. They scowled and snorted as they moved toward us. Their naked skin glistened in the light, a trail of slime on the ground beneath and behind them.
“What—” I began, but Jason shook his head. “Scout, Michael. Stop walking, and move backward. Just a few feet.”
Scout and Michael began to move behind us. With each step they took, we followed suit until the
four of us stood in a cluster a dozen feet or so away from the creatures. Still, they lurched in our direction, their movements coordinated like a school of nasty, pasty fish.
I could feel my chest tightening as panic began to take over. Staring down a group of hell-bent teenagers was one thing. This was . . . completely out of my league.
“What the hell are those?” I whispered.
“No clue,” Jason said. “But they don’t exactly look friendly.”
One of them hissed, revealing long fangs amid an entire row of sharp teeth. “Are they some kind of vampire?” Michael asked.
“I’ve never seen a vamp that looked like that,” Scout said.
Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe they were offended by what she’d said.
Either way, one of them decided it was time for action. It put its front hands on the ground, then pushed off and leaped toward us.
Okay, not just us—toward me.
But there was someone there to save me.
It started with fur—thick and silver—that sprouted across Jason’s body,
replacing his clothes like they were nothing more than an illusion. Then he went down on all fours and stepped in front of me. His nose elongated into a snout, and his hands and feet became long, narrow paws. His tail extended, and the rest of his fur grew in, and by then there was no mistaking what he was—a silvery wolf, bigger than any I’d seen at a zoo.
Every survival instinct I had kicked in, and I had to lock my knees to keep from running away. Jason lifted his head and looked at me for a moment, his head tilted to the side like a dog, his eyes now spring green.
I stood frozen in place, my gaze locked on his—on this wolf that suddenly stood before me.
That look only took a second, but that was long enough for hell to break loose.
The creature apparently wasn’t intimidated by Jason’s new form, and it didn’t stop running toward me. It continued its galloping gait, taking air in the last couple of feet and landing with an attack on Jason’s muzzle.
“Jason!” I screamed, but Michael pulled me back. I’m not sure what I would have done, but someone had to do something. Jason was taking an attack meant for me, and I didn’t want him hurt on my behalf.