But I wasn't really listening as I pulled the tapestry aside and turned the tiny sword in the Gallagher Academy crest, which lay embedded in the stone wall.
"She might be in the ninth-grade common room," Liz was saying in the manner of someone who has to keep talking or else she'll fall asleep. "They have those really comfy chairs…"
But I just watched the wall slide aside to reveal the empty corridor. I listened to the sounds of silence echo through the shaft. I looked down at the place where Macey and I had left our disguises earlier that night—at the place where no wigs, no glasses, no trace of the girls we'd been earlier that night remained.
"She's here," Liz said. "She can't be…"
"Gone."
Chapter Twenty-five
"Tell me." Mr. Solomon's voice was steady as he sat on the coffee table in front of the leather couch in my mother's office. I didn't look around the room. I didn't listen as my mother spoke on one phone and my aunt on another. I didn't watch Liz and Bex as they sat in the window seat, answering questions from Buckingham and Mr. Smith. It was the quietest chaos I'd ever seen or heard, so I just sat there, trying to keep my tired mind from drifting too far down that empty passageway, chasing after Macey.
One floor below us, girls were gathering for Saturday morning breakfast; up in the suites, half the junior class was probably sleeping in. The news about Macey hadn't spread yet, but it would…and I knew it was up to the people in my mother's office to make sure it didn't spread too far; so maybe that's why Joe Solomon looked at me as if we were the only two people in the room—the school. His world wasn't falling apart. He was going to hold it together—I could hold it together. I just had to…
"Tell me everything, Ms. Morgan."
"The last time I saw her was last night."
"Everything."
"At eight forty-seven p.m. last night we were in town…at the football game," I admitted, expecting him to shout or at least look confused, but Joe Solomon isn't one of the best covert operatives in the world for nothing, so he just nodded and told me to go on. "And we saw Zach."
Maybe it was my overactive imagination, but I could have sworn that that made Mr. Solomon blink. I thought about the way he and Zach had rendezvoused in the train tunnel in Philadelphia. A dozen questions sprung to mind, but as badly as I wanted answers, I wanted Macey back more. So I said, "Do you want it verbatim?"
He seemed to appreciate the offer but shook his head. "Not now."
"Zach and I were talking about the Circle of Cavan—I figured it out, you know. From the ring and the sword?"
He smiled. "I knew you would. Go on."
"Macey overheard us. She didn't know she was related to Gilly. She wanted to know if that was why she was admitted here. She didn't know about any of it until then, and so she…ran. It was loud and crowded and I lost her." I couldn't look at him. "I'm supposed to be a pavement artist, and I lost her."
"It's what she does, Ms. Morgan." Mr. Solomon's eyes found mine, but there was a change in him somehow. "Running," he added. "Of course, technically, her pattern is to do something to get kicked out, but that's not an option now, so she's taken matters into her own hands. Do you know what I'm saying, Ms. Morgan?"
But sadly, I didn't.
"Sometimes people run… to see if you'll come after them."
I've seen Joe Solomon every school day for more than a year, but I don't think I'll ever really know him. There are times when he's one of the strongest people I've ever known, and then there are moments—like that one—when I think he might be broken, deep down, in a place that will never mend.
And then just like that, he became my teacher again. "Is anything missing from your room?"
I stopped for a second, closed my eyes, and visualized the space. "Her passport."
"No clothes? No money?"
"She has fourteen different credit cards and knows all the numbers by heart."
Mr. Solomon looked as if he wanted to smile, as if he wanted to laugh. "She also has the most famous face in the country right now, Ms. Morgan," he told me, not a hint of worry in his voice. "I think we can track her down." But then he read my expression, and the smile slid from his lips. "What?"
"Well," I said slowly, "remember how we had that disguise class?"
There wasn't time for yelling. It wasn't the place for mother-daughter lessons in regret. As our teachers huddled around us, I gave them details of the items Macey had taken with her. When I finished, my mother shook her head and started for the phone. Unfortunately, Aunt Abby wasn't as easily distracted.
"I know what I did," I said before my aunt could utter a word.
"Do you?" There was something deeper in her eyes. She wasn't just Aunt Abby then; she was more than Macey's protector; for a split second she was the woman on the train, but then—just as quickly—that woman was gone. "You went into town alone and…and now, come Tuesday, we are going to have to produce Macey McHenry, and if we can't, every agent in the Secret Service and half the FBI is going to descend upon this mansion, Cameron, and I don't know if even your mother can keep them out. They're going to pull back carpets and knock down doors until they track Macey's every step, and in the process, they might take my head for good measure. And meanwhile, she's—" Abby placed a hand on her hip, and for the first time, I saw a holster. Like smoke and fire, I knew that somewhere there was a gun. "She's out there. She's goodness only knows—"
"New York!" Buckingham shouted and banged down a phone. "A young woman matching Macey's description purchased a bus ticket to New York last night. And someone using one of Macey's mother's business accounts reserved a private jet to Switzerland."
Abby looked at me. "Her family has a house there," I said. "It fits."