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.”
18
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.”