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“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” She put on her best know-it-all expression. “Sucked any souls lately?”
His expression went flat. “We have a gift. And if we can’t use it? Then what happens?”
“The rest of us live happily ever after?”
“Our magic helps people. If we don’t have the magic, we don’t get to help.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Help? Name one thing Reapers have done to help anyone.”
“What we do is confidential.”
“What you do is nothing. I’ve heard the ‘confidential’ story before, Sebastian. You think they don’t try to sway us with the nonsense?”
Okay, I wasn’t thrilled my BFF and a Reaper were arguing in the middle of a bridge, magic or not. But this was stuff I hadn’t heard about before.
“Who is ‘they’?” I asked. “And what’s confidential?”
“‘They’ are the Scions,” Scout said, narrowed gaze on Sebastian. “The ones who make decisions for the Dark Elite. And the confidential crap is just that—a load of crap.”
Sebastian looked at me. “It’s a long story, and there are details I can’t reveal. But we do help people. I promise you, Lily.”
Scout was standing there, but I still felt like he was saying that just to me. I definitely believed they were doing secret things; I just wasn’t convinced they were for anyone’s good but their own. Willing to believe? Maybe. But I was going to need hard evidence, and we didn’t have time for that kind of proof today. So I changed the subject.
“Let’s save the argument for another time,” I said. “Right now we have a more immediate problem.”
“She’s your cousin,” Scout said. “You can just call her up and tell her to give you your magic back.”
“If she’s done something, invented something, whatever, that takes magic away from whoever she wants, do you think she’ll just give it back to me because I ask her? She’s too manipulative for that, and I don’t even know if she can. Besides, I’m not going to help her do whatever she’s doing. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Everybody makes their own decisions about whether to keep their magic or not. That goes for you and us.”
“But not the humans whose souls you take?”
“Are you so sure about that?”
Scout growled, and I could see we were getting nowhere fast. It was time to talk about concrete options or they were going to start slap fighting right here on the bridge.
“Fine,” I said. “You two can agree to disagree.” I looked at Sebastian. “Does Jeremiah know about Fayden?”
“Not yet. She’s my cousin,” he said, pity in his voice. “He’ll go postal. I don’t want her to get hurt.”
“Where can we find her?” Scout asked.
“I don’t know. Her apartment is in Hyde Park near U of C. She wasn’t there. I’ve called her a few times, but no answer. I haven’t talked to her mom yet. I didn’t want to scare her if I wasn’t sure what was going on.”
“She hasn’t been in Chicago very long,” I said. “How many hiding places could she even know about? Wait.” I pointed at Sebastian. “You played tour guide. Where did you take her? I mean, did she seem really interested in anywhere in particular? Was there anything unusual she really wanted to see?”
He frowned and looked down at the ground as he considered. “Not that I can think of. I showed her all the tourist spots. Field Museum. Navy Pier. Wrigley Field. The planetarium. She hadn’t been to Chicago in years. She wanted to see pretty much everything.”
I nibbled on the edge of my thumb as I racked my brain, trying to figure out our next move. This was when the crew from Scooby Doo or Buffy or Star Trek or one of those other shows where people solved a mystery at the end would have been really handy.
“If I tell Jeremiah,” he finally said, “he’ll rush in and try to take whatever is there for his own use.”
“He’s your boss.”
“But that doesn’t mean I do everything he tells me. And that definitely doesn’t mean I want him using Fayden. If this is really her doing, I’m not a fan of it. But I wouldn’t be a fan of Jeremiah doing it, either, and I don’t think he could stop himself. Not when there’s that much power up for grabs.”
Scout and Sebastian looked at each other for a minute, like they were taking each other’s measure.
“Perhaps an agreement could be worked out,” he carefully said.
“I’m listening,” Scout said.
“You need Jeremiah off your back. I need you to take care of Fayden because you’ll be nicer to her than he would.”
“How do we know we can trust you?” Scout asked.
“You can’t. That’s the nature of trust—it’s always a risk. And I’m not crazy about trusting someone I know hates me. But what better options do we have?”
Hands on her hips, Scout looked at him for a minute. Finally, she held out a hand. “Deal under those terms. The détente is extended between your crew and mine until Fayden is neutralized.”
He held out his hand, and they shook on it. “Deal.” He gave me a nod, then turned and headed back down the bridge again. He met Alex and the tall girl and must have given them a little bit of a summary because they both gave us dirty looks. Maybe they weren’t thrilled about the plan . . . or maybe he’d told them what Scout had said about Reapers.
When I turned around again, Scout was leaning over the railing, her fingers linked together over the water. I joined her.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh.
“What about the confidentiality stuff? Do you think they’re really helping people?”
She sighed, and it sounded tired. “A few years ago, there was a big Dark Elite PR campaign about Reapers being secret government weapons—helping solve crimes and fix problems and stuff. But no one believed it. It was made up.”
That was the part that bothered me—how could she know it was made up any more than she could know it was true?
“So what do we do now?”
“We tell Daniel,” she said. “And we hope he likes the deal we just worked out.”
My fingers were crossed.
