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“Oh, I know,” Scout said. “But it’s like the kid in the science fair who creates face-eating bacteria. The idea is awful, but you have to be impressed by the initiative.”
“I guess. What is it, exactly?”
“Some kind of magic spool, I think. Like a spindle.” Her voice got even quieter, and I think she forgot I was there. It sounded like she was just talking it over. “Pulling all the magic into it, maybe, with some kind of controls so she can take it away in parts. First the Adepts, then the Reapers. That’s probably the big plan for later—use it to divvy up the magic so she can hand it over to whomever she wants whenever she wants.”
While Scout thought it through, I scanned the rest of the room. Fayden Campbell stood in one corner dressed in a black bodysuit like a comic book bad girl, her hair pulled into a high ponytail, her signature glasses perched on her nose.
And she wasn’t alone. There were a few other people in the room. I guess they wanted to be part of her new world order, at least if our theory was right. And one of them looked familiar. . . . “That’s Charlie Andrews,” I told Scout, pointing him out. “The Reaper who was attacking Lisbeth. The guy I hit with a suitcase.”
“We wondered why he was Reaping out in the open,” she said. “I guess we know.”
“She isn’t working alone,” I whispered. “That explains how she managed this with firespell. Maybe it’s also why you haven’t been able to figure out how she made the magic—why the equations didn’t make sense. It’s because she’s not the only one doing it. It’s the combination of their magic, too.”
“Holy toast, Parker, that is a good idea. Grab your phone,” she added, as she pulled hers out. “Get pictures of their faces. Maybe we can figure out who the rest of them are and what their powers are.”
“And if we do that, you have a little more information to add to the equation.”
She nodded and began snapping photos. I did the same, and hoped we’d find the answers she needed.
* * *
We didn’t press our luck, and got out of there was soon as we had enough pictures. And as soon as we were a safe distance away from the building, we called Daniel and filled him in. All the Adepts—except Jason—agreed to meet back at the Enclave to work on the magic solution. I wasn’t sure if seeing the spindle was going to actually help out Scout, but she definitely seemed energized. It certainly couldn’t have hurt.
The problem was, we were blocks from St. Sophia’s, and we were even farther from the Enclave. And, we were aboveground. There were ways to get into the tunnel from street level without having to sneak back into St. Sophia’s and out again. But they involved walking through the Pedway.
The Pedway was a system of tunnels and passageways that ran through buildings in downtown Chicago and gave people a way to move through the city in the wintertime. There were access points from the Pedway to the tunnels, but there was a catch. The Pedway was the territory of vampires, and vampires didn’t like Adepts. They also didn’t really like competing vampire covens. That was precisely the fight Veronica had walked into.
“We need the Pedway,” Scout said, looking at a map on her phone. “There’s an entrance in a building a block from here, and we can hop right into the tunnels. It will be so much faster than going the long way.”
“And it risks getting caught in a vampire fight that will take us a lot longer to deal with,” I pointed out.
“There is one thing we could do.”
“What’s that?”
“You could call your favorite vampire and ask him for an escort.”
I just blinked at her. “You cannot be serious. I already had to run one errand for him this week.”
“Speed,” Scout stressed. “We need it. He can give it to us.”
I sighed, but knew I’d been beaten. So I dialed up Nicu and when he answered, gave him our address. “We need to get into the tunnels, and we have to go into the Pedway to do that. Can you meet us and, like, escort us through?”
His voice was grumbly and cold. “What will you do for me in return?”
I rolled my eyes. “Haven’t I done enough for you this week? Like, given you a happily-ever-after with one of St. Sophia’s finest?”
“I do not understand your sarcasm.”
Scout tapped her watch impatiently.
“Fine,” I said. “What do you want in return?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I wish to attend this dance I have heard about.”
You could have bowled me over. “Are you asking my permission to take Veronica Lively to Sneak?”
Scout made a gagging sound.
“It is your territory,” Nicu said. “It is only appropriate that I ask for your permission before I enter it.”
“Fine,” I said, glad someone wanted to go to the dance. “Go to the dance. Live happily ever after. Can you just meet us?”
“I will meet you. Two minutes.”
I figured he was exaggerating, but it took three minutes for Scout and me to take the elevator down into the building’s basement Pedway access, and Nicu was already waiting for us.
In a tuxedo.
I’ll be honest—he cleaned up pretty well.
“You look . . . lovely,” he said, glancing between Scout and me.
“Thanks,” she said. “But let’s get this show on the road. We have spells to cast.”
“You can teach me to slow dance?” he asked, as we walked down the Pedway.
Could this night possibly get any weirder?
18
Why did I even ask questions like that? Because no sooner did I ask it than I ended up in a room beneath the city, trying to explain to a bunch of teenagers how we’d just seen a magical floating spool in a deserted building on Michigan Avenue.
Unfortunately, even having seen the pumping station and the magic Fayden had made, Scout didn’t have any better ideas about how to stop it. For nearly an hour—while the rest of the St. Sophia’s girls were starting to get their dance on—Scout frantically scribbled numbers and figures and symbols that didn’t mean anything to me on the dry-erase board . . . and unfortunately didn’t seem to mean much to her, either.
Right now it looked like a bad abstract drawn by a bunch of kindergartners. I could do better than that. I may not be able to understand their equations . . . but I could draw.
Ooooh, I thought. That was something. “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way.”
