It was all part of me.

Just as it had been part of my mom before me. Serena had worked for the Sinclairs, and she’d dealt with the monsters, paying the tolls and respecting the creatures, their quirks, and their territories. She had been happy to do it, to follow the old ways and traditions, and she’d taught me to do the same. More than that, she’d instilled her love of all the rituals in me as well. I liked carrying around quarters and chocolate bars and knowing that I could communicate with the monsters in a way that other people couldn’t or simply didn’t take the time to. It was my mom’s legacy to me, and I couldn’t have left it behind even if I’d wanted to—and I didn’t want to anymore.

Sure, my mom had been murdered here, and I’d spent four years hiding and just trying to scrape by. Not exactly fun times. But I’d also found Devon and Felix and Oscar and Deah, and I wasn’t about to lose them now. Not to Victor Draconi or anyone else. I wasn’t about to abandon Mo, Claudia, and all the other captured Sinclairs when they needed me most. I was going to stay and fight for all the things I cared about—and for the future I wanted for myself.

My friends remained tense and quiet, but I started humming a soft tune, the same one that my mom used to hum whenever she was packing her coat full of monster supplies. Despite everything that had happened tonight, despite all the loss and grief and heartache, this was still exactly where I wanted to be.

The others gave me strange looks, wondering why I was humming, but they didn’t say anything. A couple of minutes later, we rounded a corner and stopped in front of a brick building that took up this particular block. A stack of splintered books adorned a faded sign planted in the lawn that read CLOUDBURST FALLS LIBRARY—WESTERN BRANCH.

Devon grinned and let out a low chuckle, realizing exactly what I was up to. “Only you would think to come back here. Brilliant, Lila. Bloody brilliant.”

I grinned back at him. “I do try.”

Deah shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

“The library?” Felix frowned. “But this is where you lived before you came to work for the Sinclairs.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And no one knows that but us, so there’s no way that the Draconis will even think to look for us here. Trust me, we’ll be safe. At least for tonight. Tomorrow, we can figure out what our next move is. But right now, we’re all about to drop from exhaustion. We need a place to lay low, and this is it. Now, come on.”

I headed over to the side door that I had gone through so many times before. Seeing the locked door was like catching up with an old friend, and it took me less than thirty seconds to pick it open with my chopstick lock picks. We slid inside and I shut and locked the door behind us.

Felix pulled out his phone and used it as a flashlight again, but I didn’t need any light to see by; I’d long ago memorized the library’s layout. I led my friends down the aisles, past the shelves of books, and over to a door that led into a storage room. I picked open that door, then another one at the far end of the storage room, and we walked through the opening and down the steps to the library basement. I told everyone to stand still for a second, then went over and ran my fingers over the touch lamp that I’d set up in the corner.

Soft white light filled the basement, revealing a mini fridge, cases of bottled water, and a metal rack crammed full of canned and dried food, along with bottles of dark green liquid stitch-sting. Several battered suitcases full of clothes were stacked on top of each other, and two small cots covered with sheets and blankets were lined up against another wall, with a large, inflated air mattress lying on the floor in front of them.

And then there were the weapons.

Several duffel bags peeked out from underneath the metal rack, the cots, and even the corner table where the lamp was. The tops of the bags were all open, revealing the dull, ash-colored swords and daggers inside—the real, magic-filled black blades that Devon, Felix, and I had stolen from Victor over the past two weeks. The chill of magic emanating from the weapons filled the air, making it feel even cooler than it really was in the basement, but I didn’t mind the sensation because it told me that no one had been near the weapons since the last time I’d come down here.

Claudia had asked me to take the weapons somewhere safe, and this was the first place I’d thought of.

The library had had one of its fundraising sales earlier this summer, right around the time I’d packed up most of my stuff and had moved to the Sinclair mansion. After the sale, I’d snuck back into the basement to check on the rest of my things, and the furniture I’d left behind had still been here, hidden behind boxes of old, used books that hadn’t gotten sorted through and sold.

So I’d pulled all the furniture back out and put it right back where it had been before, as though I was still living here. Then I’d gone the extra step of bringing in the food, water, and other supplies, just in case my friends and I might need them some night.

Like tonight.

Devon looked around. “You’ve been busy.”

I shrugged. “I wanted to put the weapons somewhere a little safer than a tree in the woods. Who would ever think to look for black blades in a library basement?”

Felix shook his head. “Not me, that’s for sure.”

Oscar flew up out of my coat pocket and hovered in midair in front of the metal rack. “I knew that you couldn’t be eating all those bags of bacon-flavored beef jerky by yourself. I knew it!” He zipped back over to me. “You were stockpiling them, weren’t you? Telling me that you were hungry and asking me to grab them from the mansion kitchen when you planned on bringing them down here the whole time.”

“I did eat some of them.” I grinned. “They are bacon-flavored, after all.”

Oscar huffed, but a small smile lifted his lips.

“I can’t decide if you’re supersmart or superparanoid to have brought all this stuff down here,” Deah said. “I’m going to go with both.”

“Both is probably right, but I’ll take that as a compliment. Anyway, we should clean up and then try to get some rest. It’s been a long night, and tomorrow . . .”

My voice trailed off, but I didn’t have to finish my sentence. We all realized that we didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow. The light mood vanished and everyone quieted down again.

I handed out the extra clothes I’d stored down here, then led the others back upstairs and showed them where the restrooms were. It wasn’t as good as taking a long, hot shower, but we cleaned the blood, dirt, and grime off ourselves as best we could. I even stopped up a sink in the men’s restroom and filled it up with water so Oscar and Tiny could take a bath.