“It’s okay. Thanks for taking care of me.” The slightly goofy smile on his face brought tears to my eyes. He was hurt, and I did not care for that. If I’d had firespell, the Reapers would be in for a very, very bad night. And speaking of bad nights . . . “How did you two find each other?” I asked Nicu. He looked away, and that irritated me even more.

“You were going back to the school?”

“I was walking,” he said, sounding a little like an irritated teenager. “And I brought your wolf back to you. You should be grateful, child.”

“You know each other?” Daniel asked.

“Daniel, Nicu. Nicu, Daniel,” Scout said, sounding like a bad game show host. “One’s the head of a slapdash band of magic-wielding teenagers. The other heads the city’s newest vampire coven.” She must have been tired; her jokes were getting worse.

Daniel rolled his eyes and looked back at Nicu. “And why are you visiting St. Sophia’s?”

Nicu looked at me, a little bit of panic in his eyes. Was he . . . embarrassed about wanting to see Veronica?

As much as I would have liked to call him out—just to tone down his attitude—I was grateful for what he’d done, so I held it in.

“He was coming to see us,” I told Daniel, earning me looks from all the Adepts. “We promised him a meeting. Kind of.”

Nicu relaxed a little.

“Tomorrow,” I promised. “We owe you one, and we’ll get that meeting arranged tomorrow.”

He nodded, and with a flurry of fabric, he was gone.

If only all supernatural problems disappeared so quickly.

* * *

Scout and I were exhausted when we made it back to St. Sophia’s, but still too wired to sleep. That was the bad thing about late-night espionage—it was physically and emotionally tiring, but your brain was still pretty ramped up when bedtime finally came around.

After sneaking back into the suite, we went to her room. I sat down on the edge of her bed. She went to a drawer and pulled out a plastic zip bag of trail mix. She poured some in her hand, and when I extended mine, did the same for me. She dropped the bag on top of the bookshelf and stretched out on the floor.

For a few minutes, we quietly munched our snack. I picked through the pile in my palm, eating the raisins and other dried fruit first to get them out of the way before moving on to the nuts and—last but not least—chocolate chips. There may not be an order to the world, but there was definitely an order to trail mix.

“It happens, you know.”

I munched a piece of pineapple in half. “What does?”

“Some Adepts can’t hack it. Sometimes they decide they’re going full stop with the magic, but after years with powers, they can’t do it. They feel empty, or they miss the camaraderie, or they don’t want to go back to feeling plain or ordinary. Usual.”

I guess that explained what she’d been thinking about.

“It’s easy to be brave when the decision isn’t staring you down. When you’re young and powerful and the world is your oyster. It’s easier to judge a hard decision when you don’t yet have to make it. It’s a lot harder from the other side when you feel like the one thing that makes you who you are has been taken away.”

“I can see that,” I said. “And I can definitely see that in the Enclave. It’s hard for them, this decision. And having to face down the life after magic is clearly not looking as fun as they thought it would.”

“Not being responsible for the fight against Reapers is one thing. Being average, though, is something completely different. You’re no longer one of the Dark Elite; you’re just one of the millions of people in Chicago. You work. You raise a family. You pay your taxes. Stealing a little of someone’s essence might feel like a small price to pay to feel like you matter.”

“Are you regretting it?”

“Not regretting it.” She looked up at me. “But definitely thinking about, I don’t know, the gravity of it? When you talked to Sebastian that first time, I wasn’t thrilled. Or the second time. But you said some things about the world being gray instead of black and white. That makes more sense to me now.”

“So you’re saying I was right?”

I thought I was being funny, but I got a peanut in the face for my trouble. I tossed it back at her, but it landed on the shelf behind her in front of one of her tiny owls. She had a collection of those, too. In our more magical days—like last week—I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the owl come to life and pounce on the peanut. But now . . . it was just a bit of wood and some glue.

“There is something to be said for believing in magic,” I agreed. “It’s the keeping it that’s the trouble.”

“You said it.” She finished the rest of her trail mix and dusted off her hands on her pants. “Honestly,” she said, “who am I without magic?”

“You’re a girl,” I said. “A smart girl with a great education, rich parents, fabulous fashion sense, and a great friend. And even if not having magic means you’ll be closer to ‘ordinary’ than ‘magical,’ you’re still pretty extraordinary if you ask me.”

“I’m glad your parents dumped you in Chicago, Parker.”

“Right back at you, Green.” Time to talk about even more uncomfortable subjects. “Jeremiah is gunning for you and your magic. It’s probably time to think about getting the Grimoire somewhere safe.”