She took a deep breath of chilly Chicago air. “A whole new world is about to open up.”

Sebastian grabbed her arm. Hard. “What is that supposed to mean? Do you have something to do with the blackout? Have you taken magic from us?”

Fayden had been all smiles, but in that second her expression changed to something much more nasty. “You will take your hand off me right now or you won’t live to regret it.”

Whatever Sebastian saw in her eyes must have convinced him, because he pulled his hand away.

“Much better,” she said, smiling again. “The blackout is what the blackout is. Don’t you think it’s an exciting time, though? There’s something new in the air. Something mysterious. A new era.”

A taxi pulled up to the curb, and before Sebastian could argue the point, Fayden hopped inside. “Thanks for the chat. I’ll catch you later.”

The cab pulled away.

“We have got to follow her,” Scout said. As soon as the cab had passed, Scout ran to the street and hailed another one. I followed her to the street, and Sebastian picked that moment to look over at us.

I gave him an apologetic look. He nodded back—an acknowledgment, maybe that something was up that bridged the gap between Reapers and Adepts.

A cab screeched to a stop, and we jumped inside. “Follow that cab,” Scout said. “But not too close.”

The driver looked at us in the rearview mirror. “We don’t really do that—”

“Follow the cab,” Scout repeated, “and there’s a hundred dollar tip in it for you.”

“Following the cab,” the driver said, and pulled into traffic.

Wherever Fayden was going, she was going there in a hurry. We zigzagged other cars, and I think we were moving toward the lake.

“Do you think she knows we’re back here?” I wondered.

Scout looked around at the traffic. It was night, so it wasn’t exactly heavy, but there were taxis here and there. “Hopefully she thinks we’re just coincidentally moving in the same direction.” She glanced down at the driver’s badge, which was stuck to the dashboard. “And John here is doing a fantastic job of keeping a few cars behind her.”

“I drive NASCAR on the weekends,” John dryly muttered. “This is just my day job.”

Scout rolled her eyes.

“I think she’s stopping,” John said. Sure enough, the cab ahead of us pulled to a stop at the next corner. John sneakily pulled his cab into a parking space at the other end of the block. Scout pulled a hundred dollar bill out of her wallet and pushed it through the little box in the plastic guard between the seats.

“Run the meter,” she said, “and there’s another hundred in it for you.”

“You’re the boss.”

“I guess being a Green pays off sometimes,” I whispered. Scout humphed.

We got out of the cab, but hung back between the cars until Fayden got out. She walked toward a fancy-looking apartment building that was eight or ten stories tall. If she disappeared in there, we’d never find her.

“Let’s get closer,” Scout whispered. “Maybe we can at least figure out which apartment she’s going into.”

We moved up, peering at the door from behind a four-foot-tall hedge that surrounded the building. Turned out, we didn’t need to know where she was going. We needed only to watch how she got in there.

The front door had a really big keypad lock. Fayden held out a finger like she was going to punch in a code.

“Maybe she lives here,” I suggested softly, thinking she meant to unlock the door. But no sooner had I said that than a giant green spark shot from her finger and right into the keypad. The door unlocked with an audible click, and she walked right inside.

That was magic. And not just magic—like, electrical power–related magic with its pretty green tinge.

“Holy crap,” Scout said.

“Holy crap,” I agreed. “Fayden Campbell has firespell. And hers is still working.”

I guess that answered the blackout question.

Problem was, even if we had pretty good evidence Fayden Campbell had used her still-existent magic to create the blackout, we didn’t know why she’d done it, or where she’d done it. Maybe most important, we didn’t know how she’d done it. Firespell, as far as I knew, was the ability to control energy—turning off lights and sending shock waves and stuff. So how had she managed to turn off everyone else’s magic?

We let the cab wait for a few minutes while Scout called Daniel and filled him in. He promised to get eyes on the building and try to figure out what Fayden was doing there—and if she’d managed to stash some sort of ongoing spell or magic machine that we could hack or destroy or just plain turn off.

But I had another idea.

I wiggled my fingers to borrow the phone from Scout.

“Hold on, Daniel,” she said. “Lily wants to talk to you.” She handed it over.

“I think Fayden lied to Sebastian,” I said into the phone. “And I don’t think he was happy about it.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is I suggest we set up a meeting with him. If he feels like he’s been betrayed by his cousin, maybe he’ll be willing to talk about her. Maybe he can tell us more about her powers, or who her friends are, or something like that.”

Daniel was quiet for a second, giving me time to think about the consequences of what I was asking. Yes, a meeting with Sebastian was necessary to solve the mystery and try to get our magic back. But Jason wasn’t going to be happy about it. He was probably going to be even madder than he already was, if that was possible.