Not surprisingly, M.K. didn’t look convinced. But this time, it was Veronica who spoke.

“Just leave them alone,” she said. “We need to put the confetti on the tables.”

M.K. slowly looked behind her, apparently shocked that she’d intervened. I understood the emotion. “Are you serious?”

“I’m serious about the party,” Veronica said, grabbing her hand. “I don’t want these little twerps getting in the way. Let’s go.”

M.K. rolled her eyes, clearly not convinced she shouldn’t make fun of us for a while, but let Veronica pull her back toward the party room. They bounced back into the main hall, but not before Veronica glanced back and looked right at me. She didn’t say anything before turning around again.

“What do you think that was about?” Scout whispered.

“Maybe Nicu told her about us? I don’t know, and I’m deciding not to worry about it. There are just not enough hours in the day.”

“I hear ya.”

* * *

We were pretty far down Michigan Avenue, so we snuck out to a cab for the ride to the pumping station. When we arrived a few minutes later, we stopped near a group of trees and scoped it out.

The building was located in a little park tucked between skyscrapers—the type people tended to ignore as they rushed around to high-end shops. It was short and made of big chunks of rough stone. There were rectangular windows all the way around it, two on each side, all placed the same distance apart. If you sliced it down the middle like a cake, both sides would look exactly the same.

And all the windows were covered on the inside with blue paper. It was thick enough that I couldn’t tell whether the lights inside were on or off, but there was no movement in or around the building, so we moved closer.

A sign had been posted a few yards away from the door. It was from some development company and talked about how the building was going to be rehabbed. But that rehab was months away, which explained the NO TRESPASSING warning below it.

“It doesn’t look like we can see much from out here,” I whispered.

“Let’s walk around,” Scout said, and we tiptoed around three of the building’s four sides. Every window was covered, so we couldn’t get even a small peek inside.

Finally, on the fourth and final side, we struck gold. Someone hadn’t been entirely careful putting the blue paper over one of the windows, and the bottom corners had started to roll up, giving us two little views of the interior of the building.

Scout and I nodded at each other . . . and leaned in.

She squeaked almost immediately.

Sebastian had been right—there were huge pipes in the room, each one probably three or four feet wide. They lay across the floor in a complicated grid pattern, and at the end of each pipe was a huge piece of machinery. Maybe a generator or something. The size of the things was just amazing. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing about the pumping station.

The entire room was filled with bright blue light—emanating from a huge circle that floated in the air above the pipes. It had to be twenty feet wide, and it was empty in the middle—like a giant’s bracelet. It rotated slowly, humming as it moved.

“Oh, my God, Lils, are you seeing this?”

“I’m seeing . . . I’m seeing something. I’m not sure what.”

Scout pressed a hand to the glass, and she didn’t look nearly as horrified as I’d expected.

“This is a bad thing, remember?”

“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.