The interest was understandable. Michael was totally cute. Dark, curly hair. Big brown eyes. A huge smile that was impossible to ignore . . . unless you were Scout Green. She managed pretty well. Of course, if Scout didn’t ask Michael, then technically he was fair game.

The bell rang. Veronica made a little curtsy before she and Amie were joined by M.K., and they headed out the door. I waited for Scout to gather up her books.

“So,” I began, “exactly how uncool would it be if I wanted to be on the Sneak committee?”

Scout pulled her messenger bag over her shoulder and gave me a sideways glance. “Purposefully involve yourself in brat drama? Why would you want to do that?”

“Decorating and design and stuff is right up my alley,” I reminded her. “My art studio hasn’t started yet, and I really need a creative outlet, even if it does involve the brat pack.”

“Don’t you already have a creative outlet?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sure I’d call what we do ‘creative.’ ”

“Have you ever done it before?”

“Well, no.”

Scout grinned at me. “Then it’s creative.”

Drama notwithstanding, I concluded I was going it alone on the planning committee front. But as we walked down the hall toward our lockers, I decided to try something else Scout might be interested in. “Do you think Veronica asked him?”

“Asked who?” She sounded completely unconcerned, but I knew her better than that.

“I know your real first name, Scout. Don’t make me use it.”

“Fine, fine. Don’t have a conniption. Yeah, she probably asked Garcia. Or she will, if she hasn’t already. It’s just the kind of thing she’d do.”

“Maybe he wants to ask you.”

“Then it serves him right for waiting,” she muttered.

I slid her a glance. “So if he asks you, you’ll say yes?”

“Just because I don’t trip over him every time he comes into the room doesn’t mean I don’t, you know, appreciate him.”

“I knew it,” I said, a grin breaking out. “I knew you had a thing for him. So, are you going to tell him? Are you two going to start dating? Officially, I mean? This is huge.”

“Pump the brakes,” she warned, heading into the bay where our fancy wooden lockers were located. “Pump the brakes, or I tell Amie you want decorating advice. You’ll have to wear shades just to sleep in your room.”

Virtually everything in Amie’s room was an eye-scarring shade of Barbie pink. “Now, that’s just rude.”

“I’m not above rude, Parker. You keep that in mind.”

I took her word for it, which is why I snuck back alone to sign up for the Sneak committee. An artist had to do what an artist had to do, right?

2

A dozen or so hours later, we’d ditched our plaid for jeans and boots, tonight’s uniform of the Adepts of Enclave Three.

It would have been cool to say we dressed that way because we were out pummeling Reapers into oblivion. But for now, Enclave Three was acting more like an Adept advance unit. Daniel tended to give us two kinds of assignments—trying to bring back kids who we thought had been targeted by Reapers, and patrolling the cold, damp tunnels beneath Chicago to keep an eye out for Reapers and, if necessary, battle them back.

There weren’t any Reaper targets at St. Sophia’s right now, at least not that we’d identified. (Although the soul-sucking would have explained a lot about M.K.’s personality.) So really, the boots were mostly to protect our feet from dingy water while we were on patrol. On the other hand, Jamie and Jill, auburn-haired twin Adepts with elemental fire and ice power, had been gone a lot recently, spending their evenings befriending a sad-eyed boy from their high school and trying to keep him from completely disappearing into himself as the Reapers used him to sate their hunger.

Tonight we were walking the tunnels that connected Enclave Three to St. Sophia’s to make sure they were Reaper free. Unfortunately, they often weren’t. I’d had my first run-in with Sebastian in these tunnels, and the Reapers had used the tunnels to kidnap Scout and to snag her Grimoire. Since they hadn’t managed to grab it, odds were they’d try again.

We walked two by two, Scout and Michael in the lead, me and Jason behind. It’s not like the tunnels were superplush or anything—they used to hold the tracks for small railroad cars that ran between downtown buildings. They carried stuff into the buildings, and carried out ash from the boilers. Now they looked pretty much exactly how you’d expect abandoned miniature railcar tunnels to look.

On top of that, of course, the threat of Reapers was always there. But even with all that, there was something a little romantic about walking along in flashlight-lit tunnels together.

Scout looked back at me, determination in her eyes. “Lights on,” she ordered.

From what we knew so far—since I was the only local Adept with firespell—my magic was all about power, the raw force of the universe. That meant I could throw out shock waves of power that would knock people down and out, and I could manipulate electricity. But I still wasn’t entirely sure about the “how” of it.

I stopped walking, clenched my eyes shut, and concentrated on filling the tunnel with light. It was a matter of allowing the energy to flow into me, letting it pool and fill my veins with warmth, and then sending it out again.

“Very nice, Lil,” Scout said. But I knew it had worked before she’d spoken, the insides of my eyelids turning red from the sudden glare in the frosty corridor. I opened my eyes, squinting against the sudden gleam of the cage-wrapped lightbulbs that hung above us. I was getting a little better at controlling it, learning to spark the light and douse it again by concentrating, instead of only when my emotions became overwhelming.