He vanished.

I hated Orion. Who was he to expect me to embrace the ways of people I didn’t know? I hated the entire spying Society, for watching me while I wept. I hated Fitzgerald, for making me lie. Didn’t she know how hard it was to fake it, to create a new me, every time I met a Shade? It was exhausting. It was horrible. So was she.

I even hated my friends, for not being there.

I hated Conn. For everything.

And I hated J. Alfred Prufrock.

Because he waits and wanders and dithers and can never make up his mind. Because he tells himself there’s time to think and think and think. But there’s not enough time. There never is. Not for anybody in this whole universe. We always want more. Why waste it doing nothing?

It was time to take matters into my own hands.

A brilliant thought crashed and shook in my mind like a gong. I raced into the bathroom, fell to my hands and knees, and snatched the hairpin from its dusty corner.

Know why jailbreakers and burglars in movies always use a bobby pin to unlock doors?

Because it works.

22

What they don’t show you in movies, and what the Ingleside Home girls had showed me long ago, is that you also need a tension wrench.

I glanced around the room, searching for shadows that didn’t belong there. I didn’t see any, but they could appear any second. I grabbed my backpack and stuffed it with water bottles.

Now for the tension wrench.

After some thought, I attacked the bed. It was squeaky and old and—thank God—held together with screws. I twisted off a few and pulled away a metal bed slat. It would do.

I stared at the lock on the door. It looked simple enough. The Ingleside girls would laugh at this so-called security. But I figured that the Shades weren’t super worried about me breaking out because A) they could probably tackle me in the halls, and B) I didn’t know how to get out of the Sanctuary. I had a plan for Problem A. As for B … well, I’d worry about B later.

I bent the bobby pin into a right angle. Now I could use it as a pick. All I had to do was wriggle it into the lock and free the cylinder that blocked the whole mechanism. Little pins kept that cylinder in place.

I stuck my pick in the lock and raked it along the pins. My hand shook. But I set the pins, pushing them back on their springs. The cylinder slid in its chamber, the lock shuddered open. I was free.

And the Shade stationed outside my door noticed.

I snatched a water bottle from my backpack and threw it at his head. He vanished, and the bottle smashed against the wall behind him. I ran, gripping the bed slat in one hand.

Shadows swarmed behind me as I tried to retrace the steps Orion and I had taken to my prison. Sometimes a Shade would manifest at my side, and I’d lash out with the bed slat. Several of them tried to block my path. I fired bottles at them. I pounded into the Great Hall and had spotted the tunnel leading to the earth’s surface when countless Shades erupted into being, surrounding me with their dizzying similarity. Their gleaming eyes and skin and fierce faces. I slung bottle after bottle at them until I had none left. Then I struck out with the slat. The Shades flickered away. Flickered back. Finally I hit one, cracking the slat down on his arm. He cried out, fell back, then lunged forward with a kick to my side. I hit the ground, and Shades poured on top of me.

They wrenched at my hands. The slat was snatched out of my fingers. They squeezed down on my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything.

But at least I’d tried.

* * *

THEY DRAGGED ME into a courtroom that looked nothing like a courtroom. Waterfalls chattered and shushed in the corners. Ferns and orchids twined across the limestone walls.

So how did I know it was a courtroom and not an underground botanical garden sprouted by someone with serious heat lamps? My biggest clue was the curved, monolithic table and the five angry Shades sitting at it. My second clue was the doom that hung in the air. And the third?

That was when a young woman—the woman who had shoved me on my first day in the Sanctuary, who was sitting at the center of the table like she was the one in charge—said, “Who will speak for Darcy Jones before she meets the Council’s judgment?”

“I will,” I said. I took a deep breath to calm my hammering heart.

“You can’t,” said one of the five seated Shades, an elderly woman whose hair was still jet black. “It’s not allowed. You must remain silent.”

“She doesn’t even know our laws,” I heard someone mutter in the crowd of Shades behind me.

“Well?” The young woman smirked, templing her small hands. “Will anyone speak for her?”

No one answered.

Not at first. Then I heard the whisper of feet shifting behind me. Light feet. Graceful ones.

“I will,” said Orion.

His voice did little to dull my fear. Sure, he’d promised to speak in my defense, but that was before the “Your World/My World” argument.

“Orion.” The scarred woman who had interviewed me leaned forward, placing her hands on the table where she sat. “You can’t be serious. Not after what she’s done.”

“And what has she done?” said Orion. “She fought for her freedom. Don’t tell me, Meridian, that you wouldn’t have done the same.”

Meridian’s face tightened, but into a pleased kind of frown.

“No.” The young woman slapped the table. “Meridian would never have acted like that. Never. No cage can bind a Shade. But that’s because a Shade will ghost her way free. She won’t crash and blunder through our Sanctuary in a shameful display of humanity.”

“She fights well,” said a stocky man to her left. “She’s fast, too fast for me to ghost out of her way. I have the marks to prove it.” He raised a bare arm, which bore a welter from my bed slat.

I held my breath. It was a good thing that I had hit him?

“Your injuries cannot be part of her defense!” The young woman cinched her tiny hands together.

“Why not?” Orion faced her. “Zephyr, the Society can’t rely wholly on its ability to ghost. We must also know how to fight. We need warriors. We always have. Darcy struck out against us, true, but what choice did she have? We should have offered her our protection and help, as our law demands. Darcy never should have been imprisoned to begin with.”

“No one questions that Darcy Jones is a Shade,” said the elderly woman. “But—” She glanced at Zephyr, who said, “She claims she was raised by humans, yet who knows what she hasn’t told us? How are we to believe anything she says? She’s a security risk. At the very least, she needs to be imprisoned indefinitely.”

“I have to agree with Zephyr on this matter,” said a serious-eyed man seated at the edge of the table. “We live in dangerous times. If what Darcy says is true, I pity her, but we cannot trust someone who knows so little of our ways.”

“You won’t even give her the chance to learn!” said Orion.

“Her escape attempt speaks for itself. She may be a Shade, but she acts like a human.”

“Which is why you must believe she is telling the truth about her past,” Orion insisted. “A Shade who can ghost and manifest would never go through such an elaborate, physical effort to escape. She would simply vanish. Instead, Darcy risked everything to break free the only way she knew how. This proves she has been honest with us and is worthy of our trust.”

Not too long ago, I could have strangled Orion. Now his passion made me cringe. I was a liar. I wasn’t even a good one, and still he believed me.

“You’re blinded, Orion.” The man sighed. “I’d like to know by what.”

“By admiration.” Orion’s eyes flashed to mine. “She cheated the IBI. If the IBI thinks they can contain us, they will think of Darcy Jones and think again. Yes, she has been raised as a human, and yes, the damage done is immeasurable. But all the more reason that she needs our help to reclaim her identity as a Shade.”

“Impossible,” said Zephyr.

“You know what your problem is?” That was my mouth, moving. Those were my words. It took a little while for my brain to catch up and realize that I was about to piss everyone off. “You’re afraid of humans.”

A collective gasp sucked all the air out of the room.

“You know what you’ve got here?” I jabbed a thumb into my chest. “A golden opportunity.” My guilt about lying evaporated in the face of my sudden insanity. What was I doing? “I don’t know much about this world, but I know that there’s a war between humans and Shades.”

“That’s not what I would call it,” said the man I’d hit.

“You will be silent!” Zephyr hissed at me. She glanced at the man. “You, too, Loam.”

He bristled.

Was it possible that I was winning at least one of the Council to my side? I plunged ahead. “I know a lot about humans. I could help you.”

Shades turned toward one another, and the chamber murmured with whispers. I wondered if my parents could be here, in this very room. If they were, they didn’t seem eager to claim me. Not that I’d expect them to be. Not that the thought of them being here, and saying nothing, hurt.

Not at all.

“We are excellent spies,” said Meridian. “We observe humans daily. There isn’t much you could tell us about their ways that we don’t already know. Besides, you grew up in another world. Humans are different there.”

“They can’t be that different,” I said.

“This isn’t a conversation!” said Zephyr. “This is a trial.”

“But I know the way humans think.”

“Darcy can even pass as one of them,” Orion said.

The crowd muttered again. Something flashed across the elderly woman’s face. The serious-eyed man leaned back in his chair.

“The Society has always been poor at disguising ourselves as humans,” said Orion. “We need to be manifest in order to have a physical effect on the world. Yet how many missions have failed because a Shade ghosted the moment things got dangerous? Darcy’s very inability to ghost could work to our advantage. And she moves like a human. Wigs, makeup, clothes rarely work for us. Not for long. Yet she was able to walk down the street in broad daylight with nothing more to hide her than a coat with a large hood. Any other Shade would have brought attention to herself. She would have been too agile. She would have walked too quickly. Airily. Darcy positively lumbers.”

“I don’t lumber,” I said. Orion looked at me. “I mean, yeah. I’m slow. Total slowpoke. That’s me.”

“So she’s quick when it’s convenient to you”—the elderly woman glanced at Loam—“and slow when it’s convenient to you.” She nodded at Orion.

“I’m a multitalented girl,” I said.

“Enough.” Zephyr stood. “The Council has heard what it needs—more than it needs—to judge the fate of Darcy Jones.”

“Agreed,” said Meridian.

The five Council members vanished.

They were gone for a long time. How long, I couldn’t say, but my feet began to prickle from standing and my body swayed. Many Shades watched and waited, their faces lit with an intensity that could have been for or against me. Others ghosted away for lengths of time and then reappeared for a few seconds, like people who don’t really care about a football game on TV but occasionally stick their heads in the living room to check the score. Some Shades never showed their faces, not once during the trial. I could see several shadows against the courtroom walls cast by people who weren’t there.

It was eerie. To be constantly scrutinized by invisible eyes. To have someone burst into being inches in front of my face. Sometimes a host of Shades disappeared at once like a flock of birds taking flight. I couldn’t help flinching. I was startled every time. There was no way I could get used to this, even if I wasn’t waiting for my fate to be decided.

I tried to catch Orion’s eye. He stared straight ahead.

When the Council manifested around the table, Orion glanced at me. He knew, as well as I did, what they had decided. We could tell even before Zephyr opened her mouth. We could tell because of the way she looked at me.

Like she wanted to eat me alive.

“Darcy Jones is free to claim her rights as a Shade,” she said, “and to call the Sanctuary her home. She may come and go as she pleases.” Her next words were carved out with very precise diction. “She is truly one of us.”

Orion gave me a half smile, triumphant but also cocky, like he had never doubted this outcome. But I’d seen the tension on his face and wondered if some hidden part of him, the one that had accused me of ignorance, was uncertain whether it was a good thing that we’d won.

I smiled back at him. I pretended I wasn’t someone who would betray him.

I’d betray anyone in that room—the IBI, too, if I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted, exactly. Not yet. But I was going to find out, starting with finding Conn and snatching that photograph right out of his thieving hands.

23

“This is something I have to do on my own,” I told Orion.

“It’s dangerous to explore the city by yourself.”

It was several days after my trial. Orion and I stood at the top of a long flight of stairs, just below a hatch that, above the earth over our heads, was covered by a gravestone.

“I’m not afraid,” I said.

Orion’s expression softened.

I’d suspected those words might work some magic on him.

“I understand,” Orion said, and pushed open the hatch. Snow showered down onto us, biting at my skin, sneaking under my collar. I yelped.