14
Scout could see something was wrong when I walked into class. But it was Brit lit, and Whitfield, our teacher, watched us like a hawk. She took it as a personal insult if we weren’t as enthralled by Mr. Rochester as she was. So she skipped the notes and conversation, and instead pressed a hand to my back. A little reminder that she was there, I guess.
When we were done with class for the day, we headed back to the suite, but I still wasn’t ready to talk about it.
“SRF?” she asked, but I shook my head. I was still processing, and there were things I wasn’t yet ready to say aloud.
We did homework in her room until dinner, and she let me pretend that nothing had happened, that my afternoon hadn’t been filled with questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.
I took what Foley said about real tragedy to heart. I knew what she meant, totally got her point. But if my parents were members of the Dark Elite, how could things get worse than that? If they were helping some kind of medical work or research for the DE—if they were trying to help people who were hurting kids—how was I ever supposed to be okay with that?
I had no idea. So I kept it bottled up until I could figure out a plan, until I could figure out the questions to ask, or the emotions I was supposed to feel.
Eventually, we went to dinner. Like I predicted, you know what was worse than Thursday lunch at the St. Sophia’s cafeteria?
Friday dinner in the St. Sophia’s cafeteria.
We stood in line, trays in hand, for a good minute, just staring at the silver dish of purple and brown and white and orange mess, grimaces on our faces.
Without a word, Scout finally grabbed my tray, stacked hers on top of it, and slid them both back into the stacks at the end of the line. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to be a few inches taller with, like, crazy long legs, but there’s no way I hate myself enough to put that stuff in my body again.”
I didn’t disagree, but my stomach was rumbling. I’d skipped lunch for my SRF visit. “So what now?”
She thought for a second, then bobbed her head. “Mrs. M,” was all she said, and away we went.
I had no clue what that was supposed to mean. I still had no clue when she dragged me into Pastries on Erie, a shop a few blocks down from St. Sophia’s. (Thank God for Friday nights and a respite from the convent . . . at least during the daylight hours.)
One entire wall of the bakery was filled by a long glass case of cakes, desserts, tarts, and cookies of every shape and size. A dozen people stood in front of it, pointing to sweets behind the glass or waiting to make their orders.
“Pastries?” I wondered quietly. “I was hoping for something a little more filling.”
“Trust me on this one, Parker,” she whispered back. “We’re not buying retail today.” She waved at the tall teenager who was dishing up desserts. “Hey, Henry. Is your mom around?”
The boy waved, then gestured toward a back door. “In the back.”
“Is she cooking?” Scout asked hopefully.
“Always,” he called out, then handed a white bakery box over the counter to a middle-aged woman in a herringbone coat.
“Din-ner,” Scout sang out, practically skipping to the beaded curtain that hung over the door in the back of the bakery.
I followed her through it, the smell of chocolate and strawberries and sugar giving way to savory smells. Pungent smells.
Delicious smells.
My stomach rumbled.
“Someone is hungry,” said a lightly accented voice. I looked over. In the middle of an immaculate kitchen stood a tall, slender woman. Her hair was long and dark and pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wore a white jacket—the kind chefs wore on television.
“Hi, Mrs. M,” Scout said. “I brought someone to meet you.”
The woman, who was dropping sticks of butter into a giant mixer, smiled kindly. “Hello, someone.”
I waved a little. “Lily Parker.”
“You go to school with our Scout?”
I nodded as Scout pulled out a chair at a small round table that sat along one wall.
“Cop a squat, Parker,” she said, patting the tabletop.
Still a little confused, I took the seat on the other side of the table, then leaned forward. “I thought we were going to dinner?”
“Keep your pants on. Now, Mrs. Mercier is Henry’s mom. She’s also part of the community.”
That meant that while Mrs. Mercier wasn’t an Adept, she knew Adepts and Reapers and the rest of it existed.
“And,” Scout added, “she’s one of the best chefs in Chicago. She was trained at some crazy-fancy school in Paris.”
“Le Cordon Bleu,” Mrs. Mercier said, walking toward us with a tray of flatbread. “And she enjoys feeding Scout when her parents are out of town. Or when St. Sophia’s serves stew.”
“And when you add those together, you get pretty much always,” Scout said matter-of-factly, tearing a chunk from a piece of bread. “Warm, warm,” she said, popping it between both hands to cool it off.
“Which is pretty much always,” Mrs. Mercier agreed, smoothing a hand over Scout’s hair. “I have three boys. Scout did a favor for my youngest, so I do favors for Scout.”
I assumed that favor was why she’d become a member of the community.
Scout handed me a chunk of bread. I took a bite, then closed my eyes as I savored it. I think it was naan—the kind of flatbread you found in Indian restaurants—but this was hot, fresh, right-out-of-the-oven naan. It was delicious.
“Anything particular you’d like to sample tonight?” Mrs. Mercier asked.
Scout did a little bow. “You’re the expert, Mrs. M. Whatever you’ve got, we’d love to sample. Oh, and Lily’s a vegetarian.”
“You’re in luck,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the stoves behind her. There were pots and pans there, which must have been the source of the delicious smells. “We made dal with potatoes. Lentils and potatoes,” she explained. She put a hand on my shoulder and smiled kindly. “Is that okay with you?”
“That sounds really great. Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome. Any friend of Scout’s is a friend of mine.”
Mrs. M plated up a heaping mound of rice topped by the saucy lentils and chunky potatoes, and brought us glass cups of dark, rich tea that tasted like cinnamon and cloves. She pulled up a chair as we ate, crossing her long legs and swinging an ankle, arms crossed over her chef jacket, as Scout filled her in on our last few weeks of adventures. The dinner was amazing—even if stew hadn’t been our only other option. And it felt normal. Just the three of us in the kitchen of a busy bakery, eating dinner and catching up. >
It was clear that Mrs. M loved Scout. I’m not sure what specific thing had brought them together—although I assumed the youngest Mercier had been targeted by a Reaper and that Scout had helped. That was, after all, the kind of thing we did in Enclave Three.
When we were done with dinner, Mrs. Mercier walked us back to the front of the bakery. The workday was over, so the bakery was closing up. The OPEN sign on the door had been flipped, and Henry stood in front of the case, spraying it with glass cleaner and wiping it down.
Mrs. M gave Scout a hug, then embraced me as well. “I need to get a cake ready for tomorrow. Take back some snacks for yourselves and your suitemates, if you like.” She disappeared into the back room, leaving me and Scout staring at a good twenty feet of sugar-filled glass cases.
“Holy frick,” I said, trying to take in the sight. I wasn’t really even hungry, but how was I supposed to pass up a choice like this? I thought of my dad—it was just the kind of decision he’d love to make. He probably would have spent ten minutes walking back and forth in front of the case, mulling over flavors and calories and whether such-and-such would be better with coffee or wine.
A stop at a doughnut place usually took twenty minutes, minimum.
Scout looked equally serious. Her expression was all-business. “Your mission, Parker, should you choose to accept it, is to select an item from the bakery case. It’s a difficult choice. The perils are many—”
“You are such a geek,” Henry said, the glass squeaking as he wiped it down.
“Whatever,” Scout said, tossing her head. “You’re a geek.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said doubtfully. He put his bottle of cleaner and a wad of paper towels on top of the bakery case, then walked around behind it. “All right, doofus. What do you want for dessert?”
Scout leaned toward me. “Whatever you get—I’m eating half of it.”
“Good to know,” I said, then pointed at a sandwich made of two rings of pastry stuffed with cream and topped with almonds. “I’ll take one of those.”
“Excellent choice,” Henry said. “You have better taste than some people.”
Scout snorted.
Henry packed it in a small white box, taped it closed, and handed it over with a smile. Then he turned to Scout. “And you, little Miss Geek? What do you want?”
“I am not a geek.”
“Okay, dork. What do you want?”
This time, Scout stuck out her tongue, but that didn’t stop her from pointing to a small tart that was topped with fruit and looked like it had been shellacked with glaze. “Tartlet, please,” she told Henry. He boxed one up for her, and after teasing her with the box for a minute or two, finally handed it over.
“You kids have a great weekend,” he said, as Scout and I headed for the door.
“You, too, geeko.”
The door chimed as we walked through it and emerged back into the hustle and bustle of Chicago. Couples heading out to dinner and tourists getting in some final shopping hurried up and down Erie. Even though the workweek was officially over, the city didn’t seem to slow down. I wondered what it would take for Chicago to be as quiet and calm as my small town of Sagamore . . . and I bet freezing winter winds and a few inches of snow probably did that just fine.
“They’re good people,” Scout said as we crossed the street.
“They seem great. The youngest son—”
“Alaine,” she filled in.
“Was he a Reaper target?”
She nodded. “He was. He went to school with Jamie and Jill. They tagged him when he was pretty far gone—depressed all the time, not interacting with his family. And how could you not interact with that family? They’re awesome.”
“They seem really cool,” I agreed. “And Mrs. M clearly loves you.”
“I love her back,” Scout admitted. “It’s proof that sometimes people come into your life you didn’t expect. That’s how a family is made, you know?”
Having been dropped off by my parents at a school I wasn’t crazy about—and having met Scout on my first day at St. Sophia’s—I definitely knew. “Yeah,” I said. “I get that. You and Henry get along pretty well.”
“Ha,” she said. “Henry’s a secret geek. He just doesn’t want to admit it. He watches every sci-fi movie he can find, but wouldn’t tell his friends that. He plays baseball, so sci-fi isn’t, you know, allowed or whatever.”
We walked quietly back down the block, pastry in hand.
“Are you ready to talk about whatever it is you’re not talking about?”
I trailed my fingers across the nubby top of the stone fence around St. Sophia’s. “Not really.”
“You know I’m here for you, right?”
“I know.”
She put an arm around my shoulders. “Do you ever wish that sometimes the world would just stop spinning for a few hours to give you a chance to catch up?”
“I really do.”
She was quiet for a second. “At least we have dessert.”
That was something, I guess.
It wasn’t until hours later, when Scout and I were in her room, listening to a mix of music from the 1990s, that I finally felt like talking.
“Jump Around” was blasting through the room. Scout sat cross-legged on her bed, head bobbing as she mouthed the rhymes, her Grimoire in her lap. Since my plans to sketch the SRF still hadn’t worked out, I sat on the floor adding details to a drawing of the convent, filling in the texture of brick and jagged stone while I picked at my pastry. And Scout had been right about that—maybe it was the whipped cream (the real kind!), or maybe it was the sugar (lots of it), but it did help.
I finally put my sketchbook away, put my hands in my lap, and looked up at her. “Can we talk about something?”
She glanced up. “Are you going to break up with me?”
“Seriously.”
Her eyes widened, and she used the remote to turn off the music. “Oh. Sure. Of course.” She dog-eared a page of her Grimoire, then closed it and steepled her fingers together. “The doctor is in.”
And so, there on the floor of her room, I told her what I’d seen in the SRF, and what I’d learned in my follow-up visit to Foley’s office.
And then I asked the question that scared me down to my bones.
“They’re doing some kind of secret genetic research that they had to stick me in a boarding school and leave the country to work on. And we know the Reapers were using the sanctuary for some kind of medical stuff. What if—”
Scout held up a hand. “Don’t you even say that out loud. Don’t even think it. I don’t know your parents, but I know you. You’re a good person with a good heart, and I know they raised you to care about other people. Otherwise, you’d be hanging out with the brat pack right now instead of resting up for whatever is coming down the pipeline tomorrow—doing the right thing. The scary thing. I don’t know exactly what your parents are doing right now, Lily. But I know one thing—they are not helping Reapers. There’s no way.”
“But—”
She held up a finger. “I know you want to say it so that I can disagree with you. But don’t. Don’t even put it out there. There’s no way. It’s a coincidence, I’ll admit, that we’ve run across two mentions of medical or genetic hoo-ha this week, but even coincidences usually have rational explanations. And you’re not thinking rationally. Your parents are not like them. You know that, right?”
It took a moment—a moment while I thought about all the stuff I didn’t know about my parents right now—but I finally nodded. She was right: Whatever questions I had about the details of their work, I knew them. I knew my dad had floppy hair and loved to make breakfast on Sunday mornings and told horrible, horrible jokes. And I knew my mom was the serious one who made sure I ate green vegetables, but loved getting pedicures while she read gossip magazines.
I knew their hearts.
She must have seen the change in my face.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Little more enthusiasm there, Parker.”
“Okay.”
“You’re probably going to find out your parents are in Germany working on some kind of top-secret new mascara or something. Ooh, or spy stuff. Do you think they’d be doing spy stuff?”
I tried to imagine my dad playing Jason Bourne, or my mom playing a secret operative. “Not really. That’s not really their bag.”
“Mascara, then. We’ll just assume they’re working on mascara.”
My phone picked that moment to ring. I snatched it up, wondering if my parents’ timing was truly that excellent. But it was Jason. Still pretty excellent.
“Hey. How’s your Friday night going?”
“Pretty uneventful,” I told him. Which was mostly true. “What’s happening at Montclare?”
“Poker night. Except none of us has any money, so we’re playing for Fritos. Which Garcia keeps eating—Garcia. Lay off my stash, man. How am I going to go all in with four Fritos?”
In spite of myself, I smiled a little. Scout rolled her eyes and flopped down on her bed. “Ugh. Young love makes me totally nauseous.”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
“So, about tomorrow. How about I swing by at noon?”
“Noon works. What should I wear?”
“Normal Lily stuff. Minus the plaid skirt. I mean—you should definitely wear a skirt or some kind of pants, but you don’t have to wear your plaid skirt since it’ll be a Saturday—”
“You’ve been hanging around with Michael too much.”
He chuckled. “Anyway, you two girls have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay. Good night, Jason.”
“Good night, Lily.”
I hung up the phone and cradled it in my hands for a few seconds. Guilt settled like a rock in my stomach.
Scout rolled over and looked at me. “Oh, cripes. What now?”
I wet my lips. Might as well finish the confession since I’d started it.
“Remember the other day when I went out to draw over lunch?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Well, I didn’t actually end up drawing anything. I kind of got distracted.”
“Distracted by what?”
“Sebastian Born.”
Scout sat up straight, blinking like she was trying to take in the statement. “I did not expect to hear that.”
“He found me on the sidewalk. He said he’d wanted to talk to me.”
“About what?”
“About firespell. He feels responsible, I think, that I have magic. I told him I didn’t want to talk to him, that we weren’t friends. But then he asked me to go somewhere and talk.”
“Well, you’re not going to do it. You’re certainly not going to go somewhere and talk with him—” Her face fell as realization struck. “Oh, Lil. You already did it, didn’t you?”
“We walked across the street to the taco place.”
“Taco Terry’s?”
I nodded.
“You met with a Reaper at a Taco Terry’s?”
I shrugged.
She looked down at her lap, brow furrowed while she thought it over. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t either.”
“I’m not sure if I should ring your neck for going, or congratulate you for the opposition research.” She gave me a sideways glance. “I want more info before I decide whether I’m totally peeved.”
“He gave me a speech about being a Reaper. About how it’s not as bad as people think. About how magic can be a force of change in the world, even if it means sacrificing people.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
I gave her a flat look. “I think the sacrifice argument would be a little more believable if they could point to anything decent they’d actually done in the world.”
“Fair enough. But what was the point? Was he trying to sway you to their side or something?”
“I don’t know. I feel like he’s playing some kind of game, but I don’t know all the rules. But I think he definitely believes there’s—I don’t know—merit to what they’re doing.”
“That’s the Dark Elite ploy,” she said. “That’s how they build their Reaper army. ‘Think of all the wonderful things we could do with all this magic!’ But when was the last time you saw any of those things?”
I nodded. “He also showed me how to do something.”
“Something?”
“He showed me how to spark my magic—how to create this little molecule of energy.”
“And he showed you this at the Taco Terry’s?”
I nodded.
She shook her head. “That is just . . . bizarre.”
We sat there quietly for a minute.
“Are you totally peeved?”
It took her a really long time to answer.
“I’m glad you’re safe. And I could sit here and yell at you about not being careful, but you did exactly what I’d do.” She looked over at me. “You didn’t just go with him because he’s hot, did you?”
I gave her a flat look.
“Hey,” she said, holding up her hands. “I’m not blind. Just because he’s completely evil doesn’t mean he doesn’t have that tall, dark, and handsome vibe. At least tell me you took the opportunity to interrogate him.” >
“Tried,” I said, “but didn’t get much. He denied knowing about Lauren and—what’s the other girl’s name?”
“The French hornist?”
I nodded.
She tilted her head up, eyes squeezed closed. “Joanne or Joley or something? Let’s just say French hornist.”
“Anyway, I asked him about them. He confirmed our Grimoire theory.”
Scout paled a little. “They’re looking for me?”
“They are. Or at least your spell book. But I think I put the fear into him.”
There was some pretty insulting doubt in her expression. I batted her with a pillow. “I can be fierce when necessary.”
“Only because you have a wolf at your beck and call.”
“He’s not at my beck and call. And we’re getting off track. Sebastian denied knowing anything about the monsters, but here’s the really weird thing—he told me to go see the vampires. He said something about the ‘missing,’ and said we needed to talk to Nicu to figure out what’s going on.”
“A Reaper sending us into the arms of warring vampires. Yeah, that rings a little more true.”
“What about the missing thing?”
“What about it?”
I rearranged my knees so that I was sitting cross-legged. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not really. I mean, other than me being kidnapped and all.” Her voice was dry as toast.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. He did say Jeremiah was interested in you.”
Scout went a little pale. “I gotta tell you, that does not thrill me.”
“We’re quite the pair, aren’t we? They’re after you ’cause you’re some kind of wonder sorceress, and I’m some kind of crazy, firespell-wielding Adept.”
“You know, we could totally turn that into a comic book.”
“Who’d want to read about pimply teenagers with boy issues and magic problems?” We looked at each other before bursting into laughter.
A knock sounded at the door. “It’s open,” Scout said.
The knob turned, and Lesley stood in the doorway, blinking wide eyes at us. “I need to show you something,” she said.
“What?” Scout asked.
“I’m not sure, but I think it falls into your jurisdiction.”
Without so much as a word, apparently trusting that Lesley had seen something important, Scout gathered up her messenger bag.
“Let’s go.”