“So,” Isaac said. “Do we have a plan B?”
“We already know where it is,” I said quietly. “Where they put our stuff.”
We locked eyes. His expression cleared.
“You think so?” he said. “You don’t think they’d just put it in their rooms?”
“I don’t think they’d risk somebody seeing it.”
Trav spoke, sounding hoarse. “You three check the cinema. I’ll catch up with you.” He pulled his phone from the rustling pocket of his windbreaker. “I’m going to call our sound tech guys. Maybe they know where we can get some last-minute replacement equipment.”
“Cool.” I glanced from Isaac to Nihal. “Let’s go.”
When the three of us arrived at the cinema, the dim light seeping under the emergency exit door told us the Minuets were still here. We skirted the building and kept our distance.
“All right,” I whispered, as we hunched by a dying pine at the edge of the woods. “How do we get them out?”
“Tear gas,” suggested Isaac.
I nodded. “Unleash the wolves.”
“Rocks through the windows.”
“Set fire to—”
“Or,” Nihal said, “we could call the safety hotline, like rational people.”
The possibility stewed in the freezing air.
“They’ll get suspended,” I reminded. “All of them.”
Isaac shrugged. “Yep, I’m fine with that.”
Nihal stayed quiet, picking at the edge of his gray woolen scarf. He was thinking of Connor. I saw it in the distance on his expression.
I nudged Isaac. “You don’t want to see their faces when we beat them tomorrow? Fair and square?”
Isaac sighed. “Has anyone ever told you you’re as stubborn as a brick?”
“Often.”
“Move,” Nihal hissed, pulling me behind the tree. After a second, I peered back out at the cinema. A smudge of facial features hovered, murky, behind one of the windowpanes.
I clenched my freezing hands in my pockets, trying to force warmth into my fingertips. “How about the emergency exit?”
“Yeah,” Isaac said. “Let’s make some noise. Pretend we’re unlocking the door.”
“How about we stake the place out until they leave?” Nihal said. “They can’t sleep there.”
I grimaced. “I wasn’t built for this weather.”
“California,” Isaac said, rolling his eyes.
I shouldered him. “Okay, first of all—”
“Guys,” Nihal said, looking between us with something like suspicion. “A little focus?”
Isaac and I put a few more inches between each other, sheepish. We had to be less obvious.
I couldn’t help it, though. I had the buoyant feeling inside my chest of someone who was learning to fly.
I looked at his hand against the tree bark and felt it forceful on my back, careful in my hair, sweeping down my shoulder, scraping across my cheek. I glanced over his features, shadowed in the dark, and thought, You’re mine. When he caught me looking, the night felt endless again, and we were the only spots of life on a barren plain of snow.
Nihal was still puzzling things out. “How did they get into the Nest in the first place?” he murmured.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’d have to have a key, right? Unless someone forgot to lock it.”
Isaac shook his head. “I was the last out last night. I locked it.”
“They must’ve stolen a key,” I said.
Isaac didn’t look convinced. “Who even knows we have doubles of the key?”
Nihal’s lips thinned. “We should get a move on. Isaac, could you make a diversion? Rattle the door?”
“On it,” Isaac said, and loped off through the trees.
I waited until he was out of earshot to look back at Nihal. He was wearing an uncertain-looking frown.
I leaned against the tree. My nose and lips had gone numb. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You sure?”
Nihal closed his eyes hard, his long eyelashes folding up at the top of his cheeks. “No,” he murmured. “Just, Connor knows I keep my key in my backpack.”
A long second later, he gave me a look that searched for reassurance, his brown eyes deepened by the night.
I shook my head. “Well, text him and ask, then. If he did it.”
“I don’t want to attack him.”
“It’s not an attack. It’s a—” Movement behind the cinema windows cut me off. As I went quiet, I heard Isaac’s voice, distant but sharp, behind the building. He was singing Sam Samuelson’s “The Way You Loved Me” at the top of his lungs. Subtle.
The lookout’s face vanished from the window. Nihal and I ducked back into the woods, snow crunching beneath our boots. A minute later, a shadowy figure pushed the window up and darted across the lawn. Then the other Minuets poured out. I counted them as they went.
The last one to leave shoved the window down and hooked the board back into place. He broke into a run and tripped not far from us, plowing face-first into the snow with a painful-looking smack. I shifted, and a branch snapped beneath my heel.
Nihal tensed. I froze, but the guy had already twisted toward us. It was Connor, a jagged leaf of bruising wrapped over his temple.
He picked himself up and straightened to his towering height, brushing snow off the sleeves of his fleece. Nihal swayed forward, as if to drift out of the woods.
A dozen feet apart, they looked at each other for a long moment. Connor’s broad features were weighted with words. For a second, I thought he might approach us—or give us away.
Then he gave his head a shake and backed up, moving after the rest of his group. He broke back into a run and disappeared.
It wasn’t until he was long gone that I looked back at Nihal. “Hey,” I said quietly. “You good?”
His eyes were still fixed on the spot where Connor had disappeared. A long moment passed, and the tightness around his mouth didn’t ease. I could practically smell the disappointment on him, a bitter haze.
Finally, he turned back to me, resignation worn into the creases of his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The theater was less impressive than I remembered it. In my memory, it was a cavernous space, magnificent but faded, like an ancient opera house in need of restoration. As I stood here at the top of the aisle, though, it looked small and shabby and smelled like winter and dust.
“There’s nothing here,” Isaac called from the screen at the front. “Just like with the Bear.”
I shook my head. “It has to be here.”
“Maybe there’s a basement,” he called. “Like a boiler room sort of situation.”
“That,” I muttered, “or they’re meeting in the bathrooms.”