Zoe shoved the electrodagger into her purse, along with a few more gizmos, then grabbed a small glass case that contained several wireless earbuds. She stuck one of them into her own ear, then handed one to me and gestured that I should do the same. The device slid easily into my ear, and I could barely tell it was there.
“Check, check,” Zoe said.
Her voice echoed in my ear, and I flashed her a thumbs-up, telling her that I could hear her loud and clear.
“All you have to do is talk in your normal voice, or even whisper, depending on the situation, and we’ll be able to hear you through your earbud,” she said. “And you can hear the rest of us too. This is how we communicate with each other during missions.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
We both removed our earbuds. Zoe put them back into that glass case, then slid the whole thing into her bag. The sides of her blue-plaid purse were already bulging, as if the enormous bag were going to explode from all the spy gear she had crammed inside, but Zoe looked over the shelves again, debating whether she needed anything else.
I didn’t know the Valkyrie—didn’t know her at all—but she seemed nice enough. Or at least willing to give me the benefit of the doubt when it came to my parents. It was one thing to trade insults with Ian while we were in the safety of the Bunker. But now that we were getting ready to leave the academy, anything could happen, and I wanted to know what kind of people were going to be watching my back.
“Can I ask you something?” I said. “About…Ian?”
Zoe kept staring at the gadgets. “You mean why he’s been so snarky to you?”
“Yeah. What’s his problem? He doesn’t even know me, and he already hates me.”
“Maybe that’s because you remind him of himself.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
Zoe glanced around the armory, as if making sure that we were still alone, then looked at me again. “Ian’s family, the Hunters, are a big deal in the Protectorate. Like almost as big a deal as the Quinns. His entire family, they’ve all been members of the Protectorate going back I don’t know how many generations, including his mom and dad. His parents…well, let’s just say they aren’t the best. All they do, all they really care about, is traveling all over the world on Protectorate missions. So it was pretty much just Ian and his older brother, Drake, growing up together.”
“So?” I asked. “What does that have to do with me?”
“So Ian absolutely adored Drake. Loved and looked up to his big brother more than anyone else. We’re talking some serious hero worship here, especially when Drake graduated with honors from the New York academy and went to work for the Protectorate.”
I sighed. “Let me guess. A group of Reapers killed Drake, and now Ian hates all Reapers as a result.”
“If only it were that simple.” Zoe glanced around again, making sure that we were still alone. “It turned out that Drake was secretly a Reaper—and that he had been a Reaper for years.”
My eyes widened. “No way.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So what happened?” I asked, totally caught up in her story.
“Well, since Drake was a rookie member of the Protectorate, he was assigned to guard some weapons, armor, and artifacts that were being stored at a warehouse near the New York academy. But after the battle in North Carolina, stuff started disappearing from the warehouse. Takeda got suspicious, since no one but Protectorate members are supposed to know where the warehouse is. I don’t know how, but he realized that Drake was the one leaking information to the Reapers, so he set a trap for him. Takeda told Drake about a shipment of artifacts coming to the warehouse, then sat back and waited for Drake and the other Reapers to try to steal the artifacts. Takeda wanted to catch and arrest all the Reapers at the same time, including Drake.” Zoe bit her lip, stopping her story.
“What happened?” I asked. “What went wrong?”
“Drake bought Ian along to the warehouse the night of the Protectorate raid. Ian didn’t realize that they were meeting a bunch of Reapers, but Drake finally told Ian that he was a Reaper and he wanted Ian to join them. As you can imagine, Ian didn’t take that well.”
No, that wasn’t the kind of thing you took well. That was something that shattered your heart in an instant and made you question everything you thought you knew about the people you loved.
Zoe shook her head. “Ian was absolutely devastated. But that’s not even the worst part.”
“What was that?”
“Drake told Ian to either join the Reapers or die,” she said. “Of course Ian refused, but Drake attacked him. Ian didn’t have a choice. He defended himself, and he stabbed Drake in the chest.”
I sucked in a horrified breath. So that was why Ian hated Reapers and everything to do with them—he had been forced to fight his own Reaper brother. I had thought that finding out about my parents was bad, but this was worse—so much worse. At least my parents had never tried to force me to join the Reapers. They had never attacked me, and they had never made me choose between my life and theirs.
“Ian left to get help for Drake, but one of the Reapers set off some sort of bomb,” Zoe continued in a sad voice. “The warehouse exploded. Ian got out, but Drake didn’t. He’s still buried somewhere in the rubble.”
“Poor Ian,” I whispered.
“Yeah. You can say that again.”
We fell silent, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
“Look,” Zoe said. “Ian is a really great guy. Ian, Mateo, and me—we’ve all been friends for years. Ian and I lived next door to each other in New York. When he wasn’t with Drake, Ian was hanging out at my house. He’s like the brother I never had, and he’s always watched out for me.”
“But?”
She let out a breath. “But finding out the truth about Drake almost destroyed him. So when Linus Quinn and Takeda put together the Midgard, Ian was the first one to volunteer. Ian thinks that if he stops Sisyphus and these new Reapers, he can somehow make up for not seeing the truth about Drake.”
I shifted on my feet. Just like I wanted to make up for my parents’ evil actions. Ian Hunter and I were far more alike than I would have thought possible.
“Mateo and I just joined the team to keep Ian from doing something stupid, like getting himself killed.” Zoe sighed. “But Amanda was the one who died instead.”
Guilt and grief flashed in her hazel eyes, and blue sparks of magic fizzed in the air around her before slowly winking out one by one.
“Amanda’s death wasn’t your fault,” I said. “If it was anyone’s fault, then it was mine for not confronting the Reaper as soon as I spotted him in the library. But none of us realized that the Reaper was going to summon those chimeras. And you said yourself that Amanda went into the library without waiting for backup.”
“I know that, but I still feel guilty.” Her face twisted with regret. “Although it’s not like I could have helped Amanda against the chimeras.”
I felt guilty too, but I wondered at her words. “What do you mean? You’re a Valkyrie.”