The vampires around Nicu began to hiss and show their fangs. He glared across at Marlena, his eyes half-hooded. “Never forget, Marlena, who made me vampire.”

“Mistakes,” she growled out, “can be remedied.”

Scout was still mouthing her spell. With each word she spoke, the vampires seemed to become more and more angry. Soon they were screaming at each other in a heavy language I didn’t understand.

I stood at the ready, hands at my sides, wiggling my fingertips as I waited for Scout to give me the signal to douse the lights.

“Three,” she finally said, “two, and one.”

I tugged on the power, and the lights went out above us. The vampires began to yelp. I wasn’t sure if they could see any better in the dark than we could, but they clearly weren’t happy about being plunged into darkness while enemies were in their midst.

On the other hand, they seemed to think their fellow vampires were the only enemies that mattered. As the groups rushed each other to wage their battle, we became irrelevant.

I felt a hand at my elbow. “Go,” Jason said, and we moved in a tight knot, staying close to the wall as we ran for the next corridor. They ignored us, but the sounds of a fight—ripping flesh, bruising strikes—erupted behind us.

We ran full out in the darkness. When we made it to the next corridor, Detroit finagled a light to lead the way. It was a glowing ball that bounced through the hallway, leading us to the end of the corridor and then to the left until we reached the gunmetal gray fire door. The stairwell was lit from within, and it cast an orange glow into the hallway. The bouncing light disappeared into the puddle of light.

Paul pushed at the long bar across the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Locked,” he said, glancing back at us.

“There’s an access pad,” Jill said, gesturing toward the small white box that sat beside the door. “You need a card to open the door.”

Scout pointed at Detroit, before casting a nervous glance back at the hallway. “Can you do something, or do we need to have Paulie rip the thing off its hinges?”

“I’m on it,” Detroit said. She moved to the wall and elbowed the panel. Just like in the movies, the plastic cover popped off. She whipped out a set of tiny tools from her leather jacket, and then she was working. A tiny screwdriver in each hand, she began to pick and pluck at the sensor’s insides.

“You okay?”

I looked over and found Jason behind me, worry in his eyes. “I’m good.”

He touched a fingertip to my thumb. “Good. Otherwise, I’d have to run back and take a bite out of crime, if you know what I mean.”

“Show-off.”

He winked.

“Got it,” Detroit announced. She pressed the plastic cover back into place, then waved her giant black watch over the pad.

For a moment there was silence, and then the door clicked as the mechanism unlocked.

Detroit pushed through the door.

“Nice job,” I said, passing by as she held the door open.

“It’s not firespell,” she said, “but it works for me.”

No argument there.

7

Detroit and Paul stayed by the door until we were done, then pulled it closed until it clicked shut again behind us. We filed down the stairs. A steel bar stretched across the final landing, probably to keep folks out of the basement and the tunnels. We hopped over it to reach the tall, metal fire door that punctuated the dank bottom of the stairwell and waited while Detroit jimmied the lock on a chain on the door.

I’ll admit it; I was impressed. Detroit had skills that made caper movies look low budget. But I wasn’t the only one pleased with our trek so far.

“Nice job back there,” Scout said, nudging me with her elbow. “I’m calling that Adepts, one. Vampires, zero.”

“Agreed,” I said, holding up a hand. “I’m gonna need some skin on that one.” She reached out and high-fived me.

It took only a couple of seconds before Detroit tripped the tumblers and was pulling the chain away. “All right,” she said. “Last part of the trip.”

“And this was supposed to be a shortcut,” I muttered.

“At least we got to spend some quality time together.”

I gave Jason a dry look. “Be honest. You were hoping I’d use firespell. You wanted to see it.”

“Well, if you want me to be honest, then yeah. I wanted to watch you work your mojo.”

“Jeeeez, you two,” Scout said. “Make out somewhere else.”

“Spoilsport,” I told her.

The fire door led back into the railway tunnels. Maybe the Pedway architect figured they’d put be put back into use someday.

“We’ll stay here and watch your back,” Paul said, pointing between himself, Jamie, and Jill. “We can ice out the vamps if they make it in, make sure you have a clear path back to the Enclave.”

“Especially since we’re taking the long way home,” Jason advised.

Detroit grumbled, but seemed to get his point.

From there, it was only a couple hundred yards before we reached a ramshackle wooden door.

“This is it,” Detroit whispered, opening the door and giving us a peek of a walkway between our wooden door and a set of metal double doors at the other end of a long corridor. The walkway’s ceiling was covered by grates, and we could hear the sounds of music and engines above us as cars passed by.

“This is what?” Jason asked, confusion in his expression as he surveyed the hallway. “What are we supposed to be seeing?”

Naya’s face fell. “It’s gone.”

“The slime,” Detroit said. “This is where we saw it.”

“I definitely don’t see any slime,” Scout said, cramming beside me in the doorway. She was right. I mean, we were underground, so it wasn’t like it was sparkling clean in there, but there was definitely no slime.

Detroit looked crestfallen. “I don’t understand. This is really where we saw it. It couldn’t have just disappeared.”

Jason gestured toward the double doors at the other end of the corridor, which were marked with those pointy biohazard stickers. “No,” he said. “But someone could have cleaned up the slime.”

“Reapers?” I wondered. “You think the Reapers know something about the creatures?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “After all, we didn’t, not until we saw them last night.” He looked at Michael. “What can you tell us?”

Michael nodded decisively, then rubbed his hands together like he was getting ready to roll some dice. He stepped forward into the corridor, put a palm flat against the wall, and closed his eyes.

“It’s muddy,” he said. “Unclear. So many coming and going. So much birth and death. Change . . .” But then he shook his head.

“I can’t read anything else clearly.” When he opened his eyes again, there was defeat there. “I can’t see anything else.”

“What does that tell you?” Scout asked, tilting her head at him. “What does it mean if you can’t read anything?”

Michael shook his head, clearly flustered by whatever he’d seen—or hadn’t seen. “Could be that too much went on—too much magic for any one message to filter through. Or could be some kind of blocking spell.”

“We’ve seen those before,” Detroit agreed. “Spells to erase the magic’s fingerprints, scramble the magic’s DNA. Reapers use obfus for things like that.”

I lifted a hand. “Sorry. What’s an ‘obfu’?”

“Obfuscator,” Detroit explained. “Something that obfuscates—makes it hard for Michael to get a read on the building.”

“Any chance you’ve got a magic detector in your bag of tricks?” Scout asked.

“Oh!” Detroit said, fumbling through the pockets of her leather jacket until she pulled out something tiny and black that was shaped like a pill. She held it up between two fingers.

“Magic smoke,” she said. After Scout pulled Michael back into the doorway, Detroit leaned forward and tossed the pill into the hallway.

It hit the concrete floor and rolled a little, finally settling against the double doors.

“Four, three, two, and—”

Before she could say “one,” the pill emitted a puff of blue smoke. As it rose through the far end of the corridor, we could see pale green lines crisscrossing the air, like dust highlighting a laser beam.

“What is that?” I wondered.

“Trip wires,” Scout said. “Magical trip wires. And I have got to get one of those spells.”

“I’ve got a box at the Enclave,” Detroit whispered. “I’ll bring you a couple.”

“We are now besties,” she whispered.

“What do they do?” Michael asked.

Scout pointed toward the smoke. “They set wards,” she said. “They’re like trip wires. If we breach one as we try to cross the door, whoever set the spells them gets a signal. Like an alarm bell.”

“And I bet Reapers would be on us in nothing flat,” Jason predicted. “This has got to be their handiwork. I mean, it’s got to be someone with magic, and if this was an Adept hidey-hole, we’d know about it.”

“Well, we’re definitely not going in there looking for slime,” Michael said. “What’s plan B?”

“I am,” Naya said. “I will call someone.”

“One of the recently deceased,” Detroit clarified, gesturing toward Naya. She took a step out of the crowded doorway into the corridor, blew out a slow breath and moved her hands, palms down, in front of her as she exhaled like she was physically pushing the air from her body.

Jason bumped my arm. “Let’s set up a protective area while she’s getting ready,” he said, then pointed to each of us in turn. Michael and Scout made a line between Naya and the wooden door into the tunnels, and Jason and I stepped around them all to create a barrier between Naya and the trip wires. Two lines of Adept defense in case something nasty popped through either way.

Once in position, we waited silently, gazes skimming nervously around the corridor, waiting for something to happen.

As if the air conditioner had suddenly kicked on, the temperature in the room dropped by ten or fifteen degrees. I stuffed my hands into my pockets. “It’s super-chilly down here today.”

All eyes turned to me. Understanding struck, and the hair at the back of my neck lifted. The corridor felt like a field of power lines, abuzz with potential energy.

“That wasn’t just a breeze, was it?” Michael whispered.

The sidewalk grates began to vibrate, then clank up and down in their moorings as something moved into the corridor. The air got hazy, and a cold, thick fog sank down among us.

“She’s here,” Naya whispered.

Jason muttered a startled curse, then reached out for my hand. I laced my fingers with his and squeezed. Michael and Scout were also holding hands. About time.

The mist swirled, but didn’t take shape.

“She is having trouble heeding the call,” Naya said. “The energy . . . is scattered.”

“Is that why we can’t see her?” I whispered to Detroit. The question seemed rude—like this poor girl could help that she didn’t have a body—but important nonetheless.

“It takes a lot of power for the spirit to make contact, to penetrate the veil between the gray land and ours. Making herself visible would take more power than she’s got. But that won’t stop him or her from reaching out, or helping us.”

Naya finally opened her eyes. “Her name is Temperance Bay. She was one of us, an Adept. Her skill was illusion. She could change the physical appearance of an object. She died—was taken—by a Reaper at nineteen. Ten years ago.” Naya shook her head. “That’s all she can tell me—and she had trouble getting that much across. The energy down here is bad. Noisy.”

“That explains why I couldn’t get a good read,” Michael said.

“What would cause that?” I asked.

Jason pointed up. “Could be the trip wires. Could be because we’re down here in a hole. Could be because of whatever went on in this place before we got here.”

That didn’t exactly bode well.

“Hey,” Detroit said, looking at me curiously. “You’ve got firespell, right?”

“Um, yeah. Why?”

“Well, firespell is power magic. So maybe you could send her some firespell power, like an amplifier?”

Was she kidding? I barely knew how to turn the lights on and off. “I wouldn’t know how to do that.”

Undeterred, Detroit shook her head, then began tapping at the screen of her big black watch. “No, I think we can do this. It’s just a matter of energy. Of plugging you in, I guess.”

I looked at Scout, who shrugged, then Jason.

“This one’s all you, kiddo. You’re the only one who knows what it feels like. Do you think you could do it?”

I frowned, then looked at Naya. “Can you ask Temperance if she has any idea how to do it? How that might work? I don’t want to hurt her. I mean, could I hurt her?”

“Of course you could,” Naya said. “She’s deceased, not nonexistent. Her energy remains. If you unbalance her energy, she’s gonna feel it.”

“So no pressure,” Scout added from across the room.

No kidding, but I was an Adept, and I knew what needed to be done. “Okay,” I said. “Ask her what I need to do.”