Hexbound

“Temperance,” I said.

She turned those black eyes on me. I had to choke down my fear just to push out words again.

“He didn’t mean to offend you. He’s just surprised. Can you drop the illusion and tell us more about what you saw?”

The giant hag floated for another few seconds, before shrinking back to by Temperance’s slightly mousy appearance. “There are needles. Bandages. Monitors. It looks like a clinic to me.”

I bobbed my head at her. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome, Lily.”

“Well, that’s definitely new,” Scout said, frowning. “What could Reapers need with medical facilities?”

“The Reapers get weaker over time,” Jason pointed out. “Maybe they’re trying to figure out some way to treat that?”

“Maybe so,” I said. I liked the idea of Reapers turning to medicine—instead of innocent teenagers—to solve their magical maladies.

But I still had a pretty bad feeling about it.

We couldn’t avoid a return to the Enclave. Not with that kind of information under our belts. We also couldn’t risk another trip through the Pedway, so after meeting up with Jamie, Jill, and Paul, we took the long way back, Detroit checking her locket every few hundred feet to make sure we were on track. The route was definitely longer, but it was also vampire-, Reaper-, and slime-free. Thumbs-up in my book.

Daniel, Katie, and Smith jumped up from the floor when we walked in, their smiles falling away as they took in our expressions.

“It’s all bad news,” Scout said. “Might as well cop a squat again.”

When we were all on the floor—the JV Adepts exhausted, the Varsity Adepts in preparation for the shock—we laid out the details. We told him the slime was gone, but the Reapers had been there. We told him about the new sanctuary—the medical facility—and the other things Temperance had seen.

Daniel rubbed his forehead as we talked, probably wishing he hadn’t taken over the unluckiest of the Enclaves.

“We didn’t see anyone the entire time we were there,” Jason pointed out. “And Temperance said the building looked unused. So that means they’re gone, right?”

“Not necessarily,” Daniel said. “Sometimes they rotate sanctuaries, especially if humans get too close. They move around to decrease the odds they get discovered, so an empty sanctuary doesn’t mean an abandoned sanctuary.”

“We planted a camera,” Detroit said. “We’ll have Sam call you if there’s anything to report.”

“Sam?” I asked.

“Sam Bayliss. Head of Enclave Two—and Daniel’s girlfriend,” Detroit helpfully threw in. All eyes went to Daniel; Scout let out a low swear. So much for her happily ever after with Daniel.

“Thank you,” Daniel grumbled. “If that’s all—”

Scout held up a hand. “Before you send Enclave Two off into the sunset, you’ll probably want to hear the rest of it.”

“The rest of it?”

“I’m gonna throw a word at you.” She mimicked throwing something at him. “Vampires.”

Daniel’s expression turned stone cold. “Spill it.”

“Well,” Scout said, “as it turns out, we needed to use a little, tiny, eentsy bit of the Pedway, and ran into a couple of warring nests of vampires. Long story short, I used a charm to rile them up against each other; then Lily doused the lights so we could escape back into the tunnels. Oh—and Detroit’s great with locks and such.”

“Warring nests of vampires?”

“Turf war,” Jason said. “Two covens. Nicu and Marlena. I think she said she made him.”

Daniel frowned. “She must have made him a vampire. He was in her coven, then broke off to start his own. Covens don’t split very often. That’s probably not good news.”

“Especially if we want to use the Pedway,” Detroit mumbled. “Double your vamps, definitely not double your pleasure.”

Daniel made a sound of agreement.

“You know,” Scout said, “those things that attacked us had fangs. First we see them, and now we find out vampires are in some kind of turf war? That’s a lot of fangs for a coincidence.”

“That’s a good point,” Daniel said. “Not a happy one, but a good one.” He looked at Smith. “Do some research. Figure out what you can about the vamps, about the coven split.”

Smith flipped his hair out of his eyes, an emo “yes.”

“And us?” Jason asked. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll be in touch,” Daniel said. “In the meantime, stay away from fangs.” He rose, then walked to the Enclave door and opened it.

“Go home,” was all he said.

9

I knew they were busy. I knew they had lessons to prepare and exams to write. But what was no excuse.

What made teachers think having students grade each other’s trig homework was a good idea? My carefully written pages were now in the hands of the brattiest of the brats—Mary Katherine—who kept giving me nasty looks as our trig teacher explained the answers. By some freak accident of desk arranging, this was the third time she’d ended up with my paper. She took notes every day with a purple glitter pen, so my trig homework came back with huge X-marks on my wrong answers . . . and nasty little notes or drawings wherever she could find room. Seriously—she was such a witch.

And not the good kind.

When the time came to pass back everyone’s answers, I noticed she’d added a special note this time: “Loser” in all caps across the top of my page, right next to the total of wrong answers. Since I’d gotten only one wrong—and I also knew how many M.K. usually got wrong—I held up my paper toward her, and batted my eyelashes.

She rolled her eyes and looked away, but the paper on her desk was dotted with X-marks. I guessed she was going to have to find a tutor soon, ’cause money or not, I couldn’t imagine Foley would be happy about her failing trig.

Between classes I checked my phone and found a message from Ashley, my BFF from Sagamore. She was still in the public school back home since my attempt to move in with her and her parents—or have her parents ship her out here—failed pretty miserably. I felt a little guilty when I saw the message. Ashley and I hadn’t talked as much since I’d started at St. Sophia’s. There was the usual adjustment period, sure, but she had her own stuff in Sagamore, and I had a lot of paranormal (and brat-pack) drama. Add those to mandatory study hall, and I didn’t have a lot of texting time.

But that didn’t make it any less fun to hear from her, so I tapped out a quick response. I’d actually gotten halfway through asking her to come visit me until I realized what a truly horrible idea that was. I added “hard to have non-Adept friends” to my list of Adept downsides. You know, in addition to the Reapers and lack of sleep and near-death experiences.

I settled for “I MISS YOU, TOO!” and a quick description of Jason. Well, minus the werewolf bit. No sense in worrying her, right?

When the bell rang for lunch, Scout and I stuffed our books into our lockers and headed to the cafeteria.

“I’ve got a surprise for you today,” she said, her arm through mine as we joined the buffet line.

“If it crawls or bites, I don’t want to know about it.”

“Hey, what you and Shepherd do on your own time is up to you.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “What do you mean, me and Shepherd?”

She did a little dance. “We’re going to have lunch in the park with Jason and Michael.”

“You arranged a double date?”

“Not if you’re calling it a double date. You can scratch it right off your list. But we are sharing in a communal meal, or whatever fancy East Coast terminology you folks like to use.”

“I’m not sure upstate New York qualifies as ‘East Coast.’ But either way, we call it lunch.”

“Lunch it is.” She grabbed two paper bags from the buffet. Since our lunch hour was one of the only times the powers that be at St. Sophia’s let us off campus (at least as far as they knew), they were pretty good about stocking brown-bag lunches. According to their decorator-perfect labels, one held a turkey sandwich, and the other held a Greek wrap with hummus. Being the resident vegetarian, I assumed the wrap was for me.

“Nothing for the boys?” I wondered, pulling two bottles of water from an ice-filled tub.

“The boys are bringing their own lunch. I told you it wasn’t a date.”

“Well, not a fancy date anyway.” Unless, of course, you counted Scout’s rainbow-esque ensemble. She’d paired her blue-and-gold plaid with red wool clogs, a lime green cardigan, and thin orange-and-purple head-bands to hold back her hair. Whatever you might say about Scout, her wardrobe was definitely not boring. With my blue cardigan and yellow Chuck Taylors, I felt practically preppy.

Lunch in hand, we passed the brat pack and their snarky comments and thousand-dollar messenger bags and went through the school to the front door of the main building. The fresh air was a relief, especially after spending most of my days moving between the classroom building and the suite, and most of my evenings in damp tunnels.

It was a gorgeous fall day. The weather was crisp, and the sky was infinitely blue, the color reflected across the glass buildings that surrounded our gothic campus in downtown Chicago.

We walked up the street and past St. Sophia’s next-door neighbor, Burnham National Bank. The bank was housed in a fancy glass skyscraper. It was a pretty building, but still a strange sight—it looked like a giant kid had stacked glass boxes on top of one another . . . but not very well.

My heart sped up as we reached the next building. It was a pretty, short brick thing—like the slightly mousier older sister of the bank building. It was also the home of the Sterling Research Foundation, the other link in the chain that connected my parents to Foley and St. Sophia’s. While I’d basically promised Foley not to ask any questions that would hurt my parents, I didn’t think checking into the SRF was going to hurt anyone. I just had to figure out how to do it on the sly.

For a moment, I thought about walking to the front door and peeking inside, maybe offering up some excuse about it being the wrong building. I chewed the edge of my lip, considering the possibilities.

“Lils?”

I glanced back, saw that Scout was waiting at the corner, and nodded my head. “I’m right behind you.”

We slipped into the alley that separated the two buildings, and then to the left when the alley dead-ended. No—we weren’t meeting Jason and Michael in a dirty alley among Dumpsters and scattered bits of trash.

The alley held a secret.

Well, actually, it was the grass just beyond the alley that held the secret—a secret garden of lush grass and concrete thorns. It was a hidden refuge that was technically just beyond the wall of St. Sophia’s, but it carried the same sense of mystery as the convent itself.

We slithered in between the concrete columns and found Jason and Michael in the middle, sitting on a fleece blanket they’d stretched over the grass. Both of them wore their Montclare Academy uniforms. The plaid skirts were bad enough, but at least our school didn’t make us dress like accountants.

They’d already spread their lunch—or what passed for lunch for sixteen-year-old boys—on the blanket: fast food burgers, fries, and foam cups of pop.

“Welcome to paradise!” Michael said, lifting a cup. It was a high school toast, I guess.

“Shepherd. Garcia,” Scout said, kneeling down on the blanket. I joined her. Jason leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips.

“Hello there,” he whispered.

I got a full and complete set of goose bumps. “Hello back.”

Michael munched on some fries. “How’s life at St. Sophia’s today?”

Scout unwrapped her sandwich. Little fringes of turkey peeked from between the layers of bread. “Pretty much the same as every day. Brat pack. Teachers. Lily getting her learnin’ on.”

Jason smiled and his dimple perked up. “Her learnin’?”

“Thomas Jefferson,” I said, nibbling a black olive that had fallen out of my wrap. “I do a lot of thinking about federalism.”

“It’s true,” Scout said. “She is all up in the federalist period.”

“Mad props for checks and balances,” I said, offering her knuckles. She knuckled back.

Jason snorted. “How did you two survive before knowing each other?”

“That is one of the great mysteries of the universe, amigo,” Michael said. “But since we’re all here together, maybe we should talk about the other mystery.”

“Not a bad idea,” Jason said. He half unwrapped his burger and arranged the paper so it made a sleeve, then took a bite. “At least Daniel believed us about the—what are we calling them? Rat things?”

“That’s close enough,” Scout said. “And Daniel is definitely an improvement. So far, I approve of him.”

“I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear it,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you’re crushing on him, too?” Jason asked, mouth full and eyebrow arched. Scout’s cheeks flushed.

She popped a corner of her sandwich in her mouth. “I don’t crush. I appreciate.”

“You should appreciate someone your own age,” Michael muttered.

Scout humphed.

Our phones chose that moment to simultaneously start ringing. If we were all getting a call, it must have been a message about Adept business.