“We didn’t just try,” said the gatekeeper. “We accomplished .”

“Two feet inside the door hardly qualifies as accomplished, mi amiga. Unless you’d like your mouths hexbound as well, I suggest you talk.” Scout held up her hands and closed her eyes and began to recite some magical words. But since those words were “abracadabra” and “mumbo jumbo” and “hocus pocus,” I guessed she was playing chicken.

“You know why we’re here,” the gatekeeper quickly answered, her voice squeaking in her effort to get out the words.

“Me and my Grimoire?”

“Like you’re so freakin’ special,” Lauren muttered.

Scout squared her shoulders. “Special enough. My Grimoire is out of reach, and even if you got me, I’m sure as hell not going to go willingly. Did you two think you could just walk in here and carry me out?”

Lauren laughed. “Um, yes? Hello, hypnosis power?”

Scout moved closer and peered down at Lauren. “Ah, there it is,” she said, pointing down at Lauren’s neck. I took a closer look. Around Lauren’s neck was a small, round watch on a gold chain.

“Have you ever seen those old movies where some evil psychiatrist hypnotizes someone by swinging their watch back and forth? She can do that.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s a pretty narrow power.” Not that it made me any less happy that her hands were bound. These two seemed like the type to write “loser” on your forehead in permanent market once they’d gotten you down.

“Very narrow,” Scout agreed with a wicked grin. “And you know what they say about girls with very narrow powers?”

“What’s that?”

Scout paused for a minute. “Oh, I don’t know. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d make it all the way through the joke.”

Lauren did a little more swearing. Gatekeeper girl tried to join in, but she just wasn’t as good at it.

“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted. “How can someone be dumber than a baguette?”

“It means you’re stupid.”

I thought back to my nearly perfect trig homework. “Try again.” But that just reminded me that we had class—including trig—in a few hours. Exhaustion suddenly hitting me in a wave, I worked to get us back on track. “What do you want to do now?”

Scout looked back at me. “Well, we’re in the convent, and they’re in the convent. That’s two too many people in the convent.”

Five minutes later, we were dragging two squirming girls through the vault door and into the corridor behind it—and out of St. Sophia’s. They were hard to move, not just because they were fidgety, but because every time we gripped them near the shoulders they tried to bite us.

“Isn’t there a better way to do this?” I wondered, standing over Scout. “I mean, if you’d knocked them completely unconscious they’d be a lot easier to move.”

“Yeah, but we’d be leaving them completely at the mercy of whatever else might roam the tunnels at night. And that would be such a Reaper thing to do.”

Lauren growled.

We finally managed it by dragging them by their hexbound feet into the tunnel. But it wasn’t pretty, and the swearing didn’t get any better. Neither of them—especially not the cheerleader—was thrilled to be dragged through five or six feet of underground tunnel on their backs.

When they were on the other side of the door, Scout put her hands on her h*ps and looked down at them. “And what did we learn today, ladies?”

“That you suck.”

Scout rolled her eyes. I raised a hand. “While we’re here, I have a question.”

“Go for it, Lils. All right, cheer-reaper and gatekeeper—”

“I’m in the band.”

“Sorry?”

“You call her cheer-reaper, I figure you should call me by my title, too. I’m in the band. I play the French horn.”

Scout and I shared a grin.

“’Course you do,” Scout said. “Okay, cheer-reaper and French hornist, my friend here has a question for you.”

“Thanks,” I offered.

“Anytime.”

I turned toward them. “Have you two seen anything weird in the tunnels lately?”

“Oh,” French horn said, “you mean the rat thingies?”

I blinked. I hadn’t thought it was going to be quite that easy. “Well, actually, yeah. You know anything about those?”

The French horn player huffed. “Well, of course we do. We—”

She was interrupted by Lauren’s screaming. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!” And she didn’t stop there. She kept screaming and screaming. Scout and I both hitched back a little, then shared a wary glance. That kind of noise was surely going to attract attention.

“Shut it, Fleming,” Scout said, kicking her toe a little, then glancing at me. “That may be our cue to depart.”

“They know something,” I pointed out.

“I know something, too. I know we’re going to attract a lot of unwanted attention if they keep screaming. And then we have to make up some ridiculous explanation about how we heard screaming through the vents in our rooms, and we followed the sound back to the basement, and we found these girls lying on the ground and pretending to be tied up by invisible rope because they’re practicing for the regional mime championships.”

I blinked at her. “Is that explanation more or less believable than we woke up because two girls who are actually evil magicians tripped a magical alarm wired to a door in the basement we aren’t supposed to know about?”

Scout paused for a minute, the nodded. “Point made. Let’s go home. Ladies, have a pleasant evening.”

Not surprisingly, Lauren stopped screaming. But that just meant the curses were a little less loud than they had been before.

We left a flashlight on the ground between them, then slipped through the door again. When we were both on the other side, we used all our weight to push the thing closed again, muffling the sounds of cursing that were coming from the other side. I took a step back while Scout spun the flywheel and slid the security bar into place, metallic cranking and grinding echoing through the corridor.

“They’ve seen the rat things,” I said.

“And if Lauren’s screaming means anything, they’ve done more than just that. They know more than just that, which means the Reapers and the rats are definitely tied together. It wasn’t a coincidence that Detroit and Naya saw the slime outside that sanctuary.” She put her hands on her h*ps and looked at the closed door. “I also guess I have to try to ward the door again.”

“You can do it!” I said, giving her a chipper thumbs-up.

“Daniel could do it,” she said. “And without a spell. Me? He says, ‘Go for it, Scout,’ and I have to rough out a few lines—hardly have time to pay attention to the meter, to the melody, the rhythm—ugh,” she said, and the irritation in her voice was really the only part of the monologue I understood.

“So, what does that mean? Dumb it down like you’re talking to a girl who’s only had magic for, like, a few weeks.”

She smiled a little, which had been the point. “You’ve seen me work my magic. Putting together an incantation is hard work, and wards are harder than most. There’s no physical charm—like the origami I used on the thingies—to boost the words. Daniel didn’t give me a lot of direction, and he certainly didn’t give me time to do it well. The ward won’t really keep out anyone with any skill, and the hex isn’t going to last much longer.” She glanced down at her watch. “Fifteen minutes or a half an hour, tops?”

Probably not enough time to find Daniel and get him into the basement, even if he was already in the Enclave. A blast of firespell wasn’t going to do much to the door, and opening up the door again to firespell the Reapers into unconsciousness would just be a waste of time. They’d eventually wake up, and we’d still have doors with breach problems.

We needed stronger wards, and we needed them now.

I grinned slowly, an idea blossoming. “Maybe I can do for you what I did for Naya and Temperance.”

Scout tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, if I could funnel energy through Naya, maybe I could funnel it through you. To strengthen the wards, I mean.”

“Huh,” she said, then looked at the ground, frowning as she considered the possibility. “So you’re thinking the trouble isn’t that the wards didn’t work, but that they weren’t strong enough to keep the Reapers out.”

I nodded. “I mean, you’re the expert on wards so you’d know better than me, but if we pump up the power, wouldn’t it make the ward harder to break through?”

“It might,” she said with a nod. “It definitely might. Do you need to recharge or whatever?”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“I’ll assume that’s a general yes, so we’ll do this and go back to sleep. What do I need to do?”

“What do you have to do to work your magic?”

“Remember the triple I?”

“Um, intent, incantation, incarnation?”

She nodded and held out a hand. I took it in mind. With her free hand, she pressed her palm to a flat spot on the door. She closed her eyes, and her lips began to move with words I couldn’t hear. The door began to glow, pale green light filling the corridor.

“Now,” she quietly said, her eyes still closed.

I closed my own eyes, and tried to imagine the power around me, the atomic potential in the air. I imagined it flowing through my fingers, then my arm, then across my body. I felt her jump when it reached her, and her fingers tightened on mine.

“You okay?”

“Keep it coming,” she gritted out.

“Try not to flinch,” I said, “and don’t try to fight it. Just let it flow across you and into the door. Let me do the work.”

Scout let out a muffled sound, but she kept her fingers tight on mine. She kept the current intact.

A low hum began to fill the air. I opened my eyes a little. The hum was coming from the rivets as they vibrated in their sockets. The green glow was also deeper now, the light more intense as Scout transmitted the magic into the door.

“How’s it coming?”

“I think we’re . . . almost there. I can feel it filling up. Sealing. Closing up the cracks.”

That was great, but it was late, and I was exhausted, and Scout wasn’t exactly a finicky magic eater. I could feel her capacity power, like a cavern of magical potential.

And that potential liked firespell.

“Okay, I think we’re done, Lily.”

I tried to pull back, to slow down the flood of power to a trickle, but it didn’t want to stop. Scout’s magic kept sucking more power, and I couldn’t close that door.

“Lily, we’re done here.”

“I can’t make it stop, Scout.”

The door began to pulse with green light. Off and on, off and on, like the world’s largest turn signal.

“Lily, I need you to do something. This is starting to hurt.”

I looked over at Scout. Her hair was standing on end, a punky blond-and-brown halo around her head.

“I’m trying, I swear.”

“You can do it, Lily. I believe in you.”

I closed my eyes and pretended the magic was a faucet and I was turning one of the knobs. Unfortunately, that imaginary knob felt like it had been welded closed. “I can’t get it!”

“Then we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way!”

I opened my eyes and looked at Scout. The door was beginning to emit a pulsing noise. Each time it glowed it put out an electrical roar. I had to yell over the sound to be heard. “What old-fashioned way?”

“On three, we pull ourselves apart! Agreed?”

I swallowed, but nodded. “On three!”

She nodded back, and we began the countdown. “One—two—and three!”

We yanked our hands apart, but it wasn’t easy. It felt like I was pulling back a twenty-pound concrete block. I managed to untangle my fingers from hers, but the power was still pouring out, and it wanted to move. Since it couldn’t flow into Scout anymore, it pushed her away—and me with it.

I flew down the corridor and hit the floor five or six feet away. I heard the echoing thump as Scout hit the floor in the other direction.

“Ow.”

Very slowly, I sat up, hands braced on the ground to push myself upright. “Oh, crap, that hurt.”

“Seriously,” she said groggily, sitting up again, a hand on her forehead. It took a moment before she turned her head to look at me. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better. Are you okay?”

She checked her arms and legs. “Nothing broken, I think.”

One hand on the wall for support, I stood up, but had to wait until the room stopped spinning. “I have to say, that totally sucked.”

Scout tried to flatten down her hair, which was still sticking up in odd angles. “I guess our magics hate each other.”

“Or really like each other, since we had trouble prying ourselves apart. Either way, I don’t think we should do that again.”

“And we also probably should not tell Katie or Smith or Daniel that just happened. Lecture,” she added in explanation.

Very, very slowly—my bones aching from the fall—I moved back to the door and reached out a hand to Scout.