Hexbound

Paul crossed his arms over his head. “And you’re sure they weren’t sewer rats? Those things can go nuclear after a while.”

“Only if rats grow to five feet tall and began to walk upright. Well, mostly upright.” She bumped Michael with an elbow. “Show ’em what you got.”

Michael pulled the cell phone from his pocket, tapped around for a few seconds, and handed it to Daniel.

Smith peeked over Daniel’s shoulder to look. It was very satisfying to watch that smug expression fall right off his face. “What is that?”

“I don’t have a clue,” Daniel said, frowning down at the phone, then rotating it to get a different perspective. “Where were you exactly?”

“One of the utility tunnels,” Jason said. “Maybe ten or twelve corridors from St. Sophia’s?” He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded.

“And the slime?” Daniel asked.

“Mostly floor,” Michael said, “but it wasn’t contained there.”

“There was a lot of it,” Scout confirmed.

Frowning, Daniel ran his hands through his hair. Beside me, Scout actually sighed.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the slime,” Daniel said.

The room went silent.

“Excuse me?” Scout said. “This isn’t the first time? There’ve been others, and no one bothered to tell us?”

Even Katie and Smith looked surprised. All eyes turned to Daniel.

“It was only slime,” he said, “and it was just last week. We had no idea what it was or where it came from. There were no signs of any new creatures—just the stuff. And we’ve seen slime before.”

There were reluctant nods of agreement.

“Ectoplasmic slime,” Michael began to rattle off, “auric slime, that half-fish thingy that slimed the tourist boat at Navy Pier, that time the Reaper used the allergy spell and Adepts were all dripping snot like water all over the city—”

“Point made,” Daniel said, holding up a hand. “And now that we know what it is—and where it’s coming from—it’s time do something a little different.”

Just like he’d scripted it, a knock sounded at the Enclave door.

Katie hustled over, turning the handle and using her small cheerleadery stature to pull open the door.

Two girls stood in the doorway. One was tall with whiskey brown eyes and cocoa-kissed skin, a cloud of dark hair exploding from a slick ponytail. There was something ethereal about her, and something slightly vacant in her expression.

The second girl was shorter, a petite blonde with a shaggy crop of pale, shoulder-length hair. She wore an outfit appropriate for a punk stuck in Victorian England: short poofy black skirt; knee-high black boots; a locket necklace; and a thin, ribbed gray T-shirt beneath a complicated black leather jacket that bore panels of thick black fur. In her black-gloved hands was an old-fashioned leather doctor’s bag.

“Yowsers,” Michael muttered, earning him an elbow in the ribs from Scout.

Daniel waved them in, and the girls stepped inside. Katie closed the door behind them.

“Enclave Three,” Daniel said. “Meet Naya Fletcher—”

The taller girl offered a wave.

“—and Bailey Walker.”

“I go by Detroit,” the blonde corrected, offering a crisp salute.

“Oh, I’m going to like this one,” Scout murmured with a grin. “She’s got sass. Kind of like you, Parker.”

“I am quite sassy,” I agreed.

“Detroit,” Daniel corrected, then gestured toward Naya. “Naya is a caller. For the newbies among us, that means she speaks to the recently deceased.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Ghosts?”

Naya lifted a shoulder. “That’s how they’re generally known by the public, but they prefer ‘recently deceased.’ Calling them ‘ghosts’ makes it sound like they’re a different species. Like vamps or werewolves or the fey. They’re still human. They’re just . . . well . . . less breathy than we are.”

“And Detroit is a machinist.”

There were mumbled sounds of awe around the room. Being a “machinist” didn’t mean anything to me, but it clearly meant something to the rest of the Adepts.

“That means she gadgets,” Scout whispered.

“Detroit and Naya have seen the slime in other tunnels,” Daniel explained. “As you know, Enclave Two is an enclave of information, of technology. They aren’t used to battling it out with Reapers.”

When he paused, I knew exactly where this was heading. My stomach sank.

“Tonight,” he continued, “you’ll be escorting them out to determine if their slime is our slime—”

“And if there are more creatures out there,” Katie added.

The Enclave went silent.

“Detroit has mapped out a passage from here to their slime spot,” Daniel continued, “so she and Naya will play compass on this one. Jill, Jamie, and Paul—take point and travel in front of them. Once you get to the halfway point, you’ll stop there to give everyone a green zone so they can get back. Michael will do what reading he can. Lily and Jason are on offense if necessary.”

We waited for more, but Daniel didn’t say anything else.

Scout and I exchanged a glance. He hadn’t said her name.

“What about me?” she asked.

Daniel looked at her for a few seconds, then turned back to Detroit and Naya. “Ladies, if you’ll give us just a minute, I’d like to talk to Enclave Three.”

They nodded, then disappeared out the door. When it shut behind them, all eyes turned to Daniel.

“It’s your decision,” he told Scout, “but I’d like you to consider sitting out for this one.”

The room went silent.

“Sitting out?” she asked.

“You’ve had a pretty rough go of it lately, and last night took a lot out of you—physically, magically, emotionally. Enclave Three’s job will be to protect Enclave Two if the creatures pop up, not to—”

“Oh, no,” Scout said, holding up a hand. “You are not going to go there. Varsity or not, you are not going to suggest that I can’t go on a mission because my team-mates, my Adepts, don’t have time to babysit me.”

I grimaced on Daniel’s behalf.

“Scout, let’s be reasonable—”

“I am being reasonable,” she said, picking up her messenger bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “These people rescued me. They risked getting sucked dry by Reapers and they went to the sanctuary and they rescued me. No mother-trucking way are they going out there without me at their back. Not going to happen.”

Michael took a step forward to stand behind Scout. “She doesn’t go, I don’t go. And you know what I can do at the place.”

There was silence for a moment as Daniel considered their position. Finally, he looked at Scout. “You’re ready?”

“I’m ready,” she confirmed.

“Okay,” he said. “Then get to it.”

Everyone gathered up their bags and supplies and headed for the door—and the Adepts waiting for us outside.

I glanced back at Daniel, saw a sneaky smile on his face. I realized he’d done it on purpose—baited her on purpose—in order to rile her up, to get her ready to face whatever we might find in the tunnels.

No wonder he was sent in to supervise Katie and Smith. He was good. Sneaky, sure, but good.

Daniel caught my glance and nodded at me, then pointed at the door. “Get to it, Lily.”

I got.

6

There might have been sun outside, but the tunnels were still cold and damp.

“Do you ever wish you were an Adept in Miami or Tahiti?” I whispered to Scout, zipping up the hoodie I’d pulled over a St. Sophia’s oxford shirt.

“You mean instead of this moist, cold Midwestern underbelly?”

I hopped over the other side of the rail to avoid a puddle of rusty liquid. “Something like that, yeah.”

Since I’d given him an opening, Michael snuck between me and Scout, then slung an arm over my shoulder. “You know, if you’d been in Miami, you wouldn’t have met us.”

Scout rolled her eyes. “And what a crime that would have been.”

“Whatever. You know you love me.”

“I beg to differ, Garcia.”

He faked a smile, but it was easy to tell he’d been hurt. Stung, he moved back to walk alongside Jason.

“You’re being kind of growly with Michael,” I whispered to Scout when he was out of hearing range.

“He’s being kind of annoying.”

“He’s just being himself.”

She rolled her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m just—I don’t know. Maybe Daniel was right and I’m not ready for this, you know? I mean, I did freak out last time.”

“Maybe you should tell Michael that. Let him comfort you instead of pushing him away.”

“No more daytime television for you, missy.”

“Oh, my God. Did I just give you relationship advice?”

“Yeppers.”

“Sorry. Won’t happen again.”

“I knew you were teachable.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Are you guys always this chatty?” asked Detroit. She walked with determination, her arms crossed against the chill.

“We try to keep it light,” Scout said. “There’s more than enough darkness in the world as it is.”

“The dark isn’t as dark as you’d think.” We all glanced over at Naya, who was walking with arm extended, the tips of her fingers trailing against the wall.

“What do you mean?” Scout quietly asked.

She glanced back at us, her cloud of coffee-colored hair bobbing as she moved. “We aren’t the only ones here, or there, or anywhere. They’re all around us. They live in the gray land—the not-quite world—all around us.”

I swallowed thickly, goose bumps lifting on my arms as I fought the urge to look around me, scanning the near darkness for shadowy figures.

“Can you see them?” Scout quietly asked, and Naya shrugged.

“Sometimes. Mostly, I call to them. Talk to them. It takes a lot of energy to become visible. Sound is easier. Temperature is lots easier.” Suddenly, she stopped, eyes wide. “Have you ever been somewhere dark and quiet, and you felt a cold chill? Like the wind had blown right through your soul?”

I nodded, eyes wide, like a kid around a spooky camp-fire. I also wondered about that first time—the first time she’d seen them, or heard them, or called them. Can you imagine what it would have been like to learn about the other in the world by hearing, suddenly one day, the living dead?

I decided learning a weird tattoo and a little electricity was a pretty good way to go.

Detroit glanced over at Scout. “So Daniel said you were a spellbinder?”

“Yeah,” Scout said. “Why?”

“I heard you were a spellcaster. And I thought, wow, big whoop, spellcaster, dime a dozen.”

“Dime a dozen?” Scout asked. “I thought spellcasters were a myth?”

“Do you know what a spellcaster is?”

I lifted a hand. “I actually don’t.”

Detroit held out her hand. “Okay, so there’re the three I’s, right?”

“Intent, incantation, incarnation,” I offered up.

“Right. So it takes intent and incantation to get to the incarnation part. Writing the incantation is basically the spellbinding. You’re putting the right words together in the right order to create a spell. So when you’re looking through your Grimoire—you’re looking at a flip book of spells, which are the result of the spellbinding.”

“Following you so far,” I added (helpfully).

“Once you get to saying the incantation, using the intent of it to make an incarnation of some kind happen, you’ve got the spellcasting. Making the magic take life. Spellcasters just work from Grimoires that have been passed on to them. Or the Internet.”

Scout lifted her eyebrows. “They get spells from the Internet?”

“Well, not all of them.”

Okay, apparently the Internet was a magical forest just waiting to be explored.

Detroit waved her hand. “But you’ve got something special, Scout. You can do more than just repeat some words and make magic happen. You can bind the spells in the first place. You can transmute them from letters and words into magic.”

“That’s why the Reapers were so interested in you,” I said. “You said they mentioned that, right, when you were at the sanctuary? That they were after your Grimoire , and that they were talking about the difference between spellcasters and spellbinders?”

Scout nodded. “That would explain why they came after me, and why they wanted my book.”

“That makes sense,” Detroit agreed. “It’s a rare power. And if the whole point of your organization is to support the use of magic, finding someone who can actually make new spells would be huge.”

“Wicked huge,” Scout agreed. “I had no idea. I mean, I just assumed I did what everyone else did, you know? Writing spells, then actually making the incantations work.”

“Wow,” I said. “For once, you were actually being too modest.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. Probably I deserved that.

We eventually came to a fork in the tunnels and took the path to the left. This one sloped upward, and continued on for only a few dozen yards.