Something strange was going on. I wasn’t sure what—I certainly didn’t think he was some kind of Robin Hood of magic—but whatever it was, I wasn’t ready to tell Scout.
No, this was going to need a little more time.
I hoped I had it.
10
Dinner was Tex-Mex food, which St. Sophia’s managed pretty well for a snotty private boarding school in the middle of downtown Chicago. And as a vegetarian, it was usually a favorite of mine. Tex-Mex at St. Sophia’s meant tortillas and beans and peppers and cheese, so it was usually easy to whip up something meat-free.
We had an hour after dinner before study hall for Scout and, according to Foley, art studio for me, so we headed back to our suite for some time off—and so I could get my materials together.
When we got in, Amie’s door was open, the light off. Lesley’s door was shut, cello music drifting from beneath the door. She played the cello and spent a lot of time practicing. Luckily, she was really good at it, so it was kind of like having a tiny orchestra in the room. Not a bad way to live, as it turned out.
When Scout and I walked in and shut the door behind us, the music came to a stop. A few seconds later, Lesley emerged from her room. She wore a pale green dress with a yellow cardigan over it, her blond hair tucked behind her ears, her feet tucked into canvas Mary Janes. She stood in her doorway for a moment, blinking blue eyes at us.
Lesley was definitely on our side, but she was still a little odd.
“What’s up, Barnaby?” Scout asked, dropping onto the couch in the common room. “Sounds like the cello playing is going pretty well.”
Lesley shrugged. “I’m having trouble with some of the passages. Not as vibrant as I want them to be. Practice, practice, practice.”
I took a seat on the other end of the couch. “It sounds good to the plebeians.”
“Ooh, nice use of today’s Euro-history lesson,” Scout complimented.
“I am all up in the vocab.”
Lesley walked around the couch and sat down on the floor, her skirt fluttering as she moved. She wasn’t an Adept, but she was pale and blond and had a very old-fashioned look about her. It wasn’t hard to imagine that she’d stepped out of some fairy tale and into modern-day Chicago.
“How’s it going with your secret midnight missions?”
Although she wasn’t totally up to speed on the Adept drama, she knew Scout and I were involved in something extracurricular at night.
“The missions are going,” Scout said. “Some nights are better than others.” She bobbed her head toward Amie’s door. “Amie’s little minion saw us coming in on Monday night. Has she said anything about it to you?”
Lesley shook her head. “Not to me. But I heard Veronica tell M.K. and Amie about it. She said Lily was out with a boy.” Lesley looked at me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Kinda,” I said, my cheeks heating up.
“They say anything else?” Scout asked. “Or did they believe us?”
Lesley shrugged. “Mostly they wondered who the boy was. They didn’t think you’d been here long enough to meet a boy.”
“Our Parker moves pretty fast.”
I kicked Scout in the leg. “Stifle it,” I said, then smiled at Lesley. “Thanks for the update.”
“I could do some opp research if you want.”
Scout and I exchanged a puzzled glance. “Opp research?” she asked. “What’s that?”
“Opposition research. I could follow them around, eavesdrop, take notes. Maybe find something you could blackmail them with?”
“For a nice girl, Les, you’ve definitely got a dark side.”
Lesley smiled grandly—and a little wickedly. “I know. People look at me and they don’t really think I’m up to it. But I’m definitely up to it.”
“We will mos’ def’ keep that in mind,” Scout said. “But for now, since we’ve got an hour”—she paused to pick up the remote control for the small wall-mounted television—“how about a little oblivion?”
I gave her forty-five minutes before I headed back to my room to assemble my supplies.
I had no idea what we’d be doing in art studio—drawing, painting, ceramics, collage—so I put together a little of everything.
First step, of course, was to take stock of the supplies I’d brought with me from home. A couple of sketch pads. Charcoal. Conté crayons. My favorite pencils, a sharpener, and a couple of gummy erasers. A small watercolor box with six tiny trays of color and a little plastic cup for water. Three black microtip pens I’d nabbed at the Hartnett College bookstore, where my parents had been professors. (College bookstores always had the best supplies.)
I tried not to think about Sebastian or the things he wanted to talk to me about, and instead focused on the task at hand. I put the supplies into a black mesh bag, zipped it up, and threw the whole shebang into my messenger bag.
When I was ready to go, I headed out and locked my door behind me. The common room was empty again. Scout’s door was shut, and when I tried the knob, it was locked.
Weird. Since when did Scout lock her door?
I knocked with a knuckle. “Hey, you okay in there? I’m heading out for studio.”
It took a second before she answered, “I’m good. Just about to head to study hall. Have fun.”
I stood there in front of her door for a few seconds, waiting for something more. But she didn’t say anything else. What was she up to?
I shook my head and walked toward the hallway. I definitely did not need another mystery.
The surplus building was a steeply roofed box that sat behind the classroom building. The classroom building was pretty new, but the surplus building was definitely old—the same dark stone and black slate roof as the main building. Maybe it had been a stable or a storage building when the nuns still lived at St. Sophia’s.
I had to walk around the building to find the door. And when I opened it, I stared. Small or not, the building definitely had pizzazz. It was one big room with an open ceiling all the way up to the pitched roof. Skylights had been cut into one side of the ceiling, so the room—at least earlier in the day—would have been flooded with light.
One wall was made of windows, the ceiling a high vault with huge crisscrossing wooden beams. A dozen or so standing wooden easels made a grid across the floor.
“You can take an easel, Parker.” I turned and found Lesley behind me, a canvas tote bag brimming full of supplies in her hand. For anyone else, I would have thought it strange that she hadn’t mentioned she was in art studio when we were in the common room. For Lesley—not so much.