I put a hand on her arm. “It may be time to accept temporary defeat. Or at least to call Daniel.”
She sighed. “I’ll call him,” she promised. “But I’m not calling it defeat. How about ‘temporary not-knowingness’?”
“Whatever gets you through the night, Scout.”
* * *
She updated Daniel, and he invited us into the Enclave to work on the magical problem.
When we emerged from her room to head out into the tunnels, the suite was empty; Amie and Lesley were probably both at parents’ night.
The school was equally empty. We could hear the sounds of chatting and music as we walked through the buildings, but we never actually saw the party. We walked silently to the basement door and through the giant metal one, then pulled it shut behind us.
We made it only twenty yards before we stopped short, hearts suddenly pounding.
The tall girl who’d been at the bridge with Sebastian stood in the middle of the tunnel. She wore jeans, knee-high boots, and a long-sleeved top, and she bobbed to the sound of music we could hear faintly from her white earbuds. She had no flashlight, and had apparently been skulking in the dark waiting for us to arrive.
I swallowed down fear, and both Scout and I held up our flashlights like baseball bats. They were the only weapons we had. “Don’t come one step closer.”
She pulled out her earbuds, stuck them in a jeans pocket, and held up her hands. “I’m not going to.”
“Then why are you in our tunnels?”
“It’s nice to meet you, too. I’m Kiara. Sebastian sent me.”
Scout’s eyes narrowed. “To do what?”
“To keep an eye on the door and make sure none of Jeremiah’s Reapers get into the school tonight.”
You could have pushed me over with a feather.
“Could you say that again?” I asked, and Kiara smiled a little.
“You made a deal on the bridge,” she said. “You agreed to help Sebastian’s cousin without turning her over to Jeremiah. In return, we agreed to keep him out of your hair.” She shrugged. “At least as much as we can without giving ourselves up.”
“You aren’t fans of his, either?” I wondered.
“Let’s just say we have different opinions about how the Dark Elite should operate.”
She seemed sincere to me, but Scout wasn’t so easily persuaded. “How do we know you aren’t just making this up? That you won’t sneak into the school as soon as we walk away?”
Kiara shrugged. “You don’t. But I could have waited for you to leave and snuck in without your knowing it. Sebastian trusts you, or at least he trusts her.” She gestured toward me. “And I trust Sebastian.”
“What will you do if Jeremiah’s Reapers show up?” I wondered. “Won’t they be suspicious if you don’t let them into the school?”
Her eyes sparkled a little. She looked even prettier when she did it, but a little scarier, too. “You let me worry about that.”
Scout and I looked at each other for a moment, silently debating what to do.
“Could you excuse us for a minute?” Scout asked. Without waiting for Kiara to answer, she grabbed my hand and pulled me down the tunnel and around the corner.
“Crap on toast. Could these people just give us a break for, like, a couple of days?”
“Apparently not,” I said. “What do you want to do?”
Scout scratched her head and looked really confused. “I don’t know. I mean, can we just leave her here? In the tunnels right by the school?”
“She didn’t have to tell us she was here. She made a good point.”
“Yeah, but maybe that’s just some kind of ploy so she can walk right in.”
Maybe, but I doubted it. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Sebastian had multiple motives in helping us out—like getting his own magic back—but this didn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d waste effort on.
“How about this,” I suggested. “Let’s trust her for now, and as soon as we get to the Enclave, we tell Daniel. Maybe he knows more about this movement of underground Reapers or something, and if it’s really stinky he can send us back out or call Foley and give her a heads-up.”
Scout pointed at the tunnel. “Technically, wouldn’t they be underground-underground Reapers?”
“Not the point. Is that okay with you? And I don’t think we have a better option,” I added when she didn’t respond.
“Fine, fine. But let’s add this to the list of things you get to explain to Daniel.”
“Why do I have to explain it?”
“Because you got us mixed up in this Reaper mess.”
I rolled my eyes and walked back to where we’d left Kiara. Scout eventually followed me.
“You know,” I told her, “technically the brat pack got me wrapped up in this Reaper mess, since they’re the ones who locked me in the City Room. Can’t we just blame it on them?”
She nodded. “You’re right. We should blame it on them. That just feels good.”
Or at least as good as it was going to get tonight.
* * *
We made Kiara swear on her iPod that she meant no harm to the school. I’m sure that probably didn’t have much impact on whether she’d wreak havoc or not, but it seemed to make Scout feel better.
Meeting Kiara in the tunnel gave the night a weird vibe, and that vibe continued when we got to the Enclave. Katie and Smith were absent, and they weren’t the only ones. Jason hadn’t shown up.
Apparently noticing the same thing, Scout squeezed my hand when we walked inside.
While we might have been missing an Adept, we had a ton more stuff. The room was full of goodies pulled directly from the shelves at Gaslight Goods. Candles. Icons. Salts in every color. Squares of velvet and silk. Herbs in tiny glass jars. The empty Gaslight Goods bags were scattered on the floor where they’d been emptied.
“Kite must really want his customers back,” Scout said, grinning wildly.
“He’s spending money to make money,” I suggested.
“I guess so.” She started darting around the room from pile to pile, checking out all the stuff Kite had left. “Oh, my God, it’s like those books where you fall asleep in a museum and you get to use all the cool stuff while you’re asleep except I’m actually awake.”
She bubbled on for ten more minutes. And when she was done with her inspection, she threw her messenger bag on the table, pointed at Jill, Jamie, and Paul, and put them to work mixing ingredients and writing out that weird hieroglyphic math on a dry-erase board Kite had also donated.