Dressed in our party finest, we popped back into the hallway, and I dialed up Sebastian. My nerves were already taut, and the fact that he didn’t answer until the fifth ring didn’t exactly help.
“Lily?”
“Camera!” I exclaimed. “Fayden had that big camera around her neck. When you gave her the tour of the city, did she take pictures of anything in particular?”
“As a matter of fact, I kept making fun of her because she had that huge camera but didn’t take pictures of anything until . . .”
“Until what?” I asked, my heart beginning to race as we got closer to our answer.
“The old pumping station on Michigan Avenue—it’s not far from the Hancock building. It used to have all these pipes inside, but I’m not sure what’s in there now. It’s all boarded up for remodeling or something.”
“And she took pictures of it?” I asked.
“Yeah, and we had to be careful because there were No Trespassing signs all over the place. I guess they want to turn it into some kind of museum, but the money hasn’t come through.”
“So she took a bunch of pictures of an empty industrial building,” I summed up. “That doesn’t sound at all suspicious. Thanks, Sebastian.”
“Sure. If you find anything out, will you let me know?”
“Of course,” I said, not entirely sure whether I meant it or not. I hung up the phone and looked at Scout. “I think there’s a pretty good chance we know where Fayden Campbell is.” I explained what Sebastian had said.
“I need to look at the pumping station,” she agreed. “That’s the only way I’m going to make any progress on the spell.”
I checked the time. “The dance starts in, like, an hour. Maybe we should wait for Michael.”
“So Fayden can run away from us again? No, thanks.” She pulled out her own phone. “I’m just going to have him meet us at the Enclave—and everyone else. God willing, I’ll figure something out and we can get the spell working tonight.”
“Fine,” I said, putting my phone away again. “Let’s go see the evil Reaper headquarters.”
Scout jumped around and clapped her hands like I’d given her a unicorn for her birthday.
We headed for the museum’s front door, but didn’t make it very far.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
We glanced back at Mary Katherine, who stood behind us in a slinky gold dress that left very little to the imagination. Veronica and Amie stood behind her, also dressed for the dance. Their gowns were longer and more princessy than M.K.’s.
“We were just going to get some fresh air. Stuffy in here in all this makeup,” Scout said, fanning her face.
“We haven’t seen you around lately,” M.K. said to me.
“We’ve been working in our rooms. You know, ’cause we’re uncool and we never leave them.” The words sounded corny, but what else was I supposed to say? We have a magical prodigy to go spy on?
Not surprisingly, M.K. didn’t look convinced. But this time, it was Veronica who spoke.
“Just leave them alone,” she said. “We need to put the confetti on the tables.”
M.K. slowly looked behind her, apparently shocked that she’d intervened. I understood the emotion. “Are you serious?”
“I’m serious about the party,” Veronica said, grabbing her hand. “I don’t want these little twerps getting in the way. Let’s go.”
M.K. rolled her eyes, clearly not convinced she shouldn’t make fun of us for a while, but let Veronica pull her back toward the party room. They bounced back into the main hall, but not before Veronica glanced back and looked right at me. She didn’t say anything before turning around again.
“What do you think that was about?” Scout whispered.
“Maybe Nicu told her about us? I don’t know, and I’m deciding not to worry about it. There are just not enough hours in the day.”
“I hear ya.”
* * *
We were pretty far down Michigan Avenue, so we snuck out to a cab for the ride to the pumping station. When we arrived a few minutes later, we stopped near a group of trees and scoped it out.
The building was located in a little park tucked between skyscrapers—the type people tended to ignore as they rushed around to high-end shops. It was short and made of big chunks of rough stone. There were rectangular windows all the way around it, two on each side, all placed the same distance apart. If you sliced it down the middle like a cake, both sides would look exactly the same.
And all the windows were covered on the inside with blue paper. It was thick enough that I couldn’t tell whether the lights inside were on or off, but there was no movement in or around the building, so we moved closer.
A sign had been posted a few yards away from the door. It was from some development company and talked about how the building was going to be rehabbed. But that rehab was months away, which explained the NO TRESPASSING warning below it.
“It doesn’t look like we can see much from out here,” I whispered.
“Let’s walk around,” Scout said, and we tiptoed around three of the building’s four sides. Every window was covered, so we couldn’t get even a small peek inside.
Finally, on the fourth and final side, we struck gold. Someone hadn’t been entirely careful putting the blue paper over one of the windows, and the bottom corners had started to roll up, giving us two little views of the interior of the building.
Scout and I nodded at each other . . . and leaned in.
She squeaked almost immediately.
Sebastian had been right—there were huge pipes in the room, each one probably three or four feet wide. They lay across the floor in a complicated grid pattern, and at the end of each pipe was a huge piece of machinery. Maybe a generator or something. The size of the things was just amazing. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing about the pumping station.
The entire room was filled with bright blue light—emanating from a huge circle that floated in the air above the pipes. It had to be twenty feet wide, and it was empty in the middle—like a giant’s bracelet. It rotated slowly, humming as it moved.
“Oh, my God, Lils, are you seeing this?”
“I’m seeing . . . I’m seeing something. I’m not sure what.”
Scout pressed a hand to the glass, and she didn’t look nearly as horrified as I’d expected.
“This is a bad thing, remember?”