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.
We stopped at a jagged hole that had been ripped into the brick.
“In there,” Detroit said.
Scout gave the hole in the wall a suspicious look. “What do you mean, ‘in there’?
Where does that thing lead?”
“Into a janitor’s closet, actually,” Detroit said. “We have to switch over from the railway tunnels to the Pedway.”
I leaned toward Scout. “What’s the Pedway again?”
“Stands for pedestrian walkway,” she said.
“The Pedway is a set of walkways through buildings in the Loop,” Detroit said.
“Some aboveground, some underground. It’s supposed to give people a way to get around downtown when it’s too cold to walk outside. It’s also lit and a lot less damp.”
Scout looked weirdly unhappy about the possibility of walking through what I assumed were aboveground, carpeted hallways. “We usually try to avoid the Pedway,” she said.
Detroit nodded solemnly. “I know.”
I made a mental list of the things we might be trying to avoid: security guards,
security cameras, locked doors. Or maybe anyone who thought a band of teenagers running around Chicago in the middle of the night was a little off.
“Vamps patrol the Pedway at night,” Scout complained.
Well, I obviously forgot to mention them. “What do you mean ‘vamps’?”
“The usual,” Scout said with a dismissive gesture. “Goth, fangs, death by crucifix,
never see ’em eating garlic bread. Vampires aren’t friendly with Adepts.”
“They aren’t friendly with anybody,” Detroit said. “It’s not personal. And we might not even see any. The covens stick to quiet parts of the Pedway. The odds we’d actually run across them are pretty low.”
Scout didn’t look impressed with the logic.
“Look,” Detroit said. “The Pedway is a shortcut. It takes a lot longer if we stick to the tunnels. And we’ll only be in the corridor for a few blocks before we drop back into the tunnels anyway.”
We stood there for a few minutes, the Adepts of Enclave Three exchanging glances as they figured out what to do. Since I was still a newbie, I figured I’d leave the decision-making to the more experienced members.
Jason looked at Jill, Jamie, and Paul. “What do you think?”
“Well,” Paul said, “I’m not crazy about having vamps between us and wherever we’re going, but I like the idea of being in the tunnels for as short a time as possible. Besides, if we have trouble on the way in, we can always take the long way back.”
“Good enough for me,” Jason said.
And so it was decided. One by one, Jamie and Jill in the lead, we ducked into the hole in the wall. We emerged, just as Detroit had promised, into a janitor’s closet.
All nine of us stuffed into a tiny, dark room among push brooms, mops, and buckets on wheels.
“Would you like some light?” I whispered.
“Let’s keep it dark,” I heard Jill say. “At least until we figure out if anyone is out there. Michael—you wanna fill us in?”
“On it,” Michael said. I heard shuffling, probably as he squeezed through to get to a wall.
“Echoes of business,” he finally said. “Busy. Always walking, moving. Faster.
Faster. The world spins, and the feet keep moving.” He paused. “That’s all I got.”
“Hmm. Doesn’t tell us much about whether the vamps are out there,” Detroit said.
“No, it doesn’t,” Jason agreed. “But we’ve got to get out there regardless.”
I heard shuffling; then a glow lit the room from something in Detroit’s hand. It was the locket she’d worn, now open in her palm. She swiveled it until it projected a complicated map onto one of the closet’s walls.
We oooohed and aaaahed at the sight.
“Gadgets are my gig,” Detroit matter-of-factly explained. “Now, when we open the door, we’re going right. We stay straight until the corridor ends; then we take a left. Halfway down that corridor there’s an emergency stairwell. I’ve got to pop the sensor on the door, and then we’re in. We take the stairs all the way down, and we’re back in the tunnels. Everyone got it?”
“We’ve got it,” Paul said. “Let’s do this.” He cracked open the door and peeked through it, light slicing through the darkness.
“Clear,” he said, and one by one we slipped into the Pedway.
It looked exactly like you’d expect a pedestrian walkway to look. This part of the corridor was wide and made of concrete, and the floor was made of chips of stone and tile stuck into concrete. Not much to look at, but it would certainly keep you out of the snow.
We all run-walked through the corridor toward our next turn until Paul, panicked expression on his face, motioned us back against the wall. My heart suddenly pounding, we flattened against it.
I blew out a nervous breath, my ears straining to hear whatever had triggered Paul’s concern, but heard nothing. The hallway was silent except for the hum of the fluorescent lights above us.
And then the voice behind us.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
Slowly, I turned around. There were three of them—a tall and dark-haired boy stood in the front; two girls stood behind him. All three wore gray and black clothes in complicated layers over bodies that were supermodel—or maybe just anorexically—thin. By the look of them, I would have guessed they were about my age. But then I got a look at their eyes—dark, dilated, and definitely not young.
Better yet, none of them looked happy to see us, and they were positioned between us and the janitor’s closet. Our escape route.
“Vampires,” Jason murmured. He glanced back at me. “Be ready,” he said and then stepped forward. Paul stepped behind him. I reached out and grabbed Scout’s hand. She squeezed back.
“You’re out late, aren’t you?” asked the vampire in front. He had a low, heavy accent, and when he talked I could see the tips of his fangs.
One of the girls behind him hissed like a cat, her fangs gleaming in the overhead lights. She took a half step forward. I pushed back against the wall a little more, my muscles suddenly straining to run. It was like my body knew they were bad—and wanted to get away from them as quickly as possible.