Chase? Alex called in her head.
No answer. Usually if he attempted to block her intrusion into his thoughts, she could still sense him there, but he’d locked the deadbolt of his mind.
“How did you know Gabe was here?”
“Jack Bond.” Skye twisted her beautiful face distastefully. “He told me to give you a message from Chase.”
“What message?”
Skye pointed to the table next to Alex. There was a scrap of paper folded in messy fours. “He left that for you. Where did Gabe find a banshee?”
Alex ignored her question. “How did you know I would be here?”
“I guess Chase told Jack.”
Alex snatched up the note, her eyes scurrying across the page. “You didn’t read this, did you?”
“I didn’t want to touch it any longer than I had to,” Skye said, recoiling and wiping a non-existent contagion from her fingers. “Why?”
“Because you would have come to find me,” Alex said, hurrying out the door.
“What does it say?” Skye rushed to keep up. “Is it okay to leave Gabe?”
“You should stay,” Alex suggested. She threw open the door to the stairway with a little too much force. She heard a cracking sound, but didn’t turn around to see the damage she’d caused. “Ugh!” she groaned, jumping down the stairs. “Why can’t I just think myself out of this building?”
“Because you have to be able to see where you’re going. If you could think your way somewhere we wouldn’t need radio waves to travel.”
“I was being rhetorical,” Alex hissed, bursting out of the building. She waved the note above her head. “I still don’t get this. Jack saw Chase leaving campus this afternoon, and Chase told Jack to tell me that he was going home.”
“Home? Like Brigitta?”
“No. Home, home. Parrish, Maryland. Where Gabe was attacked.”
“Why would they do that?” she asked. “There’s a banshee on the loose.”
Because Alex never gave Jonas an answer to his question. She should have told him to go, to run away. He’d be better off away from his brothers. But if even a small part of him wanted to stay, he needed to find some evidence of his innocence. A way to clear his name. And he’d taken Chase with him, banshee or not. She couldn’t talk to Kaleb right now, and Gabe was unconscious. Without any of them, she felt helpless. Alone. Just like after they’d died. She wouldn’t put up with the hopelessness again.
Alex stopped abruptly, and Skye ran into her. “How do I get to Gramble station?”
“What are you expecting to happen there?”
Alex looked at her incredulously. “Travel.”
“Are you crazy? Everyone knows we’re not old enough to travel alone. There are rules about newburies. We won’t last ten minutes in the Gramble.”
Alex could feel her anxiety rising like a heat. “Do you know about the stairway by Van Hanlin’s classroom?”
“The exit? Sure. But it only works in emergencies.”
If this wasn’t an emergency, she didn’t know what was. She took off, racing across campus, so determined and lost in her thoughts that she was surprised to find Skye next to her when she reached the third floor of the learning center.
They turned the corner, and there, outside Van Hanlin’s dark room, sat an impatient-looking Professor Duvall. She stood quickly, jewelry jingling, shawls billowing, and her hands placed authoritatively on her hips.
“Professor.” Skye gulped. “What are you doing?”
Duvall huffed, placing one hand on the back of each of their necks, spinning them around and leading them to the opposite end of the hallway. “Helping you,” she whispered. “What took you so long? And what would you have done if the exit worked, huh? How would you have controlled where you ended up?”
Alex’s response caught in her throat. She hadn’t thought that far. Jonas had said he’d entered the stairway with urgency on his mind, and it had transported him home.
“There’s a reason why a roof parapet isn’t an approved form of travel. It’s only an emergency exit. Very dangerous indeed. Let’s go to my office quickly, shall we? We don’t have much time.”
Alex shot a questioning look toward Skye, who promptly raised a confused eyebrow.
Duvall’s office was a mess of books, lab tools, jars of unidentifiable substances, cages covered by blankets, and shelves congested with tiny vials. She scrambled up a rolling ladder, browsing through the inhabitants of the shelves with her bone-thin arms, mumbling quietly about organizing.
Skye’s mouth had formed a large O, astonishment glistening in her eyes. Alex followed her gaze to a large broomstick resting in the corner. There were tracks of dirty footprints trailing from the window to the resting place of the broom.
“Professor!” Skye sputtered. “You didn’t leave the city, did you? I thought it was too risky. What about the witches?”
Duvall followed their gazes to the broomstick. “I’d like it if you referred to them as the gifted, and I can handle myself. It’s been centuries. I doubt they still employ round-the-clock spies to sniff out my whereabouts.” Duvall cut Alex off before she could speak. “So, have either of you ever traveled by power lines?”
Both girls shook their heads.
“Of course not,” Duvall grumbled. “Because this school has become so prehistorically prude in its teachings. They foolishly assume if they give you too much freedom you’ll become troublesome.” She bit her lip. “You need alternate means of travel.”
“Do you mean … ” Alex couldn’t stop herself from gawking back at the broomstick in the corner.
Duvall cackled. “Oh dear me, no! That would be quite a sight in broad daylight!”
Alex crossed her arms and scowled, wondering how in the world she was supposed to know that they couldn’t just douse the broom in Thymoserum to make it seem invisible.
“So how are we going to get there?” Skye asked, glancing out the window nervously. “Electrical wires?”
Duvall shook her head. “Not if you’ve never done it before. You could easily get lost due to the frequent stops, and that would be unfavorable. Too much can go wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Well, there aren’t any other ways to travel, are there?”
“You’d be surprised how many of the gifted in this day and age are solely technological.” Duvall spun a computer monitor around to face them. “What signal travels just as quickly as a cell phone?”
Alex inspected the computer. “We’re going to travel through the internet? Is it safe?”
“Of course it’s safe. You’re dead!” Duvall barked. “Your body is comprised of energy. Sometimes the monitor flickers, and I wonder if it’s them trying to find me. Spyware has nothing on pure energy. It isn’t comfortable like cell phone travel, so spirits don’t use it often. Alex, do you know anyone in the Parrish area who might provide us with a connection right now?”
Alex nodded. What teenager wasn’t constantly connected to the internet? She was willing to bet that right now Liv Frank was lounging on her bed with a bag of Oreos and a Diet Coke, scrolling through her phone and ordering her brother out of her room. In that moment, Alex missed her friend desperately. During the past few months she’d been so preoccupied she hadn’t had a chance to think about Liv.
“All right,” Duvall said, shoving aside some odd drawings on her desk. “Give me a phone number or log in name of any social media for whomever you’re thinking of, and you can travel through the connection.”