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  “We’re not telling Mom about this,” I said. “We’re not dropping hints and we’re not making cute comments.”

  Catalina and I looked at Arabella.

  “I won’t say anything.”

  “Okay,” I said. I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

  They left my office and I called Rogan. He answered immediately. “Yes?”

  “We probably won’t need to besiege the fort. My sisters will be coming.”

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. “What should I plan for?”

  “A strike team big enough to contain Olivia Charles. But we won’t need to storm the castle.”

  “You sure about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t sound thrilled.”

  “I’m not.” This probably wasn’t a good time to explain all the difficulties Catalina’s magic caused. “All we need to do is get Catalina to a gathering of people large enough within the fortress. The more people, the better. Trust me?” I hadn’t meant for it to sound like a question.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Silence stretched. I wanted to see him so badly.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “In my office. Where are you?”

  “Outside your front door.”

  My heart sped up. I got up, lowered the blinds in my office, locked the door between the business hallway and the rest of the house, and opened the front door. He took the phone from his ear and came inside. We walked into my office. I shut the door behind us, and then his arms closed around me and tomorrow disappeared. He kissed me, long and eager. Memories of him lying next to me naked swirled in my head. I kissed him and kissed him, nibbling on his lip, licking his tongue, stealing his breath . . .

  My phone chimed. I ignored it.

  His phone beeped.

  The intercom came on, Bern’s voice spilling from it. “Nevada, where are you? I need to talk to you. This is urgent.”

  Rogan’s phone beeped again, then again, then emitted a high-frequency electronic whine. He growled and put it to his ear. “Yes?”

  A tiny voice on the other end said something urgent. Rogan rolled his eyes. “Yes. Yes. No. Handle it. Yes.”

  He turned the phone off and tossed it on the table. It went off again. He stared at it as if it were a snake.

  “Take it,” I told him.

  He turned to me. No trace of Mad Rogan remained in his face. There was just a man and he was frustrated as hell. “When this is over, any place. Anywhere you want.”

  “Is that lodge in the mountains real?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take me there,” I told him.

  Ten minutes later I walked into the Hut of Evil to find both of my sisters standing over Bernard’s computer.

  My cousin’s face was pale. “Augustine sent this over.”

  He clicked a key and a video filled the screen, showing the ultramodern interior of Augustine’s MII office. The camera sat just behind and to the right of Augustine. The door stood open. The normally opaque glass walls sectioning off his workspace were now transparent, and from this vantage point we could see all the way down to the receptionist’s desk. Lina was gone. Instead a young man occupied the chair, busily working on his computer. I’d never seen him before and he probably didn’t know I existed.

  A tall woman strode into the hallway, her face lined with age. She held herself ramrod straight, her silver hair carefully styled, her dark brown eyes challenging anyone in her way. Two bodyguards followed her, dressed in suits, both square jawed with identical short haircuts and identical expression.

  Augustine stood up. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Tremaine. To what do I owe the honor?”

  She stared at him, her eyes measuring him with the deadly precision of a raptor sighting her prey. Icy claws gripped my spine. This is it.

  Victoria Tremaine turned without a single word and walked back the way she’d come.

  I wore a Scorpion bulletproof vest, a helmet, an urban assault outfit, and boots. Rogan’s people offered me a light machine gun but I stuck with my Baby Desert Eagle. It made me feel better.

  We’d gone to ground in the Texas scrub on the edge of the perimeter fence bordering Olivia Charles’ fortress. Ahead a lone guard sat in a booth.

  I felt like a turtle. How in the world had my mother and grandmother worn this gear for years?

  Next to me Arabella, wearing the same outfit I did, pursed her lips together and took a selfie. Ugh.

  “Do you remember the exit route?” I asked.

  She nodded. “We go north, quick sprint, five miles over the brush, to Rogan’s helicopter. I got it. Stop worrying.”

  A limo slid down the road and stopped before the gate.

  “Are you sure this will work?” Cornelius asked.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  Cornelius worried me. He’d brought no animals and no weapons that I could see. His face was calm, his eyes distant. Something odd was taking place in his head.

  “It’s just that your sister is so shy,” he murmured. “I’ve been at your house for a week and she barely spoke to me.”

  The limo’s window rolled down. I couldn’t see into it from this angle, but I knew who was inside. Melosa in the driver’s seat, ready to snap her aegis shield up at a moment’s notice; my sister in the passenger seat; and Rivera in the back, armed to the teeth.

  The guard said something.

  Come on, Catalina. You can do it.

  The gate swung open. The guard left his booth and stood next to the car.

  “Okay.” I got up to my feet.

  A few yards down, Rogan stepped out from behind a tree. If things went wrong, he planned to level the booth and the guard with it. I brushed the twigs from me and trotted to the limo. Around me Rogan’s strike team—six people he’d handpicked—fell into place. Cornelius shrugged his shoulders next to me.

  Rogan joined us. We jogged to the limo, where the guard waited. He saw us and winked. His face shifted and Augustine’s familiar perfection took his place. “You brought children, Rogan? This is a new low for you.”

  “What are you doing here?” Rogan asked.

  “I wouldn’t miss this. What—and let you have all the glory and information to yourself?” Augustine pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Shall we?”

  The limo moved ahead. We followed it.

  A second checkpoint loomed ahead.

  “Is it a real soldier this time?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  The limo stopped, the window rolled down, and I felt magic shift in the distance, a mere splash of it, like a raindrop in the night. The soldier left his booth and walked next to the limo. We rolled on up the road to the guardhouse at the doorstep of the fortress. They saw us. Weapons snapped up.

  The soldier waved at the guards. The limo stopped again. The guards put away their weapons and joined the second soldier.

  “What is your sister, exactly?” Augustine asked.

  “You’ll see.” There was no name for it. No talent like this had ever been recorded. But it wasn’t something you would ever forget. “Just don’t look at her directly once she starts.”

  The soldiers unlocked the massive front doors, then one of them wandered over to the side of the limo and opened the door. Catalina stepped out. The soldier waited behind her, his face relaxed, attentive like a bellhop at a luxury hotel. Melosa got out of the car. Her eyes were wide like two saucers.

  Catalina turned and waved at us. I sped up, trying to close the distance. An older man in a grey uniform with a bearing of a soldier smiled at us.

  “Are you her friends?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s so nice. Come on, I’ll show you inside. It’s lunchtime.”

  Catalina squared her shoulders and stepped into the fortress. Two sentries rose from their seats. The older soldier waved at them. “Come with me.”

  We walked through the narrow hallway, turned right, turned left. My mouth tasted like a copper penny. I shou
ld’ve never let her do this. Ahead an open door revealed a large cafeteria.

  The strike team around me put in their earplugs and halted. We’d gone over this maneuver during the planning stage. If they walked into that mess hall, we’d have no strike team left. Rogan, Cornelius, Arabella, Augustine, and I followed Catalina in. I’d told them it was a bad idea. They’d decided they would do it anyway.

  At least sixty people sat at the tables, eating. Everyone stopped and looked at us.

  My sister smiled. “Hi!”

  “Hi?” a woman said from the nearest table. “Who are you?”

  “I’m just a kid.”

  Every pair of eyes watched her.

  “I go to Cedar High. You wouldn’t believe what happened to me in algebra class yesterday.”

  Rogan looked at me.

  “Watch,” I mouthed.

  “I was sitting at my desk and Dace Collins just broke up with his girlfriend.”

  Sixty people in the room and not a single one was eating. They held completely still.

  “He did it right in front of the whole class. She cried. It was so uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to do.”

  The room fell silent.

  “Dace Collins is an asshole,” a man on the left said.

  “Yeah, what the hell?” a young guy on the right said. “What kind of a little punk does a thing like that?”

  “You don’t worry, sweetie,” the first woman said. “Don’t stress out about it. He isn’t worth it.”

  “How dare he put you in that position? You shouldn’t have to feel embarrassed for him and his girlfriend,” another woman said. “Do you want us to go and get him for you? Because we’ll go right now.”

  The older soldier nodded at the crowd. “Jake and Marsha, go get a vehicle out of the motor pool, find this Dace, and bring him here. We’ll have us a little talk and teach him how to treat a lady.”

  “No, no, that’s okay,” Catalina said. Getting Dace Collins would’ve been a tall order, since he was a character on Liars, the latest teen soap opera. “Would you like to hear the rest of the story instead?”

  “Yes,” several voices said at one. “Yes, please.”

  They moved toward her, forming a tight semicircle.

  “That’s close enough,” she said.

  They didn’t want to stop, but they obeyed.

  “I really want to tell you the rest of the story, but can we get the rest of the people here? They might want to hear what happened.”

  The older soldier spoke into his radio. “All personnel report to mess hall immediately. I repeat, all personnel, report to mess hall immediately.” He looked at Catalina, his face and smile soft. “They will be here right away.”

  “Oh good. Please sit down.”

  They sat on the floor as one, devotion shining on their faces. Next to me Cornelius tried to bend his knees. I grabbed his arm and hauled him upright.

  “My friend is going to make a hole in that wall right there.” Catalina pointed to the far wall. “So we have more light.”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  “Yes, more light never hurts.”

  I nudged Rogan. He raised his hand. A gap sliced through the far wall, cleaving a twenty-five-foot hole in the reinforced concrete.

  “Bigger,” I murmured. Arabella would need a fast exit.

  The gap grew to forty feet.

  “Bigger.”

  The wall exploded.

  “Thank you!” Catalina said.

  “You’re so nice,” one of the soldiers told Rogan. “I’m glad she has nice friends like you.”

  “Is that your brother?” a woman wanted to know.

  “No, it’s my sister’s boyfriend.”

  “You have a sister! That is awesome. I have a sister too.”

  More people poured into the mess hall. An athletic man with a long scar across his face led the charge. He saw us and narrowed his eyes. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “She’s telling a story,” the older soldier said. “You’ve got to hear this, Gabe. It’s a hell of a story.”

  “Have you all lost your damned minds?”

  “Welcome, Gabriel,” my sister said. “Welcome, all of you.”

  Gabriel’s eyes softened. He raised his hand. A shy smile tugged at his hard face. “Hi.”

  “I was telling you about Dace,” Catalina said. “Yes. Dace is one of those neither-here-nor-there guys. He isn’t smart and he isn’t athletic. He just kind of bums around the school and tries to look edgy . . .”

  They stared at her with rapt attention.

  “We have to go,” I murmured.

  Rogan startled, as if coming awake.

  “Wait,” Augustine said. “I want to hear the end of this.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “No, really, this is fascinating,” Cornelius whispered.

  Rogan locked his right arm on Augustine’s shoulder, his left on Cornelius, and dragged them out the door.

  “You’ve got this?” I asked Arabella.

  She nodded. “They won’t get her.”

  I walked out and shut the door behind me. The strike team had closed ranks and kept walking, herding Augustine and Cornelius down the hallway. We were twenty yards away before either of them stopped looking over his shoulder.

  “What was that?” Augustine asked, stunned.

  “Love,” I told him. “They love her.”

  “Is that why Matilda likes her so much?” Cornelius asked.

  “No. Catalina never uses her magic on those close to her. Matilda likes her because my sister is nice and takes care of her. We have about thirty minutes. The longer they stay near her, the more they love her. Eventually they’ll want to touch her. They’ll want a piece of her clothes or better yet a chunk of her hair or a finger. She can’t stop it. In twenty minutes Arabella will have to get her out of there, or they will rip her apart.”

  “But what about Arabella?” Cornelius asked.

  “She and I are immune. She is our sister. We already love her as much as we can.”

  We ran through the narrow passageways, going through the place room by room. As soon as we cleared the mess hall hallway, Cornelius began to hum to himself. It was an incessant, almost hypnotic tune. It didn’t sound like any song I’d heard before. Maybe all this pressure had finally made him lose his mind.

  Three people jumped us. The strike team took down two, while Rogan collided with the third and broke him like a rag doll. The man slumped on the floor, breathing fast, his right leg bent at an odd angle. I crouched by him.

  “Where is Olivia Charles?”

  The man’s hands curled into fists. He strained, but my magic was too strong. “Down the hallway to the bottom floor. She is in the room at the end of the hall.”

  We left him in the hallway, sobbing.

  Eight minutes later we reached the room, a vast empty space, its walls and floor completely black. I had seen a room just like it before, at MII. It was painted with chalkboard paint. A half-finished circle marked the floor, the piece of chalk lying discarded next to it. Olivia Charles was nowhere in sight. We spread through the room. No doors besides the one we had come through.

  Rogan’s radio came on. “SWAT is en route,” Bug reported. “Three vehicles.”

  Lenora Jordan must’ve gotten tired of waiting. I turned to Rogan and kept my voice low. “We have to find Olivia now. SWAT can’t see Arabella. They will try to kill her.”

  “She’s here,” Cornelius said.

  He was standing by a wall. Rogan and I moved to stand by him.

  “Are you sure?” Rogan asked.

  “Yes,” Cornelius nodded, his eyes clouded. “She’s here.”

  Rogan looked at the wall. It trembled.

  Colin, a short dark-haired man, snapped his gun up. Rivera gripped him in a headlock, before Olivia forced him to do anything else.

  I faced the wall, gathered my magic, and struck at the mind behind it.

  Power punched me, gripping my mind
in a steel vise and wrapping me in pain. All I could do was hold it at bay.

  Colin stopped struggling and clamped his head.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rogan on the floor by my feet. He was taking off my left boot, then my right.

  “Sir?” Rivera said. “You could break the wall, sir?”

  “Never disturb two mental mages locked in a duel,” Augustine said. “If you kill one, the other might end up with no mind.”

  The vise squeezed my mind, red hot.

  I just had to hold. As long as she held on to me, she couldn’t get to anyone else.

  My bare feet touched the floor. Rogan moved around me, drawing.

  She was crushing my mind like a nut.

  Magic snapped into life under me. It was like landing on the surface of a pond, but instead of water, its surface was pure power. Rogan had drawn an amplification circle. I sent my magic into it, surrendering a little more of myself to the pain, and it bounced back into me, making me stronger. Magic coursed through my veins. I bounced again, and again, and again. Five. Any more and I’d expend too much.

  I snapped the vise. It shot back and clamped my mind again, turning into shackles.

  The room vanished. I stood in a vast dark cavern. Light pooled in a circle around my feet. My hands were glowing, a pale almost white light with a faint touch of yellow. To my side, I saw other shapes: a pale gold that felt like Cornelius, a brilliant blue beacon that had to be Rogan, and a conflicting clash of pale white and grey that must have been Augustine. Before me another humanoid shape stood in a similar circle, her light pulsing with violet. Beyond us in the distance, two more shapes waited, one pale and light yellow, like me, and one knitted of pure furious red. Catalina and Arabella.

  What is this? Where am I?

  The enemy magic squeezed me, trying to crush me.

  I snapped the shackles. The violet presence recoiled and struck again, wrapping invisible chains around me, trying to tether me. I reached deep inside me and let the magic explode. It tore out of me, a powerful flood of light.

  My body shook under the strain. She was wrapping her will around me. I felt myself unraveling, retreating further and further into the center of myself.

  The light of my sisters waned.

  I had to win. I would win. I had to know who the invisible puppeteer was, pulling all of the strings behind the scenes. I had to meet Caesar, because if I failed, he would keep sending people after my family. I had to know.