Firespell (The Dark Elite 1)

“I can”—I had to stop and clear my throat, my voice squeaking nervously, and start over—“I can turn on lights. Dim them, turn them on, turn them off. I’m not sure if that’s it, or if there’s more, but that’s what I know now.”

Smith, standing before his troops, crossed his hands behind his head. “You can turn on lights.” His voice could hardly have been drier—or more skeptical.

“I can turn on lights,” I confirmed. “So you can pretend I’m an outsider, look at me like I’m crazy, but I’m not just someone off the street. I am”—I had to pause for a minute to gather up my courage—“an Adept like you. So you might want to pack away the attitude.”

“Whatever,” he muttered, as if I’d lied about the power thing just to win points with him. Seriously—if I’d been faking it, wouldn’t I have faked something a little more interesting?

The rest of these repressed Adepts might have been intimidated by the floppy hair and attitude, but as they’d so recently reminded me, I wasn’t one of them. And he wasn’t the boss of me.

I held up an index finger. “Yeah, I may be an Adept, but I’m not a member of your enclave, so I’m not really here to talk to you.” I turned my gaze to Paul, then to Jamie and Jill, then to Michael, then Jason. “My best friend—your fellow Adept—is missing. Although I’m not entirely full up on the details, I’m betting you all know what could happen to her out there if she’s with them. She said something about siphoning spells, right? So even if she’s only with the teenage Reapers, the ones that still have power, they could be stealing her energy—her soul—for the rest of them to use.” I shook my head. “Unacceptable.”

They looked at one another, shared glances.

“This is your chance to step forward,” I said, my voice low, earnest. “The chance to do the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing.”

“The rules—,” Katie began, but Jason (finally!) shook his head.

“It’s too late for that,” he said. “For rules. We’re losing this battle. Today, we risk losing a spellbinder. We can’t afford that.” More softly, he added, “Not as Adepts, not as friends.”

He walked to me, then reached out his hand and slipped his fingers into mine. A spark slid up my arm at the contact, and I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

“He’s right,” Michael said, then glanced around from Adept to Adept. “They’re both right, and you know it. All of you know it. It’s time to do things differently. To do the hard thing. Who’s with me?”

Soft sounds filled the room as Adepts looked around, shuffled feet, made their decisions.

“I’m in,” Paul said, then smiled cheekily at me. “And, for the sake of having said it, it’s nice to meet you.”

I smiled back.

Jamie and Jill exchanged a glance, then stepped forward. “We’re in,” Jamie said.

Hands on my hips, a satisfied grin on my face, I glanced back at Katie and Smith, who now stood together, eyes narrowed, fury in their expressions.

“This is not how we operate,” she said. “These are not the rules of the game.”

“Then the rules need to change,” Jason said, then looked over at me. “Let’s go get your girl.”

20

“I was going to find you,” Jason whispered, his fingers still laced through mine as we left the enclave, two angry Varsity Adepts in our wake. But instead of walking toward St. Sophia’s along the Millie 23 path, we moved deeper into the tunnels.

“As soon as I could get away, I was going to find you so we could get Scout together. But I couldn’t say that in front of everyone else.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I vaguely said, not entirely sure I was ready to forgive him for not taking my side the first time around. Of course, I wasn’t so unsure that I let go of his hand.

“Okay,” he said, “then how about this—if you don’t believe me, then consider this my one screw-up.” He looked down at me. “I should have—we all should have—stuck up for her like you did in there. So let me make it up to you now. To both of you.”

I squeezed his hand.

When we reached a crossroads—a union of four tunnels, the ceiling arched above us—we stopped.

“All right,” Jason said, “we’re here, and we’ve got a goal. Now we need a plan.”

Paul snorted. “You mean now that we’ve thoroughly pissed off Varsity?”

“He’s right,” said the slightly taller of the twins. “We’ll get a lecture supreme when we get back.”

“If we get back,” Michael muttered, then lifted worried eyes to Jason. “How are we going to manage this?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out.”

I held up a hand. “First things first. Where are we going?”

“There’s a sanctuary,” Michael said, hitching a thumb toward one of the tunnels. “It’s near here—the Reaper lodge for this part of Chicago. It’s also where they store their vessels.”

“Vessels?” I asked.

“The people—humans or Adepts—the older ones feed from. The ones the younger Reapers siphon energy from.” So a sanctuary was a room of would-be zombies, their lives dripping away because members of the Dark Elite were too self-centered to let go of their magical gifts.

“My God,” I muttered, my skin suddenly crawling. I glanced behind me in the direction of the tunnel we’d come from, suddenly unsure if walking into a trap was a good idea, rescue mission or not.

But then I looked down, my fingers skimming the fabric of Scout’s messenger bag, and got an idea.

“The Reapers probably think we’ll come for her,” I said, looking up at Jason, spring blue eyes staring back. “That we’ll storm the castle, this sanctuary, to get her back.”

“Probably,” Jason agreed, then tilted his head, curiosity in his expression.

“Well, if that’s what they expect, then we should do the thing they aren’t expecting. We flank them—create a distraction. Pull them out and away from Scout. And when they’re distracted, we send in a team to sneak her out again.”

There was silence for a moment, and I had to work not to shuffle my feet.

“That’s actually not bad, Parker,” Jason said. “I’m impressed.”