Enclave Three was a vaulted stone room built into one of the tunnels. The walls were covered in mosaics, but the room was mostly empty except for a round table that Daniel had added so we actually had a place to sit and talk. Now we were the Adepts of the Round Table! Somehow, Scout never found that funny.
The rest of the Adepts—Paul, Jamie, Jill, Michael, and Jason—were already seated around the table, waiting for us to begin.
Paul was a magically enhanced warrior. He was tall, with dark skin and curly hair. His girlfriend, Jamie, was a witch with fire power, and her twin sister, Jill, had comparable skills with ice. The twins were slender, with long auburn hair and pale skin. They were identical, so there was something ghostly about them when they stood side by side.
Jason and Michael sat side by side, both staring at their cell phones. Along with Scout, we made up the Adepts of Chicago’s Enclave Three. Well, the “Junior Varsity” squad, anyway. We got the nickname because we were all still in high school.
Daniel, our Varsity Adept, was nowhere to be seen. He was our recently appointed team leader and a sophomore at Northwestern University. He got full varsity status because he was in college.
He was also the kind of hot that needed two syllables to pronounce. Hah-awt. Tall, curly blond hair, blue eyes. Very easy on the eyes, and a total doll as far as I could tell. And I was doubly lucky: I loved to draw, and Daniel was my studio art teacher at St. Sophia’s.
Daniel had replaced Katie and Smith—last names unknown—our former team leaders. They were the Adepts who’d been willing to throw Scout to the wolves, who’d refused to help rescue her when she’d been taken by Reapers. They’d been coming to Enclave meetings less and less lately, not that I was going to complain. I wasn’t a fan.
As we took seats at the table, Michael immediately gave Scout dopey eyes, and Jason gave me the intense ones. I took the chair next to his and squeezed his hand.
“Where’s Daniel?” I asked.
“Not here yet,” Paul said. “He’s on his way.”
“You’re okay?” Jason whispered.
I nodded. “I’m fine. I’d been working on decorations for Sneak. On the way back to the dorm, one of the other decoration committee girls was being used by a Reaper for fuel. I tried to firespell him, but nothing happened. I managed to knock him out, and that’s when Foley showed up. Foley’s our headmistress,” I added for the rest of the Adepts.
Jason’s expression tightened at the admission I’d been in trouble, and then it went a little fierce . . . and protective. That sent a little thrill through me.
“Scout tried her magic,” I continued, “and it’s not working for her, either. That’s when she called Daniel. What about you?” I scanned him up and down, as if that glance would be enough to tell me whether his magic had been affected. “Are you okay?”
“I can still change,” he said, but he didn’t seem thrilled about it. If the blackout wasn’t affecting him, maybe having a “curse” wasn’t all bad.
“It’s not magic exactly,” he added, “so I’m fine.”
“Which means the blackout is only affecting magic,” Michael said. “The other Enclaves are having the same problem. But given what Lily saw, it doesn’t look like Reapers are having the same trouble.”
“The Reaper’s magic worked,” I added. “And there’s a new stone angel on the grounds to prove it.”
“Free landscaping for all,” Scout muttered.
“Maybe he just got in one last lucky shot,” Michael said. “I can’t read anything.” He looked sad, and even his curls looked a little droopier than usual.
“No ice for me,” Jill said.
“And no fire, either,” Jamie added.
We looked at Paul. “I couldn’t even beat up a puppy with magic,” he said, “not that I’d want to.” But then he grinned cheekily and flexed his biceps, which weren’t bad. “But I can still use my own talents.”
“Show-off,” Scout said with a wink. “And that brings us full circle.”
“So none of us has magic,” I said.
“It’s like nightfall, but with charms,” Michael said. “You know, the sunset of our magical careers or something. Total charmfall.”
“Charmfail,” Jason coughed.
“In addition to the charmfall or charmfail or whatever,” Jill said, “a Reaper was draining a human out in the open in the middle of downtown Chicago. He was outside, and it doesn’t sound like he was trying to hide it.”
Reapers were usually behind-the-scenes types. They snuggled up to otherwise happy teenagers and sucked their energy a little at a time, leaving behind a depressed kid and not a lot of answers for parents and friends.
“You’re thinking Reapers are changing their strategy?” Jason asked.
Jill shrugged. “I’m just saying it’s a fact we should pay attention to.”
“He was young,” I said. “He wouldn’t be losing his magic, so he shouldn’t have needed the energy.”
“Maybe they’ve figured out some way to save up the magic,” Paul offered. “Like charging a battery?”
“That would be a new one,” Jason said with a frown.
That would definitely be bad news bears. If young Reapers figured out a way to save up stolen energy and somehow transmit it to the older ones, they could build a traveling army of teenagers who could steal magic a little at a time. But if they could do that . . . “If the Reapers can save up that power somehow,” I asked, “could they do the reverse? Like, could they pull the magic out of us? Could that have caused the blackout?”
“That’s not possible,” Michael said, looking at Scout. “Is it?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” she said, but you could tell the thought made her nervous. “Saving up energy from one girl and somehow transporting it back to a sanctuary is one thing. Frankly, that wouldn’t surprise me much. But taking the power of all Adepts across Chicago? That’s different by, like, magnitudes. I’m sure there’s some reason for this, and whether it’s magical or not, it’s not something the Reapers just whipped out all of a sudden. It would take planning.”
I can’t say I was convinced. We didn’t have the most up-to-date information about Reapers and their activities in Chicago, and we weren’t out there setting the magical pace. Sometimes it felt like we were playing catch-up, trying to keep our heads above water and hoping we didn’t fall too far behind.
After that, no one said a word for a few minutes. The entire room was completely silent. Everyone looked uncomfortable, like they were wearing clothes that were a little too tight. That was when I knew this was going to be an important test for Chicago’s Adepts. Maybe the most important test of all.We’d promised that in a few years, when our magic dissipated, we wouldn’t fight the loss. We’d let the power return to the universe instead of stealing the souls of others in a vain attempt to keep it.
It was easy to make that promise when you still had your power. When you were right in the middle of the magical high life and life without magic was years away. That decision would be a lot harder, or so I figured, when you were beginning to weaken. Sure, I hadn’t had firespell long, so its absence felt more familiar than having it. But wasn’t it going to be hard for the ones who had gotten used to it—who’d lived with the hum of energy longer, who’d been able to change the world around them with the flick of a hand or a few words of a spell? Wasn’t it going to be hard to simply shut that door and walk away?
Adepts usually talked as if the decision would be easy. And sure, there were consequences to being a Reaper that would also be staring them down—stealing souls, for one. But looking at their faces today, they were beginning to realize that the consequences of giving up their lives as Adepts were going to be harder to bear than they’d thought.
The Enclave door opened. Daniel walked inside, and from the look on his face, he didn’t have any good news, either. We did the roll call and filled him in on our magical deficiencies.
“I spoke with Marceline Foley,” he said. Scout and I exchanged a look. Daniel and Foley were close. He’d known Foley’s daughter before she’d been killed, which I guessed was why he’d been hired to teach studio art.
“Lisbeth Cannon is going to be okay. Marceline found her family, and they’re going to help her get back on track.” He looked down at a piece of paper in his hand. “The Reaper’s name was Charlie Andrews. He’s part of Jeremiah’s crew. Comes from a single-parent family, and his mom works nights. She gets some kind of stipend from the sanctuary to help them out, so she’s gung ho on the Reapers. Thinks her son’s a superhero.”
“Fat chance,” I muttered. It was a long drive from liking Reapers because they helped you pay the bills to thinking it was cool that your son was stealing a teenager’s life force.
“He’s too young to need the magic,” I said. “Did Foley talk to him? Why was he using a girl? Does he know anything about the blackout?”
“She wasn’t able to interrogate him,” Daniel said. “She only heard about the mom. She didn’t actually see him do anything—she only saw Lily assault him with a suitcase.”
All eyes turned to me, and my cheeks flushed red. “No firespell,” I explained. “That was the only weapon I had.”
“Awesome,” Scout said. “So he’s off the hook, and we’re back to square one, except that we don’t have any magic and there might be an army of Reapers not just recruiting teenagers for food, but actually stealing their souls.”
“It’s gonna be a great week,” Michael said.
Daniel tucked the paper away and took a seat at the table. “Everybody, calm down. The council”—those were the really higher-ups who made decisions about Adept strategies—“are looking into the blackout. They have our best minds on it.”
“We are their best minds,” Scout grumbled.
“Be that as it may, for now we leave the heavy lifting to them. This situation is temporary—if there’s a cause, there will be a solution. And we will find that solution,” he said, giving Scout a look. “That said, for now we have no power. So I want everyone on full alert. You go anywhere, you go in pairs. Be careful underground, and just as careful above. Until we know what they’re planning, we take care.”
“We always take care,” Scout whispered. “It’s the Reapers we have to worry about.”
“If we’re all on the same page,” Daniel said. “I think we’re done for now. You’re dismissed.”
“Excellent,” Michael said, and fist bumped Jason again. “Back to the crib and a little midnight gaming.”
“What is it with you two and the fist bumping?” Scout asked.
“We can’t help it if we’re smooth,” Michael said, giving Scout a big wink. She looked away in exasperation, but not before her cheeks went pink.
“Smooth?” I asked, leaning toward Jason. “He saw that in a movie, right?”
“Three days ago. Action flick filmed in Chicago, and he won’t stop quoting the scenes.”
As if we needed any more action in the Windy City.
4
Daniel’s motivational speech and our business done, we left the Enclave again, but stopped in the tunnel outside. We said our good-byes to Jill, Jamie, Daniel, and Paul, and Scout, Jason, Michael, and I hung back.
“Did you ever think your junior year would be this exciting?” I asked Scout.
“I was hoping it would involve a discovery that I was secretly a princess with the power to rule the world and make pop stars my minions,” she said. “I have not yet become aware of any such discovery.”
I patted her arm. “Keep the faith, sister.”
“On to more important topics,” Jason said. “What are we going to do about this blackout?”
“What do you mean ‘do about’ it?” I asked.
“We can’t just sit around and wait for the council to do something,” Michael said. “They put Katie and Smith in charge of the Enclave, after all. That doesn’t show good decision making to me.”
“Michael’s right,” Jason said. “We can’t just wait around and hope they’ll find a fix, and that Reapers will leave us alone in the meantime.”
Scout shook her head. “We also can’t just march into the sanctuary, tell Reapers we’re magic-free, and ask if they’re the reason. We’d be sitting ducks.”
“That’s not a good survival strategy,” I agreed. “But how are we going to find anything else out? We don’t have any leads, and no clues.”
“Enclave Two,” Jason said. “Their specialty is information and technology. Maybe they know more than we do.”
Enclave Two was one of the other groups of Adepts in Chicago. Our focus was on identifying Reaper targets and dealing with Reapers. Enclave Two was all about information—spying on Reapers, bugging sanctuaries, figuring out what they were up to.
“And that Detroit has some crazy mechanics,” Michael said. “I wouldn’t mind seeing what she’s been working on lately.” He winged up his eyebrows dramatically. Scout punched him in the arm.
“I’m right here,” she said.
“According to you, we aren’t dating, so there’s no harm in me looking.”
“Or checking out Detroit’s machinery,” I added (helpfully). But Scout didn’t look like she thought I was being helpful.