We took the booty and headed outside again. I felt a little guilty as we passed the other folks in line. They looked longingly at our stuff, probably wishing they were the ones with food in their hands.

I followed Scout across the street to a stone office building with a low concrete railing around it. She popped up onto it, then patted the railing beside her. “People watching 101.”

I took a seat and handed over her cup while she offered up a churro. It was still hot and a little greasy. More crunchy than soft, with ridges along the edges.

“Behold,” Scout said, then pulled out her own snack, opened a cup of chocolate, and dipped the churro into it. “Dip and munch,” she said, then took a bite.

I followed her example . . . and had to close my eyes to take in all the flavors. Hot. Crunchy. Sweet. Bitter. Smooth.

Amazing.

“OMG, you are a goddess,” I said, going back for another bite. At this rate, I’d have the thing finished before she even answered.

“That’s not even the best part,” she said. “Look up.”

Still munching, I lifted my gaze. With the sidewalk in front of us, and streets all around us, we had a fantastic view . . . of people. All shapes and sizes. All genders and ethnicities. A short, prickly-looking man with a tiny dog. A couple of tired-looking tourists with a baby stroller.

“Oooh, peep this,” Scout quietly said, nudging me with her elbow. Two of the tallest people I’d ever seen were walking past us. They wore the same outfits—neon-bright pants and even brighter shirts. They were blindingly bright. Where could you wear that kind of thing?

“Maybe they work in really dark rooms,” Scout said, reading my mind. “Or they direct traffic.”

“Or work in a highlighter factory. Or make paint chips.”

“People are just odd,” she said, and I really couldn’t disagree with that.

* * *

We ate our churros, and when they were gone, I followed Scout’s lead and took a sip from the cup. The chocolate was thick, rich, and delicious. Not that there was a chance it wouldn’t be—we were basically drinking melted chocolate.

“I would take an IV of this every morning,” I murmured.

“Seriously, right? I wish they had a delivery service. I need to wake up every morning with chocolate and churros outside my bedroom door.”

“Oooh, and the brat pack would have to be banned from the store forever. I mean, if we’re talking big dreams here.”

“I like the way you think, Parker. I’ve always said that about you.”

“Speaking of the brat pack, what are we going to do about Veronica?”

“Ignore her?”

“Nicu won’t appreciate that,” I pointed out. “We promised him a meeting tonight. And since he brought my boyfriend back in one piece, I’d really like to keep it.”

“All we have to do is get them in the same place at the same time. I assume we need to do it at night because, you know, Nicu is a vamp, but it can’t be too late, because she’ll be in pajamas and we won’t be able to convince her to leave her suite.”

“We’re going to have a hard enough time convincing her to leave at all. She’ll think we’re up to something.”

“What about during party prep? Can we arrange a meet then?”

I shook my head. “She’ll be there with Amie and M.K., and they’ll follow her. We need to separate her from the herd.”

Scout chuckled. “If that was so easy, I’d have saved her years ago. How do you separate someone who doesn’t want to be separated?”

I thought about that for a minute. “Don’t give her a choice.”

“I’m not going to kidnap Veronica.”

“That’s not where I was going, but good to know.” I shook my head. “No, we need to make her want to be there.”

“And how do we do that?”

“I’m still working on that part.”

While we thought it through, we sat on the stone rail and finished our chocolate quietly, watching the passersby. They all looked normal, but then, so did we.

I turned to Scout. “How many of these people know about magic, do you think?”

“None of them, if we’re playing the odds. There are six Enclaves in Chicago. Figure twenty or so JV Adepts per Enclave.”

“Twenty? That’s a ton.” We had only seven.

“We’re wee. Most Adepts don’t go to school in the Loop.”

She had a point.

“So twenty JVs per Enclave, six Enclaves in the city, that’s roughly one hundred and twenty Adepts total. Maybe add in a few who don’t know they have magic or haven’t been identified—”

“Or just don’t want to be involved,” I added, feeling sympathetic.

“Or that. I don’t know—maybe you end up with two hundred active Adepts at any given time. And in a city of nearly three million, if we’re talking members of the Community, probably more than that. They don’t ‘age out’ like we do, so their numbers grow over time. Well, unless Reapers take them out.”

We got quiet at that suggestion. I didn’t want to think about the Community members I’d met so far being harmed because they agreed to help us. Of course, they seemed to believe in the cause, so maybe it wasn’t a hard choice for them.

“So odds are, most of these people walking past don’t know about us.” I sipped at my chocolate. It was cooling, so it was getting thicker and almost gritty—and it was already chocolaty enough that it made my teeth ache. But it was the best kind of hurt.