“If that was true, why hasn’t she announced it?” I wondered. “I mean, it’s all well and good that she wants to be in charge. But at some point, she’d actually have to, like, be in charge.”

“Maybe she can’t,” Scout said. “Look, first the Adepts’ magic turned off, right? And then the Reapers’ magic turned off. As far as we know, she’s the only one in the city who has it. But if she’s going to control who gets to use it, she has to be able to give magic back to someone.”

“And maybe the spell isn’t working that way,” I finished. “She got the magic turned off, but she can’t figure out how to turn it back on again?”

“She ordered some things from Gaslight,” Sebastian said. “Maybe she was looking for a solution to that problem.”

“What did she order?” Scout asked.

“I don’t know. It was already bagged when we got there.”

“Had she been to Gaslight before?”

“Not with me,” Sebastian said. “But the girl at the counter knew her name.”

Scout looked at me, and I could already see the wheels turning. She wanted to find out what Fayden had bought, and that was how she was going to find out what kind of magic she was working—and how to stop it.

I looked at Sebastian. “She has firespell, right? Is turning off other people’s magic something you can do?”

“Not as far as I know. You?”

“Nope. So either she’s got some new version of firespell we don’t even know about, or she’s got friends helping her—donating their magic, maybe.” That kind of thing wasn’t impossible; I’d used my firespell to help Scout take out the imploded sanctuary.

“Do you know who she hangs out with?” Scout asked him.

“No. Like I said, as far as I knew, she was new to town. I didn’t lie to you,” Sebastian said, looking earnestly at me. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Before I could answer, Scout cut in. “You’re a Reaper,” she said. “Lying is just par for the course.”

“Not for me, it isn’t,” Sebastian said, his eyes going wide with anger.

“Oh, please. Reapers kill without a second thought.”

“Taking energy for food is one thing. No one has to die because of that. Killing someone out of revenge is something else completely.”

Scout made a sarcastic sound.

“I get it,” Sebastian said. “You don’t like me, and you don’t trust me.”

“Not even as far as I could throw you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“And you don’t know me, but that didn’t stop you from kidnapping me.”

“I didn’t kidnap you.”

“Your friends did,” she countered, “and that’s close enough for me. And it’s not like you stopped them, did you?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I helped Lily get you out.”

That wasn’t enough to sway her. “You’re a malicious little jerk who takes things that don’t belong to him.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?” She put on her best know-it-all expression. “Sucked any souls lately?”

His expression went flat. “We have a gift. And if we can’t use it? Then what happens?”

“The rest of us live happily ever after?”

“Our magic helps people. If we don’t have the magic, we don’t get to help.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Help? Name one thing Reapers have done to help anyone.”

“What we do is confidential.”

“What you do is nothing. I’ve heard the ‘confidential’ story before, Sebastian. You think they don’t try to sway us with the nonsense?”

Okay, I wasn’t thrilled my BFF and a Reaper were arguing in the middle of a bridge, magic or not. But this was stuff I hadn’t heard about before.

“Who is ‘they’?” I asked. “And what’s confidential?”

“‘They’ are the Scions,” Scout said, narrowed gaze on Sebastian. “The ones who make decisions for the Dark Elite. And the confidential crap is just that—a load of crap.”

Sebastian looked at me. “It’s a long story, and there are details I can’t reveal. But we do help people. I promise you, Lily.”

Scout was standing there, but I still felt like he was saying that just to me. I definitely believed they were doing secret things; I just wasn’t convinced they were for anyone’s good but their own. Willing to believe? Maybe. But I was going to need hard evidence, and we didn’t have time for that kind of proof today. So I changed the subject.

“Let’s save the argument for another time,” I said. “Right now we have a more immediate problem.”

“She’s your cousin,” Scout said. “You can just call her up and tell her to give you your magic back.”

“If she’s done something, invented something, whatever, that takes magic away from whoever she wants, do you think she’ll just give it back to me because I ask her? She’s too manipulative for that, and I don’t even know if she can. Besides, I’m not going to help her do whatever she’s doing. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Everybody makes their own decisions about whether to keep their magic or not. That goes for you and us.”