This is real. And so is the fact that Heidi, Samuel, and every other tracker on this boat who understands the true cost of James Rowan’s pain atonement policy yet looks the other way have as much blood on their hands as Ian does.

It’s time they understood that there’s a price to pay for hurting innocent people.

And I’m just the girl to teach them.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

LOGAN

Darkness presses close as Willow, Adam, Jodi, and I ease out of the rooms we share on the top floor of Lyle Hoden’s home in the center of the city. Frankie, Nola, and Smithson are staying behind to guard Connor, Drake, and the tech in case any trackers come snooping around. They’re also prepared with an excuse for our absence—something about Willow teaching us how to track—in case the Commander visits our rooms.

The plan I laid out for Lyle and the Commander was for one of Lyle’s soldiers to steal a beacon tonight so that tomorrow, under the guise of concluding our trade negotiations, I could show them how to disable it.

I have no intention of teaching the Commander how to do the one thing he believes he needs me for. I’m hoping he thinks I need someone to bring a beacon to me. I hope it never occurs to him that I’m willing to brave the rooftops in the middle of the night and find it myself.

“Ready?” I ask quietly.

“Let’s break some tech,” Willow says.

Silently, we move down the corridor to the stairwell at the far end. Unlike the lower level of Lyle’s home where the Commander and his guards are housed, the oil lanterns here aren’t lit. Faint starlight filters in through windows on either end of the hall, but for the most part, we’re shrouded in darkness.

Lyle and Amarynda agreed that if I could render the beacons incapable of calling the tanniyn, they would commit troops to our cause against Rowansmark. Unfortunately, Lyle followed Clarissa’s example and only promised one-fourth of his army. It’s not enough, but the Commander couldn’t bully him into promising us more. When I asked how we could possibly take soldiers out of Hodenswald under the very noses of the trackers, Lyle informed me that he was too smart to have only one way in or out of his city.

I’d stared hard at the Commander then, waiting for a flicker of realization on his face that if he’d had tunnels beneath his city or secret side-exits, many of his people would’ve survived the fires that destroyed Baalboden, but the cold stoicism of his expression never changed.

Adam reaches the stairwell first and holds the door open for the rest of us. The stairs are narrow and the wood is slippery with age. We walk slowly, muffling the sound of our footsteps as best as we can.

We step onto the flat roof above Lyle’s home, and I pause for a moment to get my bearings. After spending the afternoon touring the city and paying close attention to the location of the Rowansmark tech, Connor drew a map of the city’s roofs, marking each place where a beacon was attached to the eaves. Willow and I committed it to memory so we wouldn’t have to worry about reading it in the dark. Now I just need to make the map in my head match the layout of the city that surrounds me.

The city is laid out on a grid, the buildings evenly spaced boxes with flat rooftops. As long as we’re careful to plan our jumps so that we don’t have to move from a shorter building to a taller one, we’ll be fine.

“Adam and I will take the east half. You and Jodi can do the west,” Willow says.

“Do you remember how to disable the infrasonic frequency?” I ask, even though I drew her a diagram and made her repeat the process back to me until she finally snapped and told me she’d disable me if I doubted her one more time.

She rolls her eyes. “I yank out the wires on the left side of the transmitter and then rip out the silver mechanism. It’s not hard, Logan.”

“Actually, it’s a very delicate process requiring precision and careful—”

“It requires me to know my right from my left and to pull out some wires.” She pats my shoulder and moves toward Adam. “We’re good. Meet you back here before dawn.”

“Be careful,” Jodi says. “You don’t want to run into a tracker.”

Willow flashes a dangerous smile. “No, the trackers don’t want to run into me.”

Seconds later, she and Adam leap, landing lightly on the neighboring roof. The fact that the buildings in Hodenswald are so close together is going to make this task much easier to accomplish.

“Ready?” I ask Jodi. She nods and moves to the western lip of the roof. I stand beside her and assess the jump. “Take a running start and aim for a spot at least two yards beyond the edge. You’ll be fine.”

“I know I will.” Her voice shakes a little. I can’t blame her. If she falls, if any of us fall, we won’t be getting back up. She’s the shortest in our group. I worry that her legs aren’t long enough to give her the kind of distance she’ll need, but she was adamant about coming, and if being around Rachel has taught me anything at all, it’s that if a girl has made up her mind to do something, there’s no point standing in her way unless you prefer to have your dignity, and possibly your nose, ruined.

“I’ll go first so that I can catch you as you land.”

“Okay.” Her blue eyes are huge as she looks from her feet to the opposite roof.

“Just keep your eyes on me, and you’ll be fine.” I back up a few steps, run at the edge, and leap, my eyes fixed on a spot two yards past the lip of the opposite building. I don’t hit my mark, but I do land safely past the gap that separates the two homes. Turning, I reach my arms out and say, “Run and jump. Don’t look down; it will ruin your aim. Look only at me.”