“Temperance must not have known what these were,” Detroit said. “If she had, she’d have known this wasn’t a clinic.”

“I’m sure she did the best she could,” Scout said.

“We’ll let our guys figure out the details,” Jason said. “Scout, take pictures of the whiteboards so we can turn them over. Lily, as soon as she’s done, erase them. All of them. We’re not helping them preserve whatever ‘science’ they’ve done here.”

We followed his directions. Scout walked slowly around the room, snapping photos with her camera so we had proof of what the Reapers had been up to. I followed behind her. Each time she snapped a photo, I used my sleeve to wipe off the writing.

When the room was clean and Scout’s phone was tucked away again, we headed back into the hallway. The rest of the rooms on the mazelike floor were either research labs, or more like the medical facilities Temperance had described. There were needles, bandages, and monitors just like she’d said, but not for healing. For experimenting.

The whole place had an awful vibe. And then we rounded a corner . . . and walked right into the nest.

The rats had taken up an entire corridor, the walls and floor coated with slime. Dozens of them slept in a pile in one corner.

Home sweet home, I thought.

Detroit screamed.

Chaos erupted.

Jason immediately shifted, his giant silver wolf taking the attack. He pounced on the back of a rat, which began squealing and screeching and trying to throw him off.

I looked over at Michael, who stood in the middle of the room, eyes wide with fear. I pulled him away, then planted him beside the wall on the other end of the corridor. “Stay here, okay?”

He nodded, but pointed at Scout. “I think she needs help.”

Scout was throwing what looked like marbles at the rats. Each time they made impact, they sent a shock wave through the creatures—their skin wobbling in circular ripples just like on a slow-motion camera. Unfortunately, while the shock waves moved the rats back a few feet, they didn’t stop coming.

I looked around the room—and found the same problem all over. Everything we were doing was working, but only to a point.

“This isn’t doing much good,” Paul yelled, tossing one rat over his shoulder. “It’s not killing the rats!”

That was when the gears clicked into place. Scout’s spell might have worked before, but normal combat wasn’t going to do the trick. “That’s because they’re not really rats!” I yelled over the din of battle. “Scout, what takes out vampires?”

“The usual stuff!” she yelled back. “Fire, stakes, garlic, crosses, silver, and, you know, dismemberment.”

I decided to leave that one to Jason. “Remember they’re related to vampires!” I called out to everyone else. “So hit ’em where it hurts!”

I went with my best weapon. Firespell wasn’t exactly fire—it was Jamie who had that power—but it was as close as I was going to get. There was too much chaos to try an all-out burst of it—too high a chance that I’d hit an Adept. But Sebastian had said I could use it in pinpoint fashion. Might as well try that now.

I maneuvered around until I had a clear shot at one of them, then squeezed my hands into fists. I opened myself to the power, but instead of trying to throw it all back out again, I lifted a single hand, my fingers cupped, and visualized sending that single burst of magic into one of the creatures, the way Sebastian had taught me.

And then I let it go. It still warped the air, but it was focused—the firespell moving in the air in a tight spiral that ripped toward the monster and hit him square in the chest.

He went down . . . and he didn’t get back up.

Sebastian might have been evil—but he definitely had some firespell skills. And maybe because it was kind of like fire, vampires weren’t immune to it.

Together, the four of us used our magic to knock out the rats one by one. It wasn’t easy—there were so many of them, we hardly had time to get one on the floor before the next one attacked. Even with my focused attack, I’d gotten too close to their claws and had burning scratches up and down my arms and legs as I fought back the army.

I finished up the knot closest to me, then glanced over at Scout. She was using a pencil from her bag—a make-do wooden stake—to take out a rat in front of her. It worked, and he hit the ground, but the rest of them were beginning to surround her.

“Scout!” I yelled over the sounds of fighting and squealing monsters. “Duck!”

She did, and I threw out another dose of firespell, which put the creature lurking behind her on the floor. Then she popped up again, gave me a thumbs-up, and knocked out the one in front of her.

“Lily!”

At the sound of Detroit’s voice, I glanced back, expecting to see her encircled by monsters. But there was a pile of them at her feet, her silver-tipped walking stick between both hands like she was wielding a sword. For an Adept who wasn’t supposed to be a fighter, she was definitely holding her own. But she used the stick to point into the other corner—where Jason was quickly getting surrounded.

I couldn’t see Jason’s entire body, just bits of bloody fur as he leaped and rolled with the monsters.

“Jason!” I ran forward toward the melee, my hands outstretched, spiraling the firespell at each monster that jumped forward to attack him.

One of them jumped out at me, but I tossed firespell in his direction. He was too close for a shot and the bobbling air nearly bounced back to knock me down as I moved toward Jason, but I shimmied and sidestepped it.