“Damn it,” Jenna muttered. “It’s like eleven o’clock. Don’t they sleep?”

“Apparently not.” We turned away, going back down to our own floor. “I’ll sneak up tonight after everyone’s in bed,” I assured her.

She looked deflated. “Okay.”

We couldn’t stop from pausing outside of Spencer’s room. The door was open a crack and we could see his roommate’s desk, piled with books and hand-whittled stakes. There was already clothes on the floor and an Angelina Jolie poster on the wall.

But Spencer’s side of the room was bare.

His surfing posters were gone, along with the old surfboard he usually hung over the bed. I kicked the door open, Jenna crowding in behind me.

“What the hell?” His roommate, John, jerked back. When he recognized us, his face went red. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Where’s Spencer’s stuff?” I demanded. His bookcase was cleared of his supernatural encyclopedias and boxes of charms and spell bags. Even his jar of sea salt was gone, which he always kept on his nightstand because every protective spell he researched called for it. I marched over to his dresser and yanked it open. Empty. Not even a single turquoise bead to prove Spencer had ever been here. Fury and something darker, more debilitating gnawed at me, fraying my temper. “John, where’s his stuff?” I barely recognized my own voice.

John stood up, pity making him shuffle awkwardly. “They packed it up today. Didn’t they tell you?”

“No. They did not.”

“Who packed it?” Jenna snapped. She was vibrating with anger as well. Between the two of us we could have powered a nuclear reactor. John wisely took a step backward.

“A couple of the guards.” He held up his hands beseechingly. “Look, I don’t know.”

“Well, they can damn well unpack it,” I seethed. “Because he’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah? I mean, yeah, of course,” he hastened to add. “Of course, he is.”

I had to turn away from the bare mattress. It was making my eyes burn. It should have been heaped with Spencer’s Mexican blankets.

“Don’t let anyone move in here,” I told John, whirling to glare at him. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I don’t really—” He swallowed again when Jenna added her glare to mine. “Of course. I won’t.”

Out in the hall, Jenna and I exchanged bleak glances. I knew she was remembering Will’s room, stripped of his belongings long before I’d had to stake him. I shivered. Jenna looked like she wanted to throw up.

“We’re going to fix this,” I told her grimly. She nodded just as grimly.

“Damn right we are.”

I waited until I was sure everyone was asleep. I paused in my doorway to listen, and again at the bottom of the stairs, and once more on the landing outside the eleventh-grade common room. I didn’t hear anything and saw no one except Chloe asleep on the couch in our common room, her laptop half open on the floor next to her. I didn’t wake her up to go with me. I honestly didn’t know if I could trust her. She’d feel the same way about me if she knew I’d gone through her stuff. I wasn’t sure how we’d gotten here. It was a long way from counting the days until we could be roommates to punching each other.

But I couldn’t worry about that right now.

Spencer was my only concern. He didn’t have much time and we didn’t have much information. I hadn’t been lying to Jenna when I told her there was no guarantee my microphones had recorded anything worth listening to. But I could hope.

I could hope really hard.

The common room was finally deserted, the smell of barbecue potato chips lingering in the air. I crept forward, stepping as softly as I could. I retrieved the microphone from under the couch first, taking care not to stick my finger in the wads of old gum. Next, I plucked the one from the dresser. The one inside the coat rack was going to be decidedly trickier.

I stood in front of it, frowning as I ran through my options. I could tip it over and shake the microphone loose, but those old coat racks weighed a ton. There was a good chance the bottom would slide out and hit the floor. I didn’t have a magnet to lure it up the pole either. If Chloe and I were still talking to each other, she probably could have rigged up something. She was good at that sort of thing. I unscrewed the top and stood on my tiptoes to look down the length of it. Darkness and dust. I took the small penlight from my pocket and switched it on, keeping the light angled down the pole. If it flashed into a window, one of the guards outside might see it and come to investigate. It didn’t do me much good anyway. It only served to glint off the microphone pen casing and prove that it was far out of my reach.

I shook it once, rattling it. I’d have to abandon it until I had a better plan and hope the other ones had recorded something useful. I hated to do it. It galled my stubborn streak.

But I had bigger problems.

Such as the cool pale hand that suddenly clamped over my mouth, jerking my body backward against a hard chest.

Chapter 20

Hunter

I jabbed my elbow back as quick as I could but he was already dancing away. My heel caught his instep hard enough for him to make a sound. And then he tugged and whirled me around, backing me into the wall. His hand was still over my mouth. I hooked my foot around his ankle and shoved. He staggered back and went down, slipping on the area rug. He took me with him, yanking so that I landed on top of him. He sprawled with uncanny silence, not even rattling the furniture when he landed. Blue eyes laughed at me.