“We’ll be together soon. In real life. The center will hold.” She was growing translucent before my eyes. “Get some sleep. Go find Carly and Keith.”

“I will. And then I’ll find you, I swear it.”

She was nearly gone, and I could just barely make out tears sparkling in her eyes. “I know you will. I believe in you. I always have.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She was gone.

I woke up on the couch, feeling an emptiness and dissatisfaction that went beyond physical longing. I needed her heart and mind as much as her body. I needed her, and her lack caused an ache in my chest as I drifted off to sleep. As I did, I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, pretending it was Sydney I held.

Marcus showed up bright and early the next morning, getting our road trip off to a good start—with one exception. We had a small disagreement on whose car to take.

“Yours is probably stolen,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not stolen. And it’s a Prius.”

“Even more reason not to take it.”

“We can get to Tempe without even stopping for gas, unlike yours.”

“It’s worth the extra stops to go in style,” I argued back.

“Is it worth the extra delay to get answers that might help Sydney?” That was his trump card, and he knew it.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “We’ll take your lame yet highly fuel-efficient car.”

Despite our rocky past—like when I’d tried to punch him the first time we met—Marcus and I had a pretty smooth drive to ASU. He didn’t expect much in the way of conversation, which was fine by me. Most of my thoughts were with Sydney. Every once in a while, Marcus would field a call from one of his contacts, chasing some lead that was part of his clandestine affairs. Some were about Sydney and Keith; some were about other people and missions that all sounded very important when you were only listening to half the conversation.

“You’ve got all sorts of things going on,” I remarked when we crossed the Arizona border. “It means a lot that you’d take time to help Sydney. Sounds like she’s not the only one counting on you.”

He smiled at that. “Sydney’s special. I don’t think she can know how many people she’s helped with that ink she made. It’s huge for them to know the Alchemists can’t corrupt their minds—at least through the tattooing. I owe it to her to help her for that, and . . .”

“And what?” I asked, seeing his expression darken.

“Whenever anyone does something incredible, like she’s done, and gets caught, like she has, I always think that it could’ve been me. In helping me, I see them as serving the time that I probably deserve.”

“Sydney wouldn’t see it that way,” I told him, recalling her crackpot plans to help her fellow inmates. “She’s happy to do it—thinks it’s her own risk.”

“I know,” he said. “And that makes me that much happier to help.”

We reached the university by midafternoon. It was in the thick of the academic day, but they were also running on summer session, so campus crowds were thinner than they might otherwise have been. Marcus’s intelligence had told him that Carly attended year-round and was an RA in a coed dorm. No one challenged us during daylight hours, and we were able to go right up to her door, which was covered in posters for various bands and rallies. After meeting Zoe, I couldn’t even begin to say what the third Sage sister was like, though I had formed vague ideas of someone quiet and meek, knowing what I did about how Carly wouldn’t report Keith or let Sydney do it either.

The girl who answered wasn’t what I expected. She was tall and athletic, with pixie-cut hair and a little garnet nose ring. But she had Sydney’s hair and eye color, as well as enough family resemblance to let me know we’d found the right person. She wore an outgoing smile that dimmed somewhat when she did a double take at me. She might not be the family Alchemist, but she knew a Moroi when she saw one.

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to be involved,” she said.

“It’s about Sydney,” said Marcus.

“And she said to ask you if college made you want to take on Cicero’s philosophy on life,” I added helpfully.

Carly’s eyebrows rose at that, and after a moment, she sighed and opened her door to admit us. Two other girls, looking freshman-aged, sat on her floor, and she gave them an apologetic look. “Hey, I’ve got to take care of something real quick. Can we finish planning tonight?”

As the girls stood and made parting comments, Marcus leaned toward me and whispered, “Are you sure you got Sydney’s pass phrase right? Cicero was more of a statesman than a philosopher. Not that he didn’t have some good moments.”

I shrugged. “That’s what she said. And Carly let us in, didn’t she?”

Once the younger girls were gone, Carly sat on the edge of her bed and beckoned us to find spots on the floor. “Okay. So, to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from a Moroi and a guy who’s not an Alchemist but has a very suspiciously placed tattoo?”

“We need your help to locate Sydney,” I said, finding no need to waste time.

Carly tilted her head in surprise at that. “Is she missing?”

Marcus and I exchanged looks. “Have you heard from her recently?” he asked.

“No . . . not in a very long time, actually. But that’s not unheard of. Dad used to disappear for a while too. It’s part of the job. He told all of us that she’s just wrapped up in something top secret.” When neither Marcus nor I responded, she glanced between the two of us. “Isn’t that true? Is she okay?”

“She’s okay,” said Marcus slowly, and I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “But she’s not on assignment. She got in trouble for something, and we’re trying to get to her before that trouble gets worse.”

Carly shot him a fierce look. “Don’t sugarcoat things. I know what getting in trouble means with Alchemists. They’ve locked her up somewhere, haven’t they? Like they did Keith?”

“Have you talked to him?” I exclaimed. “In person?”

Her face filled with disgust. “In person and in email. He showed up out of the blue like you guys did, back in March, with this big sob story about how sorry he was and how he needed my forgiveness to go on and how I should turn him in to the authorities.”