I was all the way up near the top before I was sure it wasn’t Bryce. I started to back out, then stopped. Something was wrong with the patient. He looked better than the sickly pale woman on his other side. No wheezing or rasping or coughing . . . No sounds at all. That was the problem—the patient lay perfectly still, sheets tucked around his body with hospital precision, as if he hadn’t even twitched since he’d been put there.

Yet there were machines hooked up to him. I couldn’t tell what they were—I can only recognize heart monitors and there didn’t seem to be one with the familiar mountain-range display. But lines on the machines were moving and numbers were changing.

Comatose? I looked back at the woman in the first bed. Was this an infirmary for sick group members? That made sense—when you’re planning a huge movement, you’re going to need facilities for illness, especially if they’re supernatural and can’t be shipped off to the nearest hospital.

It seemed like a lot of secrecy for an infirmary, though. I remembered what the man in the alley said.

A war is coming.

Was the hospital a preparation for war? For the casualties of war?

The bigger question right now was: Where’s Bryce? I looked at the door across the room and took a step toward it.

Something touched my arm.

“Help me,” a voice rasped.

I stumbled back as the dark-haired figure in the last bed sat up. It was a woman. Gauze covered the top of her face, and what I’d thought was a white shirt or gown was more gauze, crisscrossing her body like a half-wrapped mummy.

She pawed at the bandage on her face with hands so thickly bandaged they were like clubs. She managed to catch the bandage and yanked it down enough for me to see one eye, swollen and leaking, surrounded by scrapes and cuts.

As if she had tried to scratch her eyes out.

I shivered and tried to yank my gaze away, but instead saw the other scratches now, the ones radiating out from the hastily wrapped gauze on her body. Scratches and gouges everywhere.

“It burns,” she rasped. “It always burns. Please help me. Make it stop.”

She started pawing at her body, her thickly wrapped hands desperately trying to scratch, to rip, to tear. I glanced toward the closed door as she mewled in frustration. I pushed her back down on the bed and assured her I’d get the nurse, that we’d get something for her, just relax. But she shoved me, flailing and grunting until a liquidfilled tube overhead clicked and beeped and discharged a dose of something and, after a moment, she went still again.

I waited until I was sure she wasn’t moving again, then I headed for the closed door to the next room to continue my search for Bryce. I paused at the door. If there was a nurse in here, that’s where he or she would be. I readied my switchblade and eased the door open. From within, I could hear the sigh and whir of machines, and the steady beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor.

It looked like a mirror image of the room I was in. Three beds against the far wall. Only one patient, though. Bryce lay in the first bed, eyes closed.

thirty-six

I walked to Bryce and leaned over, whispering, “Wake up. It’s—”

He leapt up so fast I knew he hadn’t been asleep at all, and when his hands flew up in a spell, I realized I’d walked into a trap.

As his eyes widened though, I saw that his gaze wasn’t fixed on me . . . and his outstretched hands weren’t aimed at me either.

I spun as Anita Barrington lunged, hypodermic raised. I hit her with everything I had—in a knockback that barely made her stumble. But that stumble gave Bryce time to cast an energy bolt. Anita convulsed and dropped the needle.

I grabbed the nearest object I could find—a bedpan—and prepared to swing it at her head as Bryce dove out of bed and snatched the needle from the floor. Then he glanced at me, and frowned at the raised bedpan.

“Cast a binding spell,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“Why? Because she’s a witch?”

“No,” I said. “I—” I glanced at Anita. If she hadn’t heard the rumor already, there was no sense letting her know I was the spellcasting equivalent of a twelve-year-old. Not when she’d seen what I could do—the guy I killed.

“I’m good,” I said, hefting the bedpan.

Bryce nodded and advanced on Anita. I could see him straining to keep himself upright, his face flushed with fever.

He lifted the syringe. “Why would you want to waste this on Savannah? This is your chance to use it on yourself.”

“No,” she said.

“But it’s a gift, isn’t it? A reward. That’s why I got it. A reward for services rendered.”

“I don’t want it.”

He stepped closer. “That’s okay. I didn’t either.”

She jumped up, surprisingly agile for her age and size. She smacked him in the leg as I ran forward. Bryce fell. She grabbed the syringe.

“No!” Bryce shouted as I ran at Anita, bedpan raised. “Stay back. You don’t want that shot, Savannah.”

I stopped short. “What’s in there?” I asked Anita.

“Why don’t you ask Bryce? Our prize subject. His reward for his assistance.” The grandmotherly façade shattered as she sneered at Bryce. “Did you really think we wouldn’t know what you were up to? Giving us the child so you could worm your way in and report back to your Cabal? Did you think we wouldn’t wonder why you asked so many questions? Why you insisted on seeing the facilities? A word of advice, boy? Next time your Cabal decides to send a spy, make sure they pick someone a little brighter.”

“No one sent—” Bryce stopped.

“Was this your master plan for impressing your family? Proving big brother isn’t the only Nast with initiative? Oh, you showed them, boy. You showed them you’re as inept as they always thought.”

Bryce lunged at her.

“Don’t,” I said. “She’s baiting you because she knows she’s screwed. Notice she’s not even trying to escape? She’s trapped.”

“I’m not the only one who’s trapped,” Anita said. “You’re in a solid room behind a locked steel door, children. The only way you’re getting out is when my colleagues come to let you out. And it will go much better for you if I’m alive when they get here. You both know I’m very important to this group.”