“Ishmae doesn’t drink,” he argued. “And I already checked her room. Besides, there’s no way she’d pass up a chance to get better…at anything. You have no idea how driven she is.”
“So what’s your explanation, Shane? Nobody’s dumb enough to fuck with a High-Four. If she’s missing, it’s because she wants to be.”
“For all her power, she’s still just a person,” he argued. “She could’ve fallen and hit her head, or been drugged or abducted or—”
“Alright, alright.” I cut into the stream of increasingly unlikely explanations. “Fine. She’s missing. How are we supposed to find her?”
He coughed, and stared at the tops of his sneakers. “I was hoping you’d have an idea.”
I started to shake my head, then stopped. Truth was, I did.
•—•—•
Kayleigh opened her door, squeaked like a mouse being struck by lightning, and slammed the door back shut.
“What was that on her face?”
“No idea. Looked like mud or something.” I shrugged and knocked on the door again. “Vibe, we need your help. Unicorn needs your help.”
It was a full thirty seconds before the door cracked back open. Kayleigh’s face made a reappearance, this time bright red, freshly scrubbed, and free of whatever had been smeared across it.
Mostly free, anyway. She’d missed a few streaks on one cheek, and a little more under the chin. Not that I was going to point that out, or the fact that one electric-blue strand of hair was sticking straight up in the air.
“What do you two want, and why couldn’t it have waited like five minutes longer?”
“Ishmae is missing,” said Shane. “I think something’s happened to her.”
“She’s a High-Four,” said Vibe, unconsciously reaching over to place one of her fingers on my bare arm. “What the hell could happen?”
“That’s what I said,” I muttered.
“I don’t know,” admitted the Healer, “but if something did…”
“We thought you might be able to find her,” I finished. “Like you did with Sue.”
She was shaking her head before I had finished. “It doesn’t work like that. Not yet anyway. Ms. Ferra says every person has a distinctive signature, but I haven’t learned how to read them yet. I can’t hunt down a specific person; all I can do is listen for emotion.”
“Well, could you try that, at least?” Shane’s eyes were bright. “If something has happened, it might be enough to find her…”
I watched Vibe try her hardest not to wince. Picking up on the emotions of a scared woman at night and on the very edge of campus was one thing. Performing some sort of empathic sweep of the entire campus—an area containing thousands of individuals that Kayleigh spent every waking moment trying to block out—was something else entirely.
She swallowed once, tucked a strand of hair behind one ear with her free hand, and nodded. “I can try.”
It’s like I said earlier. Some people are Capes to the fucking core.
•—•—•
Three minutes later, Vibe reached blindly for my arm, her face pinched and drawn. She held on for a good twenty seconds, her breathing slowly steadying, and then released, going back under like a diver heading into the ocean.
That cycle repeated three more times. My wrist was starting to bruise when she surfaced for the last time, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry… there’s so much out there. I can’t…” Kayleigh shuddered again, her hand reflexively squeezing my wrist again and again. “I can’t parse it all, but I didn’t feel anything like the other night.”
“So, maybe Ishmae is okay, after all—”
“Or she’s out of my range. Or unconscious.”
“Phoenix?” The three of us spun to find Winter peering out of her room one door down and across the hall. “She’s fine. I saw her an hour or so ago.”
“You did?” Unicorn pounced like he was some sort of cat, rather than a too-short ginger. “Where?”
Penelope paused to shoot Unicorn and I a suspicious glare. “Are you boys even supposed to be on this side of the dorm? Don’t you need a pass or something?”
“For the love of God, Penelope,” said Vibe, her voice still strained and weak. “Shut up and just answer his question.”
Winter drew herself up to her full height, looking down that crooked nose at us, her smile every bit as cold as the season she’d taken for her name. “Which is it, Kayleigh? Should I shut up or answer his question?”
Before the Empath could respond, Shane was between the two women. “Please. It could be important. Seriously important.”
“Oh fine.” The taller woman rolled her eyes, and tossed her head, sending long, white hair in an arc over one shoulder. “I passed her on campus. Near the Control classroom, in fact. No doubt, she was headed to do some extra credit to ruin the curve even more for the rest of us.”
“Like you care.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re acing everything anyway.”
“Nobody asked for your opinion, Crow—” the Weather Witch shot back.
“Oh shit.” Shane’s natural state was pale, but now he was borderline translucent. “Shit fucking fuck shit.”
Her other hand still clasped tightly around my arm, Kayleigh reached out to the little Healer. “What is it, Shane?”
“I know where Ishmae is.” He glanced over at us, eyes wide. “We have to hurry.”
“Hurry where?”
“To Control,” he called over one shoulder, already running back toward the common room. “I think she’s going to run the Maze.”
•—•—•
If there was one positive that could be said for the four months we’d spent under Nikolai’s tender mercies, it was that every first-year—from the tireless Orca to still-chubby Prince—could run. After twice-weekly, five-mile warmups, our sprint across campus to the Control building barely even registered.
Everything seemed quiet, the classroom’s windows dark and still.
“I still don’t get why you think Ishmae would’ve come here, Unicorn.”
“Especially if Ms. Stein said the Maze was off-limits to first-years,” agreed Kayleigh. She hadn’t been there when the rest of us saw the device, but we’d filled her in on
