I glanced around, made sure we didn’t have any unwanted visitors, and removed the necklace. Glasses gasped and pointed at me. Vanessa turned and gasped, her blue eyes wide. I fully expected her to jut out a hip and curl her lip at the sight of me. I expected her to make some sort of snide comment about me trying too hard or that she hated my outfit. I even expected her to call me new girl.
What I didn’t expect, what I didn’t think she was even capable of, was a flood of emotions suddenly shining in her eyes. “Katy,” she whispered and ran toward me, pulling me into a tight embrace. “Thank God you’re okay.”
Whoa. What the…what? I stiffened, not hugging her back. Vanessa and I weren’t exactly friends. “Uh, hi?”
“It’s her,” one of the MEs whispered. “That’s Katy Reed.”
Several more repeated my name as if saying it banded them together like a gang of badasses.
Vanessa suddenly pushed me away and jutted out a hip as she crossed her arms. That was more like it. Now I didn’t feel like I’d landed in bizarro world. “Why the hell are you here?”
“Sentry is here. If your plan was to send them to the grove, it’s too late. The Council found us and destroyed the protective veil keeping us hidden. We’ve surrounded the school. If you want to get out, now’s your chance. Shit is about to go down.” Once we found the dark elementals, that was.
“I’m not going anywhere,” the fire elemental announced. “I’m with Sentry.”
“I’m with Sentry,” another stated.
“Me too.”
Each ME declared their loyalty to Sentry, and my chest swelled with pride. They hadn’t been trained and didn’t know the strategy of our attack, but they were willing to stand for what they believed in, and that was Sentry.
“Go stand watch at the doors and windows,” I told them. “Alert us if you see any Council patrols.”
The group scattered and took up their appropriate posts. Vanessa waited until the last of the MEs were in place before regarding me. “What the hell are you doing here?” she whispered fiercely, then looked around before dragging me to the opposite side of the common room away from the MEs watching the doors and windows. “Do you have any idea how many people are looking for you? There’s a price on your head.”
“Wow. Really?” I’d only been kidding when I made that wisecrack. I’d never had a real price on my head. Then again, most hadn’t. It wasn’t a good thing, yet that didn’t stop me from asking, “How much?”
She looked at me.
Okay, I deserved that look.
“I did not risk everything to rescue the MEs all for you to fuck this up by getting killed when the Council finds you here.”
“Gee, sorry my death will be such an inconvenience for you.” God, how I hated this woman. Of course, she’d turn this into something about her, including how me dying would screw up her life. “Tell me about these tunnels.”
“It’s how I’ve been getting everyone out. There are tunnels all over the island leading to the academy. Some are collapsed now but most are still intact. There are a couple different ones that lead out to the woods. That’s how I’ve been delivering those who want to enlist with Sentry to the grove. We need as many recruits as we can get.”
“We? You’re the custodian?” Holy shit shocker. My mean girl nemesis…was my biggest supporter? Never in a million years would I have ever thought Vanessa Graves was capable of such selfless acts. “It was you behind the graffiti, you recruiting the alchemists and blacksmiths. That’s why you had your dad declare alchemy illegal, so they’d join Sentry.”
“They needed a little push.”
Shock didn’t even begin to describe the wave of disbelief washing over me. “You’ve been leading the uprising from the inside all this time.”
“Surprise!”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me it was really you? Why hide behind the name custodian?”
“If you knew it was me, would you have believed it?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Not even a little.” I still needed more convincing before I fully trusted her. “But I saw you inside Alec’s office. I was there when you told him you were having MEs crack the code in my webcomic.”
“I’ve been feeding him misinformation and staying close to pick up any intel to give to an ME to deliver to you. He thought you were hiding somewhere in Oregon. It wasn’t until Margo Carson convinced her son to decipher your latest webisode and give up the coordinates to your real location that Alec knew where you really were. He still has no idea I’ve been the one running the underground network to send recruits your way.”
“How are you not in an elemutus and in Carcerem?” I still didn’t trust her. She could be playing an angle. What angle, I had no idea, only that whatever it was would have her coming out smelling like roses. “He had to have figured out you lied when Margo posted the real location.”
“I convinced him my sources just got it wrong.”
Of course she did. “How’d you originally discover our real location?”
“Bryan.”
“Bryan?” My Bryan? As in her ex-boyfriend? Jealously bit into me and hit the back of my throat. “What the hell kind of game are you playing?”
“Calm down.”
“You do realize telling someone to calm down has the opposite effect?” My core heated as fire built inside me. If I didn’t find a way to pull it in, I’d wind up setting something on fire—like Vanessa. “How did you convince Bryan to give up our location?”
“He didn’t give it up. I followed him.”
“And he just agreed to partner with you on this? Just like that?”
“Bryan knows me very well.” She smirked, and jealousy once again twisted inside me. I hated that she’d dated my boyfriend before I had. Her expression wilted
