Chicago.Gossip Girl has nothing on us.”
I just stared at her for a minute, trying to imagine exactly what that life would have been like.
Not just the part about waking up with B cups—although that would be a pretty big adjustment. I glanced down at my chest. Not a horrible adjustment, I guessed, but nonetheless . . .
“You still with us?” Scout asked.
I glanced up quickly, a flush rising on my cheeks. She grinned cheekily. “I’ve thought the same thing,” she said with a wink.
“Before you two get too friendly,” Michael said, “tell her the catch.”
“There’s a catch?” I asked.
“Isn’t there always?” she asked dryly. “The thing is, the magic isn’t eternal. It doesn’t last forever, at least, not without a price. When we’re young—teens, twenties—the magic makes us stronger. It works in conjunction with our bodies, our minds, our souls. When we’re young, it’s like an extra sense or an extra way to understand the world, an extra way to manipulate it. We have access to something humans forgot about after the witch trials scared it out of everyone,
after fear made everyone forget about the gift.”
“And when you get older?”
“The power comes at a cost,” Jason said. “And our position is, the cost is pretty nasty.”
“Too high,” Michael added with a nod.
I arched an eyebrow. “A cost? Like mentally? Does it make you crazy or something?”
“It could,” Scout said. “It rots the body, the soul, from the inside out.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean, it rots the body? Like, it kills people?”
She nodded. “The older you get, the more the magic begins to feed from you. It drains you,
transforms you. The magic shifts, from something symbiotic to a parasite. And in order to stay alive, to keep up with the power’s constant craving, you have to feed it.”
“With what?” My voice was quiet. So was Scout’s when she answered.
“With the energy of others. Those who keep their power must learn to drink the essence of others—like vampires of the soul. We call them Reapers.”
“Takers of life,” I thought aloud.
“Bringers of death,” she said. “You want a shorter life span, they’re the folks you call.”
“You said they take the energy of others,” I repeated. “What does that mean?”
Jason took a step forward. “Have you ever seen people who you thought seemed drained of energy? Depressed? Like, kids who are sleeping in class all the time, dragging around, that kind of thing?”
“I’m a teenager,” I flatly said. “That’s pretty much how we live.”
“Puberty takes its toll,” Scout agreed, “but hormones aren’t the only problem. Reapers target people with self-confidence issues—people who don’t fit in. And slowly, so they don’t gain too much attention, the Reapers consume their energy. Call it their aura, their soul, their will to live.
That spark that makes us who we are, that makes us more than walking robots.”
“The earthquake and fire kids,” I said, “The ones chasing you—chasingus —under the convent.
Those were the Reapers?”
Scout nodded. “It’s a belated introduction, but meet Alex and Sebastian. She’s a senior in the publics; he’s a sophomore at Northwestern. They don’t actually need to do any reaping right now —they’re too young—but they help find victims for the older ones. That’s the Reaper way. Do whatever you have to do to keep your grip on the magic, regardless of how many people you hurt —or kill—to do it.”
“Okay,” I said. “So these bad guys, these Reapers, suck the souls out of people so they won’t become walking zombies. But what about the rest of you?” I looked at each of them in turn. “I assume you don’t plan on doing any soul sucking in the future?”
Before they could answer, there was another knock on the door. Before I could answer, a scrubs-
clad nurse walked in, tray in hand.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “How are you feeling?” She shooed Scout off the bed, then put the tray—which held a small plastic tumbler of water, a small plastic pitcher, and a chocolate pudding cup.
“Okay. Considering.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, then came to my bedside and measured my pulse. She pulled the end of a tube from a machine connected to the wall, then held it toward me.
“Stick out your tongue,” she said. When I did, she stuck the chunk of cold plastic beneath my tongue, then watched a read-out behind me. “Shouldn’t you all be in school right now?” she asked without glancing up.
“We have passes,” Scout said.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said again. When the machine beeped, she pulled out the thermometer, put it away, and then moved to the end of my bed, where she scribbled something on my chart. When she’d returned it to its slot, she looked at me. “Visiting hours are over in an hour.”
“Sure,” I said. After a final warning glance at Scout, Michael, and Jason, she disappeared out the door again.
Suddenly starving, I pointed at the tray at the end of the bed. “Hand me the pudding cup and get on with the story,” I told Scout. She peeled off the foil top, then handed me the cup and spoon as she licked the remnant of chocolate pudding from the foil. I dug in.
“No soul sucking,” Michael continued. “From our perspective, keeping the power isn’t worth it —not to feed off others. We aren’t willing to pay that cost, to take lives so we can wax poetic about how great it is to be an Adept.”
I swallowed a giant spoonful of chocolate pudding—magical near misses really built up the appetite—then lifted my brows at him. “Adept?”
“Those of us with magic,” he said, “but who are willing to give it up. It’s what we call ourselves. Our philosophy is, we hit twenty-five, and we return our power to the universe. We stop using it. We make a promise, take a vow.”
“It’s an even trade,” Scout said, with a small smile. “No more power, but no more upsetting the balance of the universe.”
“No more being Adepts,” Jason said, his voice quieter and, I thought, a little wistful, as if he’d considered the blow that giving up his magic would be, and he wasn’t thrilled about it.
“Okay,” I said. “So, to review, you’ve got kids with magical powers running around Chicago.
Some of them are willing to give it up when the magic gets predatory—that would be you guys.”
Scout bobbed her head.
“And some of them aren’t willing to give it up, so they have a future of soul sucking to look forward to.”
“That’s a fair summary,” Michael said with a nod.
“But that doesn’t explain why you guys are running around under the convent throwing, what,
firespell, at one another.”
Scout looked up at Michael, who nodded, as if giving her permission to answer the question.
“We found a list,” she said. “A list of, well, I guess you’d call them leads. Kids who’ve been scoped out by Reapers. Kids they’re targeting for a power lunch, no pun intended.”
I nodded my understanding.
“I’ve been working out a spell of protection, a little half charm, half curse, to keep the Reapers from being able to zero in on their targets.”
“How do you do that?”
