But we couldn’t stay there.

I knew that even as I closed my own eyes finally and we both drifted to sleep. I knew it when I woke in the morning, though my sleep had been dreamless and I’d spent the night with Leon’s arm curled around me.

That sense was there, the almost-Knowing, creeping in with the daylight that pooled across the bedspread and our tangled limbs. I felt it in every inhale and exhale. For a long moment, I looked at Leon, still asleep, his hair tousled, the trace of stubble darkening his jaw. Then I rose from the bed to check my phone.

No messages. No calls. No texts.

I tried calling Mom, then Tink, then Elspeth. None of them answered.

After he woke, Leon checked his phone, which was likewise empty of messages. “If they’re busy coordinating, they probably don’t have time to talk,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced. His brow was furrowed, his eyes troubled.

When morning burned into afternoon and there’d been no communication, I went through my list of calls again, leaving messages that sounded slightly frantic even to my own ears. Next I tried calling my grandfather. When he didn’t answer either, I searched through my call log until I found Mr. Alvarez’s number, and listened to it ring and ring. Through voice mail, his words sounded thin and far away.

And every moment, that almost-Knowing grew louder. It spoke with Iris’s voice. Unless, of course, you’d rather the rest of us die so your friend can live, it accused.

They could be dying now, I thought.

They could be already dead.

I closed my eyes for a moment, then left the cabin and walked down to the dock, where Leon was sitting, staring out over the lake. I sat down beside him, removing my sandals and slipping my feet into the water. The chill sent a quick shiver up me.

He eyed me sideways. “We’re not going for another swim, are we?”

I didn’t answer right away. In the middle of the lake, the afternoon sun glinted off a boat drifting on the waves. A few ducks were idling near the reeds that grew along the shore. The sky was nearly empty, nothing but wide blue and a few wispy clouds like faint white brushstrokes. Finally, I turned to Leon and said in one long exhale: “We have to go back.” I was expecting a fight, so when he opened his mouth, I hurried to add, “Just hear me out.”

“I wasn’t going to argue,” he said quietly. “I was going to agree.”

It took me a second. “You agree?”

“Lucy shouldn’t have sent us away. And we shouldn’t have gone.”

I nodded, biting my lip. “Something’s wrong. I feel it.”

“You Know something?”

“Not exactly.” I paused, studying him a moment before speaking again. He was watching me expectantly. I sucked in a breath. It was time for my own confession. “I need to tell you something, and I need you not to comment at first, no matter how much you want to.”

His gaze turned cautious. “That’s promising.”

“Starting now.” I looked down at the lake, watching the ripples spread out as I moved my feet. Below the surface, the water was clear enough to see the sand, close enough that I could dive in and touch it and then kick away from the dock, swimming away from the words I didn’t want to speak. Instead, I gripped the edge of the dock with both hands. “Iris told me I need to kill Gideon. She said that the reason the Beneath is awake is because of what happened on Harlow Tower six months ago. Gideon—Verrick—is connected to the Astral Circle, and when I released its power, that…triggered something Beneath. The Circle is keeping it awake.”

He was silent a long moment before saying, “And that’s why it’s running loose across the Cities.”

I nodded again. “It’s gaining strength. She said the way to stop it is to cut the link between Gideon and the Circle.”

“By killing him.”

His voice was flat, without emotion. He’d told me he didn’t want revenge—and I didn’t think he did, precisely. But that didn’t mean he wanted Verrick to live, either.

“I was trying to think of an alternative,” I said softly.

“To save him.”

“Yes.” I took a breath. “It’s not about whether he deserves to be saved. It’s not about what he’s done. I know who he was. I’m not forgetting it. It’s just—what I need to do. I was thinking if I found some other way of breaking the connection with the Circle, then Gideon wouldn’t have to die. So we have to go back. I have to end it. I have to at least try.”

Leon’s words were almost a whisper. “And if you can’t break the connection?”

I kept my own voice steady, though my insides twisted and my heart was hammering. I met his gaze without flinching. “I’ll do what I have to.”

We took it by steps.

We’d decided to teleport instead of drive—Leon would return for Mom’s car later, provided we survived. He stood looking down at me a moment, setting his hands on my hips before gently tugging me toward him. Below us, the lake lapped at the dock, and somewhere nearby a bird was cooing. Everything here was calm. Open sky. The smell of wet sand and grass. But my entire body tingled, pinpricks of fear in my flesh.

Leon must have sensed my unease. “We don’t know what we’re going to find there,” he said. “It could be nothing is happening, and Lucy’s just going to try to send us away from the Circle again.”

“Something is happening,” I said.

“Then we have to be ready,” he said. “To fight.”

“I won’t hesitate.”

He nodded. His arms wrapped around me, pressing me tightly against him. I gripped his shirt and closed my eyes.

We blinked through emptiness into a wide field all yellow with dandelions, and then into a wooded area with pines stretching up overhead, thick branches blocking out the sun. Then again into a hayfield, and then again, until we were home.

I could feel the change immediately, the second we arrived in my house. Leon had brought us to the living room, where nothing looked wrong or out of place—there was the pale blue sofa with Gram’s needlepoint pillows, and the coffee table with its pile of coasters—but something had shifted subtly. Something was off-balance, askew. I didn’t hear the kick of the AC, but the room was freezing. That sickly sweet stench of corruption hung everywhere, and the breath I drew into my lungs felt both sticky and sharp, like the air had grown edges. I coughed, then sucked air in through my teeth. I took a step back from Leon and looked around, searching the semi-dark around us. The hall clock was ticking erratically. The ground beneath me was soggy, as though the room had been flooded, but when I bent down and ran my fingers along the carpet, the fibers were dry, cool to the touch.

Leon took two long strides and then stood in the living room doorway, calling out, “Lucy?”

I moved up beside him. “Mom!”

Silence answered us. I told myself not to panic. We’d agreed that we should try my house first, but there was no guarantee Mom would be there. If she was helping to coordinate with the Guardians, she could be anywhere. I waited, listening, but all I heard was that frantic ticking in the hall and a thin, high sound from outside.

“She’s not here,” I said.

“Something is.” Leon touched my arm, drawing me away from the door as he stepped through and peered up the dark stairs. “I can feel it.”

“No,” I said. I’d turned toward the entryway. Through the windows that flanked the front door, I could see my yard and the edge of the street. “Not here.”

I jerked the door open and stepped out into what should have been sunlight.

Leon came to stand beside me. Together, we gazed upward.

“What in the hell?” he breathed.

The sky was gray, but not with clouds. The color seemed to have been leeched out of it. When I searched the horizon, I saw the edge of blue here and there, but everywhere above us was the pale color of ash, like we’d stepped into a black-and-white film.