Darius was walking the grounds of the school. The school locked all its doors at ten, and it was well past two in the morning, but that was no obstacle to a vampire that wanted privacy and who liked a lot of space to wander while he talked on the phone.

“It took her less than a second,” Darius said. “I had her do it for me again. Both times, the same two boys!”

“What did she say?” Iset asked.

“She said they ‘looked wrong.’”

“Then it seems that whoever took the notes was right—the boys were faking it.”

“That’s not what’s bothering me, and you know it.”

There was a slight change in Iset’s tone that, even from three thousand miles away, showed that the mummy was amused. There was no expression for Darius to picture, but he could imagine her body language: how she would lean back in her chair and lift her bandaged chin. With no other context, he pictured her in the library, as always, surrounded by books.

“Darius, I’m not sure I do know what’s bothering you,” she said. “Emerra’s good at spotting fakes. I thought she proved that with the scroll.”

“It would be nice to have a clearer picture of what kind of powers she has.”

“I’m sure she’d agree with you.”

“When I called Jacky, he said—quote—‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know.’”

“Then I guess that you, like the rest of us, will have to wait and see—or, god forbid, learn to live with uncertainty. Dr. Belliston and I haven’t even figured out why her body appears to be so normal, but you think you have a right to a full dossier of her powers? Before Emerra even knows them?”

“It’s not—it’s not that.” The vampire stopped and took a breath. “She had a nightmare last night. We don’t know if it’s because of her powers or if she simply had a bad dream…”

His voice trailed off as he thought about the sketch of the bars and the scribbled darkness beyond them. A breeze made the empty branches of the trees around him moan and creak.

“You’re still worried about her,” Iset observed.

Darius kicked a rock lying by the toe of his shoe. It sailed off into the night. There was a distant crack when it hit the wall.

Iset went on, “Have you apologized to her?”

The count bowed his head. “Yes, I’ve apologized.”

“And?”

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“She says we’re good.”

“I’m glad.”

The vampire raised his head and kept walking. “All right, back to the matter at hand.”

“Which one?” the mummy said wryly. “Their psychics or our seer?”

“Were you able to create a database from the pictures I sent you?”

“I don’t have all the information entered, but I can give you what I’ve found so far.”

“Please.”

“The earliest powers seem to have manifested only about a year ago. They showed up sporadically at first, but as time went on, they started appearing at more frequent intervals.”

“Is the rate steady?”

“Not perfectly steady, no. But it’s showing definite trends, and, Darius, I think the powers are getting stronger.”

“Are you talking about the complexity?”

“No, the powers are all the same—pyrokinesis, telekinesis, clairvoyance—but what the boys can do is increasing. The first telekinetic I’ve found could scoot a plastic ruler along a table—”

“While the one I saw threw a ten-pound weight into a wall.”

“Exactly.”

“And the power-increase isn’t showing up after they get training?”

“This is from their first display of power.”

The vampire came to a stop. The stone wall was in front of him. His eyes rose from the ground, all the way up its height. He had assumed that Emerra had been exaggerating.

“Why did they make it so damn tall?” he muttered.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s nothing.” Darius turned away from the wall, but he thought he could still feel it surrounding him. He walked toward the school. “Iset, are these powers dangerous?”

“It’s hard to say,” she said. “Whoever wrote the reports tried to keep them as clinical as possible. The pyrokinetics are certainly making an impact. One of the papers included a note to double the number of fire extinguishers in the dorms.”

“How many did they have before?”

“They didn’t say”

“Have any of the boys been hurt?”

“I don’t know. If they have been hurt—which seems inevitable—the records aren’t being kept with these files.”

“How many of the psychics have left the school?”

“None.”

“None of them?”

“Not that I’ve found. The powers started manifesting in the first- and second-year students. Some of those second-year boys are now third-years, but they haven’t graduated yet.”

Darius sighed and pressed into his forehead with his thumb and the tips of his fingers. “You’re saying these powers all showed up around the same time, with only a limited set of boys, they appear to be manifesting more frequently, and they’re becoming stronger?”

“That seems to cover it,” Iset said. “I tried to figure out if their powers all appeared at night, but aside from the pyrokinetics and the levitators, it’s impossible to say.”

“What about the pyrokinetics and the levitators?”

“All of them appeared at night. I haven’t found an exception.”

Darius felt a grim satisfaction at the accuracy of his intuition.

“Was it Emerra’s dreams that made you think of it?” Iset asked.

Darius passed out of the trees and shrubs onto the manicured lawn. “Poisoning.”

“What?”

“If we suspect someone’s being poisoned, we check to see if their symptoms show up around the same time each day.”

There was a brief pause, then the sound of Iset’s laugh. Darius smiled.

“Too practical?” he asked.

“Perfectly so. I’ll waste my time musing over the power of the conscious and subconscious mind while you’re out there catching criminals.”

Darius was halfway across the manicured lawn when a sound intruded on his awareness. It was out of place among the auditory clutter that the vampire had acclimatized to. He stopped.

“Hold on,” he whispered, moving the phone from his ear.

He closed his eyes, letting a million noises wash over him, trying to pick out the pieces that didn’t belong.

“Darius?” Iset said.

The count raised the phone back to his ear. “I think someone’s awake.”

“Is it Emerra?”

“No.” He raised his eyes to the grid of dark windows set into the back wing. “It’s coming from the wrong part of the school.”