I thought Miller would ask me a few questions on our way up to Wuller’s office. He never did. Conrad’s presence seemed to be a deterrent.

Even though it was a Saturday, the school was starting to wake up. The hall lights went on at six, and we could hear a few noises behind the closed doors, but we didn’t see anyone as we walked through the school.

When we reached the door to Wuller’s outer office, Miller motioned to a spot nearby.

“If you’d wait here, please. I’m sure Mr. Wuller won’t be long.”

He left.

Conrad and I leaned against the wall to wait.

I tend to chat or fidget whenever I'm restless, which meant, considering everything that had happened, I wasn't going to be waiting in silence. I started talking to Conrad about all the possible things my dreams could mean, and if any of them had to do with the psychic abilities. It was nothing but speculation, but it helped pass the time.

Thirty minutes later, my legs started to get tired.

I interrupted my own comment to say, “Wuller’s already found the hole, hasn’t he?”

It took Conrad a moment to catch up with the sudden change in topic. Then he said, “He must have.”

“Ah.” I sat cross-legged on the floor and leaned back on the wall. “Then we might as well get comfortable. We could be here for a while.”

“He’s probably getting dressed.”

“Oh? Then he’s taking his sweet time about it. I hate to break it to you, Conrad, but we’re being punished.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Lots of experience. They may call them headmasters over here, but if you cut Wuller in half, you’d see the word ‘principal’ written right in the center of his squishy, red heart, and this is an instinctive principal’s technique—make ‘em wait.”

“Instinctive?”

“Completely instinctive. I don’t think they can help it.”

Conrad sat down on the floor beside me. We both gazed at the windows on the wall across from us. The first light of dawn had set the sky glowing.

“You know,” Conrad said, “being friends with you has been a real experience.”

I smiled.

I didn’t want to curse things by reading too much into it, but my wolfman could have said “working with you” just as easily as “being friends with you.” I guess having to squish together to share a six-inch screen is good for forcing a little closeness.

“You never got in trouble when you were in school?” I asked.

“No. I was the quiet kid.”

My smile widened into a grin. “I believe that. What were your grades like?”

“Mostly As and Bs. A couple of Cs.”

“Pfffff. Nerd.”

“Jealous?”

“I’ve got my GED and nothing to prove.”

“How many times did you get in trouble at school?”

“I lost count.”

“That many?”

“Yeah. This is nothing new to me. The trick is to look contrite.” I glanced at him. “We’re going to have to do something about your ears.”

Conrad reached up and pulled on one of them. “What’s wrong with my ears?”

“They’re upright. They should be drooping a little. You know—bad wolf-boy!”

His face scrunched up, and his ears dipped slightly. “Like this?”

I laughed. “Except I can see you’re forcing it. Conrad, I’m beginning to think you’re not sorry for what you did.”

He shrugged.

A few seconds later, he said, “Mera, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“What did you do to get sent to a detention center?”

There it was. Ever since our conversation that first night, I’d been waiting for Darius or Conrad to ask me that. After the third day, I managed to convince most of my brain that they probably wouldn’t, but, once again, the little blob of my consciousness in charge of anxiety was proven correct. I could sense its smugness.

“You don’t know that I was,” I pointed out.

“Were you?”

Bad wolf-boy. No direct questions.

I sighed. “Yeah. That’s me. The delinquent.” I made a face. “The former delinquent.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“Nah. It wasn’t—it shouldn’t have been a big deal. There was a lot happening in my life, and the timing…It was really bad.”

“How so?”

“My foster parents—you know I was a foster child?”

He nodded.

“My foster parents at the time were under a lot of stress, and they weren’t getting along so great. When it all blew up, it was like dropping an anvil on the already overloaded camel. They ended my placement. It caused all kinds of problems.” My shoulders felt heavy, but I managed to shrug. “I sometimes wonder if that made it easier for them to put me in the center.”

“How old were you?”

“I’d just turned sixteen. They tried to get me for possession with intent to sell. They could only stick the possession charge.”

As the silence stretched on, I glanced over. Conrad was gazing down at me. His expression was impossible to read.

When our eyes met, he looked away. “You don’t seem like the type that would do drugs.”

“That’s what Mariah said when she asked me to hold them. She figured they wouldn’t check my bag.”

“You were holding them for a friend?”

“Yup.”

After a moment, he nodded. “That I can see.”

“Oh?”

“You seem like the kind of person who’d go a long way for the people you like.”

I snorted. “Like all the way to juvie.”

“Why didn’t you tell the judge what happened?”

I gave Conrad a long look.

“Right,” he said. “You’re no snitch.”

I did my best to keep a straight face. “First rule on the inside, noob—snitches get stitches.”

He leaned closer. “Thank you for coaching me. I’d hate to make a mistake.”

My nose crinkled when I smiled. What a silly dope.

“So what actually happened?” he asked.

“Mariah was a courier for a gang. The prosecutors were trying to get from her to the gang leaders, but I got in the way. I think that’s why they tried to get me for intent to sell—a felony verses a misdemeanor. They were probably hoping I’d cave-in and tell them what I knew.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Kind of? Like, I regret letting Mariah do that, but I needed to learn to stand up for myself, and—believe me—that helped. And it gave my therapist a really good excuse to smack me upside the head and make me think about what I wanted my life to be like. Or, the rest of my life, as it turned out.”

“What did you decide?”

“Huh?”

“What did you want your life to be like?”

For some reason, my heart hurt. It played like sadness or longing, but it was so fragile and quiet I couldn’t tell which it was. I watched the glowing gray sky beyond the diamond-mullioned windows as I spoke.

“I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be happy and have fun, and I didn’t want to hurt people. I wanted to be the kind of person that made the world a nicer place because I was there.”

Conrad lifted a hand and placed it on my head. The fur between his fingers tickled my scalp as he rubbed it. “Good plan, zombie-girl.”

I didn’t mind that he was rubbing my head. It felt good, and considering how much I patted his head, it was only fair.

Wait.

“Conrad, are you petting me or rubbing my bald head for good luck?”

“Must be for luck. You have the saddest fur coat I’ve ever seen.” He pressed my head down, then lifted his hand away. “Thank you for telling me what happened. I’ve been busting my brain trying to figure out what you could have done, but I couldn’t picture you as a gang leader.”

“Yeah, I don’t like long skirts.”

“What?”

“Never mind. You haven’t seen those anime yet. Oh! I could have been a cat burglar!”

“You couldn’t even sneak around a school without getting caught.”

“That’s because my partner in crime thought five in the morning was a good time for demolition work.”

“I’m just saying, a cat burglar would have stopped me. And do they even have partners?”

“Fine.” I tried to push him off balance by leaning into his arm. It was like trying to shove a building. “Then what kind of crime did you come up with?”

His enormous shoulders shifted in a shrug. “Best I could figure, it had to be something like ferret smuggling.”

My laugh echoed in the empty hall.

“Is that a crime?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I could easily see you picking up something cute and furry and walking away with it.”

“From now on, if anybody asks, that’s my crime. I smuggle ferrets.”

“Got it.”

Conrad raised his nose, then turned his head toward the stairway over the great hall. He let out a quiet, discontent hum.

“Is someone coming?” I asked.

“You could say that.”

Most of the time, I would have noticed his odd response, but it had been four years since I was last in trouble. I was feeling nervous, and I was determined not to let Conrad know. One must protect their innocent little kōhai.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me handle it.”

“Anything you say, Boss.”

We stood up and turned toward the stairs.

The man that came around the corner was not Wayne Wuller. It was Count Darius Vasil.

It’s easy to forget how imposing an expensive suit can make a man look—right up until he’s sauntering toward you with a knowing look in his eyes. There was no doubt in my mind, Wuller had told him everything.

He stopped in front of us.

“Good morning,” Darius said.

“It was all my fault, sir,” I blurted.

“Yes. I assumed that.” His eyes went from me, to the wolfman, then back to me. “But I am wondering how you forced Conrad to help you.”

I made a mental note to plan my lies in advance next time and said with all the conviction I could muster, “I twisted his arm.”

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The vampire didn’t smile, but I did notice a sudden tension in his cheeks. “I see.” He turned to Conrad. “You should be careful of your friends, Mr. Bauer. This one will get you into trouble.”

“I’m starting to pick up on that.”

“Wuller is only a second behind me. I have one question before he gets here—did you put that hole in the floor?”

“Yes.”

“On purpose?”

“Yes.”

“I look forward to an explanation when this is over. I recommend that you let me do most of the talking.”

Gosh. Between me and Darius, Conrad would never have to speak again.

He chose to anyway.

“Emerra’s already got dibs on being boss-man.”

When the count’s eyes turned my direction, I immediately raised both hands in surrender. “And I’m happy to step down in recognition of my worthy rival.”

Darius raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t want to fight me for the honor?”

“Nope! I’m good.”

Wuller came around corner. He was dressed in his typical tweeds. His bushy mustache highlighted the intensity of his scowl, like a furry underline (or would it be an overline?). He walked up to his door without saying a word to any of us and unlocked it.

Darius was the first to follow him in.

Wuller crossed over to the door of his inner office and opened that one as well. To get into the room, I had to pass under his disapproving gaze. It was the polar opposite of the friendly, welcoming regard he’d shown me the last time I’d come to his office as the honored guest being treated to tea. My stomach soured. I couldn’t bring myself to feel guilty about breaking the floor, but I liked Wuller, and I hated the idea that I had upset him.

Once we were all inside, he stalked over to his desk and sat down, still without saying anything.

Conrad shut the door behind us. Darius, as the new boss-man, took his rightful place in the chair across from Wuller. Conrad and I stood a respectful distance behind him.

Now that the stage was set, Wuller laid into us.

I was wrong about him being upset. A better word would have been “apoplectic.” He didn’t yell, but he was eloquent about everything that had infuriated him. It was not a short list. It started with me and Conrad and eventually reached back in time to the inception of the Torr itself and how it grew to be such a degenerate company of hidebound, elitist, zombie-brained oligarchs.

I got the feeling that because Wuller made it a point not to swear, he’d learned to be really creative with his insults.

I glanced at Conrad. His ears were down, but it wasn’t the droop of contriteness. If I had to guess, I’d say he was wary.

Darius sat across from Wuller, listening with a look of polite interest on his face. It was the same expression a businessman would wear while listening to his accountant report less than spectacular earnings for the quarter. I got a vague sense that when Wuller was done ranting, the count would say, “Hmmm. We must do better, ladies and gentlemen.”

I marveled at his calm. No wonder he was the boss-man.

His calm also seemed to be affecting Wuller, but the headmaster wasn’t impressed by it. He was incensed.

Wuller broke off, mid comment, to ask, “Have you nothing to say?”

Darius waited a moment before answering. “I prefer to listen when others are speaking.”

Wuller’s eyes narrowed, but he couldn’t find anything in that statement to criticize.

“And now?” he demanded.

“Are you done, sir?” Darius asked. “You’ve made it clear you’re angry, but I’m still lost as to why. I wondered if you would ever bother to explain it.”

Wuller did not like that answer. For the first time, the headmaster’s voice rose.

“My complaint should be obvious, sir!”

“Should it? I’ve heard a lot about us as a team, a lot about the other teams sent by the Torr, a lot about the Torr itself—but you never addressed what Mr. Bauer and Miss Cole actually did.”

For two whole seconds, Wuller was too astonished to speak.

When he finally found his voice, the words came out in a blast of noise: “They destroyed my school!”

Darius, always a stickler for correctness, was not about to let that stand.

“They put a hole in the false floor of a basement that had already been condemned. Considering the mold, the whole floor would have had to be ripped up anyway. What harm was done?”

“Harm? This school is not their property to do with as they please! And what, exactly, were they doing there at five in the morning?”

“Ah, yes. Thank you for bringing up that point.”

Wuller blinked like a man who’s shoving his hardest against a wall that’s suddenly no longer there.

Darius went on, “You seem to be laboring under a severe misapprehension, and I don’t want it to happen again.”

Apparently, the reason the wall was no longer there was because it had swung around on a pivot to hit the headmaster from behind.

Wuller could only gape with shock and mute indignation.

As Darius spoke, his clipped words grew louder.

“My colleagues were invited here by the Torr to investigate your claims about the psychic powers manifesting at your school. You have no authority over them. They do not”—there was a loud crack when the vampire’s hand hit the desk—“have to obey the rules you set down for your students, and you had no right to treat them as if they were misbehaving teenagers!” Darius continued, his voice, cold and fast, “If you want to talk about offenses and resentment, I will be happy to start and finish that conversation with you.”

“I invited you here as my guests!” Wuller shouted. “I did not think that would include having you sneak around my building at five in the morning as if you were investigating a crime!”

“Your misunderstanding of our priorities does not give you leave to pretend that you’re their babysitter!”

“My misunderstanding? Tell me, Mr. Vasil, what exactly are your priorities? Does it include allowing them to snoop around blocked-off areas and destroy my property?”

“Our highest priority is the well-being of your students!”

“That’s my priority!”

“Is it, Mr. Wuller? Then I wonder why the Torr had to send us in to investigate. Shouldn’t you have done it yourself?”

“Investigate what? The powers? I know they’re real, Mr. Vasil—and so should you!”

For a moment, the room was motionless. Then Darius shook his head.

“You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“Mr. Wuller, the manifestation of these powers is not normal! Someone is doing something to these children. They need to be protected!”

Wuller lunged to the front of his chair. “Look at you! You insinuate that I’m oblivious, but did you ever stop to consider your own prejudice? You’re so certain that you know everything there is to know about psychic powers that there’s no room in your head for new evidence!”

“Which do you think is more likely?” Darius said. “That one-third of the boys at your school—one-third, when the normal ratio is less than one in a billion—”

“Less than one in a billion! By whose statistics?”

“Centuries of data collected by the Torrs.”

“Ah, yes. The Torr. An institution devoted to the study and control of magic. Forgive me if I’m somewhat suspicious of their data, but aren’t psychics out of their purview?”

“Psychics don’t use magic,” Darius said. “That doesn’t mean they’re out of our purview. I think your understanding of the Torr is incomplete.”

Wuller opened his hands wide. “I dare say it is! I admit my ignorance! I’m not a magician. I only know what Miller’s told me.”

Did he just say Miller? I thought.

He went on, “Like any reasonable person, I trust that your knowledge of the Torr is far greater than mine because you’re involved with them. But you would rather trust their limited, perhaps biased, information on psychics rather than go to the societies devoted to studying them.”

“You mean like the one you’re a member of?” Darius said.

A sudden silence fell.

“Yes,” Wuller said at last.

“I got the chance to visit with them yesterday.”

“And why did you go there? More investigating?”

“I needed information.”

“Did you find it?”

“I did. Their records were admirable.”

“Then you know that less than one in a billion is a ludicrous claim!”

“I found them informative. I never said they were accurate. Mr. Wuller, perhaps you can clear something up for me.”

The headmaster scowled again. Deeper, this time. “What is it?”

“I was under the impression that you weren’t a psychic.”

“I’m not.”

“And you specifically told the Torr that you weren’t a psychic, and reiterated that statement to each of the teams that came here.”

“I did. What, exactly, is unclear to you? I am not and have never claimed to be a psychic.”

“Then how do you explain your rejected application to be recognized as one?”

Wuller’s face hardened. Conrad shifted beside me, but when I glanced over, his expression was blank.

“You’ve made a mistake, sir.” Wuller’s voice was quiet, but about as hard as his expression. Each word could have been a jagged, thrown stone.

Darius pulled out his phone and opened his photo app. I glimpsed a picture of a piece of paper before he put his phone on the desk and shoved it toward the headmaster.

“Wayne Wuller. Application filed on the fifth of August, 2008. Reported psychic ability, cognitive empath.”

The headmaster didn’t even glance at the phone. “Wayne Wuller! Born on the fourteenth of April, 1990! He was my son.”

If I hadn’t seen it with my own magical eyes, I never would have believed it. Darius Vasil had made a mistake. A bad one. To his credit, the vampire managed to rally in a dignified silence.

“I see,” Darius said. “I’m sorry. I should have read more carefully. Why was your son’s application rejected?”

“The claim could never be proved.”

“Because of its subjective nature?”

“Because he was dead. I applied to have him recognized as a psychic posthumously. I thought—” The headmaster’s voice suddenly gave out.

I saw it then, all the sadness hiding behind his eyes. He would never allow himself to cry—certainly not in front of us—but the tears were there, and a grief as heavy as the whole world. It hurt to look at.

He swallowed and tried again. “I thought I could at least see that he was recognized.”

Darius didn’t say anything.

Wuller decided to fill the silence. As he spoke, his voice took on a rough, angry edge, but there was none of the real indignation he’d had before. I think he was using the anger as an armor to support his tired soul.

“My son killed himself when he was seventeen years old. I know that everything I have done since then is far too little, far too late. I failed in my duty as a father, but I couldn’t change the past. Instead, I decided to try to prevent it from happening again. That has been my one driving passion for over nine years, Mr. Vasil. The life of a psychic is a hard one! It’s full of pain and uncertainty! They’re trapped in a world that doesn’t understand them and surrounded by people who refuse to believe them. That is why I founded Setlan on Lee. I gave up my whole fortune to do it! And even if you and the Torr refuse to acknowledge us, I will never give up on this school. If I save the life of even one boy, it will have been worth it.”

There was another silence, but Wuller had either run out of things to say or the anger he needed to say them.

When Darius spoke, a pressure, as light as settling silk, fell over me. This was a new feature of his vampiric influence: a gentle shhhhh that sat on your skin.

“Does that desire to save even one boy reach only as far as the psychics?”

“No,” the headmaster rasped. Eventually. “I worry about the psychics more than the other boys, but they’re all important to me. Every one of them.”

“Mr. Wuller, I’m asking you to worry about those boys. If you’re right about these psychic powers, then you’ll lose nothing from our skepticism. But what if someone is experimenting on your students, without their consent, and without their knowledge?”

The headmaster took a breath and looked away.

“This morning started a great deal earlier and was far more stressful than I expected it to be,” Wuller said. “Our conversation might be more productive if we carry on after breakfast. Our breakfasts are late on Saturdays, but that will give me some time to think.”

“That’s a sage point, Mr. Wuller,” Darius said.

“Miss Cole!”

I jumped at the unexpected hail. “Sir?”

Wuller raised his eyes to me. “Will you be joining us? I hope there’s some reasonable explanation for what happened this morning, and I would like to hear it.”

A reasonable explanation? Tall order. I wondered if he’d be satisfied with a barely coherent one.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Excuse us,” Darius said.

With those two words, the gentle weight of his influence became a force that pressed in on me until I couldn’t breathe. The vampire might as well have placed two iron plates on my chest, one after the other. It may have sounded like a polite request, but it was an order.

Wuller nodded.

Vasil stood up and led me and Conrad from the room. He shut the door behind us, then, under his breath, he said, “Conrad, what do you think?”

We all drew together in a tight huddle.

“He wasn’t faking it,” Conrad whispered. “The anger, the indignation…the grief—it was all real.”

Darius’s eyes flicked over to me. “Does she—”

“She knows,” Conrad said.

At first I was confused, but then I realized what they were so cryptically referring to.

“He told me about his nasal telepathy,” I said.

The count’s brow furrowed. “It isn’t telepathy. You need to learn these terms, Emerra.”

“Speaking of abilities I constantly mislabel, could you maybe warn me if you plan on using your Jedi mind trickery? That time was intense.”

“You felt something?” Conrad’s voice rose in disbelief.

A sharp hiss escaped the edge of Darius’s mouth. When we looked at him, he glanced toward the side of the room. Our gazes followed his.

Alex Miller was sitting at his desk, seemingly absorbed in his work. He wasn’t a bad actor either.

“We need to get back to the room,” Darius said. “We have a lot to talk about. When’s breakfast?”

“Brunch is at ten,” Conrad said. “No lunch.”

“No lunch?”

“Most of the boys go into town on Saturday,” I explained. “They have some food you can buy in the dining hall from two to four. Hey, Darius, when I say ‘scone’ and they say ‘scone,’ are we talking about the same thing?”

“Not even close.”

“Rats.”

“Get the biscuits.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Trust me.”

He headed toward the outer door. Conrad followed him. I trailed a step behind…then another step behind. Then another.

Darius stopped with his hand on the handle and looked back. I was standing in the middle of the room.

“You guys go on without me,” I called. “I’ll catch up in a minute.”

The vampire nodded, and the two of them left. When the door closed behind them, I turned to Mr. Miller.

He was still pretending to be absorbed in his work, but if he was hoping that would be enough to stop me from bothering him, he knew nothing about American women.

I plopped down on the seat next to him and thumped my finger on the top of his head.

“Ouch!” he said.

“You ratted me out.”

His eyes slid over to me for a fraction of a second. I was leaning back in the chair and smiling at him. When he saw that, he relaxed. His shoulders dropped by an inch.

“You don’t seem too upset by it,” he muttered. “What were you doing down there anyway?”

“Looking for clues.”

His eyebrows jumped. “Did you find any?”

I shrugged. It was easier than trying to explain what I didn’t understand.

“Are you the one who told Wuller about the Torr?” I asked.

He put his pen down. “Yes. I thought you knew.”

I didn’t have Conrad’s super-nose, so I couldn’t tell for sure, but Miller’s manner was so simple and open, I thought he was telling the truth.

“How did you know about them?” I asked. “Are you a magician?”

His head bounced with a brief, silent laugh. “Ah, no. That would have been nice, but—no. My uncle is an alchemist. Two of my cousins were born with talents, but I missed out on that lottery.”

“Were you jealous?”

“It would have been impossible not to be. Magic is…special.” He blushed. “That’s probably why I became so interested in the psychic community. I knew I didn’t have magical talent, but no one knew who or why someone would show up with a psychic ability.”

“Is there a way to train yourself to become psychic?”

Miller’s shoulders fell again. “People have claimed that there is, but I haven’t seen any compelling evidence. To be honest, Miss Cole, before I came to work here, I was beginning to wonder if there was such a thing as a real psychic. I grew up surrounded by magic. To me, that was the real power. Being a psychic seemed like second place. I think that’s why I could be more skeptical. I wasn’t in awe of the powers. I didn’t need them to be real. But to many of the people in the Psychic Society, the powers are something to believe in—like a faith.”

“Does that include Wuller?”

“It was less of a faith with Mr. Wuller, and more of a perfect certainty.”

“Because of his son?”

Miller didn’t answer.

I pointed to Wuller’s personal office. “Could you hear us?”

“I wasn’t listening in.”

The assistant’s red cheeks betrayed him.

“I don’t think you would have had to listen hard,” I said. “There was some shouting going on toward the end.”

“That, uh…that particular wall is one that we put in. It’s thinner than the other walls in the school.”

“Then you must have heard him telling us about his son. Wayne Wuller—”

“Yes. Wayne Wuller Junior. I know. I was the one the society asked to review the claim.”

A ripple of shock zipped through me. “You reviewed it?”

“Yes.”

“Does Wuller know that?”

“That’s how we met, Miss Cole.”

“And he knows that you rejected it?”

“I warned him at the outset that most posthumous applications are officially rejected, but they’re also filed and counted in a different category. There’s a difference between ‘suspected false’ and ‘unable to be proven true.’”

“How do you review a claim for someone who’s dead?”

“We go over any relevant personal information we can. Sometimes its newspaper clippings, journal entries, accounts from witnesses. In Wayne’s case, he kept notebooks. It was mostly art, but there were some personal entries I could review. I also interviewed any of his friends that were willing to talk to me.”

“And?” I said.

“And what?”

“Was he an empath?”

Miller pressed his lips together.

I scooted closer. “I’m not asking for your official report. I know that. I want to know what you really think.”

Miller’s voice was barely above a whisper when he answered: “I think that Wayne Wuller was a sad young man who didn’t get help in time. And I think the saddest thing in the world is that he will never know how much his father loved him.”

“He wasn’t an empath?”

“No, but I think, at least some of the time, he believed he was.”

I fell silent. I needed some time to sit with the sympathy that had invaded my heart. It had snuck in through the crack that appeared when I saw Wuller’s grief, and now it grew until I could no longer ignore it.

“He means it, you know,” Miller said.

I looked up.

“Mr. Wuller cares about those boys, and he’s more serious about this school than you can imagine.”

An uncomfortable smile quirked up the edges of my mouth. “Yeah, but do you think he’s more serious about saving those boys or proving that psychic powers are real?”

“The boys, Miss Cole.”

The confidence in Miller’s voice clamped a vice-like hand around my attention. It was the same tone I’d heard him use when he’d confronted Reisig about his poor record keeping. Miller’s nervousness had vanished. He met my eyes without hesitation, and his face was stern.

“He would save the boys,” he said. “Trust me.”

Wow. That made two people who wanted me to trust them. In one morning. And it was barely seven.

On the other hand, Darius was always certain of himself. Miller? Not so much. Which meant I was a lot more inclined to listen when he was certain.

“I’ll let you get back to your work,” I said, standing up.

I left the office. Conrad was leaning against the wall a few feet down the hall. His arms were crossed, his eyes were half closed, and his ears were alert—a casual guardian mode, if ever I saw one. He didn’t look up when I came out, but he pushed off the wall and fell in step beside me as I passed.