"Yeah, it's fine," Ophelia said. She stared past us at the two suited delvers, eyes empty. Completely empty. The lie came out perfectly, emotionless and without any tells—or anything else. It was just words.

The Fritch twins looked at Ellen, then at me. I had Tallas's Dueling Blade in one hand and armor on. Ellen was obviously mid-cast. And Ophelia had definitely just used her magic. Things were not fine in the hallway.

But before I could make a move, Ophelia kept talking. "Eleanor, you don't want this scene. Not here. Not in Mr. Traynor's offices. And especially not during one of his parties."

Ellen prickled at her full name. I reached for her arm and touched it with my free hand, letting my fingers sit on it for a moment. "I think she's right."

She shuddered as she forced herself to breathe. Then she nodded stiffly. "Of course, Miss St. Vrain. We'll be seeing you, then?"

"You will," Ophelia said. Her tone didn't change. Not once.

"Then we're good here?" the smaller of the twins asked.

"Yes, we're good here," I said quickly, before anyone else could fill in the space. Things were moving quickly, and I wanted control over something. All I'd wanted was to meet one of the Traynor team's delvers—any of them except the one we'd made contact with. Instead, we had an ultimatum from Bob, at least three C-Rank delvers closing in around us, and Jessie convinced that Ophelia was…not a friend, but an ally. I needed a minute to focus.

The Fritch twins left, and Ophelia shrugged as she followed them. She didn't say anything else, and as she passed me, I felt the urge to take a step to the side, giving her a few feet of space.

Then we were alone in the hall.

"That's Ophelia St. Vrain," Jessie said. She stood from her chair and started heading for the door. "We had a conversation about—"

"Not here," Ellen interrupted. She got the chair moving. "I can't fight a whole team of C-Rankers, and—"

"—Ophelia isn't our friend. If she has the choice between working with her team to get rid of you and helping you, she's getting rid of you," I finished.

I didn't know why the Lonely Mage gave me such a bad feeling, but she very much did. The whole set-up did. It felt like we'd walked into a trap portal. But I didn't understand how the trap worked. "Let's get out of here."

Ellen nodded. "Deimos is parked across the street. It's on its way to pick us up right now."

"What about Stephen?" Jessie asked.

"Okay, we'll take Deimos—"

"What about Stephen?" Jessie repeated as I pushed her chair down the hall. She followed me, hand on the wall for support, and I rolled my eyes and slowed down for her.

"We had Stephen head for the bus stop. He's getting in contact with Jeff and the rest of the team. We're supposed to meet them at the 303 Wall's west gate," Ellen said. "Now let's go. Deimos will be waiting."

We hurried through the front door, Ellen playing the role of the host's daughter as we moved. Deimos was waiting, and we wrestled the chair into the back of the car. Two minutes later, we were on the freeway, cruising west and listening to pulsing, deep drum and bass. Only once the music really got going did Ellen say anything else. "Okay. You knew Ophelia was the absolute wrong person to talk to, but you talked to her anyway?"

"I didn't have a choice. She kind of, sort of kidnapped me. A little bit."

I turned in my seat to stare at Jessie. "Seriously? You're pretty relaxed about that."

"Yeah, seriously. You ran into Stephen. Didn't he tell you?" Jessie asked. "She took me to the offices before I could do anything, then we talked. She wants our help. Apparently, she's the closest to B-Rank on the team, but she's worried that Ellen's going to take the deal. I don't know if you noticed, but she's not very likable."

Ellen rolled her eyes from the driver's seat.

Jessie plowed onward. "Anyway, she knows the team doesn't really have her back. She doesn't trust them, and they don't trust her. It's not a good situation for her at all. But if she can remove the threat of a B-Rank mage taking her position, she can keep the job."

"And did you tell her about…" I trailed off.

"No. I didn't have time. She steered the conversation. But I did get her phone number, so we can maybe meet another time."

Deimos ripped through the traffic fast enough for their brake lights and headlights to flicker on the car's ceiling. We kept talking, trying to figure out exactly what Ophelia wanted from us. Her move didn't make sense. If it was just an attempt to get Ellen to renounce the spot on the Traynor team, that was easy; all Ophelia had to do was nothing. Contacting Jessie put the mage at more risk, not less.

At the end, as we passed through the checkpoint and drove out into the Sonoran Desert, we had to admit that we just didn't know enough. We were operating on incomplete information, and so was Ophelia—and until we could put our heads together and really work through it, we wouldn't see the whole picture.

Sophia had a car. It wasn't anything like Deimos, but when the rusted, sun-faded hatchback pulled up and the rest of our team climbed out of it in full delving gear, my shoulders loosened up for the first time all night. With all six of us here and ready to go, Jessie was safe—and so were we. The Traynor team would have to be crazy to take a shot at us.

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We hiked into the desert for a few minutes, Jessie leaning on my shoulder and texting with Stephen as we went. Then Ellen squatted in a clearing in the rabbit brush. "Okay, what do we know, and what's our next move?"

"We know Ophelia isn't happy. We know Bob's running out of patience. And we know that Ellen doesn't think we can fight him as it stands," I said, raising an eyebrow and sitting next to her.

"I don't think that," Ellen said. "I know that. I mean, you can definitely beat him in a fight, but…okay, hear me out for a minute?"

"Sure," I said. Jeff nodded, and Raul sat in the dirt and looked at Ellen.

Ellen closed her eyes for a minute. Then she nodded. "So, Bob Traynor runs the Traynor Corporation. He's not a hands-off CEO who leaves the day-to-day to his minions, either. He's involved in everything. I mean, everything. Sewage, electricity—he owns probably half of the Wickenberg fields. And he's involved in all of it personally. He's made himself indispensable to Phoenix, the California cities, and probably the Monster Eaters, too. A Traynor subsidiary makes those panels for their cars. He's everywhere, and he's got fingers in every pie. So, you can't just remove him from the equation."

"Are you really discussing killing your dad?" I asked.

"No. Trust me, I've already worked through all the scenarios where he disappears or dies. None of them end well for me and the city. Now that you're involved, Kade, none of them end well for you at all, period."

I shrugged. "I wasn't planning on fighting him. But I'm not sure what we're supposed to do. We're delvers. Solving problems with fighting is what we do."

Jeff snorted.

I stared at him. "What?"

He shrugged. "It's what you've always done, Kade. But—"

Before he could finish, Jessie interrupted. "I remember listening in on your conversations with Dad. He wanted you to look at other options. I think Ophelia is that other option. We need to meet with her, and we need to do it somewhere without the rest of the Traynor team."

"I don't think Ophelia is enough leverage," Ellen said. "Bob's entrenched. He's got all the cards, and flipping one mage won't be enough. We need something more damaging."

"We've still got the core breaks," I said.

Yasmin cleared her throat. "I think you're overestimating the threat of core breaks. Yeah, they suck—and you know that—but they're not super common, and the Traynor team's not going to be worried about them if they've never heard of a break happening before. Even if they do believe you, they won't be enough to shift the balance of power, will they, Ellen?"

Ellen stared at the sand below her heel-clad feet. Then she shook her head. "No, they won't be. But I know something that might."

She reached into her top and pulled out a pair of crumpled papers.

The contracts sat in the middle of the desert floor, with the seven of us gathered around them. They were all but impossible to read in the moonlight, but Ellen refused to let any of us get a light from the cars. "No technology. Bob could be listening."

I didn't think Sophia's car was going to be an issue. Bob almost certainly hadn't bugged her flashlight. But I wasn't prepared to fight Ellen on it, and her shadow power made it…tolerable…to try to read the contracts over again.

"When the lights went out, I grabbed these," Ellen explained. "I didn't have time to do more than tuck them away, but as I was reading through them, I spotted a few things in the language that make me think Bob was lying about the legal team approving them. For one thing, perpetuity is a long time; most lawyers would point that out as a sticking point, especially when it's about everything to do with a person."

"And?" Yasmin asked.

"And Bob's involved in everything, but I didn't say he was good at it. He's ridiculously powerful. Probably one of the most influential non-delvers in Phoenix, and someone who could beat the Light of Dawn at the politics game. Plus, he's got enough money to crush his opponents—and anyone who doesn't give him what he wants is an opponent. You saw that, Kade."

I nodded. "Yeah, I did."

"So, if he were to write up a contract, walk into Legal, and ask them to approve it, what do you think would happen?"

Sophia spoke up for the first time. "They'd tell him it was bad."

"Correct," Ellen said triumphantly. "And then?"

Jessie's face fell. "He'd fire them, right?"

"And blacklist them with every other company in Phoenix, since he owns half of them and has minor stock in the rest. Daddy—Bob—is not someone you say no to. The only reason I've gotten away with it is that he's still looking at me as an investment. He's a thug."

"But…"

But these contracts have another glaring weakness—at least, I think they do. We need to find a lawyer of our own. One that's not associated with the Traynor Corporation. And then we need to start fighting back on Bob's battlefield, not just ours."

"What are you saying?" Jeff asked. He'd been quiet most of the meeting. In fact, he seemed withdrawn, but in a different, less listless way than his weeks on my couch.

"I'm saying that if we want to beat Bob, we need to beat him on the battlefield of public opinion. We can't think small. Disrupting his delving team isn't nearly enough. We need to go public."

Jessie nodded, but something in her eyes flickered, and she shook her head slightly. I was the only one who'd seen it, but it was enough to know she had another idea—or at least the spark of one.

Carter Richards was running out of time.

The Roadrunners had been recruiting in the Peoria and Mesa GC centers. They'd already cornered Caleb Richter twice, and the second time, he'd had to fill out half of an interest form before a portal break alert had let him slip away. And he didn't understand why the sudden push in recruitment was happening.

He had a guess, though. It was common knowledge that none of the three S-Rankers who'd gone to Carlsbad Fortress had come back. That meant the Light of Dawn was out of the picture, and Deborah Callahan was running the show at Acme Tower. If she was recruiting independent delvers, she was still up to her usual shit. She was trying—again, or still—to take over the Roadrunner delving guild.

That was fine as far as Carter was concerned, except for two problems.

First, his alias wasn't foolproof. In fact, it was far from it. A simple investigation into his build history would reveal it instantly; Caleb Richter's build didn't exist prior to his Unique skill merge. And that merge alone would be incredibly suspicious if anyone more aware than a sophomore in high school looked at it. If Deborah decided to look, she'd twig onto it right away. Maybe she already had. Either way, it was only a matter of time, and Deborah didn't like it when people said no to her.

And second, Kade Noelstra hadn't bothered to get in touch.

That wasn't acceptable. Carter needed him, and he was more than willing to pull strings to make it happen. Just because the Gerald girl didn't realize the full implications of the letter he'd handed her didn't mean they weren't there. Kade had been ignoring him. And yes, he was patient. But he was also running out of time. He needed to either become Carter again or fully embrace Caleb, and he couldn't do either of them as long as Deborah was out there.

The bus's brakes squealed as it stopped. The door opened, and hot air poured inside. Carter stepped out into the dry evening heat, bow slung over the quiver on his back and gear screaming 'delver' to everyone around him. The apartment building across the street matched the picture in his phone, and the specific apartment he was looking for was a first-floor one with easy access to the garage across the way. He headed for the door and worked the lock until it popped open. Then he settled into an armchair, facing away from the entryway, and waited.

If he wanted Deborah out of the picture, he needed help. He needed someone who understood. And he needed someone who might hear him out.

He needed Kade Noelstra.

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