“Yeah,” Bex said at last. “Here she is.”
When Bex turned and left, I wanted to go after her, but Buckingham was standing too close for me to follow. Besides, despite everything, there was really nothing left to say.
“Cameron, you are, of course, responsible for any and all work you missed during your absence—none of which is insignificant during the Gallagher Academy’s senior year.”
Professor Buckingham cut her eyes at me, expecting me to argue, I guess, but all I could think was senior year. I don’t know if it was the head trauma or the fatigue, but I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I was a senior. I looked around at the girls who filled the hall, and for the first time it occurred to me that none of them were older than us, more trained than us, more ready than us for the outside world.
Even without the Circle, that fact would have terrified me.
“Now, if you don’t feel up to the task quite yet—”
“No,” I blurted, reaching for the course schedule in Professor Buckingham’s hands. “I want to. I want to work—for things to get back to normal.”
And I meant it—I really did. But then Buckingham turned and strolled toward the doors, past my best friends, who didn’t know how to act around me, younger girls who were staring at me, and Zach—yes, Zach. Who was at my school. Who had spent the summer with my Bex. Who was sitting in the Grand Hall like he’d been there for years.
And I remembered “normal” might never be the same again.
Chapter Seven
I remember everything that happened that morning. Or, well, almost everything.
Madame Dabney talked for a long time about how lovely it was to have me back, and then she handed me a beautifully lettered condolence card on the loss of my memory. Mr. Smith had a lot of questions about the Alps and the nuns (one of whom he was pretty sure he might have dated during a bad operation on the Hungarian border in the early eighties).
Routine is good, the doctor had told me. My memory would come back if and when I was ready. So when Mr. Smith handed me a pop quiz from the week before, I told myself I’d only missed it because I’d been sick and confined to bed, and I didn’t let myself obsess about the details.
At 10:20 exactly, the entire senior class grabbed their things and headed downstairs. When we reached the main floor, Liz and the rest of the girls on the research track peeled off and started for the labs in the basement. But at the last second, Liz stopped short.
“Bye, Cam.” She looked afraid to let me out of her sight. “See you later?”
“Of course you will,” Macey said, looping her arm through mine as if I couldn’t possibly run away again on her watch.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll see you at lunch, Lizzie.”
“Okay,” Liz said, then turned and headed for the labs. She was almost gone before I realized that Macey was still beside me.
“Macey, don’t you have to go with her?”
“Nope,” she said, and flashed me a sly smile.
“But…” I started, my foggy mind doing the mental math, because even though she was our age, Macey had come late to the Gallagher Academy. Aside from one or two subjects, we’d never been in the same classes before.
“She caught up,” Bex said, her voice frigid as she started down the dark hall behind the kitchen.
Students never went down there. There were no classrooms or cool places to study. The light was bad and sometimes the hallway smelled so much like onions that my eyes watered. I’d never—not in five years—seen Bex show any interest in that hallway, but she was disappearing down it as if she walked it every day.
“Hey, Bex!” Zach yelled. He barreled down the Grand Staircase, running after her. I don’t think he even saw me as he fell into step with Bex, the two of them turning a corner, out of sight.
“Where are they going?”
I couldn’t hide the bitterness in my voice, but Macey didn’t seem to hear it. She just looked at me as if maybe I’d been knocked on the head even harder than she’d realized.
Her voice was full of mischief when she cocked a hip and said, “Sublevel Three.”
Okay, not to sound braggy or anything, but after five full years, I was pretty sure I knew every part of the Gallagher Academy. I mean, seriously—all the parts (including the ones that got condemned due to an unfortunate uranium incident in 1967).
So I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. After all, Sublevel One was all research books and classrooms, massive training stations comprised of steel and glass and secrets. Sublevel Two was more like a maze—long spiraling corridors filled with our most precious artifacts and dangerous files. The first sublevel looked like something straight out of the future; the second looked like it had been ripped from the past. But as soon as the elevator opened into Sublevel Three, I knew I’d found my way into a place far older than the school itself.
Shadows and stone stretched before us. Dim, old-fashioned bulbs hung from a low ceiling. There was nothing but the sound of footsteps and the drip-drip-drip of falling water coming from somewhere I couldn’t see. We weren’t just in a different part of the mansion—it felt like we were in a different part of the world. And yet when I touched the wall, there was something so familiar about the feel of the stone beneath my fingers, the smell of the musty air.