“I don’t know him! I don’t know any of my dad’s friends. Or…I don’t know which of his friends might be in the Inner Circle.” Preston seemed sad when he said it, as if he too had been living a lie. It was just that no one had bothered to tell him. “I don’t know anything.”
“Why are you doing this?” I turned back to Catherine. “Why did you betray the Circle’s leadership?”
“I’m in the betrayal business.” Catherine laughed. “Besides, I like the world the way it is. A world war is a highly inconvenient thing. I prefer my destruction on a much smaller scale.”
“What do they want? What are the Circle leaders planning?” I asked.
“You know what they’re planning,” Catherine countered. She sounded almost bored, like we were wasting her time. She looked around Zach, to where Liz stood. “It was her plan, after all.”
Liz shuddered but didn’t speak or cringe or cry. I couldn’t shake the feeling that our little roommate was growing up. We all were.
“Who is the mole at the Gallagher Academy?” I asked, but Catherine only looked at me as if I were crazy. “How did the Circle get Liz’s test?”
“Oh, that.” She shrugged. “The school has to file all of its admittance tests with the CIA. From there, it was easy enough for the Circle to acquire them just to see if there were any students we wanted to recruit…” She looked at Liz. “Evil plans we wanted to steal.”
“Why?” Zach asked. “World war…what’s in it for them?” He leaned down to his mother’s level. “What do they want?”
Then Catherine looked at her son as if he were the most naive boy in the world. “They want everything,” she said, and then she cackled. She was insane—there was no denying it. But she was also oddly lucid as she said, “The government is so big—so powerful. Cavan wanted the Union to fail—that’s why he tried to kill Lincoln. It’s the same agenda. They want what they’ve always wanted. Chaos. Fracture. Pieces so disorganized that no single player can ever have too much power.” Then she laughed. “Of course, what they really mean but never say is that they don’t want anyone to have more power than they have. Personally, I like power. It’s one of many reasons I want to see them fail.”
“Tell me what they’re planning,” Zach said.
“You know what they’re planning,” she countered. She was staring at Liz. “Don’t you, Liz?”
“They want war,” Liz said, her voice surprisingly strong.
“But is there war?” Catherine asked.
No. The answer swept over us all. Not yet.
“King Najeeb was a charismatic leader, but he was a grown man in a dangerous business. He still had enemies. His death, while sad, was not that tragic in the bigger scheme of things. And besides…it’s not like he doesn’t have an heir.”
“The princess,” I said, and Catherine nodded.
“A grown man blown to bits is sad. A small girl killed just days after her father.… An entire line wiped out.… That will cause the world to burn. The Iranians will have to break the treaty. And when the Iranians invade Caspia, Turkey will invade, and…boom.”
“We have to find her,” I said, turning to Zach.
“No.” Catherine shook her head slowly. I don’t know if Liz’s drugs were finally becoming too much, but her voice had a hazy quality as she looked at me. “No. You don’t.”
“But we…” I started, then something in her eyes made me stop. She shook her head.
“You know where she is, Gallagher Girl.” The words sounded different when Zach’s mother said them. Haunting and dangerous and cruel.
“Amirah.” I whispered the princess’s name and thought about my first night back at school, about the tiny seventh grader with the big brown eyes and utterly royal countenance. “Amy. She goes to the Gallagher Academy, doesn’t she?”
A dreamy smile spread across Catherine’s lips. “Good girl,” she told me. “It is a school fit for a queen. Now, go. Stop them.”
“Step away from the psychopath!”
I knew the voice as soon as I heard it, but still part of me was almost afraid to turn around.
My aunt Abby’s eyes were on fire, and she crossed the room in two long strides, grabbing my arm and physically pulling me farther from Zach’s mother.
“Abby!”
At first, I was terrified—afraid my friends and I had been caught playing hooky. But then my fear turned to relief as I realized Abby and Townsend had found us. We didn’t have to be on our own anymore.
“Abby, you’re here! How did you find us? Did you get my messages? Were you—”