alive, or no one would be able to control Frederick.
“Yeah, it seems like there are a lot of things you might’ve mentioned,” Rafe said. He looked at Jensen. “You two, keep each other out of trouble.”
“Always,” Jensen managed to say in a deadpan.
Rafe’s bossy nature had amused me back at the academy. There had been something so fun about playing Silas, courting Maddie, and pretending to be as carefree as a kid was supposed to be. But here, his dominant personality was beginning to be a real liability. And I knew I had to dance around it, because I didn’t have time to waste fighting Rafe.
“Maddie and I should go in now,” I said. “If the shield is there, Maddie and I combined have enough magic to steal it. We can all be home in time for lunch.”
Rafe shook his head. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t share my optimism.
“You know, you’re going to have to trust us,” Maddie said gently.
“I do,” he said.
“Great,” I said. “Then let us go.”
He hesitated. “Silas, you and I can go. Maddie, you and Jensen stay here. See if you can figure out Maddie’s ability to shift.”
“And my inability?” Jensen asked.
“Yes,” Rafe said bluntly. “Maybe if you’re able to turn again, Maddie, you can figure out what’s going on.”
Her lips parted.
“Don’t we need them to watch our backs and stay close?” I said. “If we can get the shield and get out of here, we can figure that all out at home. Once I grab the shield, I can open a rip and we can move out.”
Rafe gave me a long, warning look. Right; I wasn’t playing along well enough with my old role.
“If Maddie can shift and if we can figure out how the rest of us can shift, we don’t even need the shield,” Rafe said. “There’s no need to continue an operation that could end up with all of us in prison in another world.”
“Maybe Maddie is just special,” I said, although I had been troubled by how much power she seemed to have now too.
I was happy she had the power to do magic so easily, and I was happy she had her wolf back. I just didn’t like it when I didn’t understand things. It wasn’t something I felt often, and it left me unsettled.
“Let’s just do this,” Jensen said abruptly. He clapped my shoulder, as if he were sympathetic to my arguments but thought I should just let Rafe take the lead.
I smiled back at him easily, the way I was supposed to. “Let’s.”
Not long after, Rafe and I headed into the city. We went on foot, because it was probably for the best I stayed off public transit where we might run into monitoring for magical disguises.
“Have you ever been here in Quorum before?” Rafe asked as we walked.
“A few times, yeah,” I said. “Briefly.”
“What were you doing here?”
“Stealing weapons, mostly,” I said. “An assassination, once.”
I might as well be honest.
Rafe’s gaze flickered toward me, but his voice was causal when he said, “Were you alone?”
I was pretty sure he was asking if I was the assassin. “Yeah.”
“How’d it go?”
“Clean,” I said. At first, I was going to leave it there, let Rafe know I had zero interest in further discussion of my past. But then some stupid part of me hated to disappoint him, and I reluctantly went on, “He was an Establishment magician who had hunted down dozens of Rebels. Made a habit of torturing them. The world didn’t lose much that day.”
Rafe nodded, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Is there anything you want to tell me about what happened in the woods today? Or...long before?”
“Not a thing, Rafael Hunt. But I appreciate the attempt.”
The two of us exchanged a look, then turned the corner. There was the faintest ripple of tension across my skin, as if I were breaking through water, and then suddenly, the temperature was about fifty degrees warmer. I was already pulling off my coat and scarf to sling it over my arm while Rafe stared around us, his lips parting in surprise.
Prospect Square spread out around us. The museum was an immense white building with tall columns on the other side of the square; other regal buildings ringed the square, but brightly-colored flowering trees and fountains filled the square. A dozen kids in swimsuits or hiked-up pants were wading in the fountain. Parents sat on the marble rim of the fountain or stood nearby, occasionally ducking out of the