She walks back to the recitation hall without another word. All Atticus does is stare after her with an open mouth.
Shocked, Raven asks, “I thought she was going to chew us out. Why didn’t she turn us in? We should all be fired.”
“Absolutely,” I say.
“But she didn’t,” says Atticus. “A warning is enough.”
“She likes you,” I tell him. “Seems like she needs you.”
He beams. “She called me ‘competent.’ ” Dreamily, he strips off his black robe, revealing his clothes underneath—a Fair Isle sweater and pleated slacks. He bundles his robe up into a mass and tucks it under his arm. “Right,” he says, “so that means we won’t get many more chances.”
There’s a hardness in his eyes, and I can tell he’s thinking of what to do next.
“We do what she says. We can’t learn in public,” he says at last, gesturing to the closed auditorium. “We need to study in private.”
“Then we need one of those books,” I say. “We can’t just wait for one to magically appear in our hands, right? Not like what Warden Stone did onstage.”
Raven takes off her robe as well and neatly folds it over her arm. “What if we steal one of the books from the archive?”
“Steal one.” I nod as Atticus jumps on the idea.
“Perfect! You already work at the archive.”
Nervously, I tug at my leather gloves. “I like your idea, except I don’t want to put Raven in danger. They’ll notice if one of their books is gone, won’t they?”
“Apparently some of the books have a mind of their own. In this restricted section called the Eastern Archive, they move around all the time, by themselves, and they have to be locked in cages. If we’re fast, they might think one of the books wanderedoff, giving us just enough time to bring it back before anyone raises an alarm.”
“Cages?” Atticus asks. “Like zoo animals?”
“Yeah. I can steal a key, I think, and we can return the book as soon as we copy its contents.”
“We’re liberating the books,” Atticus says, his smile growing.
I brush my fingers against the watch in my pocket. It’s annoying being this close to learning about the nature of our powers and not being able to learn how to use them. “All right,” I say. “Let’s plan a heist.”
7
Atticus
You too shall know, what it is to love without hope!
—Matthew Gregory Lewis,The Monk
“Am I thegreatest, or am I the greatest?” I ask, finding Raven and Dorian after work in the Acroteria, sitting across from one another at our usual booth, leaning over mugs of steaming hot coffee.
“Is there a third option?” Dorian asks dryly. He looks particularly handsome today, in an emerald-green sweater vest, brown tie, and dark jacket. The green really brings out the color of his eyes.
“What did you do?” Raven asks conspiratorially. She looks like she just came straight from her shift at the Rosette, with ink stains on her hands and a small paper cut on the tip of her finger.
I produce a large piece of paper, rolled up and tied with a cotton yarn. “Voilà. Our plan.”
It’s been three days since we were caught at the lecture by Professor White, and we finally have what we need to move forward. Raven and Dorian clear off the table as I unroll the paper. He slides over to make room, and the cushion is still warm from his body heat. I catch a whiff of him: leather and aftershave. God, he smells good.
“Blueprints?” Raven asks, looking at the curling paper.
Right. Focus.
“I copied them from work,” I say. “Stayed late at the office yesterday. See these?” I run my hands over the lines, a labyrinthine network of dizzying twisting and turning corridors, like an upside-down Christmas tree. “These are the underground tunnels beneath the Rosette. You said that’s where the archive is, right, Raven?”
