“I’ll tell you when we get to our room.”
“Okay.” She takes my other hand and we fall into the shuffle of students. Professors stand along the path, ushering us back into the academy, reminding us over and over to go into our house.
I mean to take my friends upstairs and fill them in on everything, but we end up staying in the common room to help comfort the younger students. As soon as we get them calmed down, Maxon comes into the room and calls for me.
“Addy.”
I whirl around at the sound of his voice. He’s still wearing his Captura uniform. There’s a large number 7 on the back with his last name stitched underneath.
“Yeah?”
“Come with me.” His face is set, jaw tense.
I look at Kaia and she shakes her head, letting me know she has no idea why he’d be asking for me.
“Okay.” I turn back to Lara, a first year I’d been talking to. “I’ll be back in a little bit. You just hang out in here and you’ll be perfectly fine.” I force a smile and feel like I’m lying through my teeth. If there is a demon lurking about, devouring reapers, then none of us are safe.
“What’s going on?” I ask Max. He doesn’t say anything until we’re going down the stairs, away from the common room.
“Professor Messor wants to talk to you.”
“Why me?”
“You were the last one to see—” He cuts off and snaps his mouth closed.
“Blaze,” I finish. “He’s missing. I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Cass,” I admit. “She lurks about and overhears a lot of things she probably shouldn’t. And…and that’s not all she’s overhead.” I slow, pulling my cloak tighter around my body. I look up at Maxon, feeling small next to him. “I wanted to talk to you about this earlier, but I never got a chance to get you alone.”
“Get me alone? What?” He’s only half paying attention, too distracted over the fact that Blaze is missing. They are on the Captura team together, and while they have their differences sometimes, I know they’ve been friends for a long time.
He slows to a stop. “What are you talking about, Addy?”
I look around, making sure there aren’t students in the hall who might overhear us. “You don’t believe that Terrence ran away, do you?”
“I don’t,” he answers without hesitation.
“Neither do I.”
His brows furrow and he shifts his weight, staring down at me. “What makes you think that?”
“Cass overhead something else.” I push my hair back behind my ear. “You know how Professor Messor had a locator spell done and it came up blank? There was no trace of him anywhere, and you said it yourself…when a reaper dies, we’re just gone. There’s no way to track us. We’re just gone completely. But they were still pushing the story that Terrence ran away. Cass heard Professor Messor talking again, about how no one in town had seen him, and if he had run away, he would have gone home.”
Maxon’s face pales. “Professor Juvan performed a locator spell for Blaze too and nothing happened either. There was literally no trace of him anywhere.”
A chill runs through me. “Do you think a demon could have gotten in and is hiding at the school?”
Max shakes his head. “And not be noticed? No way.”
“The school is impossibly big, right? With hallways no one knows of. What if it found a place to hide?”
“Even if it did, we’d know. Demons give off a very specific energy, and we’d be alerted.”
“So it’s impossible.”
“It’sextremelyunlikely. A lot would have to go into it, and I just don’t see how a demon could deactivate the demonic energy trackers without being noticed.”
