“We?” I exclaimed.

“Here,” said Ms. Terwilliger. I turned around, and she tossed me a set of keys. From the look on her face, it was taking every ounce of self‑control not to burst out laughing. “That square one’s a master. I know for a fact she has yoga and won’t be back for the rest of the day. I imagine you can repair the damage–and retrieve the homework–before anyone’s the wiser.”

I knew that the “you” in “you can repair” meant me. With a sigh, I stood up and packed up my things. “Thanks,” I said.

As Angeline and I walked down to the science wing, I told her, “You know, the next time you’ve got a problem, maybe come to me before it becomes an even bigger problem.”

“Oh no,” she said nobly. “I didn’t want to be an incon‑venience.”

Her description of the scene was pretty accurate: organs everywhere. Miss Wentworth had two models, male and female, with carved out torsos that cleverly held removable parts of the body that could be examined in greater detail. I had a pretty good sense of anatomy but still opened up a textbook for reference as I began sorting the mess. Angeline, realizing her uselessness here, perched on a far counter and swung her legs as she watched me. I’d started reassembling the male when I heard a voice behind me.

“Melbourne, I always knew you’d need to learn about this kind of thing. I’d just kind of hoped you’d learn it from a real guy.”

I glanced back at Trey as he leaned in the doorway with a smug expression. “Ha, ha. If you were a real friend, you’d come help me.” I pointed at the female model. “Let’s see some of your alleged expertise in action.”

“Alleged?” He sounded indignant but strolled in anyway.

I hadn’t really thought much about asking him for help. Mostly I was thinking this was taking much longer than it should, and I had more important things to do with my time. It was only when he came to a sudden halt that I realized my mistake.

“Oh,” he said, seeing Angeline. “Hi.”

Her swinging feet stopped, and her eyes were as wide as his. “Um, hi.”

The tension ramped up from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds, and I tried not to groan. After all, their situation wasn’t all that different from mine. How would I feel if Adrian and I suddenly ended our relationship because of the taboos ingrained in our races? Trey and Angeline had split up because of outside pressures, not anything between them. And as I studied the longing in her eyes, I knew that the show she put on for Neil was exactly that: a show.

Everyone seemed at a loss for words. Angeline jerked her head toward the models and blurted out, “I had an accident.”

That seemed to snap Trey from his daze, and a smile curved his lips. Whereas Angeline’s antics made me want to pull out my hair sometimes, he found them endearing.

“That seems to happen a lot,” he said.

“It wasn’t my fault,” she insisted.

“It never is.”

“I just have bad luck.”

“Or you’re just trouble.”

“You got a problem with that?”

“No problem at all,” he said in a low voice.

“Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “Are you going to help or not?”

Somehow, the awkward tension had become sexual tension, and I was about ready to bolt. Trey, after one more long, heated look at her, turned away and threw himself into reassembling the female model. I hadn’t put much stock in his bragging, but to my surprise, he finished pretty quickly.

“Told you I’m an expert,” he said, with a sidelong glance at Angeline.

They both seemed to have forgotten me again and were going all dreamy‑eyed. I cleared my throat. “Angeline, it’s almost time for dinner. Do you need to go change?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” She had enough presence of mind to fetch the homework that had started all of this. “Thanks for helping,” she told Trey, as though I hadn’t even done anything.

He gave a nonchalant shrug, like he did this every day. “No problem.”

After he’d swaggered out the door, Angeline gave a mournful sigh. “Oh, Sydney. Why does he have to be one of those stupid Warriors?”

I locked up the classroom. “Well, he’s not technically one right now.”

“But he could be again,” she said, trudging beside me as we headed out to catch the shuttle to our dorm. “And if he does, he’ll never overcome all that stuff about mixing with dhampirs. One of these days, he’ll start dating a human again, and since we’re here, I won’t be able to do anything about it.”

“What exactly do you mean?” I asked cautiously.

She brightened a little. “Well, if we were back home, I could just keep challenging his new girlfriends to duels.”

“Well, let’s just hope he stays single, then.”

I left her to her fantasies when we reached the dorm, each of us off to our own room. Zoe was waiting in mine, looking mournfully at a beat‑up paperback. “Where have you been?” she asked. “Not at the airport the whole time?” She regarded me thoughtfully. “With Ms. Terwilliger?”

“Angeline, actually. I had to help her with a, um, problem in her biology class.”

“There you go again, doing things you don’t need to.”

Angeline and Trey’s plight had me thinking of my own, and I didn’t have much patience for Zoe’s Alchemist rhetoric. “I do need to do it. I need Angeline here at Amberwood, and that means making sure she stays in her teachers’ good graces.” I sat down backward in my desk chair, resting my chin on its back. “You want to be an Alchemist so badly? Don’t wait to react to the immediate problem. Plan ahead, look at the big picture, and you won’t ever have to deal with that problem. Better to save yourself from a major catastrophe than drag your feet over a bunch of little inconveniences.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, looking hurt at my chastisement. “I get it. You don’t have to lecture.”

“Sorry,” I said, feeling only slightly so. “You came here to learn. I’m just trying to help.”

She gave me a small smile. “I know. I’m here for professional reasons. It’s just hard to forget sometimes that you’re my sister. You’re pretty good at it, though . . . treating me like I’m just another Alchemist. I’ll have to try harder to be as good.”

I flinched. She meant it as a compliment, that I could put aside what was between us and wholeheartedly focus on Alchemist mandates. I didn’t feel so proud of that, though. In fact, it made me distinctly uncomfortable, and I nodded toward her book. “What are you reading?”

That got her out of business mode, though it also brought a scowl. “I don’t know. Some Shakespeare play for my English class. We have to pick one by tomorrow, and I thought this one would be good since it’s so short.” She held it up. Richard III. “But I’m not really getting it.”

“Yikes,” I said.

“Bad play?” she guessed.

“Great play, but maybe not the best match for you. See if you can hunt down a copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Might be easier on you.” Thinking of my friends’ romantic woes, I couldn’t help a small, sad smile. “And you’re practically living in the middle of it.” I laughed when she didn’t get the reference. “I forget that wasn’t part of Dad’s standard curriculum. I did most of my literature research on my own.”

She nodded, and suddenly her eyes went wide. “Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you. He’s coming here. Dad.”

I sat bolt upright in the chair. “When?”

“Next week.” I tried to relax, knowing my shock was a bit beyond ordinary surprise. I certainly couldn’t let her know I was afraid. “He wants to talk to us about Mom and the hearing. They’ve set a date for next month.”

That was news to me, but then I shouldn’t have been surprised at being out of the loop. After all, Zoe had proved a much more eager daughter than I had. It was only natural he’d tell her first.

“He’s going to help prepare us,” she continued. “So that we can be ready to fight for him.”

“Ah,” I said.

Zoe flounced back on the bed and stared morosely at the ceiling. “I wish it were over already. No, I wish I was eighteen like you and could just be free.”