“Is she alive?” I asked, barely recognizing my own voice.

“Yes,” said Jackie and Marcus together. I glanced between them questioningly.

“If she were dead, I’d be able to tell in the spell.” Jackie didn’t elaborate.

“They won’t kill her. It’s not their style,” said Marcus. “They prize their people too much. They’ll just try to change her, make her think differently.”

“Re‑educate her,” I said dully.

He spread his hands out in a helpless gesture. “Well, that is where the name comes from.”

“How much can they really change her, though?” asked Eddie. “I mean . . . she’s Sydney. She’ll be the same . . . right? She can fight them.”

Marcus took a long time in answering. “Sure.” He wasn’t nearly as good a liar as Sydney. To me, he asked, “She never gave herself the salt tattoo, did she?” I shook my head but could tell from his face he’d already known the answer. I didn’t say anything about the possible but unproven protection Sydney could have from her magic use. We’d had nothing more to go on than Inez’s word, but Sydney had remained optimistic about conducting some experiments on herself when she had time. Which we were now apparently out of. “Once everything’s settled down,” she had told me. “Then we’ll have some time.”

I stayed up all night, unable to find rest. The next day, our entourage was summoned to a meeting at Clarence’s with an Alchemist named Maura. She was about Sydney’s age, with her brown hair cut in a blunt style. She wore an Amberwood uniform. “I’m the new Alchemist assigned to Palm Springs,” she said, her voice prim. “I will be your liaison to handle any Moroi friction that might rise. Since I understand you’ve mostly adjusted, Princess, I doubt there’ll be any reason for us to have excessive interaction.”

The rest of us stared morosely. Everyone else knew by now that Sydney had been taken, though all the reasons weren’t widely known. Those who didn’t know about Sydney and me believed they’d snatched her for getting too close to us–which, really, wasn’t that far from the truth.

Maura handed us all business cards. “Here’s my e‑mail and phone number if you need to get in touch. Do you have any questions?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Where are Sydney and Zoe Sage?”

Maura’s smile was as polite as a politician’s, but I could see that Alchemist ice in her eyes. I doubted she’d be able to stay in the same room as me if she knew Sydney’s backstory, but it was obvious Maura still had the usual disdain and distrust for my kind.

“I’m sorry,” she said coolly. “I just go where my orders send me. They don’t share classified information with me. You’d have to check with my superiors to get any details about where the Sage sisters’ new assignment is.” From the tone of her voice, she didn’t think anyone would tell me, and that, at least, we could agree on.

I hadn’t taken the mood stabilizer that morning and had felt little change throughout the day. Jackie had told me she’d be able to try some other location spells during the dark moon in two weeks, and that and the hope I might recover spirit were all that kept me from a case of vodka. The biggest feat of all was going to class. I wanted to stay home and curl up in a ball. Or keep nagging Marcus for updates. It was only the thought of Sydney that got me to Carlton each day. She would want me to keep up with it, not just because of her educational convictions but because she’d hate to see me plunging into despair. I trudged around campus like a robot, and my palettes strayed to gray and black.

Three days after I’d stopped the pills, I was pretty sure the dark moods were here to stay. It was just like before.

Five days in, I woke up in the morning and felt the first glimmers of spirit.

I nearly cried. It had been so long, and as I extended my senses, brushing them against those glittering, brilliant strands of magic, I felt as though I’d been unable to breathe until now. It was an essential part of me that had been missing. How could I have given it up? I couldn’t fully grasp or wield it yet, but the sweetness of that power was heady and restorative. It gave me my first surge of hope since Sydney’s disappearance, as well as the initiative to call Lissa. I flipped the switch on my malaise and suddenly had enough energy to take on the world.

“You need to get in touch with the Alchemists and find out where Sydney is,” I told Lissa when she answered.

“What . . . are you talking about?” she asked, understandably bewildered.

Apparently, no one had bothered to tell her about the regime change in Palm Springs. As long as Jill was safe, the Alchemists hadn’t felt Lissa needed to know the logistics. I kept our relationship out of it and explained how the Alchemists had freaked out and carried Sydney away for getting too friendly with us. Again, it wasn’t that far off from the truth.

“That’s awful,” she said. I could hear the compassion in her voice. “But there’s not much I can do. That’s their business, no matter how terrible it is. I can’t go make demands of them, any more than one of them could come ask about one of my subjects. Alchemists and Moroi work together, but we don’t have control over each other.”

“Can you please just ask? Please?” I tried to keep my voice level and was glad this wasn’t a video call. I couldn’t even imagine what my face would reveal.

“I’ll ask,” she said reluctantly. “But I can’t promise anything.”

“I know. Thank you.” A flash of inspiration hit. “You met her . . . could you go to her in a spirit dream? I’ve been trying, but with the pills . . .”

“Ah.” She paused. “I’d like to . . . I can try, but I’m not as good as you. I have to know someone really  well to visit them. Maybe you can ask Sonya.”

It was a good idea, and I followed up on it, once more clinging at whatever threads I could. Sonya and Sydney had become good friends, but Sonya was also a weak dreamer. When she called me a couple days later, the news wasn’t uplifting. “I tried,” she said. “I couldn’t reach her. Maybe I don’t have the skill after all. You’re the best at this.”

“Maybe she was awake,” I said, not sure I believed it. My hopes plummeted down to endless depths once more, but they didn’t stay down for long because the next morning, I was able to touch spirit.

There it was again, that sense of recovering some intrinsic part of myself. I gasped at the feel of it. The magic burned within me, euphoric and glorious, and I ran outside in boxers and a T‑shirt. Not many people were out, but a man walking his dog across the street gave me a surprised look. Without hesitation, I drew on spirit’s power, and the man’s aura flared within my vision, orange and blue.

“My God,” I breathed. I had my magic back. I could do this. I waved at my neighbor and then hurried back inside. Once I was in my bedroom, I settled down on the bed and tried to summon spirit’s dreaming state. It required a fair amount of calmness, and my excitement and agitation made it hard to relax. When I finally managed the trance state, though, I couldn’t reach her.

I shifted back to the waking world and tried to be reasonable. If she was anywhere in the United States, it’d be daytime for her too. And there was also a chance I still had to strengthen my powers a little. But the darkness was temporarily cast aside, and I felt myself carried upward on wings of hope, possibly into the state that Einstein had warned was too  up. I couldn’t imagine that, though. For the first time in days, I felt as though all wasn’t lost. I could save Sydney.

The rush of it gave me so much energy that I hardly slept at all for the next four days. I was too wired. That, and I didn’t want to waste any opportunity to seize on when she might be asleep. My control of spirit was back to full strength, and I constantly flipped into dreaming mode, hoping I’d catch her. But it never came. Sometimes I made no connection at all. Sometimes I’d have the sense of darkness or a wall. Whatever it was, the result was always the same: no Sydney.