She and Mary might have had their little differences, but Allie had enough faith in Mary to know she would sacrifice herself for the safety of the kids in her care. Together they would take on the Haunter, and who knows, perhaps it would forge some sort of bond between Allie and Mary.

She began at the top floor, but Mary wasn’t there. There were kids in the foodless food court, playing their morning games. “Mary! Where’s Mary? I have to find her!”

Allie went to the arcade floor, the publishing room, the TV room, and everywhere she went kids followed, her commotion actually drawing kids right out of their routines, like a speeding train pulling a swarm of leaves behind it, caught in its draft.

Mary was nowhere.

Vari, however, seemed to be everywhere. Everywhere she went, Vari seemed to find a way to get there first.

“Mary knows where you went last night,” Vari announced. “Everyone knows.”

Allie looked around at the other kids, and Allie knew from the way they looked at her, and from the distance they kept, that she had suddenly become an outsider. Someone to be feared. Someone who could not be trusted.

“Mary doesn’t want to talk to you,” Vari said. “Ever.”

“Listen, you little weasel, you tell me where Mary is, or I swear I’ll take you straight out into the living world, and stomp you down so hard, you’ll sink clear to China!”

When Vari didn’t talk, Allie took things into her own hands. Allie had heard that Mary liked to wander the unused floors when something was troubling her. A quick trip to the elevator control room found all the elevators on the usual floors, except for one. There was a single elevator waiting on the fifty-eighth floor.

It was the emptiness that hit Allie first. She knew the unused floors of the great towers were empty, but some were more empty than others. When you stood in the concrete expanse of floor fifty-eight, you felt like the only person in the universe.

Mary was there all right, in a far corner looking out of the windows at the world below. When she turned to see Allie her expression hardened. Other elevators began to arrive, and kids piled out of stairwells to watch the situation unfold.

Mary strode toward her with such sternness about her, Allie felt sure Mary would slap her … but she didn’t. Instead Mary stopped a distance away. Dueling distance, Allie thought. The distance from which Aaron Burr must have shot Alexander Hamilton.

“I want to know where Nick is,” Mary asked. Allie could see she had been crying, although Mary tried not to show it.

“I need your help,” Allie said.

“First tell me where Nick is!”

Allie hesitated. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Lief and Nick have been captured by the Haunter.” At the word “Haunter,” many of the little kids gasped, and clung to older children.

“See, didn’t I tell you?” Vari said. “They brought this on themselves!”