“By open, do you mean with no tree canopy?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “All outdoor space is camouflaged. There are even trees planted on the school’s roofs, and vines on its walls.”

I blink at her, and for the first time it really sinks in that I’m in an ancient building no one knows the location of, with no easy way for me to contact the outside world. “And that’s to…keep the locals from spying on us, or to hide us from airplanes?”

“Actually,” Layla says, looking skyward, “they say there’s a kind of high-tech camouflage netting that encases the school and reflects radar, making the entire building nearly undetectable and appear like nothing more than a hill.”

I’m now convinced that whatever Dad was trying to protect me from by sending me here must be really dangerous. Which only makes me worry about him and Aunt Jo. I’m seriously regretting not pushing harder to make him tell me the specifics.

Layla heads for the archway she just pointed at and waves her hand for me to follow.

And I do. “I thought you just said there was a class in there?”

“I did,” she says, and enters the next courtyard with me right behind her.

I gasp.

To our left, five students in identical stances brandish bows and arrows. Behind them, another ten or so await their turn. And to our right is a wall affixed with wooden targets, not bull’s-eyes but a series of Xs no bigger than a quarter.

“Release!” says a wiry woman with high cheekbones. She wears an all-black version of the outfit we’re wearing.

Five arrows whiz past us so fast that I feel the wind on my face. They securely lodge in the top line of Xs. Not one is amiss.

“Easy enough,” says the teacher.

I swallow. I can’t believe how good they all are.

“Now try it with movement,” the teacher says, and I detect a French accent.

One of the archers steps a few feet in front of the rest, and his gaze makes me just as uncomfortable as it did when I talked to him earlier—Ash. He gives Layla and me a knowing grin and spins a leg out to the side in a fast kick as he releases an arrow in midair. It not only lands in an X, it hits it so perfectly it splits the X in half.

My mouth opens. “That was incredible,” I say to Layla.

The teacher turns and looks at me. “Since you’re talking during my class, I assume you would like to try to top that.”

And before I can get a word out, an arrow whizzes through the air and punctures the grass at my feet. I reflexively jump backward. A bow comes next.

“Um, I don’t—” I start.

Layla snatches the bow and before I can finish my sentence she’s loaded and shot the arrow. She not only hits the board, she splits the arrow her brother shot in two. “It won’t happen again, Professor Fléchier,” Layla says.