“Aren’t I rich, you mean?” I purse my lips, but she just smiles and wraps her sweater tighter around her narrow shoulders. “My mom comes from money, but my dad doesn’t. She Paged at the Western Chapter in Virginia, but never Squired. That’s where they met.”

I turn this over a few times. My parents met after my mother graduated; Dad didn’t go to college. I’d never thought about whether she’d met someone at school, dated. I’d always imagined her in a lab, but what did I really know about her life here? “Did your mother want to Squire?”

“At first. My grandparents definitely wanted her to, but then my parents got together and she realized she wanted a family.” We turn down one of the walkways that Nick and I had taken two nights ago. “She’d never admit it, but I think she wanted the prestige, not the war.”

“And your dad knew about the Order?”

Sarah shakes her head. “Nah. Not until later. He’s a sworn and pledged Vassal—had to be before they could marry—but mostly what he knows is the dinner parties and the opera tickets and the formal galas. Not that he’s particularly well received at any of them.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s Venezuelan. But I pass, so people don’t realize I am too. Or they forget. They say racist crap around me sometimes.”

“Then what?”

She shrugs. “Sometimes I check ’em. Sometimes I don’t bother.”

“Ah,” I say, and neither one of us has to say anything else about that.

“Does he know how danger—” Sarah bumps my elbow so that I stop speaking. A pair of students—on the way to the twenty-four-hour library, by the looks of it—walk toward us on the path.

Right. This is what I signed up for. Following the Code of Secrecy means not talking about demon attacks within earshot of the general public.

Once they pass, she glances over her shoulder to watch them turn the corner. “Sorry. What were you asking? Does my dad know how dangerous all this is? He knows what we fight and why, but I don’t think it feels dangerous to him. He can’t See aether, and he’s never seen a demon. He knows we have a healer and he knows that my Line hasn’t been Called in decades, so he probably thinks I’m protected from the worst of it. Mom didn’t want me to Squire unless I got Selected by a high-ranked Scion, since they’re less likely to be Called. The Abatement, you know?”

“No, I don’t. What’s the Abatement?”

She curses low. “Fitz is an ass, but he’s right. Nick should have educated you. You deserve to know the risks.”

I stop. “Sar, what’s the Abatement?”