“Jayla’s at that school,” Eli said, his voice going hoarse.

“So is Billu,” Zeran mumbled.

“And my mom,” I whispered.

Rana Kane frowned. “I get the feeling that I’m missing something.”

“What are we going to do?” Eleni asked, crossing her arms.

I stared at my friends’ faces—the anguish, the fear, the determination. We couldn’t let ourselves fall apart. “We divide and conquer. I’ll look for Frankie. Zeran and Eli, go to the school to make sure everyone’s okay. Eleni—”

“I’ll warn Papa and the other celestials about the prisoners from Alsar,” she finished. “I can open a gateway and beat them there.”

“Right,” I said, uneasy. I didn’t like the idea of separating, but the way I saw it, we didn’t have a choice. “We’ll meet at the school in one hour.”

“One hour,” Eli said, then he and Zeran pushed through the library doors and stepped into a cloud of fog.

Eleni hugged me before she opened a gateway. “Be safe, Sister.”

“You too,” I said before she disappeared. “One hour.”

I tightened my grasp on my staff and directed my magic to find Captain Nulan. If I wanted to rescue Frankie, I’d have to go through her. When I was in the Dark, I could sense Papa. Maybe this would work too. I closed my eyes, and I could see glimpses of Nulan. Her wicked smile, the arch of her eyebrow, the flutter of her wings, the glimmer of her slim knives. I opened my eyes, my heart beating fast, just as the gateway opened. “Here I go.”

I crossed the bridge of spinning god symbols, following an echo of Nulan that manifested itself like a ghost. When I exited at the other end, I landed on a barren planet of rocks, sand, and dead trees. There was no one in sight—no buildings, no structures of any kind. I didn’t understand. Nulan wasn’t here. I turned in a circle, confused, until I saw a knife lodged in a tree a few feet away. Not just any knife—one of Nulan’s slender blades. It was a message, that much was for sure. Catch me if you’re quick enough.

“Find Frankie,” I whispered as I cut the staff through the air, and another gateway opened.

This time, I landed on a world blanketed in fog and found another slender blade. Then I opened a third, fourth, and fifth gateway, growing more desperate. I was breathing hard, exhausted from the effort. Somehow Nulan was hiding Frankie and herself from my gateways while leaving a trail for me to follow. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and leaned against my staff. Without the ability to make a gateway, it must’ve taken months for Nulan to plant these false leads, which meant that she’d been in the human world a long time before we encountered her at the city dump. But why?