“Like you,” I said, and Frankie smiled at me with tears in her eyes.

“Do you see those three in the background?” Eleni pointed out a woman and two men. They looked ordinary and fit in with the crowd at first glance, but the more I stared at them, the more the picture seemed to change. The woman’s image blurred so you couldn’t make out her face. One of the men looked like a bodybuilder, and the other had tentacles poking out from around the sleeves of his jacket.

Eli cleared his throat. “That’s creepy.”

“Are they darkbringers?” I asked, rocking on my heels.

Zeran grimaced as he, too, stared at the photo. “No.”

“How do you know for sure?” I asked.

“Call it a gut feeling,” he replied.

“I agree.” Frankie bit her lip. “Charlie said that my celestial mom had been on earth to hunt down rogue criminals from Azur, so it’s more likely that these three come from there. I have to find out who they are.”

“I’ll help you,” Eli volunteered.

“We all will,” I added, and Frankie nodded.

When we arrived at Jackson Middle, kids were filing into the main building. Soon Eleni’s friends from her eighth-grade class swept her into their ranks. I spotted Tisha Thomas at a water fountain down the hall. “I’ll catch up with you in homeroom,” I said to my friends as I made a beeline for her. “Hey, Tisha, can I talk to you about something?”

Tisha looked up at me with eerie silver eyes. Her eyes hadn’t been like that before she came into her godling powers, and now they had an otherworldly quality to them. “This wouldn’t be a good place to have that conversation,” she said. She had such a serene edge to her voice, almost dreamlike. “We have five minutes before homeroom starts.”

“The lab.” I pointed down the hall. Shangó, the orisha of lightning, aka Mr. Jenkins, our science teacher, was always in the lounge during homeroom, since he didn’t have a class that period. The lab would be empty.

Tisha followed me inside, and the lights came on overhead. “You want to know how Zeran will betray you.”

“No . . . um, yes.” I shook my head. “But I wanted to ask you about Captain Nulan first.”

Tisha frowned. “Who?”

“Tyana Nulan,” I said, realizing that Tisha had no clue who I was talking about. “She works for the Lord of Shadows. I was just wondering if maybe you’d had a vision about her.”

“Why would I have a vision about some random person?” Tisha asked, confused.

This conversation was going nowhere fast. “Isn’t that how it works?”

“I’m not quite sure how it works,” Tisha admitted.