Go easy on her? Even though I knew Sydney had meant that as a way of looking out for me, it was impossible to imagine. How could I go easy on the woman who’d kidnapped Jill? Who was the reason Jill might very well be suffering at the hands of those madmen? Sonya had been in bad shape when she’d been rescued from the Warriors, and they’d had Jill much, much longer.

Alicia will pay, Aunt Tatiana promised in my head.

To Sydney, I said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

My phone rang, and I felt a dry sort of amusement at the display. “Not many people can claim to talk to the Moroi queen twice in one day. Hello?”

“Adrian?” came Lissa’s voice. “What have you done?”

“Why do you assume I’ve done anything?” I asked.

Lissa sighed. “Because an angry Alchemist bureaucrat just called, pretty worked up about how you and Sydney are at large in Palm Springs! They made it very clear they aren’t going to pull any punches in trying to get her back. I thought you guys were lying low.”

“We were, we were,” I said. “It was kind of an accident. But we’re safe for the time being.”

“Well, try to stay that way. On the bright side, I was able to get through to someone to ask about the Alchemists possibly putting pressure on the Warriors.”

Hope filled me. It would save Sydney from infiltrating the Warriors and me from interrogating Alicia if the Alchemists could just rescue Jill for us. “And?” I asked.

“It’s what I feared—they want more proof. I mean, the person I talked to made some vague comments about making ‘inquiries,’ but I didn’t really feel like he was taking me seriously. I think he thinks I was using it to deflect from you and Sydney being outside of Court.”

My hopes fell as I looked at Sydney across the room. She was trying to sit in an overstuffed beanbag chair. The thought of her going off to sneak around the Warriors’ compound made me ill. It had been one thing when she’d left with Eddie and Ms. Terwilliger, but now she was walking right into the hands of some of our enemies. What if she was found out? What if the Warriors tried to renew their friendship with the Alchemists by using her as a bargaining chip? What if the Warriors decided to make an example of the woman who’d married a vampire?

No good can come of any of this, Aunt Tatiana reiterated.

“I’ll keep working on them, though,” Lissa continued, oblivious to my churning thoughts. “And I assume you guys are doing your own things to get answers?”

“So it seems,” I said.