When the hour deadline was up, I bought a souvenir for Adrian, for old times’ sake, and then prepared to call Stanton again. Part of the reason I’d chosen Pies and Stuff was because they had a pay phone in their parking lot. “What’d you decide?” I asked when Stanton answered.

“We’ll help you,” she said grimly. “Your story checks out about those two. I’ve got a group going to St. George right now.”

“Wow,” I said, impressed in spite of myself. “You move fast. Do you know where to go in St. George?”

“We know about a Warrior camp there. We’re going to scout it out and assess if it matches what you know.”

“I’ve got records all about it that I can have sent to you,” I told her. “The guardians—”

“Are also en route,” she finished. “We’ve been in touch with them and will be coordinating our efforts to strike together to get the girl out. I expect it all to happen within the next day. I assume that’s good enough for you.”

“That’s good enough for you to get the last two names,” I replied. It was hard to keep my cool, considering how relieved I was to hear action was being taken for Jill. The fact that this was all finally happening—and so quickly—was exhilarating. “But if you want the rest of the information I have, you’re going to have to work for it.”

There was a long pause. Then: “What information would that be, exactly?”

“I have proof of other Warrior and Alchemist interactions, deals you probably don’t know about. Deals I hope you don’t know about.” Stanton was a stickler for the rules, but I wanted to believe she was one of the better Alchemists. “I’ll give you all that information too. And I’ll make sure the Moroi don’t know the dirt. You force them to put an awful lot of faith in your help . . . but I have a feeling they might not be so cooperative if they knew you’ve got people in the group working with the enemy.”

“What do you want?” was all she asked. That told me a couple of things, most importantly that she knew it was very possible there were traitors in her midst.

“Amnesty for everyone we released from re-education. And an end to re-education, period.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Impossible.”

“What’s the point of re-education, Stanton?” I demanded. “Half the time it doesn’t work. There were people who’d been in there for ages. And even if it seems to work, you never really trust those people anyway. Like Keith. You’re always watching. If you want to help protect humans from evil—the real evil, Strigoi—then there must be a better use of your resources.”

“We can discuss this after we rescue Jill Dragomir,” she said stiffly.