She was clearly off-duty now, dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt as opposed to the black and white suits guardians wore for formal occasions. She tossed her mane of dark brown hair over one shoulder and grinned. “I heard how you’ve been locked away up here, so I thought I’d come spring you guys.”

I tried not to wince at you guys.

“I thought you and Dimitri were away looking for Jill,” I said, hoping to deflect the attention off of us.

Some of her enthusiasm dimmed at that. “We were . . . but we weren’t having much luck. So Lissa had us come back and look into a few royals who’ve always been against her, in case they might have abducted Jill.”

That was news. “You think there’s any truth to it?”

“Probably not,” said Rose. “And Lissa knows it’s a long shot too. But she wants to exhaust every lead.”

I stepped back. “Well, I don’t want to hold you up from that . . .”

Her grin returned. “You aren’t. We already put in some hours today and can’t do anything else until one of the lords in question gets back tomorrow. So now we’re doing something else productive. Grab Sydney, and I’ll show you.”

“She’s, um, asleep right now,” I lied.

“Asleep? It’s the middle of the day.”

“Our day,” I corrected. “She’s still on a human schedule.”

Rose looked understandably floored. “Really? Last time I was here, I thought she’d adapted pretty nicely.”

“She misses the sun,” I explained.

“Does she actually go out?”

“Well, no . . . but it’s the principle of the matter. It’s a human thing.” Judging from Rose’s increasingly baffled expression, I really wasn’t doing a good job of covering for us here, so I decided to cut my losses. “Look, why don’t you show me whatever you’ve got, and I’ll leave a note for Sydney.” I figured that was better than Rose possibly offering to wait around until Sydney woke up.

“Sure,” said Rose. “We can get her out another time.”

I gestured her toward the hallway. “After you.”

“Don’t you need to leave the note?” she asked pointedly.

“Uh, right. Hang on.” I stepped back inside and left Rose out in the hall. After standing there for about half a minute, I opened the door again and joined her. “All set.”

Rose took me to a section of Court generally reserved for guardian activities. It was near their headquarters and some of their housing. More importantly, it was where they trained, and it was to one of their training fields she led me now. Only, when we arrived, it wasn’t a group of dhampirs we found. It was a group of warrior Moroi.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. I meant it as a compliment.