“She’s alive,” said Sonya, guessing my thoughts. “She’s been taken to the medical center, but she’s practically comatose. The one time she did come to, she babbled incoherently before lapsing back into unconsciousness. The doctors haven’t been able to rouse her since. Perhaps you’d like to come by and see her.”

“Um, I’ll have to talk to Adrian and see when we can get a chance to—”

“Save the subterfuge, Sydney.” There was something both weary and exasperated in Sonya’s voice. “We know you aren’t here.”

“Well, yeah, like I said, we stepped out—”

“We know you aren’t at Court,” she interrupted. “After Nina’s fit, a Court-wide search was conducted, and then Daniella Ivashkov finally caved and admitted you both were gone. She won’t tell us where you are, though, and I think she’s trying to confuse us by giving us some outlandish story about you turning into a cat.”

I really didn’t know how to respond to any of that.

“A number of people would like to speak to you,” Sonya continued. “Both of you. I don’t suppose you have the means to do a video call?”

My eyes fell on Adrian’s laptop bag, which he’d brought along. “We do . . .” Honestly, I was kind of afraid of what this conference call might entail, but I could see Adrian was having to restrain himself from tearing the phone away from me to get answers about Nina. A group call might be the best solution, especially since our cover was blown. There was also a good chance we could be traced by such a call, but I wasn’t quite as nervous about the Moroi finding us as the Alchemists.

When I disconnected with Sonya, I found Adrian was in agreement. He was dying to know more about Nina, and we decided it’d be worth the risk. We were both still naked, so the first order of business was hastily tossing on some clothes so it wouldn’t be entirely obvious what we’d been doing.

Adrian eyed me wistfully as I searched for my shirt. “If we made sure only our heads were in the shot, I don’t think anyone would notice.” I answered him with a warning look, and after a great deal of dramatic sighing, he reluctantly put on his own clothes too.

We still stayed on the bed, however, opening up the laptop there. Once we had everything set up and connected, we leaned in together over the laptop and found Sonya’s worried face looking back at us. Before Adrian could even ask her about Nina, Sonya moved away, and another face filled the screen.