“Careful. You might go crashing right through the floor,” I tell her, only half joking.

“I guess it was too much to ask for all your secret bases to be in penthouse apartments, huh?” Sarah asks, fixing me with a teasing smile.

We slept in this old factory last night, our sleeping bags laid on the sunken floorboards. Both of us are filthy, it’s been a couple of days since our last real shower, and Sarah’s blond hair is caked with dirt. She’s still beautiful to me. Without her at my side, I might’ve totally lost it after the attack in Chicago, where the Mogs kidnapped Ella and destroyed the penthouse.

I grimace at the thought, and Sarah’s smile immediately fades. I leave the window and walk over to her.

“This not knowing is killing me,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t know what to do.”

Sarah touches my face, trying to console me. “At least we know they won’t hurt Ella. Not if what you saw in that vision is true.”

“Yeah,” I snort. “They’ll just turn her into a brainwashed traitor, like . . .”

I trail off, thinking of the rest of our missing friends and the turncoat they traveled with. We still haven’t heard anything from Six and the others, not that there’s an easy way for them to get in touch with us. All their Chests are here and, assuming they could even try reaching us by more traditional methods, they wouldn’t have the first clue how to find us, seeing as we had to flee Chicago.

The only thing I know for sure is that I have a fresh scar on my leg, the fourth of its kind. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but it feels like a weight. If the Garde had stayed apart, if we’d kept the Loric charm intact, that fourth scar would’ve symbolized my death. Instead, one of my friends is dead in Florida, and I don’t know how, or who, or what’s happened to the rest of them.

I feel in my gut that Five is still alive. I saw him in Ella’s vision, standing alongside Setrákus Ra, a traitor. He must have led the others into a trap, and now one of them won’t be coming back. Six, Marina, Eight, Nine—one of them is gone.

Sarah wraps her hand around mine, massaging it, trying to ease some of the tension.

“I can’t stop thinking about what I saw in that vision . . . ,” I begin, trailing off. “We’d lost, Sarah. And now it feels like it’s happening for real. Like this is the beginning of the end.”

“That doesn’t mean anything and you know it,” Sarah replied. “Look at Eight. Wasn’t there some kind of death prophecy about him? And he survived.”

I frown, not stating the obvious, that Eight could be the one who was killed down in Florida.

“I know it seems bleak,” Sarah continues, “and, I mean, it is pretty bad, John. Obviously.”