“Engel went to Teacher for help. She saw his organization, and had a sense of what he was building. Her unique vision reveals things in darkness and limits her ability to see things in light, and she saw enough hidden things to make her wary. He has a building larger than some cities, and he’s filling it. The lower floors were crowded enough that things had to be shuffled around and moved to keep her from seeing them, but she still saw them.”

“White walls, floor?” Sveta asked.

Semiramis nodded.

“I’m wracking my brain to think what other terms might be used to describe it. Was a portal used to enter?”

“I don’t know.”

“It is what you think it is,” Tattletale told Sveta.

Sveta nodded, jaw and mouth set firm.

“We knew he was siphoning in people. Not a city’s worth. That’s useful,” Tattletale said. “It doesn’t give us many hints about what he’s doing here though. Egg said something and she connected dots?”

“When they talked, they made sense of things between them. Egg said what you said, that ah, they were in the old headquarters. Engel seemed upset. I remember because of how disturbed she seemed by the revelation.”

“That’s because they were at the old Cauldron base. The place Engel would have gone to attack if she’d ended up with Sveta’s old team. The place where everything was managed behind the scenes. Where they made the Case Fifty-Threes.”

Sveta’s head bent down, her eyes fixed on the black table. I reached out to rub her shoulder.

The others reacted with their own measures of mild surprise. A frown from Semiramis, because she probably got it at this point. Teacher being there made Teacher very hard to get to. Not to mention the people, the resources, and the attention he was paying to us.

“What else?” Tattletale asked. “What did Engel see, that Egg could explain?”

“People, many were vacant behind the eyes, lined up in the dark. I don’t know what else—”

“Every detail matters,” Tattletale said, firm, eyes wide and focused on Semiramis.

“I don’t remember the details. At the time, I didn’t care. It was a conversation about someone I cared very little about, that I wasn’t even a part of.”

“But you remember the conversation.”

“Only fragments. You’d have to talk to them.”

“Give me something, because the way things are going, I’m not positive we’ll get a chance to talk to them.”

“Broomsticks,” Semiramis said.

“Broomsticks are good,” Tattletale said. “What about them?”

“There were people in a stairwell who tried to keep her from seeing their brooms, according to Engel. Egg thought it was strange or important.”

“Brooms,” I said.

I glanced at Tattletale and saw her smiling.