“So what? You just…head over to his house and look up whoever you want?”

“No,” she says, annoyed. “We’ve been trying to figure out who’s responsible for Roundtable.”

I try to imagine them together without me. Funny enough, it’s hard to do, but apparently it’s been happening. “And that’s…all you do?”

“Shut up, Shy,” Natalie complains, shoving me hard with her shoulder.

I laugh. “Hey, it’s a fair question.”

She glares at me, but she’s blushing, and the corners of her lips are turning up. After a moment, she’s in the school’s records, pulling up Lennon’s name.

“Looks like she lives with her grandmother,” Natalie says. “There’s a restraining order against her father—Goliath Markov.”

My blood runs cold. Natalie must see I’m startled by the name because she asks, “What?”

“I know that name. I’ve heard my dad mention him,” I say and take the computer back. Once I’m in the archive again, I search Goliath’s name. He has a profile and not just any profile: Goliath Markov is Valryn. He’s also been incarcerated at the Compound for the last seventeen years—the whole of Lennon’s life—for several reasons, one of them being impregnating a human woman.

That would make Lennon an abomination.

“How does the Order not know?” Natalie asks beside me as the realization settles upon her. If Goliath was in prison for his relationship with a human, the Order definitely knew about Lennon at one point.

“Maybe they do know about her?” I offer. “Maybe they decided not to do anything about her as long as she stays hidden?” There’s nothing about Lennon that screams abomination. She looks like any other human. But if the Order knows about her and are letting her live, why have they been telling us horrible things about abominations for so many years?

Anora’s questions flood my mind…

Have you ever met an abomination?

You don’t know what they look like?

If they are actually…deformed?

It’s Natalie who dares say what I’m thinking out loud. “She has to hate us.”

She probably does, and while that doesn’t make her a murderer, it does give her motive.

I push the computer aside, standing suddenly.

“Dammit.”

“What?” Natalie asks, and I start to pace.

“The day Anora captured Vera’s soul, I found her in the woods. As we were leaving, I noticed a raven in the trees. Any other time, I would have followed it because I didn’t recognize it. What if it was…”

“Lennon.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Anora and the Standoff

Lennon convinces me I should eat lunch in the cafeteria. She says running makes me look guilty and is useless since the Order will find me. Ravens are everywhere on campus at the moment, which I guess is supposed to keep me safe until after the vigil when they take me to Temple.