“It will end when we find the treasure,” Tess said, enunciating each word, as if she were telling herself this as much as telling Jaime.

“Yes, but sometimes I wonder if my idea of treasure and the Morningstarrs’ idea of treasure are two different things,” Jaime said.

In the past few weeks, Theo had been thinking along the same lines, but Tess looked so crushed by Jaime’s lack of enthusiasm that Theo kept his own mouth shut. Whether Theo wanted to admit it or not, he needed Tess’s relentless energy, her strange certainty, to keep going. Otherwise, they had destroyed their own building for nothing. And that was nothing Theo could stand.

They left the dry-cleaning store on West 34th Street and had to walk nearly fifteen minutes to the nearest Underway. Taking the Underway was an entirely different experience than it used to be, ever since they’d found out that the Guildmen running the trains might not be human but Morningstarr Machines, ever since they had nearly died while riding a runaway Underway train, ever since they had found out that some of the Morningstarr Machines—maybe all of them—could have their own agendas.

The ride to Queens was long, but the three of them sat rigidly in their seats. Nine, however, was calm and quiet at their feet as the passengers loaded and unloaded at the various stops. The Guildman managing the train car was tall and thin, with spidery limbs and a pale face so expressionless that he could have been one of Jaime’s blank ovals. But he paid the three of them no mind, sweeping cold blue eyes over all the passengers, making sure no one was eating anything or littering anything or otherwise causing trouble. Instead of cleaning the floors the way it normally would, a silvery caterpillar curled up in one of the seats across from them, as if it were sleeping. Theo jerked his chin at it.

Jaime murmured. “Yeah, I noticed.”

“Think it will turn into something else?” Tess said. “A butterfly? A moth?”

Theo shrugged, a frown tugging his features down. He hated not knowing things. Lately, it had been happening all too often.

They hopped another train over to Astoria. During the ride, Theo tried hard not to look at the Guildman or the caterpillar or especially the other passengers, blissfully bouncing along as if nothing in the world had changed, though so much already had.