“Not always. More often they would just give you a long look. You could feel them taking in your skin color and your hair and your size, you could see them deciding that all problems in the world are caused by people like you, people who want things they shouldn’t want, who have dreams they aren’t supposed to have. People get strangely angry about things like that, have you noticed? That’s something I hope my son never has to feel. The weight of that look. But even if he does, I hope that he’ll never let it stop him. I hope he dreams dreams bigger than any star in the universe. I hope he dreams pie-in-the-sky dreams.”

Jaime had felt the weight of that look his mother spoke about, chilly eyes that scraped him up and down, left and right, eyes that said there were so many problems in the world and he just might be the cause of them. But he was always able to shake off the feeling in a second or two. Those people didn’t know him; they didn’t matter. His dreams mattered. The people he loved mattered.

But now, as he stood here in the New York Public Library, the blond woman’s icy stare lingered. It weighed on him like the lead blanket they put over you at the dentist’s, but it was something that exposed you rather than protected you.

Tess’s voice broke through Jaime’s reverie. “That woman was too creepy. Like she brushes her teeth with bleach. Let’s get out of here before she comes back.”

They returned to Dr. Little Crow’s desk. The whole time Theo and Tess chatted with the librarian, Jaime was scanning the library for another glimpse of light hair, a red dress the color of fresh blood. But she was gone.

Whiskers tickled his fingertips, and a thick purr hummed in his bones as Nine rubbed her face against his leg and hand.

“Jaime?” Tess said. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said, not quite fine. He had never been a nervous person, but here he was, practically shaking in his Converses because some wacky lady with a bad dye job had given him the evil eye. He wished Mima were here to stare that lady down, flay her in a dozen different languages. He wished he were big enough and strong enough to hold his head high like his mother always had, to have the quiet dignity and nobility of his father.

But then, Mima taught him to trust his gut, and his gut was telling him that the discovery of the Shadow Cipher gave them power, but the kind of power more powerful people covet, the kind of power more powerful people would do almost anything to get.