23.

Time for the Bunker Séance. Hi had wanted a host of candles, patchouli incense, and 1790s organ music.

Shelton vetoed the candles on behalf of our sci-fi setup; Ben vetoed the 'music' on behalf of Cooper; I had trouble arguing with an increasingly irate Hiram about why the incense would not, in fact, add to the atmosphere but irritate the hell out of me. He won, largely due to his threat to substitute the patchouli for sandalwood.

We'd had to hit the townhouse complex before reconvening at our HQ. If nothing else, it was hard to escape Ruth Stolowitski for such a stretch of time, especially when she was so worried about "the nasty effects of end of term on my bubba". None of the boys would turn down her planned pack-size serving of ramen (always surprisingly tasty). Plus, Candela had been testing my mind-body sometimes-detachment. I'd only managed it right near the end of our session, but it had thoroughly exhausted me. Only our emergency stash of red bull had kept me focused enough for this séance, but the fallout was that I was having trouble sitting still. My crossed legs kept bouncing, eyes darting, as I waited for the stuffed-bellied boys to assemble themselves, and Coop had picked up on it.

"So," Shelton asked warily as he haphazardly hit the floor on my left, "how we doing this?"

Ben reluctantly slumped down on Shelton's left, scooching my wolfdog back into the centre of our pack square. When Cooper tried to yank away back through one of the gaps between our knees, Ben yanked him right back and gave a stubborn stare.

"Well, I've done a little research, and… I'm not really doing it the whole inviting-the-dead way."

"No chanting 'Bloody Mary' in a mirror then?" Hi blew out air. "I brought along my compact just in case."

"Er, no." I gave him a strange look. "We're going to flare together, then using the threads of who's broken into my mind before, pin down who it is."

There were about four seconds of silence where the Virals regarded me.

Hi broke first.

"Wait, you're not kidding?"

"Tory," Shelton pleaded, "tell me you've got more details than that."

"It's a great plan!" I protested. "I – okay, well, not great. But it's efficient."

"No it's not!" Hi again. "We can't even work out how to talk to you through our heads. We can't even control our own flares –"

"Neither can I."

" – yeah, we know, and you think we can help you pinpoint an unknown person – who has more powers than you, if they're repeatedly breaking into your head and causing seizures and stuff – using our flares in your head?"

"Yeah, alright, I'm doing most of the legwork here," I waved my hand, "but it's gonna be great. Now shush." I closed my eyes, then a beat later, opened one on impulse to grab Hi and Shelton's hands. Being physically linked might help.

"Is flaring going to be okay?" Ben asked carefully.

"Yeah. Probably. And before you ask, I'm a lot more in control of whose heads I invade nowadays," I said cheerily. "Oh, and join hands."

"Who's going to keep control of the wolfdog?"

"I will, as soon as we're flaring. I can talk to him then." I cracked an eyelid grumpily, only to find all three of the boys exchanging looks. "Oi! Hurry up!"

"Alright, alright," Hi grumbled, but they did as I asked.

Without further ado, I reached backwards in myself. Jason, Chance, Madison… I conjured up my anger at them, and it was enough for me to grasp my flare.

SNAP. Ice chased fire, snapping and welding. I could feel through my painful struggling that my friends' fingers had tightened in mine; the wolf had to break the shackles before it could come out to bite. Up, and up, and up; I was wound tighter, pulled tauter, pushed further into the furnace.

Then… over.

I was almost bowled over by the calm that followed this extra violent seizure, or maybe it was just the sensory overload. I had to stay with my eyes closed for a good ten seconds before I opened them to check in with the boys.

"All good?" I breathed. The words rang out with pure clarity, and three nods – plus a whine from Cooper – satisfied me.

First volatile step out the way. Now I just needed to establish open lines, and we could begin.

Closing my eyes again, I tried to delve inside my mind and stop concentrating on the physical. Think mental landscape. Breathed in and out, trying to conjure our connecting lines.

The flaming cords were hard in coming. Long moments passed as I tried my hardest to visualise them. I struggled with my frustration until letting out a low growl.

"Tor –?"

"Shhh! Not out loud!"

Did I even need the fiery ropes to speak to people? No, but it made it easier. I knew how they worked, even if it sometimes ended with me stranded in people's heads (accidentally). I didn't need a mental image to meld minds with people I knew like the back of my hand.

But. Too much Red Bull. Too anxious for an answer. Too much moonlight coming in, even though it was only dusk – it was full moon around this time of the month and the jitters that brought were fraying my already shot nerves.

I struggled with my mind, far from meditative contemplation, for another minute before my eyes flicked open. The light blinded me for a second, my other hypersenses calming down a little as the balance was restored. Hi and Shelton were obediently sitting with closed eyes, although they looked uncomfortable about it. Ben, however, had cracked an eyelid and was watching me. He grinned when I scowled.

I sent my best what are you doing with your eyes open? expression to him.

More like what are you doing? You're the one who wants 'em closed, was his rolled-eye response.

I can't figure out what's not going right! I frowned to him. Then a Too jittery shoulder wriggle.

Ben thought for a second, then an idea crept across his face. Furtive, excited, a little intense… I studied it for a second, trying to work out where I'd seen it last. He had surely remembered a helpful thing from our past. Memories, memories… his face in darkness, his – oh.

I bit my lip, face heating up, but didn't look away. Beneath the many smells in the bunker – most notably salt and mud – attraction increased. God, his face in this semi-dark, the intense expression, the hair falling over his ear like that, the lip –

When I pushed the pack mind again, it was melted enough for me to pull everyone together.

YES! I'm in!

Aw man, Hi thought. Not sure if I'm glad I get to leave before midnight, or annoyed at being invaded again.

Definitely the glad, Shelton thought back.

That was the prelim work, I instructed them. Now the fun begins. I paused, surveyed the forms in my mind and tried speaking just to Ben's. Thanks for the… help.

What was that?

Hey! That's new!

I frowned, resisting the urge to visually peer at the boys. How did it seem to you two?

Like… a whisper shooting past. What was that?

Uh, direct communication while I'm also still on the main line, I thought hastily. Now. Um. I meditate?

Admittedly this wasn't my best plan, but I'd known that before coming here. Psychic powers weren't (yet) defined scientific procedures. I had no idea what I was looking for. Did I just… try to access the next level?

What happens when you're attacked? Ben asked. Can you find that place in your mind?

Good plan. I'll try.

I sat back and moved my consciousness into my mind. Mom had always had a word for this… mindfulness? Being aware of everything in your mind? Yeah, that was it. Well, I tried observing my consciousness like a blueprint. I could pinpoint where the attacker had come in, and where they'd ended up. Score one for Tory's mental mapping.

However, as the minutes inched by, I began to realise something very irritating: I couldn't make the attack-pathway in my mind match up to Virals-pathways. It was like trying to attach sand to a wave. I was the nub of the Virals communication, and they had felt my reaction to being attacked… so the pathway from attackeràToryàpack had to exist somewhere. I just couldn't locate it.

My pack were very patient as I stumbled through this desert of realisation. Someone would let out a bored huff every few minutes, but they stayed concentrated and with me. Being as it was full moon, they were probably all getting a quiet stream of my thoughts through, but nobody complained. Probably sensing my growing frustration, they'd be able to guess the potential unpleasant consequences.

Okay. Okay. I was calm, I could do this.

Except I couldn't.

This is ridiculous. I almost sent it to the boys, but fired it only to my dog at the last second. Cooper snuffled in response, but kept himself obediently in the centre of our small square for my sake.

Séances clearly weren't going to work for me if I couldn't connect the two train lines. But what did solve problems? Thinking things through. Right. If I sat down with this connection in place and worked through the jigsaw without anyone interrupting, we could get somewhere. So what puzzle pieces did we have?

If we were going internal attacking, not much. They happened at school or Mag League, so that could mean Charleston area or a debutante in my classes. They tried to force me to lose control of my body, but I was apparently getting better at fighting them off. The explosion of energy the seizures forced from me was similar to coming down off a flare, so they had be related to my Viral abilities.

Surely only another alpha could do this? It was like an amped-up version of some of my powers. That left the finger pointing at Chance and Azad. Or the runaway dogs. But I was supposed to trust them. I wasn't about to invite them to the bunker, and not after that heated argument with Chance, but they hadn't sold us out, and I trusted them to help us when we ran to them with information about attackers and our own flares.

This wasn't to say that everything they did was right, though. All this stuff about getting other scientists in? Playing with fire by dating Madison? Cornering me and attempting blackmail because there was a mutual underlying mystery? It probably wasn't fair to judge on character, but Chance's attitude was really starting to grate me –

Wait.

An idea shot through my mind too fast for me to make the connections properly, so I eagerly backpedalled. Chance's attitude, character, blackmail, Madison – Madison. That was it. The puzzle piece that didn't fit.

And what didn't fit? I examined her in my mind clinically, stepped back from events the way I couldn't quite with the attacker's mental path.

There were actually several things that didn't fit, now I thought about it. It wasn't that she'd told her therapist and reverend about my 'possession'; it was her mounted attack, and the fact that she was doing it now, not seven months ago. It wasn't that she didn't know about Chance's Viral status; it was that she obviously knew about me and had started dating him at the same time as starting this attack against me. It wasn't that she was watching me in the canteen earlier; it was …

No, it was that she was watching me throughout the episode in the canteen earlier. I examined this idea, turned it in my mind. I didn't get it. Out of all these contradictions, why was this one bothering me?

I imagined a box in my mind: Tory à Chance à Madison à ? But the only thing connecting us all was my evolved powers.

Nope, I didn't get it. I sighed out loud.

"What is it?" Hi blurted. Probably couldn't take the tension any longer.

"I've got a lead. But I can't work it out…" I huffed.

"So gather more evidence," Shelton offered. "We can help. But you seriously got this from a séance?"

"Not exactly," I hedged. "Although I like that idea about gathering evidence. Could we gather it now?"

There was silence from the boys. I cracked one eye, then the other, before giving up and letting the boys' hands go too. "Come on. This is a good lead."

"Sell it to me," Hi said stubbornly. "Your track record is mixed at best."

"Not true," I protested. "Every time we go on felonies, we get really important evidence! When has a b-and-e ever not been useful?"

"So we're looking at further potential criminal records." Shelton sounded kinda pissed. "We barely got by last time. It was only because of Corcoran's stupidity and dumb ambition our college transcripts weren't toast."

"What's the idea?" Ben asked slowly.

He was always on my side in these, and I appreciated that. Unfortunately, the plan was risky enough that I couldn't guarantee Shelton and Hi would budge. "Madison. She's got a wider role in this than just revenge on me, but I don't understand what."

"Just revenge?" Hi muttered.

"She's had the creeps about me for months, so why has she only just got all these people on my case now – at the same time that we start with Candela?" I met their eyes in turn. "I think there must be someone connecting us."

"So, Chance then," Hi said.

I scrunched up my mouth. "It's not that I trust him… but I really don't think he's double-dealing us. I think he's fishy!" I added over the loud protests erupting, "but I don't think he's actually double-bluffing completely."

"Is a potential semi-double-deal of Chance the lead for Madison?" Shelton asked warily. "Because I am not committing any felonies tonight, by the way, so get your alternatives cooking, Brennan."

"We won't be stealing anything!" I protested. Probably.

Heard that, Ben noted across all our heads.

In desperate need of a decent argument now, I tried to shore up my pros. "This is a really important person we need to find out about, because what if it is Chance? He's the obvious suspect at the minute –" although what for, I was starting to lose sight of, "– and if it is him, we have to stop going to Candela asap."

"Aaand what does a visit to Chez Dunkle change about this?" Hi demanded.

"We nab her phone." Not that this was a plan I was coming up with off the top of my head… "We check her messages for arrangements concerning our internal attacks."

"How does one jailbreak a phone? And retrieve deleted messages?" Shelton asked grumpily. "I don't know how, and our Variance fund is cleaned out."

"I'll corner her and force her into doing it then forgetting it if I have to," I snapped. "Look, are you coming or not? I'm going." I glanced across the circle for a split second. "With Ben."

Squabbling broke out until Hi shouted over the top of everyone, "Cooper and I require your silence for the Lord of Light!"

It worked. We all four (including Coop) stared at Hi. "Um… why Cooper, too?" I ventured.

Hi glared. "Because that's the only way you'd listen to me. I think we need to discuss this without you in here. Your case is made, Tory. Give us five minutes without listening in and disconnect your flare. Then we'll see."

It was a good plan. I really would need their help to pull this off, too; at least Ben, for the transport, but he would be more of an asset in talking the other two round to battle. So I nodded, hooking Coop's collar as I stood up stiffly and dragged him out the crawl space into the night air.

As we messed around in the dunes for a few minutes, I idly considered how our misadventures with the Gamemaster last fall had been the beginning of a chain reaction. That had been what began the inter-mind exploration, what opened a chasm between Ben and I for so long, what first brought Chance and Madison together, and caused Chance to look into Karsten.

In a chain reaction, every separate reaction has a separate enzyme to catalyse it. So what if these weren't the reactions but the enzymes? What unknown catalyst had we been thrown into – and what would be left afterwards?

I just knew in my gut that it was important we went to scout Madison's. That would help quell this feverish inaction. Hopefully.

I focused on paying Coop proper attention as we scruffed around for a few more minutes.

The boys crawled out to me, Ben first, then Shelton and Hi bringing up the rear. Their faces were impassive, but I ruffled Cooper's ears and stood up with as innocent an expression as possible.

"So," I said casually, "who gets the flashlight?"

Half an hour later and we were casually leaning against railings South of Broad. Salty scents from the water were washing over me, pleasantly filling my flared brain and calming me somewhat in the face of slow 3G. I had a feeling from Ben's deepened but slow breathing that he was doing the same.

Hi, on the other hand, had sweat patches expanding by the minute. It didn't help that our flares were kind of wild tonight; it added an instability to the situation that I didn't really feel it needed.

I could sense the boys agreed. Between Hi's psychotic bouncing, Ben's barely-working relaxation breathing, and Shelton's fast blinking in the light of his phone, we were going to draw attention to ourselves from the late-evening tourists as potential delinquents soon.

I sent a prayer up to the gods of Google Street View that it would load faster. Shelton had grabbed Madison's address off the Mag League website's Division Directors contact area. Now we were just finally checking the house two down on the opposite side of the road was definitely Madison's crib. It would be one thing to break into her house for clues; quite another to break into the wrong one.

"Bam!" Shelton's breathed word carried easily, and I hurriedly peered over his shoulder. My eyebrows rose.

"Wow, good thing we checked." It was three down on the opposite side.

"Fail to plan…" Hi blew a breath out, making his fringe partially unstick. "I don't know if this makes me feel better or worse."

"Definitely better." Ben clapped a hand on Hi's shoulder, making him jump. "Imagine getting jailed for a useless break-in."

"That's going to happen either way," Shelton mumbled, widening his eyes innocently when I shot him a glare.

"Hey, we have no guarantee of that! I've got a great gut feeling about this." Nobody argued. I resisted the urge to beam victoriously. "So, we just have to swing into her backyard, find which is Madison's balcony, and make it up there. I've heard Courtney saying before how she always leaves it open for Chance and dangles down rope or something to let out guests." I shrugged. "A final test for suitors?"

"Not to ruin that plan, but I'm pretty sure Madison isn't expecting any of us," Hi interjected. "Not that she'd be able to turn me down if she knew."

"Yeah yeah, you'd have it all sorted out in no time." I rolled my eyes. "I was thinking drainpipes. Or maybe a trellis. They seem like the sort of people who'd have a trellis the size of New England attached to the back of the house."

"And do we have any other ideas in the works if Madison's house does actually have the most basic security?"

"Ben brought Sewee's rope." Not answering the question, but I ignored the implications of his question. Sloppiness brought on by desperation. "Chill, Shelton." I rubbed my hands together and turned to survey the railings. They were stationed atop a brick wall, so we'd each jump onto the wall and carefully climb over, dropping into the garden. The lack of streetlights was all we had going for us; we'd just have to pray nobody saw us.

Even I was feeling uncomfortable with that particular detail, but I wasn't about to let on. I knew there was something wrong at Madison's; I knew we needed to get there.

With a head motion to the boys, I casually jogged across the street and executed the planned swing-up, hand-brace, and leg-over movement swiftly. Perhaps not gracefully, and I stumbled for several feet on the jarring landing, but it seemed to instil confidence in everyone enough for us to all make it over with only one ripped pants leg between us.

I glanced around the magnolia bushes we were standing in. Tried to gauge the house. If we crept through the flowerbeds, we'd make more noise but be harder to see. On the other hand, the house seemed completely dark.

I made the executive decision and pushed my way to the edge of the lawn. If a light came on, we could jump straight back into the painstakingly curated flowerbeds. For now, I was confident in our hypersenses to warn us if we were observed. Maybe that was stupid, after such topsy-turviness in the last month, but I couldn't find it in me to care. I needed answers too badly.

Double-checking the pack was with me, and mentally checking in with Coop moored on Sewee, I set off at a creeping lope. The front lawn was an impressive half-hockey-pitch size, and bore an obnoxious volume of floral scents. I imagined the flowers to be as over-primped and brash as Madison herself, and took great pleasure in stomping on one dahlia head that was stuck out a little too far.

Even with our near-silent treads and fast pace, there was a pervading, anxious sense of overexposure. At the end of the day, we were four teenagers sneaking around to the back of the house, and while we were careful to blend in with the bushes next to us in case of CCTV, Shelton had been correct about the many security risks.

The dark grass sounded unbearably loud as we crept quickly forward. I concentrated on it as we bypassed the long side of Madison's grey-brick mansion, and passed into what would classify as the back lawn. I paused on a parallel with the back corner of her house.

We can make a break for it across the lawn, or go the long route round the back of her garden and back out, I sent to the boys. Any preferences?

Ben and Hi voted lawn. I agreed; the house was pitch-black aside from ground-level windows. Hopefully the Dunkles were as cheap as the Claybournes when it came to light bills and hired help and, luck of luck, were out with few guards left here.

Did nobody ever tell them the first trick of keeping burglars away? Hi wondered.

This feels too easy, Shelton floated uneasily.

I agreed, but after taking several seconds to listen for any and all possible clues to CCTV, rigged traps or laser-beam gnomes, decided to take the chance for now.

With a last glance around, I opened my mind to the Virals so they would see what I was doing. Then I tensed my muscles – crouched – flew across the croquet lawn and in a blink was pulling myself up one, two – toes finding almost non-existent cuttings to spring from here, here, up and up –

And then I was crouched over Madison's dark window, toes on her ledge and fingers clutching the top of the window frame. Body still carefully held, I chuckled lowly to myself, the sound carrying across in the wind.

Even just jogging the gleaming glass with my knee, I could hear the wood bumping wood – and no metallic long clank.

Her window was open.

Bingo.

A/N: so this was written over about a month between that illness and interviews. It might not make sense, but I had (drawn-out) fun?! It is also my last backlog chapter. AKA, the updates will only be done as fast as I can write… apologies in advance.

Also I want to say thank you so, so, so much to my wonderful reviewers. The few who come back and review every time in particular, because it means an incredible amount to me and really encourages me so much. Thank you for always boosting my confidence! Over 90 shows of love is incredible and I'm so lucky to have such lovely readers.

NEXT TIME: plot twist. That's all I can say.