Page 108 of Flickerstate

“I stole these.” I pull the notebooks from my pocket and hand them to her.

She flips one open and shines her phone on the pages. “Why these?”

“Why steal at all?” Vik asks.

“We didn’t find it,” I say.

“What?”

An impatient grunt forces between my teeth. “The key to all mythologies.”

“We found the cure,” he says. “It’s leaguing.”

“We don’t know that. So when we had to run, I—I grabbed what I could. That way at least we aren’t empty-handed.”

Vik shakes his head. “If Griffin realizes material is missing from—“

“He’ll figure out someone was in his section anyway. As soon as Mirabel finds him and yells at him about ignoring her. And on the topic of Griffin, where the hell is he? He was selling me pretty hard on the claim that he needed to sleep or he’d go full gremlin.”

“Same with me,” Vik says. “When I ran into you guys he made a point of reminding me—what did he say?”

“He turns into a pumpkin at midnight.”

Candace’s eyes tick around the clearing, tree to tree. I’m remindedwe have no idea where Griffin is. He could be hiding in the woods, eavesdropping on us. I squint into the thick-layered washes of dark beyond Candace’s flashlight: stillness and silence.

When Candace speaks next, she whispers: “He stays up till five a.m. at home all the time. Has he always gone to bed early, the years you guys have been blockmates?”

Vik considers. “He pulled all-nighters freshman year. He got better at managing the workload after that. He complains about needing more sleep, but everyone does. This midnight-pumpkin gag is more recent.”

“Is there a door hidden behind the boxes on the back shelf inyoursection, Vik?” I ask.

Vik blinks. “No?”

“I found one in Griffin’s,” I say.

Candace stares at me. “You found ahidden doorin the Highwall Collection?”

I nod. “Right before Mirabel showed up. The door was locked with an electronic keypad.”

Vik chews his lip. “Why hide a locked room inside a locked room?”

We stand in silence and think aboutthat.

“Okay,” I say. “What have we found that’sactionable?”

“Highwall and her collaborators could league,” Vik says. “They were experimenting with group leaguing. And leaguing—it’s not like channeling. With channeling, the navigator gets access to their own nav plus the channeler’s. One plus one. Add another channeler, and it’s one plus one plus one. When we league, our powers multiply or—or it’s exponential, or—I’m not sure how far I can push the math analogy. The point is, five-person leaguing means unprecedented power. Even three-person leaguing… We should try it.”

“Now?” Candace asks.

Vik looks tempted, but he shakes his head. “Tomorrow. Before we try, I want to search the names of the ‘candidates’ online. See how many of them suddenly left the Academy, the way Jake and Aria did. And I want to reread Jake’s biography of Highwall, seewhether I can figure out whoMOis. If they’re alive, maybe they know how far Highwall got with leaguing—and how many leaguers it takes to cure a bite.”

“While you’re doing that…” Candace says. “Did Jake own any books that talked about nav machines?”

“Parascience and the History of Navigation.”

“Is that the one,” I ask, “where people are speculating that nav comes from Satan and aliens and, like, earth auras?”

“Among other things.”