Page 98 of Flickerstate

Candace clears her throat.

Vik releases the knob finger by finger (his knuckles arewhite). “Yes?”

“Should we go over the plan one more time?” she asks.

“That’s why I’m here,” he says tightly.

“Norah?”

I look down at myself. I’m expecting to see my skin flushed red and sweaty like I’ve been standing inches from a bonfire, but no. When I brush a shaky hand down my sleeve, the velvet’s barely warm. “Yeah. Let’s talk. About the plan.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I’m meeting Griffin at eight. When I slip out of my block, leaving Candace and Vik in my single, he’s standing at the end of the hallby the window. The night frames his profile in soft black, while the ceiling lights cast a halo around his bright hair. His tuxedo fits perfectly.

I’ve never seen a boy in a tux that fits. He must own it. Wild.

His lips purse in a silent whistle. “You clean up nice.”

I snort. “What are you implying about how I looked before?”

“Nothing, but this—” He frames me with his thumbs and forefingers, like Candace did earlier. “This is something else.”

Griffin and Candace share an aura of wealth and assurance, but the two of them are otherwise so different—Griffin boyish and outgoing, Candace sardonic and self-contained—that you could forget they grew up together. Except, every so often, they copy each other’s vocal tics and use each other’s gestures. Their similarities make me fonder toward Griffin, but uncomfortable too, becauseI have to wonder: What does Griffin know about Candace’s cure? What has he guessed?

I shake off my disquiet and mime a curtsey. “We aim to please.”

He laughs—“Since when?”—and holds out a bent elbow. I wrap my hand around his arm. He’s flexing. I’d call him out, except I can’t think of how to do it without admitting that yeah, he’s jacked, so I forbear.

We descend the stairs and stroll out of Lucasson onto the cold, dark quad, lit here and there by iron lamps. When we reach the dining hall, a messy line of students in formal wear spills from the propped-open main doors, past the bare-branched redbud, onto the frosty grass. Waiting to offer their tickets to whatever volunteer is checking them, I assume.

“I’ll peek inside, see how long we’ll be waiting,” Griffin says.

As he meanders up the line, kids clear a path for him like magic. I pull my phone from my dress’s skirt pocket and text Vik:Got it?

We’re in,he texts back.

Okay. Vik and Candace have entered the Archive. Now it’s my job to keep Griffin surveilled and distracted, away from the library, away from his block, where he might notice his keycard is missing, until Vik and Candace find the cure.

“Ooh, your dress has pockets?” Jacqueline, in vivid purple pumps and a white silk halter dress, swans across the quad toward me. Antoine, a step behind her, models a black-on-black ensemble: matte black suit and shirt, satiny black tie.

I slip my phone into my pocket. “It does indeed. You guys look great.”

“You too,” Jacqueline says. “Are you here with Vik?”

My face does something complicated. “Um, no.”

Jacqueline’s big eyes widen. “Sorry, I assumed, ’cause… Who are you here with?”

Griffin walks his charmed path back through the crowd. “Antoine, Jackie, so stunning tonight,” he calls. “There’s some jam at the ticket desk. Looks like we’ll be waiting a while.”

***

Navigation is the one thing all Academy students have in common, aside from stellar test scores, so we rely on it as a discussion topic to paper over awkward moments. When Jacqueline sees that my date is Griffin, her eyebrows float to her hairline—and I, in grand Academy style, ask what she and Antoine want to do with their nav career-wise.

She wants to research whether you can fine-tune nav to mess with subatomic particles, which sounds like either the next frontier in physics or her supervillain origin story. (Her eyes glow with obscene enthusiasm when she says “waveform collapse,” so smart money’s on the supervillain thing.) Antoine wants to work in policy—specifically, in upping the number of navigators in emergency response. “We should have nav teams the way we have fire stations,” he says, “one for every town and more in big cities. The county nav department system doesn’t cut it. When people call 911 about nav issues”—he’s been talking about beasts the whole time but hasn’t said the word once—“it takes way too long for someone withthe right skills to respond. And the funding cuts Secretary Tully is proposing will make it so much worse. I’m organizing a walkout at his stupid sham of a talk tomorrow, if you guys want to join.”

I bite my tongue to keep from agreeing too forcefully. After a pause, I say in a casual tone, “This semester has owned me so hard that I forgot he was even coming to campus. Can’t say I’m thrilled to be reminded. I just might join the protest.”