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“This stuff does the trick.” She began lining the upper corners of the castle with it, standing on tiptoes to reach. “Everything this tape picks up is sent directly to DOME headquarters. They have a system recording day and night. At least that's how it seemed when I hacked into their system this afternoon.”

“You
what
?”

Erin ripped a piece off and smoothed it out with her fingers. When she'd finished, the tape was invisible, and you could run your hand directly over it without feeling it was there. “I bet you'd be amazed, the places you'd find this stuff,” Erin said, shaking her head.

“I thought your dad never told you DOME secrets.”

“He doesn't. I'd be amazed too. Anyway, after tonight, I'll be able to quarantine the data from whatever's recorded here in the DOME system, so I can control who sees it and where it goes.”

“This is through your magical second hacking session later on?”

“Not magical. I learned from the best.” Erin thought of Mac and smiled, thinking how proud he would be.

“Clearly,” Logan said.

“I'll be watching closely,” Erin told him. “And I have the surveillance gel, so I'll be able to hear anything that goes on as soon as it—”

“Wait, where are you—”

“He'll never show if I'm here with you,” Erin said, as if Logan should have realized this. “But I won't be far.”

“Erin, you can't leave me here.”

“Oh, don't be a baby,” she said. “You're almost Marked, remember? Don't even need a night-light.”

Logan gritted his teeth.

“So your job,” Erin said, as if uninterrupted, “will be to get Peck to say something we can use against him. We already know he's guilty, so the point's not to entrap anyone—we just need clues. Where Peck's been hiding, where he's trying to take you, what he's done with Meg . . .” Erin's face grew a little dimmer. “On the other hand, if events do start to deviate from what we might call . . . our ideal scenario . . .” She paused for a second. “I guess . . . just try to make sure they deviate with this in your pocket.” She handed him a small button. Logan knew what it was.

It was a tracker.

11

“I don't like this,” Blake said, still in the shadows. “She's planning something.”

Eddie squinted. “What is all that stuff she has?”

“No idea. It's high-tech. But it's clear she's laying a trap.”

“That meddling little—”

“Tyler, I need you to find Jo. Tell her to relay to Peck—we're packing up. I'm calling it off.”

“I told you you'd blow it,” Tyler said, grinning.

“When we get back to Fulmart, I'm gonna strangle you in your sleep.”

“Too bad I'll be sleeping on a shelf too high for your fat hands to reach.” Tyler disappeared into the shadows, giggling as he went.

“He's right,” Eddie said. “You blew it. We should've pounced before school started back up.”

Blake didn't say anything for a minute. Then he just said, “You're right, Eddie. I blew it.”

12

Logan looked at his tablet: 3:00 a.m.

“I don't get it,” Logan said into nothing, knowing Erin could hear him. “Where is he?”

A minute later Erin appeared from the shadows. “You made it up, didn't you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You set your own fire.”

“I saw a
face
in my
window
—”

“An easy lie. You met a pretty girl and got her attention, and you thought you'd take advantage of it. You win, Logan.” She sighed.

“I didn't
lie
about anything! And this wasn't my idea—it was
yours
! I have no idea why Peck didn't show! Maybe he saw you
bugging
the place and decided—”

“Right, Logan, of course it's my fault. That's convenient.”

“Whatever,” Logan said. “This could have gone a lot worse. 'Least you didn't get me killed tonight.”

“Yeah, there's that,” Erin said without sincerity. She had her fingers in her ears and scraped violently at the gel inside, tearing it out in flakes that she flicked impatiently to the ground. “Stupid echo,” she said. “Can we at least move to where there isn't so much powder? Everything I say shouts back at me inside my head.”

“I've got a better idea,” Logan said. “Let's go home.”

“Fine.” Erin went to her rollerstick and grabbed its top, dragging it behind her with visible frustration as she walked away from the playground.

“We're not gonna walk—”

“Yes, we are,” Erin said.

“It's over a mile back. It's three in the morning—”

“Too bad.”

“But what about your roller—”

“It wasn't built for two.”

The walk back to Wright Street from the park seemed longer to Logan than it ever had, and it was silent except at the end, when he spoke.

“What do you suppose he wanted?” he asked. “If we hadn't scared him off, I mean . . . what do you think he really wanted from me?”

“He was never coming,” Erin said. “Admit it.”

“You not believing it won't change the truth, Erin.”

She looked at him and frowned. “I'm not going home anytime soon, am I?”

“That I don't know. I have a feeling we came close to something tonight, though. Closer than it seemed.”

“Maybe.” Erin shrugged. “Or maybe you're just stringing the new girl along.”

“Right,” Logan said sarcastically. “Anything for a second date with ‘the new girl.' Since tonight was so dreamy and all.” He paused and kicked a rock, sending it skipping down the sidewalk. “I'm not, though.”

“I can't believe we took all this stuff,” Erin said, changing the subject. She bounced the backpack on her shoulders, glad it was too dark for Logan to see the blush she felt in her cheeks. “Maybe I can return it.”

“Or maybe it'll come in handy yet.”

Erin shrugged. “Either way.”

They turned onto Wright, and Logan could see his house ahead.

“Don't get caught on your way back in,” Erin said.

When Logan snuck back into his own bed, in his own room, he was more tired than he'd ever been.

How long had he been asleep when Logan woke to the whisper in the dark, its faint vibrations directly in his ear?

“Surveillance powder. Very clever
.
”
There was a pause in the words, and the stillness of Logan's room rang in their place.
“Well, Logan, if that's how you want it . . . we can play this little game.”
And then a rushing sound filled Logan's ears, like water crashing inside them, and his line to the chalk went dead.

Logan lay under the covers with his eyes wide and horrified. He didn't sleep again after that.

SIX
REGROUP

1

L
OGAN STOOD IN THE SAHARA WING AT
Spokie Middle, just staring out the fake window into the virtual dunes beyond. The sand was red and untouched, isolated from everything and everyone. It was all Logan wanted, to be there, to forget about this week and the world of trouble he was in.

“You okay, Logan? You look like you've seen a ghost.” Logan jumped; Hailey had come up behind him and spoken before he knew she was there.

“Something like that.” He laughed and turned around. After everything else that had happened, his memory of seeing Hailey last night on the sidewalk felt like it was from years ago.

“It was nice bumping into you yesterday, briefly.” Hailey stared intently at her hands, which she was wringing. If there was anyone in Spokie more nervous-looking than Logan, it was usually Hailey.

“Yeah.” Logan chuckled. “Sorry about that . . . whole . . . running off thing. What can you do, right?”

“Right.” Now Hailey looked out at the desert too.

“I'd rather be there,” Logan said, without turning to Hailey. “Of all the hallways in this school, if you could, which one would you go to?”

“The moon,” Hailey said.

Logan laughed. “Probably the one place farther from people than I chose.”

“Do you like the new girl, Logan?” Hailey asked. The quiver in her voice was gone. She asked it with purpose.

Logan didn't know what to say. “We get along all right,” he finally admitted. “It's not romantic, if that's what you—”

Hailey made the smallest sigh, barely perceptible, but Logan heard it. “You always say we should hang out more. But we never do.” Hailey was paying close attention to the wind on the dunes.

Girl trouble? Now Logan was having girl trouble? Is that really what this was, on top of everything else? How much crazier was eighth grade going to get? He thought back to last year, when his biggest concern was algebra, and whether or not he'd get the last throw in during his food fights with Dane and Tom at lunch.

“Well, let's hang out,” Logan said, heading this complication off at the pass. “Seriously. I mean it. I think that'd be great.”

“Okay,” Hailey said, brightening up immediately.

“Sometime next week?”

“Good,” Hailey said.

Logan smiled inwardly. His sudden excitement surprised him, and yet it was sincere. A date next week with Hailey—that'd be all right.

But this was silly. It was hardly a date. It was hardly anything at all.

And if it was, how would Erin feel?

Fine, Logan. Erin would feel fine. Don't kid yourself
.
Erin wouldn't bat an eye. After last night, she doesn't even like you as a friend right now
.

And in any case, the way things were going, Erin would probably be on her way back to Beacon by next week.

Or Logan would probably be dead.

“What should we do?” Logan asked. “We don't have Marks. We can't even get ice cream.”

“We'll take a walk.” Hailey smiled. “Walking's still free.”

Now Logan smiled too. “Cool. All right,” he said. “Well . . . see ya.”

Logan sighed and turned to make his way to English. What he didn't see was Dane, waiting at the end of the hall.

He didn't see Dane's clenched fists.

And he didn't see the look on Dane's face.

2

At lunch, Logan found Erin sitting by herself on the lawn above school in the one patch of sunlight between the shadows of the surrounding buildings.

“You hear it last night?” Logan asked.

“Hear what?”

“I don't know what time it was. A voice. In the gel. It was faint, but the powder picked it up.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Erin said.

“Erin, you
must
have heard it.”

Erin chewed her soy cheese sandwich and looked toward the sun, closing her eyes and letting it warm her face. “I didn't hear anything.”

That's when Logan remembered Erin getting fed up on the playground. She'd picked the gel right out of her ears before they'd even left the scene.
Great
, he thought,
she won't believe this either
.

“Well, it happened. It must have been Peck. He showed last night, I'm sure of it. After we'd left.”

Erin laughed. “That's a likely story. Did he come with a unicorn?”

“Look!” Logan was quickly losing his temper. “I'm sorry last night didn't go perfectly according to your crackpot plan—which was no less dangerous just because we weren't kidnapped, by the way—but I have no reason to make up any of this stuff. You're the one who wants it to be true so bad. I'd much rather see it all go away.”

Erin stuffed the rest of her lunch into her backpack. Logan noticed the equipment still inside.

“But if you can get over your self-pity for two seconds, I got to thinking last night.”

Erin looked at him, eyebrows raised.
Impress me
, they seemed to say.

Logan could not believe what he was about to propose. Just two days ago, it had seemed insane to him, impossible. But the game was different now. “I don't know how it is in Beacon, what you do with your Markless—”