Chapter 20 · She Remembers It

The sleepwalkers were climbing.

Cass saw them through the cracked window of the east stairwell—four, maybe five students in nightclothes, moving up the outside wall like they had sticky fingers. No ropes. No gear. Just slow, deliberate handholds on stone that shouldn't hold anything.

"They're going to the bell tower," Mara said behind him. Her voice was flat. The ring sat in her palm, still warm from his hand.

Cass turned. She wasn't looking at the climbers. She was looking at him, and her eyes had that calculator thing going on, the same look she'd had right before she'd pinned him in the vault and asked if he was the reason everyone kept dying.

"We can still pull them down," he said. "If we're fast."

"Or we go upstairs and deal with Sera before she finishes whatever the hell she's doing with your mom's knife."

Cass's jaw tightened. The ring in her hand caught the moonlight, and he felt the absence of it on his finger like a pulled tooth. Lighter. Wrong.

"She's using them as bait," Mara added. She finally looked at the climbers. "She knows we'll try to save them.