She swallowed and pretended that this didn’t bother her. Phobia was still an Anarchist, she reminded herself. She had never thought of him as a friend, but he was still her ally.

Even if he had killed Adrian’s mom.

“Have no fear,” rasped Phobia’s sullen voice. Nova spun, startled to find him suddenly only a few feet away from her. The blade of his scythe was arced through Ace’s helmet, hooked through the neck hole and jutting up through the eye socket. “To most prodigies, this helmet would be more burden than gift.”

Nova wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the helmet, which was perhaps her father’s greatest achievement. She would not call the power that it wielded a burden, and yet there was a weighted dread that settled in her stomach as she started to reach for it. She took hold of the helmet and slid it off the blade. The metal was warm to the touch, still casting off that familiar glow as she cradled it in her hands.

“Ace would fight for any of us,” she said. “He did fight for us. Everything he’s ever done has been to make life better for prodigies. We can’t leave him in that place. We can’t let them execute him.”

“It’s impossible,” someone muttered, though Nova couldn’t tell who. It didn’t matter. She could see the thought mirrored on every face surrounding her.

“It’s not impossible,” she insisted. “This morning, I was a prisoner in Cragmoor Penitentiary and had only three allies in the outside world.” She gestured at Honey, Leroy, and Phobia. “And now here I am. Here we all are. If you’re serious about wanting to change things, then this isn’t up for debate. Ace has done more to further the cause of prodigies in this world than any human alive, and we’re not going to abandon him. Besides, he’s my uncle. He rescued me when I needed him. I’m going to rescue him now, or I’m going to die trying.”

“Well, at least one of those scenarios seems likely,” muttered Narcissa. “You’ll definitely die trying to break into Cragmoor.”

Nova glared, even as anticipation began to pulse through her veins. That familiar hum of adrenaline when she was making a plan, working through the logistics, figuring out what she was truly capable of. “We’re not going to attack the prison. We’re going to stop the execution.”

A stout man who was old enough to be Nova’s grandfather barked a laugh. “Well, jolly good, then! Tha’ll be easier. No worries that the entire Renegade crew’ll be about.”

“You’re right; there will be a lot of Renegades there,” said Nova. “But the Renegades tend to get cocky when they’re in big groups. They let their guard down. And while they might be expecting Nightmare to make an attempt to save Ace”—she glanced at Narcissa—“they won’t be expecting all of us. But I need some time to think. And I’ll need to go back to headquarters. There are a few things—”

“That’s it?” said Narcissa. “We risk everything to get you out of prison and you’re just going to rattle off some vague hopes about rescuing Ace Anarchy and risking our lives to do it? This is about more than Ace Anarchy, more than the Anarchists.”

“I know it is,” said Nova. “But I need time to figure this out. You’ll have to trust me.”

“We trust you,” said Leroy. “You are the one who stole back Ace’s helmet, from the Renegades’ own vault, no less.”

“Oh!” said Honey. “Speaking of things stolen from the Renegades, do you think you’ll be needing this back?” She reached for her collar and pulled a black medallion from the bust of her dress. The Vitality Charm.

Nova felt a surge of apprehension as she scrutinized the design impressed into the black iron. Though it had protected her from Agent N, a part of her had hoped she would never have need of it again.

She said nothing, though, as she slipped the chain over her neck and tucked the charm beneath her shirt.

“Let’s reconvene in a few hours,” she said. “I’ll need to know what each of you can do, to see if your abilities might be useful as I develop a plan.”

“Your old fears have returned, little Nightmare,” Phobia added, his voice low, but not low enough. “They are stronger now than ever before. A nearly petrifying fear of failing … again.”

Nova peered into the bottomless pool of shadows beneath Phobia’s hood. His attempts to psychoanalyze her usually filled her with irritation. It felt like a violation of her privacy, for him to be poking around in her head that way, searching for her deepest fears, uncovering her best-kept secrets.

But it didn’t seem to matter so much this time. She was afraid to fail again. She was afraid to let everyone down—not just Ace and the Anarchists and this unexpected new group of allies, but also Adrian and the friends she’d made at the Renegades.

Yes, friends. The word was foreign and almost unbelievable, but she had faced the truth in that prison cell. The realization was too stark and painful to ignore. She had fallen in love with these people, who had taken her in and trusted her. And yet she betrayed them. To know that they would go on despising her for the rest of their lives left her feeling almost as hollowed out as the knowledge that Ace would never again look at her with beaming pride.

“Yeah, I am afraid that I’m going to fail again,” she said, still peering into the nothingness of Phobia’s face. “But one cannot be brave who has no fear.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THERE HAD BEEN many times since Adrian and his dads first moved into the old mayor’s mansion that Adrian had the nagging thought that it was far more space than the three of them needed. Not only because there was a formal parlor, formal dining room, and four guest rooms that had yet to welcome a single guest, but also because three grown men simply had no use for seven—count them—seven bathrooms.

Each one, of course, came equipped with a mirror. And that wasn’t even considering the mirrors in closets or the one hung over the fireplace mantel in the parlor, and probably some he hadn’t even thought of yet. It seemed reflections were everywhere he looked these days.

Adrian unscrewed the mirrored medicine cabinet from the wall of the third bathroom on the main floor, thinking for the umpteenth time that he hadn’t given enough credit to Narcissa Cronin’s power when he first met her at Cloven Cross Library. Sure, traveling through mirrors had seemed like a neat party trick, but now he was beginning to fully appreciate what a useful ability it could be.

There were mirrors everywhere.

It was almost like having a skeleton key to nearly any door in the world.

It drove him nuts every time he stopped to think about it. He had been in the same room with Nightmare that day at the library. She had been right in front of him, and he had been completely oblivious. It made him sick to think how she must have been laughing behind his back.

Realizing what a tedious job it was going to be to get rid of all the mirrors in the house, he’d been tempted to simply smash them to bits, or maybe just drape them with heavy cloths. But he didn’t think his dads would be too happy coming home to a house full of glass shards, and he didn’t know enough about Nightmare’s mirror-walking ability to know if a heavy cloth would be enough to keep her out.

And so, they had to be taken down.

The final screw fell into his palm and he pried the cabinet from the wall. He hadn’t bothered to remove the toiletries inside and he heard them sliding and crashing into one another as he carried it down the hall, down the steps, and into his basement bedroom. Past his bed and TV, past the desk where he had spent hours sketching in notebooks and, more recently, giving himself tattoos, and into the room that had once been deemed his art studio.

The room that had of late been converted into a living jungle.

He hadn’t entered the room in the days since Nova’s arrest. It held too many memories that were soured by his belief that Nova was his most loathed enemy. Memories of her head tucked against his shoulder, her face tranquil in sleep. Memories of her surprise when she saw the mural Adrian had painted on these walls, then watching her unspeakable awe as he brought the trees and vines and exotic flowers to life.

Since that night, the jungle had begun to fade, just as Turbo was. Adrian’s power didn’t include immortality. His creations would wilt and die, just like things in real life. Faster, actually, than things in real life. Now, when he entered this room, the one-time aromas of perfumed flowers had been replaced with the smell of decay and rot. The vibrant colors of the flowers faded to grays and browns, their silky petals drooping and papery crisp. The vines that hung from overhead tree branches became brittle to the touch, and a number of them broken, disintegrating on the mossy ground that was, itself, dying to reveal the plain concrete floor underneath.

Only the statue that stood at the far end of the room appeared untouched—but then, it had never been alive to begin with.

Adrian set the mirror against the wall with the others that he had already removed. He figured that if Nightmare did come through one of them, she’d be so confused by the dying flora that she’d think she took a wrong turn in mirrorland, or however that worked.

As an added precaution, he set up a couple of booby traps throughout the room that would alert him to an intruder—including a net that would fall down from the tree canopy and trap her inside. He really hoped she would set that one off. It would serve her right, he thought, remembering the bazooka-like gun she’d once used to trap him, as the Sentinel, inside a similar net.

Just thinking of their battle at the parade set his teeth on edge. Nightmare had embarrassed him enough times. Though he was happy—overjoyed, really—that Nova wasn’t the villain after all, he was more frustrated than ever to know that the real Nightmare continued to be one step ahead of him.

“Okay,” he muttered, surveying the mirrors and the traps he’d set. “Five down. Just thirteen more to go.”

He was passing through the foyer when the creak of a floorboard overhead made him freeze.