Nova tensed. “You read them?”

“Of course I read them.” Narcissa flipped through a few pages, then stopped on a child’s drawing of a shadowy monster with narrow white eyes. “It’s just a blob at first, but as he got older, and his art got better…” She kept flipping. The papers were more organized than when Nova had seen them the first time, stuck in a forgotten box on a forgotten shelf. Narcissa must have put them in roughly chronological order, and the result was striking. She stared as, page after page, Adrian’s phantom took shape.

At the bottom of the stack were the three issues of Rebel Z, the comic Adrian had started in his younger years. Nova had flipped hastily through the first one when she’d been sneaking around the office, but Narcissa took her time now, turning page by page. In the story, a homeless street kid who looked an awful lot like a young Adrian was abducted by an evil scientist. He, along with twenty-five other children, were subjected to cruel testing. Narcissa stopped on a page showing one of the other kids strapped to a medical table, screaming in agony as the doctor and his assistants applied some sort of high-tech probes to his skull and chest.

Narcissa turned another page, and Nova’s breath caught.

The boy on the table appeared dead, and rising up from his parted blue lips was a monster—the same shadowy figure that had plagued Adrian’s artwork for so many years. But it was no longer vague and obscure. Now its edges were outlined in crisp black.

A hooded cloak hovered over the boy’s body, bending down as if to see into the boy’s dead eyes.

A skeletal finger stretched out from billowing sleeves.

A weapon was clutched in its opposite hand, glinting faintly in the doctor’s laboratory.

A scythe.

“It could be coincidence,” Nova whispered.

“I thought that, too,” said Narcissa, lowering her voice. “So I asked Honey about him. Most of the Anarchists had followed Ace for decades; some had been with him since before the start of the Age of Anarchy, even. But Phobia just appeared out of nowhere a year or so before the Day of Triumph and told Ace that it was his purpose to bring terror to their mutual enemies. As far as Honey knows, he’s never told anyone his real name or who he was before he became Phobia.” She shivered. “The timeline works. Adrian Everhart would have been … what? Five or six when he first started drawing this … thing.” She pulled some of the older drawings from the stack. “His skills weren’t there yet, but it seems safe to say that he was drawing Phobia … even back then.”

Nova massaged her temple. She had half expected this. Thoughts of Phobia and Lady Indomitable had plagued her in her prison cell almost as much as thoughts of Adrian himself. It was a puzzle that had quickly resolved itself once Adrian told her about the card found on his mother’s body. One cannot be brave who has no fear.

Phobia’s power was to prey on his enemy’s deepest fears, and Adrian himself had told Nova that the greatest fear of his childhood had been that someday his mother would leave and never come back.

She’d hoped she was wrong. But now …

“He created Phobia,” she whispered, taking the child’s drawing from Narcissa and inspecting it with mounting dread. She was startled to find her vision misting as she tried to imagine what Adrian would feel if he knew the truth. “He created the monster that killed his mother.”

“Nova…” Narcissa reached forward and took the drawing back. “Adrian Everhart is a Renegade. He’s not on our side.”

Nova straightened, blinking back any signs of approaching tears. “I know that.”

“Yeah, but…” Narcissa frowned doubtfully. Hell, she looked borderline sorry for Nova.

Scowling, Nova gathered up the papers and shoved them back in the bag. “Thanks for getting these. I need to talk to Millie and—”

“Whoa, whoa, there was something else I wanted to show you.” Narcissa grabbed the Rebel Z comics before Nova could put them away. “Have you read these?”

“I don’t have time.”

“But there’s something—”

“Later,” Nova snapped. Then, feeling guilty, she forced a smile. She wasn’t mad at Narcissa; she was mad at this whole impossible situation.

Adrian Everhart was her enemy.

Phobia was her ally.

So why did it feel like her heart was breaking, to know how much pain it would cause Adrian to ever learn the truth of their connection?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You can show me later, okay? I just … I really need to talk to Millie about some stuff. It’s important.”

Fingers tapping on the comic’s cover, Narcissa slowly nodded. “Sure, it can wait. It doesn’t change much at this point anyway.”

* * *

Nova had a long list in her head of everything she needed to do and everyone she needed to talk to in order to make sure all was going according to plan—the plan that was still forming by the minute. Especially now that she knew not all of Narcissa’s Rejects would be willing to pull their weight as she’d been led to believe.

But she wanted to talk to Millie first. She hoped the psychometrist might offer answers that Nova doubted she’d find anywhere else.

The basement beneath the pawnshop was divided into a series of large rooms, where a few members of their fledgling alliance had staked out a corner here or set up a cot for themselves there. There was one toilet and a shower with running water that never truly got warm, and so it was only the prodigies who were wanted by the Renegades who spent much time in the underground hideout. Many of the others still had their own homes to return to, though Nova had insisted they meet at particular times to hash out the details of her burgeoning plan.

Of the prodigies who were more permanent fixtures in the shelter, Millie had been given her own space, sharing a converted closet with the power generator that rumbled and cranked incessantly. When Nova arrived at the room, she saw Millie sitting cross-legged on an old sofa cushion, cradling a teacup in the palms of both hands. Her eyes were closed almost blissfully, but one popped open in annoyance when Nova knocked at the plywood door.

“Could you look at something for me?” said Nova, stepping into the room before Millie could shoo her away.

Grunting, Millie peered down into the cup, which Nova realized was empty. “I’m busy.”

“This is important.”

“You young people think everything is important.”

Nova tensed, annoyed at the idea that her problems might be trivial. “If we fail, Ace Anarchy is going to die. Or am I the only one who cares about that?”

Millie hummed, unflustered, as she turned the teacup upside down, examining it. “Eighteenth-century bone porcelain. Gilt edging. Hand-painted botanical motif.” She rubbed her thumb over a red imprint on the bottom. “Clear backstamp. Back when pretty things were valued more highly than they are today, this would have sold for upward of two thousand dollars.”

Though Nova was irritated at Millie’s willful ignorance of her statement, at this, her eyebrows rose in mute surprise. She studied the teacup more carefully now, but to her, it continued to look like an antique, useful only for holding tea.

With a crooked grin, Millie set the teacup on her table. “At least, that’s what it wants you to believe. Alas, it’s a fake. A quality replica, but still an impostor. It’s interesting, don’t you think, how an impostor, no matter how good it is, can never be as highly valued as the original.” Her expression turned faintly mocking. “I suppose you know something about that, don’t you, Young Renegade?”

“I suppose I do,” Nova muttered. “Is that from the pawnshop?”

“Was brought in to be pawned yesterday morning. Dave’s been hiring me to do appraisal work for years. People bring in a lot of random stuff to sell, and it can be hard to sort the gold out of the dung heap. Luckily, that’s where I excel.”

“Coming here was your idea?”

She shrugged. “Miss Cronin tracked me down at my boat and told me what she was planning, trying to bring together the old cohorts of her grandfather’s. I liked the idea—it’s been getting harder and harder to conduct business, with the Renegades always breathing down everybody’s necks. But we weren’t all going to fit on my little houseboat, so I suggested Dave’s place. The Ghouls and a few of the other gangs used to have meetings down here.”

“What about your boat?” Nova asked. “Aren’t you worried about leaving it unprotected while you’re here?”

“It’ll be fine,” said Millie, her eyes sparking. “Leroy helped me set up some defenses. If anyone tries to steal my treasures, they’ll have regrets.” Setting the cup on the floor, she folded her hands on her lap and turned her full attention to Nova. “What is it you wanted me to look at?”

Nova shut the door behind her. Stepping across the room, she unlatched the bracelet, her fingers fumbling with the clasp Adrian had once drawn for her. The chain slid from her skin. The star brightened momentarily before returning to its faint glimmer.

“I want to know more about this,” she said, holding it out to Millie. “When I stole the helmet, my bracelet reacted to it, almost like the two were magnetized. And the”—she stumbled on the word star, instead saying—“jewel had some sort of reaction, too. It helped me break into the chromium box that the helmet was being kept in. I feel like they’re connected somehow.”

Millie’s face as she stared at the bracelet was akin to a curator admiring a fine piece of art, and yet she didn’t reach out to take it. “I haven’t touched the helmet, so I may not see any shared history, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

“I can have Phobia bring you the helmet, if you need it,” said Nova. “I’ve been thinking maybe we should all try it on, anyway, to see how it affects our powers. It’s supposed to amplify any prodigy ability, which could be useful. And we’re going to need every advantage we can get.”