“Somehow I knew you wouldn’t wait until midnight.”

I spin around, face-to-face with the one person I never expected to see here.

“Damian?” I can’t stop blinking. Damian isn’t here. He’s in Thailand with Mom. Trekking through the Southeast Asian jungle. On their honeymoon. They’re not getting back for another two days. Oh no, maybe something happened. Maybe Mom—

“Your mother is fine,” he assures me with a knowing smile. “She is sleeping peacefully in our Nakhon Pathom hotel room.”

It still bugs me how he can read minds, but I’m more in shock over the fact that he’s here. In this courtyard. Right now.

“Then what are you doing here?” I ask. “How did you know I—”

“I sent the e-mails, Phoebe.” He places his hand on my shoulder. “I sent the note.”

That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Damian go through all this mystery and superspy subterfuge? He could have just picked up the phone—or, considering the rates to place a call from Thailand, sent a nonblocked e-mail. Besides, he is so not the type to play games.

When he doesn’t seem to be reading my mind—or at least he’s not acting on what he reads—I ask, “Why? The mystery, the suspense, the secrecy. Why would you do it this way?”

“For many reasons,” he replies cryptically. “The foremost of which is that I wished to distract you from your looming test. I believed that if I diverted your worry from your powers, you might more easily control them.”

Ha, like that worked.

“Skepticism aside,” he says. “Consider this: When was the last time your powers behaved erratically?”

“This morning,” I say without hesitation. “Griffin and I were training with Tansy, and as we—”

“I know.” He always seems to know way more than should be possible. It’s like he’s got this whole island wired or something. “Autoporting surprised you, but it did not misbehave. That was exactly what your subconscious was trying to achieve.”

Maybe he’s right. I mean, I was exhausted and desperate to get across the finish line and then, suddenly, I was. At least I hadn’t zapped myself to Finland or anything. The last time my powers truly freaked out on their own was the first day of camp, when I turned Stella into a birthday cake.

His distraction had worked.

“Was that the only reason?” I ask. “Keeping my mind on something else?”

“No,” he explains. “I chose the lure of your father’s trial in an attempt to draw out your strongest emotions.”

“Why?” I shake my head. “Everyone says emotions hijack your powers.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Phoebe, learning to control your powers is about more than passing a single test.” He steps forward and places his hands on my shoulders. “For your own protection, you need to have complete mastery over your powers. Even in the face of emotional upheaval.”

“Oh.” I guess that makes sense. Nothing could shake me up more than anything to do with Dad. If I can control my powers in the midst of all that, then I can control them in any situation.

But does that mean it was nothing more than an emotional distraction?

I shake my head in disbelief. “So this was all some kind of mind game,” I say, a wave of really uncomfortable emotion welling in my chest. “There never was anything new in my dad’s trial record, was there?”

“On the contrary,” Damian says, clasping his hands together in his very formal way. “There are many things in the transcripts you may wish to see.”

So there really is something in the record. And he really is going to let me see it. I’m about to ask what it says when Damian steps sideways into the darkest shadows.

“But no one must see what I am about to show you, so you must send your friends away,” he says, his voice a low whisper. When I look at him like he’s crazy—I’m here alone, aren’t I?—he adds, “A pair of them are about to burst through the far doors, and a third has been watching you from the second story chemistry classroom since shortly after you arrived.”

I scowl up at the classroom window. That would be Griffin, I’m sure of it. Stalking out into the moonlight, I look directly into what I know are his bright blue eyes—just so he knows I know—and point toward the Academy entrance. I sense his hesitation and then a shadow finally moves across the darkened window and I know he’s gone. Probably to go wait on the front steps.

Then, before I can even turn back to see if Damian is impressed, the far doors fling open and Troy and Urian come racing into the courtyard.

“We’ve got it,” Troy shouts.

“My computer finished its search,” Urian says, holding up a computer printout and looking extremely proud of his geeky self. “We figured out who sent the e-mail.”

“Yeah,” Troy gasps, skidding to a stop in front of me, “it’s—”

“Damian,” I say, bursting his bubble. “I know.”

Urian drops his jaw. “How?”

I jerk back over my shoulder. Footsteps echo across the courtyard and I know Damian has stepped out of the shadows.

Troy—who is always kind of a chicken when it comes to authority figures—blanches. “Um, ah, Headmaster Petrolas,” he stammers. “I thought, um, you were in, er, Thailand.”