A Farewell to Charms by Lindsey Leavitt Page B

could program my manual to get anywhere into Façade. Why not there? And once he saw those glowing vials filled with stolen magic, he would have to believe me.
    “Hey, you want to go explore Façade some more?” I asked. “I could show you some places Sergei didn’t.”
    “Can’t. Sergei just sent me an urgent job.” He smiled and held up his manual. “Another time, though?”
    “Yeah. Another time.”
    Reed reached over and gave my hand a little squeeze. “Be careful out there.”
    My hand was still buzzing minutes after he left. Stupid hand. Didn’t matter who Reed was or how I felt about him in Sproutville. Here, he was important, and here he didn’t want to listen to me. And although that realization was painful, it didn’t change what I needed to do.
    Infiltrate Façade.

A s I limped through Façade’s corridors, I devised DBIF: TBP, short for Desi Bascomb Infiltrates Façade: The Battle Plan.
    1. Find a map of Façade.
    2. Get into the sub-sanitation room.
    3. Find a former sub’s magic.
    4. Return/restore that sub’s magic.
    The problems with that plan:
    1. Façade: Even if I managed to find a map, I still wouldn’t have an invisibility cloak to hide me. I couldn’t cover all of my tracks. And if surveillance went back to monitor where I had been, they could document my every move.
    2. Room: There is a special key that I didn’t have. There was an application that I needed to somehow access and hope even worked.
    3. Magic: When Meredith showed me the Wall o’ Magic, there were thousands of vessels, and there could be much more stored somewhere else. To just pick up one vessel and know who originally owned that magic was not going to be easy. Forget easy. Impossible.
    4. Return: And if I did figure out who owned that magic, I had to return it without Façade knowing and somehow make that sub magical again.
    To put it optimistically, I was doomed.
    But Vanna’s tenacity had inspired me to take the risk. I could get in trouble. I could lose my job. I could be sub sanitized. And that’s if Façade was feeling kind. But that meeting was the last straw. I couldn’t know what I knew and pretend that I didn’t.
    First stop was the lobby, where Meredith said Ferdinand could somehow help with my injuries. It took forever to get there with my crutches. When I finally reached the front desk, I was out of breath. “Hi, Ferdinand!” I wheezed.
    He cleared his throat. “What happened to your ankle?”
    “Just another subbing escapade. Meredith said you might be able to help with that?”
    “Yes. And if there’s anything else, you’ll need to sign in since you’re here alone.”
    “Oh, really?” Man, that’s probably why Meredith wanted me to come down here first, so I wasn’t sneaking around Façade without documentation. I scribbled my name, fudging my entry time by a few minutes. There was a space asking my reason for visiting. Somehow, sabotage didn’t seem like a good thing to write down. Then I had a genius idea, something that might just solve the next glitch in my plan. I wrote Broken manual .
    Ferdinand took the clipboard from me and glanced up. “You’ll want to head over to Central Command to get that manual fixed. Do you know where to go?”
    I scratched my head. “Um, kind of? Do you have a map of Façade?” A map that would also have directions to the sub-sanitation room hidden somewhere deep in the belly of the agency.
    “A map? So anyone could waltz in and wander anywhere they like? No maps.”
    I twirled a piece a hair around my finger, hoping Ferdinand didn’t notice my hand shaking. “Oh. Sorry. I just get lost super easy.”
    He pointed to the hallway on the right. “Go down there. Central Command is on the left. And,” he lowered his voice. “If you really need a map, Hank would be the one to ask. But I didn’t tell you that.”
    “Tell me what?” I asked innocently.
    “As far as your injury goes.” Ferdinand opened a drawer and took out a jar of loose powder.