Gallagher Girls 5 - Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter Page B

could.
    “Where are you going?” Bex asked when I reappeared. She was sitting up in bed and squinting at me through the dark.
    “Waffles,” I told her. Bex raised one eyebrow, doubtful. The clock beside her bed read five forty-five a.m. “The kitchen will be open soon, and I want…” There were so many ways that sentence might have ended. Answers. My memory. But most of all I needed my mom to hug me and smooth my hair and tell me I wasn’t a terrible person for pulling that trigger the day before.
    So instead I just said, “Waffles. I’m craving waffles.”
    Bex rolled onto her side. “Tell your waffles hi for me.”
     
    There’s something especially beautiful about the Gallagher Academy when the classrooms are dark and the halls are quiet. Moonlight falls through the stained glass windows; shadows creep across the stairs. It looks like the most peaceful place on earth. Too bad every spy knows that looks can be deceiving.
    “Thank you for coming.”
    At the sound of Professor Buckingham’s voice, I froze in the middle of the Hall of History, staring down at the foyer below.
    “You really didn’t have to rush,” Buckingham said, closing the front door behind two women I’d occasionally seen but had never met.
    They wore heavy coats and heavier expressions, and there was no uncertainty at all in the younger woman’s voice when she said, “I assure you, we did.”
    “Where’s Rachel?” the older woman asked.
    “In her office.”
    “And the girl?” the young woman said.
    Buckingham seemed to bristle a little at the word, but she folded her hands and said, “Sleeping.” She gestured toward the Grand Staircase. “We’ll be ready to begin soon.” I slid around the corner while they climbed. It was easy for me to be invisible in the long shadowy corridor. I was still the Chameleon, after all, as I stood watching the trustees descend upon the Gallagher Academy.
    Knowing they were there because of me.
     
    There’s a passageway I never use. Or, well, hardly ever. Seriously, that particular passageway is an EMERGENCY SITUATIONS ONLY kind of thing, and, call me crazy, but it was starting to feel more than a little emergency-ish by the second.
    The trustees were there.
    In five and a half years at the Gallagher Academy, I’d seen them at my school maybe a half dozen times (and that included the time Dr. Fibs accidentally activated— but didn’t detonate! —a nuclear warhead in the labs). This wasn’t a meeting, I knew. This was an emergency.
    “Where are you going?”
    I stopped and turned, and wondered if I’d ever get used to the sight of Zach in our halls, wearing his official Gallagher Academy workout gear—the clean white T-shirt with the official school crest. It was maybe the best cover legend I’d ever seen: Zachary Goode, preppy schoolboy. But I couldn’t touch him. It was like there was still a fire between us. I wondered if we would ever leave the tombs.
    “Cammie,” he said, urgency rising in his voice, “are you—”
    “I’m fine,” I said, darting into a sitting room that nobody ever used. “Hold this.” I picked up the fireplace poker and moved it out of the way.
    “Gallagher Girl…” He sounded skeptical, but that didn’t stop me from pressing against the Gallagher Academy crest that was engraved into the mantel. Zach stood in wonder as, one by one, the stones began to roll away.
    “I just want to check on something.” I ducked down and stepped over the ashes of a fire that had long since gone out, careful not to leave any tracks.
    “Does this something have anything to do with the two limos that just pulled up outside?” Zach asked, and followed. But I didn’t answer.
    “I thought the passageways were all blocked off,” he said from behind me.
    “The ones they know about are closed up. And besides, this one doesn’t go outside. It’s not a perimeter threat.”
    The passageway was dim and tight. Old wooden beams cut through the space, covered with dust. There