THERE IS, GENERALLY, SOMETHING INFINITELY disturbing about being able to see monsters outside of your window, even if they’re so far away you can barely see them. Car rides were fine. I was used to it then. But when you already hate flying . . .

The first thing I did after boarding the Sect’s private jet was shut my window blinds. Ten minutes into the flight, I was still cowering in the corner.

“You okay?” said Rhys from his seat opposite mine.

“’Course,” I lied with a resolute nod. “I’m ready.”

“I can see that.”

“So, let’s do this. Where do we start?”

Rhys had switched his dork glasses for some contact lenses, which, as he’d told me in the airport, were far more suited to battle. He brought out his tablet and stared at the screen. “It’s going to take us only an hour to get to Montreal, so I’m going to have to bring you up to speed pretty quick.”

“Right, right.” I nodded again, very resolutely, my bloodshot eyes straining.

Rhys’s quizzical gaze stayed on me for a moment more before he reached into his bag again. Then a candy bar flew at my face.

“Ow,” I complained after it bounced off my nose.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to throw it that hard.”

I picked it off the table. “What’s this?”

“You’ve never seen chocolate?”

I flipped it over. “Why are you giving it to me?”

“Would you prefer to starve?”

“This jet doesn’t serve real food?”

“Fine, give it back.” Rhys reached for it.

Quickly, I clutched it to my chest. “So you said there was information I needed to know?”

Rhys’s lips quirked into a little grin.

“Chae Rin Kim,” he said as I quietly began tearing the wrapper. “Stop me if you’ve heard this. Eighteen. Born in Daegu, raised in the suburbs of Burnaby, Vancouver. Youngest of two daughters.” He handed me his tablet.

Chae Rin looked particularly disinterested in the picture next to her stats, though the stats themselves were nothing to shrug at: high number of missions, high number of kills. I bit off a piece of chocolate. “Her parents own a restaurant too. It’s pretty famous.”

The pathetic truth, of course, was that June had almost convinced me to save up for a cheap plane ticket. If June had had her way, we both would have been part of the customer boom Daegu Grill experienced once the news finally leaked that the owner’s youngest daughter was an Effigy.

The plane shook. Just the slight jolt almost made me choke. Swallowing my candy before it could go down the wrong pipe, I shrank even deeper into my sad little corner.

Rhys sat back, sliding his coffee toward him. “Well, since I’m at least mostly sure you’re one of those weird Effigy fanatics—which, by the way, I still find endlessly ironic—you probably already know she works near Montreal.”

I nodded. “At a circus. But as far as I know, she hasn’t been in the field for, like, months.”

“It was that last mission. Happened just outside a little fishing village near Hong Kong.” Rhys’s index finger linked around the handle of his coffee mug. “Didn’t go well. Some villages in certain parts of the world have weak APDs, so attacks are inevitable. Even though agents managed to evacuate the village, it was a hard fight; the damage Chae Rin caused was massive.”

“I remember hearing about that, but I didn’t know she was involved. I just thought phantoms wrecked the place.”

“The Sect suppressed that information from the media,” Rhys continued. “But dealing with governments is another matter. Of course, a certain amount of damage is unavoidable during missions like this, but as an international organization, it’s crucial that the Sect maintains its political relationships and takes responsibility for situations like these. Because of what happened, Chae Rin’s been suspended for the time being.”

“Suspended.” I cocked a brow. “Didn’t know you could be suspended from a cosmic duty.”

“Cosmic duty or no, there are rules,” said Rhys. “Usually when an Effigy screws up, there’s an investigation—not only of the incident, but also of the Effigy herself.” Rhys sipped his coffee. “They look at everything: past training scores, psych evaluations, mission proficiency, and so on. They even interview people in her life. Then a council assesses her potential and figures out what to do with her. Depending on the results, they could order the Effigy to be retrained, jailed, or put to use in other ways. But while that’s going on, the Effigy has to leave the field.”

“Okay, but isn’t the Sect scared she’ll cause some damage while she’s on hiatus?”

Rhys took the tablet back into his possession. “In extreme circumstances, an Effigy can be taken into custody during the investigation. But Chae Rin’s saved a lot of lives. I’ve met her a few times myself. Despite her temper, she’s usually proficient in the field. Plus she had a couple of agents vouch for her, so she was given some leeway.”

Another jolt. Wrapping my arms around myself, I pressed my shoulder firmly against the window for support.

“Scared of flying?”

My eyes snapped open. I hadn’t even realized I’d shut them. “No.”

“It’s just turbulence.”

“I said no.”

“Or don’t tell me. . . .” Rhys tilted his head. “Are you scared something out there might be causing the turbulence?”

“Something always causes turbulence.” I avoided his eyes, but couldn’t look at the window either. “Air pressure and velocity and—I don’t know, clouds and other sciencey stuff.”

Rhys moved to open the blinds, but with lightning-fast reflexes, I grabbed the handle and kept them shut. Even after he started laughing, I held firm, though my cheeks burned.

“You do know there are antiphantom signals inside airplanes, right?”

“Obviously.” I didn’t know the science behind it, except they worked like Needles. Their range wasn’t nearly as vast, but they helped create clear pathways for flight.

He leaned in. “And they have EMA. You know that, too, yeah?”

Yes, yes, in case the signal didn’t work and the plane needed to be protected via electromagnetic armor. I could tell this one had it because of the pulse vibrating through my skin from the cabin wall.

“And this is a Sect jet. Trust me, you’re safe.”

“I know that.”

“Just a bad flier?”

“Why do you care?”

Apparently, this caught Rhys off guard. Blinking, he sat back. “Should I not?”

We were silent for too long.

Then, out of the blue: “Your uncle’s okay.”

“What?”

“In case you were still worried, I mean. He’s fine.”

“I know.”

“Some agents even gave him a lift to the control center in Manhattan. He works there, right?”

My hands felt cold. Without saying a word, I pulled my legs up onto the seat, wrapping my arms around my knees. “Did they tell him about me?”

I never thought I’d be so happy to see someone shake his head. “No, not yet. They gave him some excuse about needing you as a witness or something.”

“Creative.”

I wanted to wait for the right moment. That was the official excuse. But it made sense, didn’t it? I wanted to tell Uncle Nathan, but not now, not from an airplane in the middle of a dangerous mission to take down a mass murderer.

“I’m curious, though.” Rhys lowered his eyes to his mug, turning it around by the handle. “You’ve had over a week to tell him the truth about you. Why didn’t you?”

“Excuse me?” I squeezed the candy bar in my hand until chocolate oozed out the other end. “That’s . . .” I fidgeted in my seat. “That’s private.”

“It’ll be hard, though. The longer you wait, the harder it’ll be on both of you.” Rhys kept his eyes low as he quietly added, “If you’re not careful, you might end up getting hurt.”

An uncomfortable heat rose up my neck as I stared at him. “Why do you care?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

The second I caught his eyes, I wished I hadn’t. My body stiffened. My heart thumped against my chest, but the sound of the beat made my fingers curl against my lap. It was his expression: pity, or concern, or whatever else. The shocking tenderness pried me open, and in that one moment, I felt cruelly exposed. Helpless.

He didn’t even know me. And I was vulnerable. This wasn’t fair.

I placed my candy bar on the table and wordlessly slipped off Rhys’s jacket.

“What are you doing?” he asked, but I didn’t answer.

It’s not that I didn’t appreciate his kindness. But Belle had already warned me about what it meant to be the next so soon after the last. The struggle to remain yourself, to draw that line. Apparently mine would begin with his jacket, since he probably hadn’t given it to me at all. Folding it in my hands, I stretched out my arm, presenting it to him.

“Take it.”

“What? Weren’t you cold?”

“I’m fine. Thank you. Just take it, please.”

“But—”

“Natalya’s dead.” I was expressionless as I said it. “She isn’t here anymore.”

I could see Rhys’s hands twitch. “That’s—”

“I’m not her.” And I looked at him. “I’m me. You don’t know me, so don’t . . .” I sighed. “I don’t need you to worry about me. It just makes me feel . . . all awkward.” I shifted my shoulders uncomfortably. “Please. I’ll be okay. Let’s just . . . work. I want to work.”

By the time he spoke again, whatever awkward warmth flushing his skin had already dissipated. Taking back the jacket, he straightened up in his seat. “Okay, then. Back to Chae Rin.”

  •  •  •  

We touched down at eleven. Because I wouldn’t let up about it, Rhys got a couple of hotel rooms so we could finally clean up and change clothes before heading off in the Sect car waiting for us outside.

Montreal was a really pretty city with a nighttime skyline. And unlike New York, it wasn’t ruined by a giant blinking monster-repelling tower. I didn’t know much about Canada and its antiphantom tech, except that they apparently used a rail system in the parts of the country where the population was concentrated. I guess being flashy was an American thing.

Somewhere beyond the rails protecting Montreal was Le Cirque de Minuit, hidden deep in the boreal forest.

Sitting in the backseat, I thumbed through a brochure of the circus I’d picked up from the hotel’s front desk. Apparently, Mastigouche Reserve had to be abandoned in the late nineteenth century once the phantoms appeared. That made it one of the many areas around the world that we ended up having to leave to them: a Dead Zone. According to the pamphlet, a private investor spent millions in the forties buying up some of the area, paving a single, fortified road and setting up one of the most successful circuses in the country.

I shook my head. Turning a Dead Zone into an attraction. It was just crazy enough to work. People do love the thrill of danger. But over the years, countries began passing laws that regulated people’s access to those sorts of areas, so even with the circus’s permit and strict security measures, their business started to suffer. These days, they toured the world for most of the year as a troupe, but for a few special weeks out of the year, they put on the ridiculously spectacular shows they were famous for in Mastigouche. June had always wanted us to go to one together. Would have been nice.

After a few minutes, we’d arrived at the first tollgate at the city limits. In America, you had to pay a small fee to use the officially sanctioned highways. Canada had them too, except apparently they were so cheap here the driver might as well have paid with Monopoly money.

Of course, tollgates were also used to mark official, government-sanctioned entries into Dead Zones. It took almost an extra two hours of highway travel to get to the one marking off Mastigouche Reserve. Rhys showed the officers a bunch of papers, and then, after inspecting our identification, the officers lumbered out of their tollbooths for a meticulous—and lengthy—inspection of the vehicle.

“Aren’t any bodies in the trunk, boys,” Rhys mumbled in the front seat.

“There’s been a lot of illegal activity in this province’s Dead Zones lately,” explained the driver when we were finally allowed to leave. “Traffickers. They’re being extra vigilant.”

“Isn’t that something you guys take care of?” I asked from the backseat.

“Nope.” Rhys turned to the window. “We fight things. Not people.”

“Sure about that?” I sank into my seat as I pictured Saul’s grinning face.

We drove on a narrow, two-lane road. A large part of Mastigouche Reserve was still technically a Dead Zone, but of course, you can’t have customers getting eaten on their way to the circus. The protective rails alongside the road did their job just fine, but the antiphantom technology wasn’t quite strong enough to keep phantoms at a comfortable distance.

The sight beyond the window stole my breath before I could make a sound. It had all happened so fast. Black bones stretching out of smoke camouflaged by the night. A roar, the gaping jaws of a serpent barreling at the car. But coming too close to the rails was its mistake—in a blink of an eye, it exploded into black mist, fading back into darkness.

I covered my ears. “I hate this.”

“Ha! I love this!” Rhys said at the very same time, his eyes glued to the window like a wide-eyed child. “God, this place never disappoints.”

I dropped my hands. “You’ve been here before?”

“Yeah, once. My mom took me here for my twelfth birthday.” He laughed. “But I haven’t been here since. Can’t believe this place still—”

I screamed for real this time when another phantom approached from the left and promptly evaporated. “What if we go over the rails?”

“Relax, the car can’t swerve,” explained Rhys. “There’s an electromagnetic current going down the rails and up the bars.” He pointed at the row of bars jutting up out of the rails. Each one curved in ninety degrees over the road, forming a row of frames to pass beneath. “It’s supposed to keep the car in place and atomize the phantoms.”

“How thoughtful.”

Rhys took in the chaos with all the giddiness of the schoolboy he would have been if he weren’t already an agent. I bent over, wrapping my arms around my stomach.

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that!” Rhys turned in his seat. “The phantoms are part of the attraction. It’s badass! Like Jurassic Park or something—actually, wait, I think I have the sound track on my phone.”

“Can you please stop him?” I begged the driver before a piercing roar had me ducking for cover.

But Rhys was right. There were more phantoms drifting between the trees, more serpents. They arched their bodies over the treetops, long and twisting like magnificent dragons of legend, a bright sheen blanketing their black bodies as they caught the light of the stars. Maybe it was the cheap thrill of being so close to something so dangerous, but there was actually something hauntingly beautiful about their lithe forms, their graceful movements—like the creatures written about in ancient legends. Fairy-tale monsters dreamed up by storytellers who never could have imagined that they would one day become as real as flesh.

It didn’t take long to get there. We drove through a white gate, and at the end of a wide road paved in red brick was the massive Le Cirque de Minuit. A string of lights hung from the pointed tips of the building, twisting around the towering fir trees.

The driver, having met Chae Rin on one particularly unfavorable occasion, decided to wait in the lobby. There were only about fifteen minutes left in the two-hour midnight show. Rhys’s Sect ID badge sufficed as a ticket.

“We’re here for Chae Rin,” he told security before dragging me away from the adorable baby tiger in the lobby and into the massive arena.

Streams of colorful lights broke the darkness—soft hues of primary colors washing over the sea of heads all enraptured by the center stage. And I couldn’t blame them. The moment I stepped inside, my knees nearly gave out from under me.

“Christ,” Rhys said in a breathless whisper. Even in the darkness I could see his hands shaking. A giant, clear tank took up most of the center stage . . . just big enough for the phantom within it.

I staggered forward to the edge of the staircase, clutching the railing. A serpent—the same type of phantom as the ones in the forest. Lazily, it drifted in the fluid-filled tank, a sea dragon circling its own tail. It was impossible. Unthinkable.

A phantom in a cage.

The audience whispered excitedly, craning their heads for a better look. And then there was the ringmaster standing in front of the tank, his red ringlets of hair tumbling over his face from beneath his top hat. He worked them into a frenzy, throwing his sparkling lavender jacket around—dramatic and cheesy in proper ringmaster fashion: “Have you ever seen such a sight? Have you ever imagined the power of a monster tamed by one man?”

“Apparently it’s all the rage these days,” Rhys said, eyes narrowed.

I turned to him. “What do we do?”

The ringmaster spread out his arms. “But tonight,” he bellowed, “tonight, you’ll see!”

She came out of nowhere. Tumbling out of the sky, emerging out of the darkness. Though her flips were wild, the young woman’s feet touched down on the high wire above the stage in a perfect landing she ended in an elegant bow. A golden Venetian mask covered half of her pale face. Adornments laced her black ponytail. The silver body paint sliding up her tall, slender body made it impossible to tell where the leotard began and ended. And yet, despite the getup, I knew.

“It’s her,” I whispered as the ringmaster lifted up a gloved hand.

“Tonight you’ll believe! Ladies and gentlemen: the power of phantoms!”

As he brought his arm down, the phantom burst from the top of its cage.