They were too far underground for windows, and there was only one lamp, which gave off an orangey glow that didn’t quite reach all the way into the corners. While the rest of the offices seemed to be filled with the building blocks of the trade—radar screens and weather samples, various gadgets and instruments—London’s shelves were mainly lined with old books.

“I’ve been hoping you’d visit,” he said to Simon as he pressed the door shut with a click. His dark hair was immaculately combed, his suit pressed and neat. If he were to walk through the lobby of the building above, nobody would suspect he was anything but some slick lawyer or banker, a businessman with a busy day of meetings and an agenda that did not include things like implementing natural disasters.

“I take it your lessons with Otis have been somewhat less than thrilling.” He looked pleased at the thought, smiling as he crossed the room. “Come to learn from the master, then?”

“Yes, sir,” Simon said, avoiding Ruby’s eyes.

London crooked a finger at one of the bookshelves and a wall of fog appeared, making everything behind it fuzzy and indistinct. Then he snapped his fingers and it was gone. “You’ve made a wise choice,” he said. “There’s a lot I can teach you.”

As he pulled out the armchair behind the cherry desk, Ruby noticed a set of framed photographs behind him, and she felt weak at the sight of them, lined up so neatly in a row. “Like that?” she asked, pointing.

“Ah, yes,” London said, spinning the chair halfway around so that he could look up at them, too. The first showed an aerial shot of the city of New Orleans in the wake of a hurricane, the waterlogged streets turned to rivers. The second was starkly different, with white snow filling the frame, the great Northeast blizzard from two years ago, one of the worst in history. And the third, which would have been beautiful had it not been so horrible, had it not killed so many people, showed an avalanche in motion, the snow tumbling down the bald face of a mountain in the Northwest, the result of the earth beneath it quaking, a jolt that turned deadly for dozens of people.

Beside these was an empty frame, just waiting for something to fill it, waiting for June 21, for the next disaster in the next city that would claim the next however many lives.

“It’s somewhat of a hobby for me,” London explained, like the curator of an art exhibit.

“Destroying cities?” Ruby asked in an acid tone, sounding braver than she felt. “You must be so proud.”

He swiveled to face them again. “I am, actually,” London said. “Not a bad collection, don’t you think?”

Ruby glanced over at Simon, whose face had drained of color. Even though Otis and Daisy had told them about these, it wasn’t the same as seeing the evidence displayed with pride across the wall of an office. Ruby understood how badly Simon had been wanting to cling to the idea of the wizard they’d met on the road that night, the one who promised to share all his secrets. But there was no longer any way to deny that the man before them was cruelly calculating, and when Simon’s eyes met hers, they were full of panic.

Now, finally—perhaps too late—he was realizing just how wrong he’d been.

Ruby turned back to London, blazing with a sudden anger. “So a few people forget to recycle, and you go ahead and wipe out their whole town?” she asked, her voice louder than intended. “Just like that? Just for sport? How is that fair? The whole point of the Society is not to do any harm. You’re the Chairman. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

Beside her, Ruby could feel Simon bracing himself for the response, but London looked nothing if not amused by her outburst.

“It’s just as well that you didn’t end up with your brother’s powers,” he said with a little smile. “You’d be a chore to control.”

Ruby glared at him, but said nothing.

“As for the rest of it, I have my reasons,” he continued, rising from his chair. He rested both palms on the desk and leaned across it. “The only thing reliable about weather is that there’s always a cause, and there’s always an effect. Let’s just say I prefer being the cause.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon asked, and London smiled thinly.

“It means that we can either be a tool or a shield,” he said. “We can either get behind a storm and help it to hammer a city, or we can try to stand in its way, to lessen the winds and mute the rains. Which is what Storm Makers have always done in the past.”

“So why not now?” Ruby asked, and London frowned.

“Because shields don’t always work,” he said. “And hammers always do.”

“But that’s not the point,” Simon said. “You’re supposed to help people. You’re supposed to use your power to stop them from getting hurt, not to hurt them even worse. Why would you—”

London cut him off. “No use explaining to you, I suppose,” he said, turning back to the photographs on the wall, evidence of his handiwork. “From what I’ve heard, you haven’t been making much weather at all. Which doesn’t make you a particularly effective hammer or a shield. But that’s not important. All that matters now is that you have done it, and so theoretically you can do it. And most important, that you’re incredibly, impossibly young.”

“I’m not going to help you,” Simon said as London lowered himself back into the chair. “I’m not.”

“That makes no difference at this point,” he said lightly, as if they were discussing something far more mundane, a change in scheduling or a food preference. There was a calmness to him now that made him seem far more crazy than he had even when he’d been conjuring flames out in the fields. “Everything’s already in motion.”

“But why?” Ruby asked, the words emerging thickly. “Why go to all this trouble?”

“Why?” London said, but there was an edge to his voice now. “I guess your new friends didn’t tell you the whole story.”

“Otis and Daisy?” Simon asked, and Ruby pictured the note she’d slipped through the door of the garage, just one line—Gone to Chicago—but more than enough to tell the whole story, if only Daisy had found it.

Please, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut. Please let her have found it.

London was watching them with an unreadable expression, his forehead creased in thought. After a moment, he lifted his hand and hit a button on his phone. Seconds later, the door opened with a click that made both Ruby and Simon jump.

“Summer,” said London, his voice oddly bright. “May we have some tea and lemonade?”

In the doorway, the receptionist from out front had appeared, and Ruby could see that she was practically trembling. When their eyes met, she looked quickly away.

“Yes, of course, sir,” she said, then stepped out again, shutting the door behind her.

London sat back with a satisfied expression. “I figured some refreshments might be in order,” he said. “After all, this is a rather long story.”

“What is?” Simon asked, and London closed his eyes.

“The one about how Otis Gray killed my sister.”