Natalie waited in the corner of the library, fidgeting. School had been out for thirty minutes already, and Quinn still hadn't shown up. She'd gone straight there after the bell had finally rung. Their class had been handled by one of the other teachers who had a prep period to end the day, as the principal had pulled their science teacher out for a stern discussion. She'd gotten out a bit early as a result, but Quinn should have arrived by now. The library was only a couple blocks from their school, and students went there all the time, so she didn't feel out of place.

No one else was nearby. She'd picked out a table in the corner, near one of the fire exits in the back just in case. Boris had mentioned once to always sit close to an exit, even if it was one with an alarm.

Better to be noticed like the red fox and able to run, than to get trapped in and eaten like the rabbit, he said. Natalie had started thinking about it all the time ever since. She kept her back to walls whenever she chose a spot to sit and never let people behind her when she could help it. She made sure she could run at any time.

Since there wasn't a single person close enough to notice, Natalie decided to try out one of the more interesting spell combinations she'd been thinking about for a while. Hector had once explained to her all about how to mess with electricity moving around in devices nearby. He didn't know how to actually move it or create it, but he could totally block it with one of his spells. They'd always used that to make sure no one could record Council meetings.

Still, he'd always been pretty limited in how much he could use the spell to pick out specific things. Natalie shared his affinity, so the spells were pretty easy for her to do—and more importantly, Rachel had let her read the Scrap that taught her electricity magic. She was pretty sure she could combine those two into something more useful.

Natalie closed her eyes and concentrated. She murmured the spell Hector always used to block out electricity around him, but she gave it a little twist. Instead of blocking the area, she stopped short at just marking out the area in her brain, combining it with the sense of electricity in motion. Her mind started to loosen from her head, like it was a ghost floating out into the air.

She couldn't actually see anything, but she could feel the outline of electricity around her, kind of like a pencil sketch of the room in her head. Natalie could feel the electricity running through the outlets and spinning around the entire building sixty times every second. As she traced it around, she found the spots where it jumped out to specific devices in the building. The computers at the desks, the lights, other devices scattered around she could only guess at.

Some of it jumped into small black orbs hanging from the ceiling.

"Jenny!"

Natalie's eyes flew open. Quinn was finally walking up, backpack over his shoulder and a box covered in fantasy artwork under one arm.

"Hi Quinn."

"Sorry I'm so late. I had to walk Tyler home. He was having a bad day with his attacks." Quinn sat down at the table, but Natalie frowned. "What's up?"

"Sorry," she said. "Can we… uhh… move to another table?" She could feel one of the cameras from the lingering sense of electricity still fading from her mind. It was watching her, making her feel uncomfortable and afraid.

"Sure?" Quinn shrugged, standing up. "Where do you wanna sit?"

Natalie closed her eyes again, trying to find every camera in the building now that she knew the pattern of wiring inside them. After tracing the path of the electricity bouncing through all of them, she realized that—despite being in the center of the opposite wall—there was a particular table that would be totally blocked from every camera by tall bookshelves. It was further from the exits, but she felt like Boris would probably agree with her decision. She pointed it out.

As they sat down, Quinn glanced around. "What's special about this table?"

"No cameras," Natalie replied, before she remembered she shouldn't. She looked down at the box, speaking quickly before Quinn could react. "So what's this game called again?"

"Conquest of Aldur-Bannor," Quinn answered, passing right over her comment, to her great relief. He started pulling out the decks of cards inside. "Everyone just calls it Conquest though, even though there's like ten games named that. But ours is the best one."

"Is this one of those games where you gotta buy a ton of cards?" she asked, picking up a deck at random. She wasn't totally concerned if that was true, since she was pretty sure Kendra could afford it without breaking a sweat, but she didn't want to figure out an explanation for why she suddenly needed money.

"No, everything's in the box already. They make expansions and you can buy those if you want, but you don't have to." Natalie opened one and started digging through the cards. "What are you looking for?"

"That card you were using yesterday. The general. Linnethi?"

"Linnethea," he corrected. He pulled out another deck and handed it to her. "This is the general deck, she should be in there somewhere."

Natalie sped through the stack of cards until she found the card. Linnethea Syldarei, the Wolven Huntress. "She looks so cool."

"Well yeah, that's why I like to play her." Quinn grinned. "She's also super good if you know what you're doing."

"So how do you start?"

"Well, it starts with a draft. We each pick out nine territories and a general from those two decks." Quinn started setting them out. "There's sixteen different territory cards right now and thirty generals. You could do nine of all the same territory or nine different ones, or whatever you want. You only get one general though, unless you pick Kobblebomma because he's really two cards."

"Kobblebomma?" she repeated, giggling. "That's a silly name."

"He's the worst. Don't ever pick him." Quinn started laying out the territory decks.

"You only had five territories out last time though," she pointed out. "Not nine."

"Well, you don't have to play them all. Some of them you don't play ever, you just pick them to mess up the other guy. They get put out over time as you build up your kingdom."

"Queendom," Natalie corrected.

"Queendom," he agreed. "Especially if you're running with Linnethea. She's really strong."

Natalie took a second to remember the match from the day before. "But Steven said she couldn't win that fight. Why'd you attack anyway? Did you have a plan?"

Quinn laughed. "Nope."

"So you would have lost?"

"Totally would have lost."

Natalie grinned. "So you tricked him."

"Tyler likes to play super straightforward. He doesn't like tricks or traps, so he's bad at them. When he sees me doing something super dumb, he thinks I got a reason for doing it. Sometimes I do," he added, "but sometimes I'm just shooting for the moon."

"Shooting for the moon?"

"Something my dad always says. Like, trying to do something absolutely crazy without knowing it's gonna work."

That sounds like Hailey. "Where does the rest of the deck come from?"

"That's your queendom deck. Those are all the same. There's just a bunch of them if you want to play lots of people at once. Games with more than two people are weird though." He pointed them out. "All the real interesting stuff comes out of your territories and the general you pick."

Natalie gazed at her chosen general with admiration. She's so strong and pretty. And fierce! And her wolf kinda looks like Gwen, but more white and snowy. I bet she can take care of herself just fine. Beneath the artwork were a couple blocks of text. She felt like she could probably figure them out herself, but if she asked Quinn to explain she'd have a good excuse to listen to him talk for a while. She liked listening to him talk about something that got him so excited.

She held Linnethea up. "So what does mine do?"

Quinn smiled. "She's the blindsider. Everyone looks at her stats and thinks she's too weak to even take a hit. But when you look at her abilities, and you combine them with stuff like the elven forest or ambush cards, plus the stuff on the really good elf fighters, you can take out a whole army trying to attack a territory without losing anyone. She's actually crazy powerful. Plus she can make wolves and other animal tokens, which are basically free fighters that don't suck like Tyler's lame soldiers."

"Cool." From the sound of it, Natalie's choice in this card game lived up to her first impressions.

"I'm guessing you wanna play her first then?" Quinn asked.

"Not if you do!" Natalie said quickly, heat rushing back into her face. She held out the card.

"I can play any of them. I don't care. She might be a little harder to play the first time though," he added. "Her stuff is a bit weird to use."

"Oh my god, she turned into a nerd!" They both turned, but the stage whisper had come from somewhere behind the next bookshelf, well out of sight. Natalie recognized it as Blake's voice. She ignored it, focusing on the cards in front of her and trying to discern what the numbers scattered around the corners meant.

"That's so adorable. She found her people!"

Natalie tried to ignore them, but she could see Quinn's hazel-colored eyes narrowing behind his glasses. He looked like he might stand up and confront them. She didn't want that. It'd be so much worse if they got a reaction.

"You think she might get infected?"

"Those attacks look so painful. I hope she doesn't end up like poor Tyler."

Quinn started to get up, but Natalie quickly shook her head. He stopped, confused. Blake and her sidekick Lydia hadn't emerged from behind the bookshelves, and Natalie didn't expect them to. They'd move along as soon as they realized they weren't going to get a reaction.

Sure enough, the whispers died away after a minute or so, as soon as they got bored. Quinn sat back down.

"Sorry," Natalie said quietly.

"For what?"

"I think they don't like me, and now they're making fun of you guys too."

Quinn frowned. "Why'd you tell me to stop then? I'm not afraid of Blake."

She shrugged. "Someone told me once that girls like that are always gonna act like that." Though Ryan said a lot more words Dad didn't want me to repeat. "He said the best thing is to just ignore them because that way they don't get anything out of you. If all they're doing is saying stupid stuff that isn't even true, that's a lot better than what they could be doing. They're still following the rules like everyone else, so they aren't gonna do anything really scary."

"Like what?"

Natalie hesitated. "Stuff that's a lot worse." Stuff like what I've done. Or what they tried to do to me.

Quinn sat back in his chair. "You can't tell me?"

Natalie looked down at the ground uncomfortably. "I'm not allowed to. It's against the rules," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"Are you in witness protection or something?"

"Am I what?"

"Witness protection. It's where they send you far away from home and change your name to keep you safe. You have to hide out from everything though. Can't tell anyone who you were and stuff. I saw it on a show once."

Natalie felt a shock roll through her. Quinn had just described her life a bit too closely. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to answer a question like that. Boris hasn't covered anything like that in his lessons. Should she say no? Make something else up? Quinn was too smart. He knew all about lying and bluffing people. He'd know she was lying.

"Yes," she finally answered. She slowly lifted her head, afraid to see his reaction.

He didn't look angry, or surprised. If anything, he looked excited. "So you're in hiding? That's so cool."

"I… huh?"

"It's okay," he added, picking up a deck of cards and shuffling it. "I've got your back. Your secret's safe with me. I won't even tell the rest of the gang if you want."

Natalie couldn't feel more relieved. She hadn't lost her new friend, and she hadn't really broken her secret either. Quinn hadn't even asked for her real name.

He held out another deck. "So, Jenny, wanna play some Conquest?"

Natalie reached forward, arm outstretched over the table. Without even thinking about it, her mind moved ahead of her grip, lifting the deck away from Quinn. The cards slid out in a neat pile, floating straight through the air and landing perfectly in her hand.

She froze, staring at the deck that had just moved itself into her palm. She didn't dare look up at Quinn.

"...Whoah."