Somehow Sarah found a way to be annoying even when she was silent. The flip-flop hanging from her left foot lived up to its name as she joggled her foot up and down, sending the petite slab of purple rubber flipping this way and flopping that way, maddeningly just out of rhythm, almost but never quite working its way out from between the Little Princess's dainty toes.

"Could you stop that?" Sarah's foot froze. The flip-flop wobbled to a stop at the bottom of its arc.

"Sorry." Sarah uncrossed her legs and planted both feet on the floor. Her toenail polish was mismatched: pink on the left, silver on the right.

"It's just distracting, is all."

Sarah nodded but kept her mouth shut. Being in such close proximity to Charlie had rattled her, and every minute they waited in the cramped lobby of the Student Activities Office, staring at the "CHARLIE ST. JAMES" nameplate on her closed office door, only wound her mental springs tighter and tighter. Kenya would have liked to have seen what happened when those springs snapped, if she hadn't been hearing the protesting pings of stretched coils in her own body as well. She didn't want to see Charlie either, and she hadn't even done anything to piss her off. But they had to bring this to Charlie now, before it got out of hand.

You aren't supposed to be in here. That was it. This Alex idiot had gotten ahold of some gunpowder, or this synthetic gunpowder, and he'd communed with Joanie and fucked up her brain. The question was, did he do it on accident because he's a druggie asshole who thinks he's Kurt Cobain, or did he do it on purpose because he's trying to harm the Creatures?

She had no intention of telling Charlie that Joanie was missing, or why. That would only distract Charlie from the real problem.

The lobby door opened, letting a blast of hot air into the air-conditioned office. The air was followed by a guy in the unmistakable garb of a student who woke up at 7:45 for an 8:00 class – pale feet in flip-flops, baggy cargo shorts, a faded, frayed purple Ambassadors T-shirt. He looked like any other basic white guy on campus. His hair was two weeks overdue for a cut, his face two days overdue for a shave, his gut carrying fifteen extra pounds. But he nodded at Kenya as he passed between her and Sarah, and his eyes caught the light coming in through the glass door just right. She saw galaxies, green and gold and brown turning to black.

An office door down the hall opened as the guy approached, and a large bearish man in a blazer stepped out to greet him. "Mr. Moss," he said. "I appreciate you dressing up." The younger guy stepped inside the office, and the older cast a lingering look down the hall at Kenya before he followed and shut the door.

"Kenya." All of a sudden Charlie was there, standing in the open doorway of her office. "Sarah." Sarah wouldn't look at her. "Come inside."

You aren't supposed to be in here. The phrase lingered in Kenya's mind, whispered in Joanie's hollowed-out voice, as she entered the dim, cramped office. She wasn't supposed to be in here. You never wanted to meet Charlie on her home turf, if you could help it. She had a way of seeing you – the real you – and in this office, surrounded by the stacks of books and papers, the sagging shelves of magazine files full of old New Yorkers, and the lingering smell of Thai takeout, her powers increased fivefold. Like a dragon in its lair.

Charlie folded her body, hidden beneath the asymmetrical drape of a diaphanous burgundy garment, into the massive black leather chair behind her desk. There was nowhere for Kenya or Sarah to sit. The guest chairs were occupied by Styrofoam cartons stacked on manila folders stacked on newspapers stacked on books. Charlie stared at them through her huge glasses, opaque in the glare of her desk lamp, the only light in the room.

"So," she said, "where's Joanie?"

She knows. "Sleeping, I think," said Kenya. "Unless she's at Weston."

"No," said Charlie. "No, she's not."

"Then I don't know where she is."

"No. You don't." Charlie lifted her chin a fraction of an inch. The glare disappeared from her glasses, revealing her black-rimmed eyes, magnified by the thick lenses. "Princess," she said, those eyes fixed on Kenya, "do you know where the Queen is?" She's fishing, Kenya realized. She suspects. She doesn't know.

Sarah shifted back and to her right, as if trying to hide behind Kenya. "No, ma'am," she said.

"Hmm," said Charlie. She flipped open the lid of a takeout container on her desk and broke off a piece of a biscuit inside. As she chewed, she leaned back in her chair and drew her bony knees up under her top, creating the illusion of two poorly-drawn breasts. "You came here to tell me something. What is it?"

"The other night," said Kenya, "when we called."

"You said Joanie went to Olive Garden?"

"She'd taken too much gunpowder. We took her to see Lark, like you said."

"I know all this." There was no hint of concern in Charlie's voice or on her face, none for the girl she'd ostensibly hand-picked to be a Living Creature, Anthony Delmonico's Queen of Knives.

"Lark did a blood test. It wasn't gunpowder that Joanie took. It was some kind of synthetic gunpowder."

"Okay." If this was a surprise to Charlie, there was no way to tell.

"Do you know anybody who could make something like that?"

"Any number of people, surely. This is a large research institution with an above-average chemistry program."

"There's more."

"I should hope."

"There's this guy. Alex. He's in this shitty band with Joanie's high school friend Audrey. When Joanie was communing, she went to the Purple Room, where they were playing. I think he communed with her. I think he gave her the bad gunpowder."

"Does this Alex have a last name?"

"I don't know."

Sarah, who had been steadily inching behind Kenya, poked her head out around Kenya's shoulder. "Pratt."

"And how would Alex Pratt, shitty band member, get his hands on some synthetic gunpowder?"

"I think..." Kenya paused. Could the Nine Dead Men, goobers though they might be, have really sunk so low as to abduct such a straight-up nimrod as Alex Pratt? Kenya'd always heard that twins shared a brain, but it seemed to be literal in the case of Alex and his brother. They were both the stupid one.

"He's in the Nine Dead Men," said Sarah.

"Is he now?" Charlie jutted forward over the desk. A hot streak of lightning flashed in her glasses. "You're sure this time?"

Sarah shrank behind Kenya. "Yes, ma'am," she said.

"My Lady," said Charlie. "Do you concur?"

Sarah's hand grasped Kenya's arm at the elbow. Her fingertips fluttered with anxiety. This was no time for doubt. "Yes," Kenya said.

Charlie sat back in her chair and hugged her knees to her chest, disarmingly childlike. "You're saying the Dead Men have attacked us."

"Unprovoked."

"Not quite." Charlie shot a glance at Sarah. Her fingers dug into Kenya's arm. Charlie rested her sharp chin on her knees, thinking. "The Dead Men are idiots. They didn't make the synthetic gunpowder themselves. They got it from somewhere. From someone. Follow Alex Pratt. Find out. And then we retaliate."

Sarah relaxed her grip on Kenya's arm. "And Princess," Charlie said. "Don't fuck it up. You can go." Sarah was already halfway out the door as Kenya turned to leave. "Not you, Kenya." Sarah didn't even look back as the door closed behind her.

Kenya turned back to Charlie. She was huddled almost in a complete ball, her face buried in her knees. She said something, but it died in the folds of her top, the color of dried blood.

"What?" said Kenya.

Charlie raised her head. "Why are you lying to me, Kenya?"

"I'm not—"

"Where the fuck is Joanie?"

Kenya didn't have an answer.

"I think about you a lot, you know," Charlie said. "I think about how difficult it must be for you, sometimes, to be so close to Joanie. To have finally found this friend, only for her to be so superior to you in every way. To love someone as deeply as you must love Joanie, only to know, in your heart, that you can never measure up to her. Not in your sport, not in your studies, not in life. Do you think about that? Or have you buried it so deep you can't think about it anymore? Have you encrypted that information? Made it uncrackable?"

Kenya's vision was filling with gray, like drops of watered ink. The tips of her ears burned.

"Of course I say I think about you a lot, but really I'm just thinking of Joanie. You're interesting to me only in how you reflect her. Does that make sense? The truth is, I don't really care about you. I care about Joanie. And whatever you did to hurt her, whatever you did to drive her away, you need to make it right. Find her, and make it right. Or you will find out just how little I care about you." Charlie turned her attention to her takeout breakfast. "You can go."

Kenya stepped out of the office into the frigid air of the hallway. She wanted to shoot something.