Andreas glowers at him. “What else are we going to do? Leave her locked up in her room here with someone always needing to play babysitter? If she says she wants to help us, we might as well give her a chance to prove it.”
My spirits rise with a rush of hope, so swift it’s giddying. Andreas believes me—enough to give me a chance, anyway.
I still don’t think we’re really safe sticking around here, but I’d rather be with the guys helping us get what they think they need than holed up in the bedroom twiddling my thumbs.
“I’ll do whatever I can,” I say quickly. “I’ll be a little rusty on the computers, but I can handle the basics.”
Jacob scowls at me and turns his attention back on Andreas. “If she wanted to be helpful, she’d own up to the truth about what she’s been doing the last four years.”
Andreas cocks his head. “Does that really matter as much as what she doesnow?”
Dominic clears his throat, and the others glance at him, recognizing that he’s got something to say. He isn’t the type to interrupt.
He glances at me and then the others. “The more she’s around the other people on campus, there is more chance she could get across some kind of signal. If that’s what she’d want to do.”
“It’s not,” I mutter.
Andreas waves off Dominic’s concern. “Isn’t that already covered by the whole poison precaution? If she screws us over and loses your help, she’s signed her own death sentence. Nothing to worry about.”
Dominic hesitates. “I suppose we can cover more ground if she comes with us. All four of us can be working at the same time.”
Jacob can’t argue away the logic they’ve presented. He doesn’t look happy about it, though.
He turns to Zian. “Are you okay with her running around on the loose?”
“No,” Zian says, and my heart lurches. “Not when we can’t be sure what she’ll do.”
“It won’t really be on the loose,” Andreas says in an exasperated tone. “We wouldn’t let her go off on her own. One of us would always be with her.”
Zian nods slowly. “Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
“There you go.” Andreas smiles at me—is that the first timeanyof the guys have aimed a friendly expression at me since I made it back to them?
I can’t tell how much it’s the novelty or relief or the way the smile turns his face twice as gorgeous, but a flutter of warmth fills my chest.
“It’ll look better to the other students if we’re all coming and going—like we really are attending classes,” Andreas adds.
Dominic rubs his mouth, his expression turning even more pensive. “We should probably sit in on some lectures here and there too, just to keep up appearances so no one starts to wonder.”
Jacob sighs and studies me again with his hardened eyes.
“You tell me what you need me to do to help out, and I’ll do it,” I say. “If this Ursula woman is so important, I’ll dig up everything I can.”
“Fine,” he bites out, and grabs another slice of pizza with a hostile gesture as if it’s offended him too. “But we’re not letting you get anywhere near the computers. You can be on cover-story duty.”
Nine
Riva
Before we arrive at the room for Introduction to Sociology, my nerves are jumping at the thought of crashing a class where we don’t belong. Just how badly are we going to stick out?
Then I step through the doorway and jolt to a halt before the annoyed murmurs of the students behind me propel me onward.
The lecture hall is massive, practically a coliseum. There must be a thousand people packed into the folding chairs in the graduated rows that end maybe fifty feet above the level of the central stage.
Zian and I are both minor blips in the huge crowd—which would reassure me more if we weren’t also surrounded by a swarm of unknowns.
I keep my hood up, even though I can spot girls with stranger hair colors than mine in a brief glance around the hall. All my senses are on the alert.