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As I get closer to the gate in the chain-link fence, I realize I don’t have much of a plan. Get in. Find the group. Learn the lay of the land. Find a way to lose the group, again. I’m still riding high on the promise of home, and not thinking clearly.

There’s a tap on my shoulder from behind me. I’m certain I leap ten feet into the air, my heart and lungs tangled in my throat. “What the hell happened to you?” Cas says.

“Good god, Cas. It’s not polite to scare people like that.”

She’s not amused. In fact, she looks outraged. “No it’s not, but you’re going to get yourself killed if you go in there. Don’t.”

I try to play dumb. “What are you talking about? I haven’t done anything.”

“Yet,” she says. “You haven’t done anything
yet
.”

I jump up and down to pull my wet jeans away from my seat. The wind has picked up and I’m starting to get cold. Though I’d like to be having this conversation somewhere warmer, I’d rather not be having it at all.

“I know what you’re planning. Turn around and go home. All the way home if you want.”

The Foresight. Of course. How could I have been so stupid? Being blessed with my own special gift of shortsight, I guess. I hear Cas going on and on, but I’m not really listening. “Is everyone inside?”

She grabs my arms. “I’m serious, Cressyda. Whatever you think you’re going to go in there and do, you’re going to destroy yourself. Us. Everything. Please don’t.”

“Knock it off, Cas. New Charity will be fine. Just like it was before. You’ll still have crops, just less of them. Trade can start back up. The town can be a part of the rest of the world again. It’ll be good for you, good for everyone. I promise.”

“Syd, you can’t go near the Ward.”

Wards had been rampant around New Charity when we were children. Back then the small seals of elemental energy were designed to repel or capture, imbued with the power of the person who’d lent their magic for the purpose. There was enough magic to go around back then—magic of the elements. But we always knew where they were, and what kind of damage they’d do. Uncle Pi used his air magic to form a shrill whistle when he escorted the Sanctuary school kids to the mercantile candy aisle. The bank vault repelled a breach with tongues of fire. The town gate grew icy and slick to the touch at nighttime. Perhaps this Ward would pull the ground out from below me with earth magic. “So I get thrown a few feet, so what?”

“This is different. You know about the sacrifice, right?”

“Of magic? Magic you and Len and the Bishop are now the only arbiters of?”

Cas narrows her eyes at me. “You think the Bishop would ask the town for their magic and then not keep us around to see the future? That would be pretty ignorant, don’t you think?”

“Precisely.” I move toward the gate again.

“Syd!” Cas stamps the ground. “All the magic. That’s what the Ward protecting the floodgate is made of, how the Spirit used the collection of New Charity’s gifts.”

“Bullshit,” I say, unease worming around my gut. Why hadn’t Pi said anything when he’d told me about giving up his own gift? “That’s not a Ward, that’s a catastrophe. No one in their right mind would combine all the elements like that. If a Ward like that were unleashed, New Charity would be a crater. Why would he put everyone in danger like that?”

“He believes he’s protecting us. He’s an instrument of the Spirit.”

“Oh my god.” Idiots. Sheep. The magic belongs to the Bishop. All of it.

Cas’s volume drops a bit. “Not everyone was happy once they found out.”

“No shit?” I’m furious beyond words and twice as cold as I was a few minutes ago. I still can’t believe the Bishop has gone this far and that the people of New Charity have let him—hinging the survival of the reservoir to the survival of the town itself. Had the Bishop shaped the Ward to keep his own flock from disturbing his verdant utopia? Or did he want to take out every last Survivor in range if they ever broke through the wall?

“I don’t think we understood exactly how the magic would be used at first. But there’s no arguing that it’s a good protection. The town is united in wanting the Blessing and the Ward to stay intact.”

“So there’s no way to get around the Ward?”

“The floodgate
is
the Ward, Syd.”

“Damn it, Cas. All these gifts. They could be used in so many other, better ways. How can everyone just sit still for this?”

Cas glances over her shoulder. “It’s been years now. When that much of yourself goes missing . . . after a while you forget. It’s something nobody talks about anymore.”

I swallow back the rest of my disbelief and focus on Cas’s alarm. “You saw something bad, right? Where I get hurt?” She doesn’t answer. “Well, come with me, then. Help me avoid whatever it is.” I came all the way here. I’m closer than anyone in the City has been. I have to do something, anything. At least make a point.

Cas won’t move. So I leave her gaping at me, and head inside.

Once through the gate, the doorway to the power plant looms large and brown. I open it as quietly as I can, Cas, from the steps below, still imploring me to wait. I let the door close on her, listening for the voices of the group. I want to know where they are, though I’m not sure I want to be seen yet.

There are helpful signs on the wall lit in low green lights. I follow the arrows, and have to duck behind an archway when the group suddenly spills out from the door. “The computers in this room,” Sheriff Jayne is saying, “keep the lights on in New Charity and function largely unassisted because of the kind of software those of you interested in engineering will be able to write someday.”

I search back through my memory of my one and only science and infrastructure class at the arts academy. New Charity used to take only the water it needed to fuel its tiny power station, sending the rest downstream to the City, where our own dam redoubled the water’s force and converted it to electricity. Now the extra water is diverted instead to their own reservoir.

Sheriff Jayne continues. “We can see the floodgate Ward through this window over here, though we won’t be getting any closer.” She closes the door to the power controls behind her. Ten to one it is locked, but I wait until they are well out of sight to try it.

And locked though it is, upon examination I find the tumbler to be very old. Another bobby pin and a thankful prayer to Danny’s insistence on teaching me the trick, and I’ve picked my second lock in New Charity. It’s darker in the control room, and I don’t want to risk an overhead light, so I wait for my eyes to adjust. There’s constant sound, the rush of water and the hum of energy, and if I weren’t trying to figure out my next move, the noise would be almost calming.

I can’t save the lives of my friends in the City by destroying the entirety of New Charity. When I set out, I was okay with the idea that I might have to get hurt to open the reservoir. But there’s no way I can confront the Ward, not with all these lives to account for. Not even the lives of my so-called enemies.

The door behind me opens and I wheel around. Cas has stopped crying and resumed fuming. “What are you doing? I just told you opening the reservoir will kill us all. Are you really that cruel?”

“Calm down. This is just the control room for the power station,” I say. “Says so right over the door.”

She glowers at me. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. Something.”

“Let’s go, Syd. Please.”

The control room is simple in design. Some indicators in a bank at the top of the desk. A console below. Under the desk sit a couple of servers. I suppose racks and racks of computing power aren’t necessary to power the tiny grid of the town. All the same it’s bad design to have a single point of failure—something I’d managed to retain from my two years at City High.

Someone’s left their notepad on the end of the control panel. “Can you hand me that pad?”

Cas looks at me strangely, but passes it to me without saying anything. I pull my lighter out of my hip pocket.

“Syd, stop!”

“I’m just going to shut down the power for a bit, Cas. Give New Charity a taste of what City life is like. It won’t hurt anyone, I promise.”

“You can’t.”

It’s stubborn at first, but the notepad finally catches. “I can, and I am. Now go find a fire extinguisher before I
actually
burn this place down.”

Cas stands mesmerized as I shove the notepad between the servers, and blow softly to fan the small fire. I want to thank Cas for saving me from doing something catastrophic, for keeping me from becoming the monster the Bishop has been waiting for. In this moment I both love her and want to kill her, which I just might do if she doesn’t find me a fire extinguisher with a bit more alacrity. “Look, we don’t have time for an existential crisis. I just want to burn the computers, not the room. Fire extinguisher. Please. Now?”

And that’s when the sprinklers start.

Klaxons. Flashing red lights. Water cascades down the walls.

“Shit.”

“What did you do?” Cas is almost hysterical, her voice part squeal, part scream. The green lighting is off for a moment, then something chugs to life and it flickers back on.

“We have to get out of here,” I say, shielding my eyes from the water.

I can tell she’s trying to convince herself to breathe, her hands flapping in the wet air. “If they catch us . . .” I push her out of the control room and we make it halfway to the main door before it swings open and I duck into an alcove.

Sheriff Jayne enters the deluge, looking murderous. She stomps up to Cas and peers around the corner at me.

“Don’t say anything,” she says to me. “Cas, out. Outside. Now. Tell them you accidentally tripped the sprinklers when you came in to look for the group.”

“But,” Cas starts.

“Just do it,” the Sheriff growls. “And hurry. Tell everyone to stay out while I’m still securing the alarms.”

Cas gulps once and bolts out the door.

“Please don’t arrest me. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to—” I am babbling. She looks over my head at the gushing sprinklers, uninterested in what I wish to volunteer.

“What were you doing in here?”

“I . . . Everyone else was here. I wanted to come on the field trip?” I try to ply her with a smile. “Not much of a market for ballerinas around these parts.”

A mix of pity and disgust crosses her face. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to go to battle with your eyes closed swinging blindly?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Did Cas tell you about the Ward?”

I nod. “Just now.”

“So you knew not to mess with the floodgate.” She motions to the smoking control room. “But what was
this
supposed to accomplish?”

If I’m going to jail, I would like someone to understand why. The Sheriff peers down at me with a hazel glare, unblinking even as water falls from her long eyelashes. This is a woman who seems to be both right and fair. Like I want to be someday, provided I’m not rotting away in a jail cell. “I wanted to give New Charity a taste of their own medicine. A few days in the dark. I just meant to mess up the computers. Something easily fixable. I didn’t mean for . . .” I trail off, holding my hands in the still-cascading water.

“These sprinklers, these alarms are ancient—installation probably predates your birth. The fact that you only did some old-fashioned damage, and we knew Cas was still in the building, is the only reason the Bishop isn’t in here tearing the place apart.”

“The Bishop is here? Outside?”

She nods. “How did you set the sprinklers off anyway?”

“I set a notepad on fire and shoved it between the servers in the power control room. I tried to get Cas to get an extinguisher but she froze.”

She curses to herself. “Don’t you even think about blaming this on Cas. This is all you, pumpkin.” She picks me up by the shoulders and stuffs me behind a stack of pallets.

“Jayne,” the Bishop bellows from just outside the doorway. “What’s the meaning of this? Can’t you shut these accursed things off?”

“I just thought I’d make a sweep of the floor first.” Jayne’s voice is calm and authoritative. She is the first person I’ve seen in New Charity who doesn’t seem to be intimidated by the Bishop—or anybody, for that matter. “Make sure there’s no actual fire.”

His giant frame fills the doorway. “Has this happened before?”

“Once or twice.”

“Explanation?”

She approaches a large white panel on the southern wall. She throws a switch and the water slows to a drip. I glance at the control room and there’s no smoke inside. “Before, I’d imagine it was rodents. This time, Cas must have accidentally brushed up against something.”

“Mm. Perhaps it’s best if she discontinues her training with you.” The Bishop still hasn’t crossed the threshold. “Fewer opportunities for . . . mistakes. More time for being an Acolyte.”

Jayne stops just short of a huff. “What good will that do? It was an accident, for crying out loud.”

“We’ll see.”

I watch her reset her posture and her jaw. This isn’t a battle she’s going to win. She nods, turns, and, using her own pocketknife, cuts the entire shock of wires inside the alarm panel. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was looking at me while she did it. “The generator is running things here. But I’d imagine the town’s out for a while. Until we can get someone in here to look at things.”