A Drop of Night Read Free Page A

It’s where all this started, I guess. This searching for something colossal, some epic task that would make people move out of the way when I walked down a hall, that would make me fearsome and great and impossible to ignore. I hope this is it.
    I could have done a million other things. I could have gone through the Long Island house with a baseball bat and broken all the Kutani porcelain. I could have made party streamers out of Mom’s and Dad’s sensitive business emails and thrown them around at their next fund-raising gala. I could have picked up drug-addled Ellis Winthrope and flown to LA and sent pictures of our wedding to the whole family. But this is better. It’s my coup de grâce. Or maybe just my coup, no grâce.
    I look down at my phone. Three minutes until I meet the others.

3
    I spot Jules Makra first. He’s leaning against a pillar by Gate B-24, scrolling through his phone. We each got a little bullet-pointed spreadsheet in the blue folder, like we’re superheroes in a lame cartoon. Age. Skill set. Majors. Extracurriculars. Mug shots so we know how to spot one another.
    Jules is tall, gangly. Jittery. Elaborately sculpted black pouf hairdo that looks like he spent ages trying to get it right. It’s starting to droop. His earphones are in and his leg is bouncing to a very irregular-looking beat. I tap my fingernails on the handle of my bag. Steel myself and walk toward him, suitcase whizzing behind me.
    A second before I reach him, he looks up. Sees me. Grins.
    Jules Makra up close: a little bit punk, a little bit hipster. Rolled-up chinos and this weird, brightthrift-shop shirt plastered with Russian dolls and flowers, all crinkled up under a lopsided bomber. His eyes go sharp for a millisecond, little splinters over his grin. He’s assessing me.
    I assess him back. “Are you with Professor Dorf?”
    â€œYeah!” he says. He pulls out one earphone and his grin widens. “You’re Lilly?”
    â€œNo.” I glance around for the others.
    â€œUm. You’re Anouk?”
    No, I’m William Park . I almost say it out loud, but then William Park shows up, so I don’t.
    I like Will Park’s face. He looks like someone studiously observed everything about Jules and inverted it. He’s tall, too, but bulky and broad shouldered, and while Jules looks like he’s about to pop a shoulder blade out of his skinny back, Will looks self-contained. Calm. Except for his jaw, which is sharp enough to cut stone and slightly tense, like he’s clenching it. Nervous, maybe. He’s wearing a newsboy cap pulled down low and a ratty old pea coat that was probably shabby chic in the 1920s.
    Jules tugs out his other earphone and grins again, only I think he grins wider at Will, probably in the hopes of avoiding the debacle-that-is-Anouk. “Hey!” he says.
    â€œHey.” Will’s voice is low. He goes straight for the handshake. He only looks at me for a second before his gaze drops. His eyes are blue.
    Jules is frowning, probably wondering what the odds are that everyone on this team is an asocial freak. I sit down on my suitcase. Will leans a shoulder against Jules’s pillar and looks out into the crowd. Incredibly awkward silence ensues. One of those silences where everyone knows they’re being awkward, but there’s nothing they can say to break it, and so they just freeze up and hope for a quick and speedy death.
    Hayden Maiburgh shows up next. He’s just as tall as the rest of us, but he’s another type entirely. The type I like to avoid at all costs. He’s wearing a private school blazer and blue-mirrored aviators, and his hair’s been lacquered into a brassy swoop. He looks like he’s on his way to play polo or bathe in gold bathtubs of champagne, and he grins at us as he approaches, that sort of Hey, losers grin some people are born with.
    â€œHey, losers,” he says, and I almost spit out my