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authority. Where they could get things done.
    Nope, this was freaking Rhode Island. And I was freaking Lela Santos. I was stuck in this house with my overprotective foster mother—the department of child welfare had custody of me for another three months and sixteen days. I had to attend school so that my probation officer didn’t come calling, and so that I could stay away from an all-expenses-paid trip back to the Rhode Island Training School, or the RITS, the state’s glorious juvenile facility. I had to keep my grades up so that I could stay eligible for that scholarship to the University of Rhode Island. If we could get rid of all the Mazikin, maybe the Judge would let me have that chance. Maybe she would let me have a future.
    “And in the meantime, I have to save the world and be home by ten,” I whispered.
    The Judge had said this would be hard. From where I was sitting, it looked impossible.
     
     
     

FOUR
    AFTER WAKING IN A panic from nightmares of battling a million Mazikin who closed in on me with grasping hands and crazed, hungry grins, I drove to the Guard house early, only to find Malachi waiting on the porch swing. He slid into my front seat and gave me a concerned once-over. “Did you sleep well?” he asked, stroking his fingers down my cheek.
    “It could have been better.” I pulled out of the driveway and steered toward the school.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Four against a million,” I said, feeling the sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.
    “Only if we sit back and do nothing, Lela. It will take the Mazikin a long time to bring that many into this realm, and that’s even if they were unopposed.”
    “But the odds—”
    “Were never in our favor. This is not new.” He sighed. “In the dark city, we were given enough to fight them and no more. My requests to double the number of Guards and outposts were refused on many occasions.”
    “And did Raphael tell you that you wanted more but didn’t need it?” I asked with a laugh that died quickly as I glanced over at him. He was staring at his empty hands.
    “Sometimes I wonder if they don’t want us to win or if it’s more entertaining to watch us struggle,” he said quietly, and then shook his head. “But if I dwell on that, I only feel angry. So I choose to believe that we are not given more because we have to find the rest inside ourselves.”
    “I’d rather have an army.”
    He chuckled. “So would I, but it helps to believe there might be a reason we don’t.”
    We spent the rest of the ride in silence as I mulled that one over. Was this whole thing a game the Judge had set up to amuse herself? Or was it some kind of “growth experience”—as my probation officer had once described the RITS—for a lucky few? Either way, it seemed like a lot of effort and hassle. And I wasn’t sure I believed either was true, but I didn’t feel like arguing about it, either. If it helped Malachi to believe his own inner strength could make up for miserable odds, who was I to take that hope from him? Especially when I’d never met anyone as strong as he was. I couldn’t be sure he was wrong—about himself, at least.
    We made it to school with time to spare, so I headed to the vending machines to get myself a granola bar. Standing close beside me, Malachi was alert and scanning the hallways, always the Guard looking for danger, but his eyes got snagged on the selection of goodies behind the Plexiglas.
    “You didn’t eat breakfast, did you?” I asked.
    “I’m still getting used to being hungry,” he said as I popped another three quarters into the slot and got a bar for him, too.
    Nutrition in hand, we headed into the open cafeteria, past the Goths sleeping on their backpacks, past the skinny, wannabe-gangsta kid in dirty jeans completing his oh-so-sneaky drug deal behind one of the wide, round pillars around the perimeter of the room, past the procrastinators hunched over their homework, and past the cheerleaders crowded around