Ten people in the group. That wasn’t bad. Other than Althea and Giles, they were all young—twenties and early thirties. The idealism of youth. Seemed to have skipped me, but I blame that on growing up with Paige and Lucas, whose idealism shines like the noonday sun. I’d learned to start pulling the shades before I went blind.

“Okay, look,” I said when they’d finished introductions. “I’d say I’m pleased to meet all of you, but you know that’s bullshit. I’m your prisoner. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“So now you’re ready to start asking questions?” Althea said.

“If you think holding me in a room for a day or two will make me break down and tell you everything, don’t bother. If you’ve done your research, you’ll know I’ve been kidnapped before. I spent weeks in a cell. I’m not going to snap and betray my friends for warm blankets and a feather pillow.”

“Guess we’ll have to do this another way then.” Sierra smiled. “Shall I get my tools, Giles?”

Roni flinched. I was pretty sure Althea did, too. The others shifted, uncomfortable. Giles only gave her a look of stern disapproval.

“There will be none of that,” he said. “Savannah is angry, and rightfully so. I can assure her, though, that we weren’t deliberately withholding answers. We were simply waiting until everyone was here to participate in this meeting.”

“So, can we get to it now?”

He smiled. “Yes, I won’t keep you waiting any longer. Right this way, please.”

He walked to a door and held it open. Inside it was dark. I stopped, ready to dig in my heels, then he pulled back a curtain, and I saw light beyond.

Roni hurried ahead to hold back the curtain for me. Giles had already disappeared. The others were behind me. Sierra jostled past, her brother following. The others circled wider, passing, until it was only Althea, Roni, and me.

I glanced back. I could take them. Even without spells, I was sure I could. It was the other eight people, only a few yards away, that posed a problem.

I continued into the meeting room. Ahead, Giles was blathering on in his outdoor voice, and it bounced off the walls, so loudly I couldn’t make out the words until I walked through the curtain. We were stopped there, in an alcove, the rest of the group hidden from view as Giles paced the front of the room and talked.

“We have promised you many things,” he was saying. “And while we continue to work together to bring our dreams to fruition, I have now delivered on one of my promises.”

He turned and motioned me forward. I stepped past the end of the curtain, and a gasp went up. Then a cheer.

“May I present a young lady who needs no introduction. Miss Savannah Levine.”

I turned and looked out, and found myself on a stage overlooking an auditorium. An auditorium filled with people, all looking up at me and cheering.

Oh, shit.

At first, all I could hear was the cheering, and when that stopped, the thundering of my own blood filled my ears. I stared out at the sea of faces. I tried to count them. My brain stuttered and I had to start over, and finally gave up and counted rows, estimating instead.

Close to two hundred people filled that room. Two hundred supernaturals, aligned to expose the supernatural world—

No, maybe I was wrong. I’d guessed these were the people behind the uprising, but my only proof was Sierra and Severin. No way could there be this many supernaturals already aligned in a plan that everyone with a brain knew was madness. It’d be a damned suicide cult.

Giles was still emoting as he paced the stage. “—long have supernaturals waited for this day. We have waited patiently because we knew it would come. The signs would appear. The signs foretold in the Phalegian Prophecy.”

Phalegian Prophecy? I searched for a memory of such a thing. Sure, supernaturals had prophecies, like any other group. Predictions of the future written by some nut-job, then warped and stretched to fit a current situation. Proof the world was going to end.

Proof that it was time to reveal ourselves, though? I’d never heard of that one.

“The signs have been clear,” he continued. “Signs that our day of revelation is coming.” He paused for a cheer. “Signs that our day of dominance is coming.” A bigger cheer now, so loud it made my ears ring.

Dominance? Seriously? What? Supernaturals are going to take over the world? Were these people idiots? I’d barely passed high school math, and I could do the calculations. Humans outnumbered us by tens of thousands to one.

“Now we prepare to put our plan in motion . . .”

What plan? Sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads?

“First, though, we must complete the gathering of the signs. Once we have them all, others will come. They will join our cause and unite to make this the kind of world supernaturals deserve. A world where we don’t need to hide. Don’t need to cower. Don’t need to fear persecution. And why should we fear persecution? We are supernaturals. We are superior. This is our birthright and we will seize it now!”

As the crowd roared, the sarcasm bled from my thoughts. I stared out at that room and I saw the exhilaration and the anger, the pride and the resentment. I looked out there and I saw myself.

This was a force that could grow into something beyond our worst nightmares because it didn’t matter how illogical the plan was. What these people felt was not logical. It was a hunger and hatred that boiled in their veins. I’d grown up with that hunger and that hatred—that desire to make my power felt—and even now, I felt the pull of it.

I heard that voice inside me that said I was special. I was superior. That voice that had screamed every time a teacher tried to tell me what to do. Every time any human tried to tell me what to do. A voice that had begged me strike them down, blast them with a spell, and show them exactly who they were dealing with.

Growing up meant coming to terms with that voice. Recognizing it for what it really was. Misplaced pride. I’d done nothing to earn my magic. I was born to it, like a princess is born to her crown. In a land without princesses, that didn’t earn me jack-shit. I could rail against my fate or I could say that it was only right, that deed, not birth, should earn privilege.

That egalitarian view didn’t come from inside me. It was learned from the examples of those I saw around me, mainly from Paige and Lucas. Had I continued to grow up in my mother’s world of dark magic, I could be sitting in that audience, believing that humans were weaklings to be manipulated, conned, fleeced, then mocked over rounds at the pub.