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Jazz looked up at Gibby. “And where did you run off to?”

“Phone call,” Gibby said easily. “Nothing important. We should—uh-oh.”

“What uh-oh?” Jazz asked.

“Nick has his thinking face. And it’s red. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his red thinking face before.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Maybe I should go visit Seth at the animal shelter,” Nick said, tapping his fingers against the table. “I mean, it’s obviously important to him, right? Does it make me a bad friend that I never went there this summer? I should take an interest inhisinterests, right? I mean, that’s what you’re supposed to do when your best friend starts something new.”

“No,” Gibby blurted.

Nick and Jazz turned slowly to look at her. “Why not?”

“Because,” Gibby said. “It’s… uh. Probably super busy. With the… flooding thing. And, Nicky, aren’t you allergic to cats? There’s probably lots of cats.”

Oh. Right. But still. “It’s notthatbad. I mean, yeah, I swell up and get blotchy and then almost die, but so what? If Seth likes it, then I should like it too, right?”

“Oh sure,” Gibby said quickly. “Totally. But I don’t think he’d want you to get sick because of him. That’d make him feel bad, and you know how Seth looks when he feels bad.”

“My greatest weakness,” Nick breathed. When Seth Gray felt bad about something, his eyes got really wide and his bottom lip trembled, and all Nick wanted to do was hug him close and protect him from everything.

“Exactly,” Gibby said. “And we can’t have him getting distractedfrom all those cats. Besides, he’ll probably be done sooner than you think—”

Nick’s phone beeped.

Then Jazz’s.

Then Gibby’s.

The librarian glared at them, but then her phone beeped too, and she frowned down at it.

Nick picked his phone up to see an alert across the screen.

EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY IN MIDTOWN. EXPECT DELAYS. AVOID AREA IF POSSIBLE.

“Whoa,” Nick breathed. “Do you think it’s Shadow Star?”

“I don’t know,” Gibby said. “But we should probably stay away since we were told to.”

“Right,” Nick said. “But what if we—”

“No.”

“But we could—”

“No.”

“Maybe just—”

“No.”

Nick glared at Gibby. “You know, when I’m an Extraordinary, I’m going to be able to do whatever I want.”

“And I tremble in fear at the very thought. But until that time comes, you’re still squishy and fragile, and even though you sometimes act like it, you’re not stupid enough to get in the middle of whatever’s going on.”

“I feel like there was a compliment buried under all that somewhere.”