“Well then, I guess it’s a good thing you’re friends with someone who’s mastered the art of breaking rules to get what they want,” Ro told her. “I’m sure Hunkyhair can help you come up with a plan.”

Sandor cleared his throat.

“Oh, relax, Gigantor, she already said she was going to be working on this anyway,” Ro reminded him. “Isn’t it better if she has some help?”

Help.

The word felt like a spark—but it snuffed out just as fast when she realized Keefe wasn’t exactly volunteering.

“It’s okay,” she told him after a beat of awkward silence. “You should be focusing on your memories.”

“I should,” he agreed, and her heart felt like it sank into her sloshy stomach. “But… thanks to my lovely bodyguard here, it looks like I’ll be sitting out on all the scheming you’ll be doing about the dwarves and Tammy Boy. So I’ll have some extra time to kill—and you know I’d never pass up a chance to get one up on the Forklenator.”

“You don’t have to,” she told him when his smirk looked a tiny bit forced.

“I want to. Seriously.”

She met his eyes, and there was an intensity in his stare that made her heart change rhythm.

“I’m always here for whatever you need, Sophie,” he said quietly. “And I gotta say, Team Foster-Keefe is going to crush this. But… I need you to promise me one thing, okay?”

She nodded.

He looked away, kicking the ground again. “You have to tell Fitz what we’re doing—and why. Just to make sure there’re no misunderstandings, you know?”

“I know,” she mumbled. “I’ve been planning to tell him anyway. I was only waiting until I had an actual plan, so he wouldn’t freak out as badly.”

“He won’t freak out,” Keefe assured her.

“Uh, this is Fitz,” Sophie reminded him. “Reacting to bad news isn’t exactly his strong suit.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” He stood and strode over to his desk, grabbing another notebook—a pale blue one this time—and a pen before plopping down on his bed. “Okay then, Miss F. Let’s figure out how to solve the ultimate Foster Mystery!”

 

 

FIVE

WOW. YOU WEREN’T KIDDING about not having much to go on,” Keefe said, squinting at the notes he’d scribbled down while Sophie had paced his room and told him everything she knew about her biological parents.

He hadn’t even filled half of a page.

And everything had question marks by it, in case Mr. Forkle had been lying.

So technically, they might have nothing.

Keefe scooted farther back on his bed and propped Mrs. Stinkbottom behind his head, looking way more relaxed than Sophie was feeling at the moment. “Okay, I have to ask… how do you feel about bending the rules of telepathy a little?”

“You mean breaking the rules of telepathy,” Sophie corrected, number one of which was No reading someone’s mind without their permission.

He shrugged. “I’m just saying, I’m pretty positive that you and Fitzy could solve this thing in five minutes if you went all Cognate—RAWR on Forkle’s memories. You’ve broken through his blocking before.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure he has other defenses he’d start using once he figured out what we were trying to do.”

“And that’s why you do it when he’s asleep.”

Sophie frowned. “We don’t know where he lives—and even if we did, I’m sure he has all kinds of security and…”

Her voice trailed off as Keefe exchanged a look with Ro that seemed to say, Isn’t our moonlark the cutest?

“You don’t have to go to his house. You already know where he works,” Ro reminded her.

“But Foxfire’s on hiatus—and he doesn’t sleep there anyway,” Sophie argued.

Keefe laughed. “I kinda love that I have to explain this to you. It’s like proof that no matter how feisty you get, you’ll still always be our sweet little Foster.”

Sophie’s cheeks burned, but whether she was embarrassed or touched, she couldn’t tell. Either way, she hoped he didn’t notice.

“You know those sedative things you hate so much?” he asked. “We’d slip one into the Forklenator’s lunch when school’s back in session and he’s in Magnate Leto mode. Then you and Fitz would ditch your afternoon sessions, let me work my mad skills on the lock to his office, and ta-da! One conked-out Forkle drooling on his giant desk, just waiting to have his memories explored. You guys would have plenty of time to do your Telepath thing and slip back to study hall before he wakes up. I doubt he’d even know anything happened.”

“Absolutely not!” Sandor snapped. “No one will be ditching sessions or drugging anybody!”

Sophie had to agree, even if the less-than-noble part of herself couldn’t deny that the plan was solid.

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t work,” she told Keefe. “But… it’d be icky.”

“Icky?” Ro repeated.

Sophie nodded. “Keefe and I both know how it feels to have someone invade our minds and mess with our memories. I’m not doing that to anyone else.”

“Even if you wouldn’t be ‘messing’ with anything?” Keefe countered. “You’d just be learning information you should’ve been given anyway because it’s about your life. And let’s not forget that you’d be learning it from the person who stole some of your memories and planted all kinds of other stuff without telling you. I mean, if anyone deserves to have their privacy violated…”

Sophie sighed.

He wasn’t wrong.

But that didn’t make it right.

The fact that he’d used the word “violated” said more than enough.

“How about we call that plan Z?” she suggested. “And I’ll consider it once Foxfire is back in session, if literally every other idea has failed and we have no other options.”

Ro muttered something about “no fun.” But Keefe grinned. “Fair enough. And… never change, Foster. You keep us honest.”

Sophie’s face burned even hotter as he flipped to the last page of the blue notebook and wrote, “PLAN Z: UNLEASH THE FITZPHIE!!!” Then he turned back to the half-full first page and labeled it “PLAN A.”

“Okay… since right now the only information we have is about who it’s not,” he said, scanning his notes again, “the first thing we need to do is make a list of people it actually could be. Then we’ll decide how to rule them out.”

Sophie sighed. “Technically it could be anybody.”

“Nah, we can rule out a bunch of people. Like Grady and Edaline, since there’d be no reason to keep that hidden. And my dad, since he’d never give up control of his kid like that—or be able to go this long without bragging about you. And everyone in the Neverseen, since they’d never help the Black Swan—and hey, good news! That means you’re not my sister.”

Sophie stopped pacing. “Did you actually think I was?”