Page 94 of The Art of Exiley

She hasdefinitelydone this before. And now I can’t help but wonder who else she’s ever needed to track.

“Is there a reason he would be visiting this area?” Georgie asks, pointing to the East River on a map.

I peer over her shoulder as she enlarges the window for me. “Not that I know of.”

“He’s been here three times in the past two weeks.” She zooms in on a couple of small islands.

“That’s near Riker’s Island, New York City’s prison,” I say. “Maybe he’s been visiting an inmate?”

“No.” Georgie shakes her head. “This here is Riker’s Island, but that’s notwhere he’s been going. He’s been going here.” She points to a much smaller island. “Is there a park there or something?” She clicks around a bit more, then says, “North Brother Island. That’s what it’s called.”

I inhale sharply. North Brother Island is the home of an abandoned hospital and is completely restricted. Or so I thought.

Before I can explain this to Georgie, she’s already reading through an extensive web search. “There’s a hospital there that has a past life as a place for quarantined disease patients, veteran housing, and a rehab for drug addicts. Now the whole island is a bird sanctuary and off-limits to people.” She zooms in on a photo of the old hospital. “Definitely looks like a hidden medical facility to me,” she says with a grin.

I nod. “That has to be it.”

“So you’re saying you think this is where they’re keeping Hypatia?”

I nod again.

“Okay, let’s make this happen!” She claps her hands together. “How else can I help?” She doesn’t even wait for me to answer. “I bet I can make you a map.”Clack, clack, clack.On one monitor she’s researching North Brother Island, and with the other she’s continuing to go through Alfie’s phone, moving so fast through his apps, files, and internet history that I can barely keep up. “Has this dude not heard of incognito mode? I did not need to know that he’s into—”

“I don’t want to know!”

“Good call.”

I’m not quite sure what Georgie thinks she’ll find by scrolling through endless selfies of Alfie flexing in his bathroom mirror, but she clearly knows what she’s doing.

“Jackpot!” she exclaims when she finds a series of pictures of what looks like a construction site. “He took pictures of the renovations they’ve made to the old hospital. I don’t blame him—it looks super cool. I cancross-reference these photos with the old blueprints I found in the Historic House Trust archive to make a map. It won’t be fully accurate, but it should be better than nothing.”

“You are an actual wizard,” I say with genuine awe and only a hint of concern for why she would have ever needed this specific set of skills.

An alarm buzzes, and Georgie starts to gather her things. “Well, this was fun, but I have a reservation to use one of the looms, so I gotta go.” She blows me a kiss and bounds out of the room while my confession about Rafe stays trapped in my throat.

27

Michael seems distant during Foundations. Or notdistant, per se, just… normal. Like ateacher.

I hate it.

But there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask him, and I can’t sulk forever. I catch up with him as he’s leaving class.

“Hi.” He smiles politely at me. I have to take two steps for every one of his to keep up with his long stride.

“I heard a beautiful song last week,” I say. No need to mention with whom. “I was told the composer is… Yosef HaLevi?”

Michael lights up at the name, and he slows his pace just a little. “One of the greatest composers of our time.”

“Of our time? So he’s still alive?”

“No one knows. He hasn’t been heard from in many years, and it’s unknown whether he was in Naiot during the Fall.”

“So Yosef also had the Sight?” I ask as I follow Michael into the cafeteria.

“No. He was a Levite—a musician who played to help the prophets achieve a peaceful mind to receive their visions. And since he’s a Nazir, he also amplified their Sight.”

My head is spinning. “A Nazir?”

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