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more classically inspired, like the Chained Dragon, which we'll see in just a moment on the University Chapel. Others represent the university experience, like this perennial favorite here, the Unseeing Reader, who symbolizes opening the eyes of students."
    Keeping her voice low, Lily asked Tye, "Why do I need a guard?" She was on a campus tour at a suburban school, not wandering alone in the inner city. "Are you supposed to protect me against vicious squirrels and roving gangs of prefrosh?"
    "Something like that," he said.
    The tour guide was talking about a bulldog (Yale's mascot) carved into a drainpipe on the chapel, supposedly a joke from the architect, a Yale graduate. "Everywhere you look on the Princeton campus, you'll find treasures like these," the
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    guide said. "Some call our gargoyles the 'true professors of Princeton.'"
    Lily winced. Okay, that was cheesy. She hung back as the tour proceeded on to the chapel. "Am I really supposed to be on this tour?" she whispered to Tye. "She seems as likely to say something useful as a gargoyle." Lily nodded up at the Unseeing Reader.
    "I wouldn't be so sure of that." His golden eyes twinkled at her. "You never know what a gargoyle might say." He waved up at the gargoyle as if the Unseeing Reader were an old friend that he always greeted.
    High up on the arch, the Unseeing Reader's stone fingers twitched.
    Lily felt blood drain from her face. It had to have been a flicker of light, a cloud crossing the sun, even though the sky was blemish-free blue. "Did you see--" She stopped. She didn't want him to think she was a lunatic or, worse, to report back to the Old Boys that she had her mother's problems.
    Tye was watching her with an unreadable expression.
    "Never mind," she said. Clasping her shaking hands together behind her back, Lily willed herself to stay calm. She'd taken a triple dosage. She might have a seizure or a heart attack, but she could not have a brain hiccup.
    The fingers twitched again.
    "Oh, crap," she said.
    She couldn't pretend she hadn't seen that. Out of the
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    corner of her eye, she glanced at Tye. He was still watching her, his tawny eyes intense.
    Above, the gargoyle spread her fingers. A shard of stone slipped between them and plummeted toward the plaza. Without thinking, Lily stretched out her hands. The stone landed neatly on her palms. She stared at it. It didn't feel like a hallucination.
    "What does it say?" Tye asked.
    Her head shot up. "How do you know it says anything?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "The Old Boys ... Vineyard Club ... they rigged the gargoyle," she said flatly. She waved the stone shard in the air. "This is a clue. And you knew it was and let me think I was ..." Instead of finishing the sentence, she swatted his arm. Her fingers brushed against his bare skin. She felt tiny static shocks dance on her fingertips.
    His eyes widened, and he reached out as quick as a cat and caught her hand. He held it for a second, and she felt prickles run up and down her arm. "Who are you?" he demanded.
    "Nobody," she said. "I'm Lily. Lily Carter."
    He was staring at her with a gaze so piercing that she felt yet another blush rise up over her neck and face. A second later, he dropped her hand and blushed too. "Sorry," he said. He seemed at a loss for words. She flexed her fingers. Strange, she thought. Her hand felt tingly. "You, uh, you think the 'Old Boys' are controlling the gargoyle?" he asked.
    "Puppet or robot." She didn't care which, so long as it wasn't a hallucination. Lily studied the shard, a flat rectangle.
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    Carved on one side were numbers and letters: 921.45 Wil. She showed it to Tye.
    "Cryptic," he commented.
    "It could be a date, except the punctuation isn't quite right," she said. "And what about 'Wil'? What does that mean?"
    "Abbreviation?" he suggested. "Acronym?"
    "Research time," she said. She was a stone's throw from the university library. The prospect of winnowing through that much information was daunting, but