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almost as big as our whole apartment, and it had matching furniture and an enormous desk that she hardly ever used. Sometimes I wondered what her parents would say ifI asked to study in Phil’s room now.
    Lilith hadn’t told my aunt and uncle about the Mad Goat Incident, which was just as well. I’d hate to see Uncle John start giving me the looks he reserved for his sister. He might even tell Phil that I, too, had gone insane.
    Twenty minutes later, Lilith skipped into the room, eyes alight. “Honey, I have amazing news. The Cloisters of Ctesias has been reopened.”
    “Um, yay? What in the world is a cloister?”
    She grabbed my hands and danced me around in a circle. “It’s an ancient training ground in Rome for unicorn hunters. You’re going to be a hunter, baby!”
    “No!” I pulled back and crossed my arms.
    Lilith’s face turned hard. “What, young lady?”
    I backpedaled. “I mean, I can’t.” Think. “I have school. I don’t have a passport. I don’t speak Italian.”
    She waved her hand in the air. “Details. We’ll get you a passport, and we can arrange for you to take your exams early. You’re a smart girl—you’ll be fine.”
    No. She couldn’t send me away to some crazy unicorn boot camp. She couldn’t enlist me just like that. Didn’t I have any rights? I never wanted to see another unicorn again, and here she was trying to turn me into someone who regularly engaged with them. Killed them.
    She grabbed my arms again, this time with a firmer grip. Her eyes were frighteningly lucid and, even more frighteningly, filled with intensity. “Think of it, Astrid! Rome! The Eternal City!” She spun me around again.
    I couldn’t think of that. I was too busy trying to decide between fight and flight. Could I run away? But where wouldthat leave me? I was sixteen, without a high school diploma. That was no way to avoid my mother’s fate. Could I throw myself on the mercy of Uncle John? He’d never let her send me away like that. He could fight for custody. He’d do that for me, right?
    But as soon as the thought sprung into my head, I pushed it away. Tell authorities about my mom? What would they do to her if I did? Tell them about unicorns? Would it do any good? After all, I’d seen one, and Lilith had all those reports. Maybe everyone knew about the Reemergence, too. Maybe they’d side with her.
    Perhaps there was another way. “And who’s going to pay for it?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice as calm as possible. “Not Uncle John, that’s for sure.”
    “That’s the best part. It’s all sponsored. It’s all free. An opportunity like this—Astrid, it’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”
    I stopped her from turning me into a human Maypole. “You wanted these monsters to come back?”
    She had the decency to look sheepish. “Well, I wanted you to be able to claim your birthright. In a way I never could.”
    Poor Lilith. She did want it. All my life, people had thought she was wrong, crazy—even her own daughter. But now I’d seen the truth with my own eyes. Maybe I owed her for those years of derision. Maybe I owed her because no matter how much I’d resented the way we lived, I’d always loved her. She was my mother.
    And she’d parried every argument I’d made, like always. She was a grown-up. No matter what bad decision she made, I had to live with it. The unicorns had eclipsed every aspect of her life—why wouldn’t they do so to mine as well?
    Besides, it wasn’t as if I had some packed social schedule tokeep. Or a crazy desire to spend another hour in Current Issues, while my ex-boyfriend and ex–best friend giggled about how I was both crazy and a prude.
    Better to hunt the mad goat than to let it attack any more of my boyfriends.

3
W HEREIN A STRID I S C LOISTERED
    L ILITH DID ALL THE packing, which made sense, as she’d also done the bulk of the shopping. If I’d been in charge of my Rome wardrobe, it would have included more capri pants and kicky