The Madness Underneath: Book 2 (THE SHADES OF LONDON) by Maureen Johnson

I’d known he would come. My initial inclination was to grab him around his long, skinny middle and hug him until his head popped off, but Stephen was not really a hugger.
    I decided to hug him anyway. He tolerated this reasonably well, though he didn’t reciprocate. I guess I expected a smile or something, but smiling also wasn’t his thing.
    “Your roommate,” he replied. “Julianne. Is she asleep? Your lights have been off for a half an hour.”
    Nor was conversation, really.
    “You’ve been looking at my window for a half an hour?”
    “That’s not an answer to my question.”
    “She’s asleep,” I said. “At least, she’s quiet. She didn’t say anything when I got up.”
    “Would she normally say something?”
    “It’s good to see you too,” I said. “They said that’s a really good security system, but not so much, huh?”
    “It is quite a good system.”
    “So why didn’t it go off?”
    “Disarming the alarm system of a school building isn’t exactly the trickiest thing the security services has ever had to do.”
    “Security services…”
    “We should move.”
    “What?”
    “Come on.”
    “But…”
    He had already slipped a businesslike arm across my back and was ushering me down the cobblestone path and around the corner. Stephen was the only person in the world I would tolerate this kind of thing from, because there was one thing I did know—if he dragged me out of bed and ushered me through the dark, there was a reason. And I would be safe.
    There was a red car, and I heard the doors unlock when Stephen pointed the remote at it.
    “That’s not a police car,” I said, pointing out the obvious.
    “It’s an unmarked vehicle. Get in.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Let me explain inside the car.”
    There was a figure sitting in the front passenger seat. I recognized the head of white hair at once, and the altogether too young face that went with it. It was Mr. Thorpe, the government official who’d come to visit me in the hospital. The one who told me I was never allowed to say anything.
    “What’s he—”
    “It’s all right,” Stephen said, opening the back door for me. “Get inside.”
    Stephen held the door open until I acquiesced.
    “Aurora,” Mr. Thorpe said, turning around. “Good to see you. Sorry to pull you out in the middle of the night like this.”
    “What are we doing?” I asked.
    “We need to talk.”
    Stephen started up the car.
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    “Do you enjoy being back?” Thorpe asked.
    Thorpe didn’t exactly seem like the kind of person who cared whether or not I was adjusting well to my circumstances, and Stephen was suddenly very focused on his driving.
    “It’s okay,” I said. “I just got here. As I guess you know.”
    “We do.”
    “Why do I feel like my being back has something to do with you?”
    “It does have something to do with us,” he said. “But I hope that you’re happy about it.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “We’re just going to take a short ride,” Thorpe said. “Nothing to be worried about.”
    Stephen looked at me through the rearview mirror and gave me a reassuring nod. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. He turned up the heat.
    The first few turns, I knew basically where we were—in the Wexford neighborhood, going south. Then we were lost in a warren of tight little streets for a few moments, reemerging near King William Street, where the old squad headquarters was, where we’d faced down the Ripper. We turned off that quickly enough and were on a road that ran along the Thames Embankment. We were definitely heading west. West was the way to central London. The black cabs got more numerous, the path along the Thames thicker with trees and impressive buildings, the lights on the opposite bank shinier. I caught sight of the London Eye, glowing brightly in the dark, then we were going right, into the very heart of London.
    We pulled up into the circular drive of what I first