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Gabriel hooks a finger under my chin, urging me to look at him. "I'm sorry for the way I acted early on, especially on the beach. I would never have hurt you. The things I said, that wasfear talking. I'd just gotten dumped into the middle of an Echo creature gang war, then got ripped away from there to crash down on a beach. That's not an excuse, just what happened."
"I know that. You don't need to apologize for it again. Even on the beach, I knew deep down that you wouldn't hurt me. Having amnesia has forced me to trust my instincts."
He kisses my forehead, then sits up and stretches. He slaps my bottom. "Get up, Lady Godiva. We have more journal pages to explore."
At first, I thought his nickname for me was annoying. But when he says it now, with humor in his voice and a twinkle in his eyes, I love it. But I don't have a nickname for him.
"Do you like being called Gabe?" I ask.
"Not particularly. I prefer Gabriel."
Okay, no nickname for him.
I get up and stretch like he had, but I also yawn. Lying with Gabriel makes me feel relaxed and warm and content. But we still have work to do, so we both get dressed and resume our study of the journal. This time, we sit side by side on the floor as we flip the pages, discussing each one before we move on to the next. Eventually, we come to the drawing Grant had told me about—a rendering ofThe Vitruvian Man, as envisioned by Leonardo da Vinci.
"Grant told me about this drawing," I say. "Da Vinci was inspired by the writings of Vitruvius, a Roman scholar who talked about the perfect proportions for architecture and the human body."
Sefton's version of the Da Vinci drawing looks remarkably like the original, almost as if he traced it. Maybe he did. Sefton Stainthorpe had given himself teleportation powers before he set the alchemy of worlds in motion, and he admitted to Dax and Allison that he had teleported into the Getty museum to steal rare alchemical manuscripts. He might've stolenThe VitruvianMantoo. But that drawing is so famous that someone would've missed it, surely.
Maybe he hid in the museum after hours to copy it.
Ugh, like it really matters how he managed to reproduce the drawing with such amazing accuracy.
I touch my fingertip to the journal page, following every line of the drawing. Something about it seems vital, like we need to uncover its secrets before we'll have any chance of taking over the Brain. But what then? I have no idea. Can we stop the apocalypse? Sever the Echo from Earth?
Tapping my finger on the drawing, I ask, "Once we control the Brain, what do we do then? There must be a purpose for taking command of the Brain, but we don't know what that is. Do we?"
"I don't know what it is, that's for sure."
"You know, I remember Grant and Erin talked about something called the Tria Prima. The way I understood it, that was the magics that kick-started the alchemy of worlds. Sefton called it an alchemical reaction."
"He was obsessed with alchemy, right?"
"Yes. There were boxes in the cellar of Fallenmouth that Sefton had imbued with powerful magics to help drive the apocalypse. Allison used her Echo power to circumvent that."
Gabriel squints at the journal, almost like he's trying to divine answers from the page. "Do you know much about the Tria Prima?"
"No. But I think there's more information about it in the journal."
"Let's skip ahead to that." He hesitates, glancing at me. "Mind if I, uh, dog-ear this page?"
"Sure, go ahead. It's not my journal."
Gabriel folds over the page's upper corner, then flips through the journal in search of information about the Tria Prima. Weboth skim the pages, but it's pretty clear that most of the journal consists of the ramblings of a deranged mind. Very little of it makes sense. But then we finally stumble on to something meaningful.
"Tria Prima," Gabriel says, tapping a page. "Sefton wrote about it right here."
"What does he say?"
"I'll paraphrase, because he tends to ramble like a lunatic for some weird reason." Gabriel smirks at me. "Can't imagine why he would do that."
"Everybody knows he was insane. Just give me the gist of it."
"Okay." Gabriel skims the text. "Here we go. Sefton's obsession with alchemy seems to have led him to an even deeper obsession—with his brother and with Allison. He decided that the three of them were the Tria Prima. That's a reference to the three basal elements of alchemy that triggered the first transmutation and created everything in the universe. Sefton believed that by recreating the Tria Prima with himself, Dax, and Allison, he could generate enough power to tap into the quintessentia, the prime catalyst that created the universe."
"He needed that to start the alchemy of worlds?"
"I think so." Gabriel flips to the next page, his gaze narrowed as struggles to comprehend the text. "There's more rambling, then he talks about the Triangle, which is composed of the Tria Prima. He says the Triangle has the greatest power of all, and he worried that someone might try to appropriate that power from him."
