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“Someone’s coming.”
Sylvan moves to the entrance, but he doesn’t step out. Instead, he waits at the edge of the doorway as though he plans to attack whoever comes in.
Caleb stops to listen. “I don’t hear anything.” A fraction of a second later, he nods. “I hear them now.”
Blaise and Sierra enter the room, sweeping in. Blaise, a witch and Nim’s partner, wears a beautiful blue dress, covered in nebula designs which looked like they’d been printed directly from a telescope, orbiting the earth. Her midnight hair had slashes of magenta in it. Sierra isn’t as flashy as Blaise today, but they’re both Archivists. Sierra gives Sylvan a long look, as if daring him to attack them.
Maddy rushes toward them. “What are you doing here?”
“Nim called us to assist her.” Blaise glances around the room with a scowl on her face. “Where is she? Did she let you in here?”
“She didn’t let us in here, but she disappeared. The best we can tell, this is where she was.”
“Where did she go?” Blaise asks again, her concern obvious in the way her eyebrows pinch together. “This isn’t a room she would have let you be in.”
“We don’t know where she went,” Maddy says.
“There was a rumble and a burst of wind, and now we’re not sure what happened to her,” Caleb adds. “That’s why we’re in this room. She was here with that book and then not, but we didn’t see what happened.”
While Maddy continues circling the room, Caleb tells them what happens since they’ve arrived at Veritas. Their eyes grow wider and wider with the telling, and Sierra’s gaze darts to Sylvan over and over. They’re suspicious of him, and Maddy is, too.
When Caleb finishes, Blaise curses aloud. “The book should never have been opened so recklessly. Nim knows better. We don’t read these kinds of books alone. It’s why we never take these out of Veritas, it’s why we don’t allow it. Nim knows all of the rules and the reasons behind them.” She takes a deep breath. “How do we figure out where she’s gone?”
Maddy jerks her thumb toward Sylvan. “Maybe he can help.”
“Can we trust him?” Blaise asks.
“He was with us when Nim disappeared, so I hope so.”
Blaise turns toward the Fae. “Can you help decipher the pages?”
He points to Maddy. “Will she allow it?”
Maddy takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I won’t stop you this time, but you must promise to listen to Blaise and Sierra. When they say stop, you stop.”
Sylvan blinks. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He approaches the table and leans over the book on the table, and Maddy trails after him, loitering behind. “It’s as suspected. These pages can act as a portal.”
Maddy joins Sylvan at the table and leans over the book. The edges glitter as though they’re gilded, but they aren’t. It must be some kind of magic on the pages. She can’t read any of the words in it. “How can you tell the pages hold a portal? What’s it say?”
Sylvan gestures to the margins, not touching the parchment surface, but nearly. “The spell isn’t obvious, but it’s there. It’s made for Fae eyes, and it’s a warning about not being portaled somewhere else, but it also says the reader can choose where to port. I cannot read the exact words without enacting the spell, and I’m not interested in beginning our fight against Orion from somewhere else.”
“Can you tell where she might have been sent?”
Sylvan studies the page. “Because this book disappeared, we have no information about what the portal pages do or where they lead, but I suspect Nim chose the location. There’s nothing on the page which notates anything or any fixed location. So, I can conjecture that the portal location has something to do with the choice of the reader.”
Caleb scowls and crosses his arms. “No way to tell?”
“If I read the spell, I will be ported to the location in my thoughts. It is unlikely that this would be the location Nim has gone.”
“No, not my Nim,” Blaise moans, the powerful witch looking scared and vulnerable, something Maddy’s never seen.
“There has to be a way to know where the book sent her,” Maddy murmurs. She settles on the corner of the table, her mind churning through what she knows. She has some magic. With the strength of the vampire blood in her, maybe, just maybe it would help… “If I focus on Nim, maybe the portal could take me to where she is. She’s a seer, and I’m a warlock, right?”
Caleb’s already shaking his head. “No, no, we’re not risking you like that.”
“Somebody has to do it, Caleb. Nim’s gone, and it’s our fault. We can’t lose our best chance of beating Orion. There must be a way to know where the book sent her.”
Sylvan studies the pages and then studies Maddy, Caleb, and the others. “It is the only way to know where she went.”
