From the sounds on the roof, it was still raining, but it seemed the worst of the lightning and thunder had passed.
“Idris. Please wake up. I lied. I did find something outside, only I was too embarrassed…it doesn’t matter. Leo is in trouble.”
“What do you mean, trouble? What did you find?” asked Idris groggily.
Alison heard the others stirring around them. She stood up (Gods, her back hurt; she was too old for this) and pulled the pair of them back to the corner they’d occupied earlier, where hopefully they wouldn’t disturb the others trying to sleep.
Ceri held something out to Idris. He lit a tiny flame on the end of his fingertip—it looked like he’d slept long enough to get at least some of his magic back—and looked at what she held.
Leo’s journal. She was certain Idris would recognize it as well; Leo was never without the thing.
“What does it say?” asked Alison.
“I don’t know,” said Ceri. “I warned him about what happened to you tonight, and he said something is after him too where he is.”
“Where is he?” asked Idris.
“Here. But not here. He said it’s like here but different. It’s daytime there.”
“You’re able to communicate with him?” asked Alison.
“Yes, through this. It seems to be the same in both places.”
Idris examined the journal. “There are pages missing.”
Alison could guess at the meaning behind Ceri’s guilty look without her explaining it.
She had removed the pages. Probably because they were about her, which is why she hadn’t come forward with the journal immediately.
If Idris also reached the same conclusion, he didn’t mention it. “I feel nothing unusual about it,” he said. “Nothing which suggests dark magic, at least. If he’s there with those objects and the items missing from my closet, he needs to separate them immediately. If he can put them back into their containers, all the better. We may be able to help him decurse some of them, but it will be harder with us here and the objects there.”
“I tried to tell him all of that,” said Ceri. “He stopped responding. I don’t know if he’s still there or if he even has the journal.” She sat down at the closest table and checked for a response, but there was nothing there.
Idris sat beside her and held the flame nearby so she could see.
“Do you have any idea how to get him back?” Alison asked him.
“Not yet,” said Idris. “I’ll need to read what he’s written about where he is. How was it that you escaped from that vine situation again?”
“Keir had to let me go over the falls. It was how he thought Charlotte had died.”
“Some sort of acceptance lesson?”
“Yes, we think so.”
Idris turned back to Ceri. “Are there any lessons you know of that he needs to learn? Other than not taking things that don’t belong to him or messing with dangerously cursed objects without permission?”
“Most of those objects belong to him. You are the one who took something that didn’t belong to you first.”
“I took them for safekeeping, and after tonight, perhaps you can see why I did.”
“Any response?” asked Alison.
“Nothing yet,” said Ceri. She yawned.
“Have you slept at all tonight?” asked Alison.
“No,” said Ceri. “How could I?”
