“Gold Coast,” Elle whispered behind me.
I spun to see her looking wide-eyed at the map. “You see it?” I wasn’t sure if it was a seeker only thing. She nodded.
“Why can’t I see all of the others here?” I asked her. Unless every single crystal was in Australia, but I doubted it. This map showed eight and I needed twelve.
She shrugged, “Maybe you have to find them in order or something, or it can only show you one at a time on Earth.”
Hmm.
A woman suddenly walked up to look at the plaque and I instinctively reached out to cover it with my hand, which made the map disappear, and the plaque was normal once again.
Whew. That was close.
I backed away, giving the woman a sweet smile, and then looked at Elle. “I guess we’re going down under.”
She nodded, jaw tightening as she gave me a warrior’s grin.
Elle was really coming into her own in this situation, I wish I could say the same about myself.
Just then, Bashur barked and jerked. The leash flew from Elle’s hands.
“Bash!” I screamed and ran after the huge beast.
“Puppy!” a girl said, reaching for a tiny chihuahua that wasn’t there. When her hand hit the top of bashers back, which was nearly as tall as her, she recoiled. Illusions were pesky things. They looked like one thing, and felt or smelled like another.
“He’s not friendly,” I told the mom, and she yanked her daughter back, shooting me a glare. I dove and grasped onto Bashur’s collar just in time for him to start digging up a beautiful red tulip bed.
“Bashur!” I scolded him, trying with all my might to yank him back and away from the pretty flowers he was currently murdering.
When I finally got up to his face, I reached out for his muzzle and yanked him back.
“What the—?” His nose was covered in dirt and he held a leather-bound book in his mouth.
My stomach dropped when I saw the book. It jogged a dozen memories within me. When I was younger, my mother would write in a book like this all the time. Like a journal. Then one day she just stopped. I asked her why and she simply stated, “It’s complete.” I never really thought about it again until now. My fingers caressed the spiral on the spine. It was hers. I couldn’t help it; I had to open it, just to get a glimpse of her perfect scrolling handwriting. But when I split the spine, I frowned as I gazed upon blank pages. Flipping through them, all I saw was blank after blank.
But this was hers … I knew it, and clearly Bashur had smelled it. It must be some magic illusion ink. I’d have to deal with it later.
Her words came back to me now. In her final dying moments she’d asked me to find her journal and I’d barely given it any thought. Until now.
“Good boy, Bashur! You’re getting a treat when we get home,” I told him, and he licked my hand, depositing a large string of drool on my palm.
Yuck.
Elle looked down at the book in my hands. “Is that?”
She’d seen my mom working on it many times over the years.
I just nodded. “Let’s head back.”
With that, we headed back for the apartment and on our way to Australia. The journal pushed to the back of my mind as I focused on getting the next crystal.
After stashing the journal in the bedside table in New York, I grabbed Bashur and Elle and we positioned ourselves in front of the front door. Checking my watch, I saw that it was just about one more minute until an hour had passed. When the clock ticked, I pulled the door open and Mara was leaning against the hallway of her home, inspecting her nails.
“Hey, kids. Did you find it?”
I grinned. “Yep, it’s in Gold Coast, Australia.”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh, Gold Coast is lovely.”
