The wayfaer portal in the living room gave off a bright light as magic funneled in. Jesper, Dimitri, Koa, Slater, and Zuko came in with various expressions of exhaustion on their faces.
“You could’ve come and got us, too,” Slater pouted, stealing the seat next to me.
“Ah, I suppose I could’ve.” Drecken shrugged.
“Would’ve been nice.” Zuko sat next to Slater and immediately scooped a spoonful of stew and ate it. “Damn, this is good.”
“Thank you for fixing dinner,” Jesper murmured as he sat across from me with Koa next to him.
Koa took a bite before groaning. “Yeah, seriously. Thanks. This is delicious. Jesper, it rivals your dinners.”
Jesper took a tentative bite before he let out a noise of appreciation. “Drecken, I need your recipe.”
“Sorry, but Sir Reginald said I can only give it to Rune.” Drecken gave him a sheepish smile.
Jesper pouted before turning toward the spider monkey already sleeping on the couch. “And he’s sleeping.”
“You just missed him.” Drecken took another bite.
I giggled before taking a drink and meeting Jesper’s gaze. “Do we have any idea what those scales were going to be used for?”
He shook his head, swallowing the bite of food in his mouth and taking a drink. “Still no leads. Whoever is taking the scales knows where they’re being held, but we’ve confiscated a lot of them back.”
“That’sinsane,” Zuko muttered between bites. “We have a missing drake scale notice at least every month.”
“Not to mention that new body in the lake in the Bizarre,” Slater huffed.
“Nothing helpful there either,” Koa sighed.
“That sounds frustrating,” Drecken comforted us. “Have I told you about the nanobots I found in Allison’s bloodstream yet?”
“Yes,” Dimitri muttered dryly. “Many times.”
“Nanobots are such oddities. No other human body I’ve done autopsies on had them,” he said with a hum. “Well, aside fromwhen Norman found some in human specimens back in Kalista’s Second War…”
“What about Allison’s parents?” Zuko asked. “Sure, the mom’s unusable, but the dad maybe?”
Drecken sighed. “Well, you took the mom’s body for Cthulhu, remember?”
Zuko chuckled. “How could I forget? I had you create an enchanted enclosure with her corpse as the centerpiece. He loves it, by the way.”
“He really does,” I cooed.
“Right.” Drecken nodded. “Anyway, the dad’s body lacked any magic at all.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Koa muttered, fussing with a medium-sized terrarium Drecken had enchanted for Ragnar to shift through different environments that he liked. It was by far the best gift for him, and it held spatial magic so Ragnar could explore to his heart’s content. “Jeff wasn’t the type to get involved on a personal level when I was spying on them. He let everyone else be the guinea pigs.”
Rolling my eyes, I took another bite. “That makes sense. I’m just glad it’s over until the next human kicks up a fuss.”
“Hopefully, that won’t be for a long while,” Slater said as he stuffed his mouth with another bite.
“At least the academy held a memorial for Seth, after all that happened at the formal,” I murmured.
“Of course they did.” Jesper’s brown eyes bored into mine. “Seth’s sacrifice didn’t just save you, honey drop, it saved us all.”
“I know.” I stared into my almost empty bowl. “I’m still worried about the Montclair family. You know, Octavia and Delphine.”
Jesper sighed. “I know, but there’s nothing we can do until we are made aware of something we can’t look away from.”
