"Nope! My power still works fine," Duvessa said cheerfully. She waved her hand dismissively and leaned back on the stone bench. "Arnold was stuck on the idea of someone taking it too."

"You sure?" Booth asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the blanket Duvessa had handed him and absently fiddled with the corner. "You mentioned the other day that they ain't all coming back, and I don't just mean the ones you summoned on the mountain. So, what's happening to them?" Booth gestured to Owen and Seth. "We were wondering if someone was swiping them."

Duvessa blinked. "But I haven't summoned any dogs. And I still have my power. Blaise lost her water power all at once. Why would mine be different?"

Seth didn't have an answer. Her situation was very different from that of both Blaise and Saben. "We should look into this. We really can't afford not to if something is stealing your summons."

"If they're your summons we ran into, we should know for sure," Booth said.

"How much can you summon right now?" Blaise asked. Blaise was seated next to Duvessa and had one booted foot up on the stone bench.

"A normal amount, I'd guess," Duvessa said. "My maximum and the behavior of the summons have been weird since the berries."

"It's rude to ask someone the particulars about their power," Selendrith piped up. She sat on the bench furthest from the rest of the group while still being included.

Owen and Seth were both leaning against the same tree. Mau was up the tree on a wide branch, and Reginald was on a smaller branch nearby.

Owen agreed with Selendrith. "Yeah, we're getting pretty nosy. Duvessa, you don't have to answer nothing."

Seth should have realized that, too. He tended to be an open person, and keeping secrets was new to him. He needed to be more aware that some things were intrusive or rude to talk about. But in this case, it was necessary to know those things to get to the bottom of the mystery.

"Of course I don't, and I don't mind. All of you are my friends. I don't think anything is wrong with talking to you about this since I believe all of you are trying to help. So I will help you help me."

For the next half hour, Duvessa experimented with her power. The result was that the size of the summons she could do was down about a quarter, and the total number of different summons she could have at a time was at half.

They discussed the behavior of her summons and how they usually worked compared to how they've been lately.

When she summoned a creature, she imbued it with an intended purpose. Sometimes, she included specific instructions, and other times it was more of a nebulous desire. If she wanted to change the instructions, she needed physical contact with the summon or to let Reginald take control of it.

Seth recognized the instructions as part of the intent necessary in any spell. For summoning, intent included not just the spell's result but also its behavior.

Unstructured spells also had that. What the spell did and how you wanted it to work, it was all there. If you could intent the behavior of a summon, Seth wondered if you could intent the behavior of a structured spell into something slightly different from the original purpose.

No, that wouldn't work and would change the spell. Without the right intent, the spell would become an unstructured variant. Most unstructured magic still needed a structured form to start with. Even Duvessa's shadow summons had a basic summoning spell as its base.

Seth could learn to cast a summon, but it would be much harder for him and use a lot more mana. People who had summoning talents had their talents do a lot of the heavy lifting in creating and controlling summons. It was similar to how Seth's wind talent was supposed to work to move more air than the standard Breeze spell. Or how when the wind was cooperating, he could sense more with it.

Towards the end of their experiments with Duvessa's power, Blaise got up and started pacing. She walked a figure 8 between the two trees. "This is different," she muttered to herself. "It's not the same. My power was gone right away, so this is different."

"Don't worry so much about it," Duvessa said. "It's been funky since the berries. It'll settle down in a few more days."

Seth thought that was possible. His own magic was acting differently. But that didn't explain the shadow dogs that attacked them. The most reasonable explanation was someone else with the same power.

Seth also knew summoning solid shadows was a very rare talent. Whether the summoner was a stranger with the same talent or this was Duvessa's talent in a thief's hands, Seth didn't know which was more likely. Both were outliers in probability.

If her power was being stolen, and Arnold thought it was, it meant the thief had a new method, or there was another thief. The thought that there could be another thief was alarming.

Jumping to conclusions wasn't smart. They should work through this and find the right answer, not the easy one.

"I'm not convinced," Seth said to Duvessa. "I was under the impression your talent was pretty rare."

"We could find out if it's her power," Selendrith said.

That had everyone's attention. Even Blaise paused in her pacing. Selendrith shrunk a little under the scrutiny.

"Well? Are you gonna explain that?" Booth asked.

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"Oh, of course. The exams at the end of the semester have signature testing. The professor doing the testing can absorb a portion of a spell and compare it to another absorbed portion and identify if the same person cast the spells," Selendrith explained. "You all should have had a mana signature taken when you were granted your keys."

"Yeah, I remember that. It was in a jar or something?" Owen said.

"How do you know that?" Seth asked.

Selendrith looked puzzled and raised an eyebrow at Seth. "How do you not know that? It's in the student handbook. It describes the whole process."

Seth had completely forgotten about that stupid handbook. He really needed to get around to reading it. Later.

"Never mind that. What do we need to do to test this? Can we go back to where those shadow dogs were?" Seth asked.

"Unless the dogs are still there, that won't do anything. Mana doesn't keep a signature after the spell is completed. You would need to capture a portion of an active spell, and then compare it to what's in Duvessa's jar," Selendrith said.

"I wanna know why they gotta check our mana at tests," Booth said. "What difference does your signature make?"

"It's to prevent cheating," Selendrith explained. "A mana signature is unique to a person and can't be duplicated by any known means. Whereas someone could have a twin, or use an illusion, or some other method of pretending to be the student, and cast the spells in their place. There could even be unknown artifacts that would let something like that happen."

"How complicated of a spell do we need to cast to capture another spell?" Blaise asked.

"Oh, you can't use a spell," Selendrith said. "That would just make the result the signature of the person who cast it. They have gulliants, these little spike things, in Administration that are really sensitive to magic and will absorb the signature of a spell they touch. Each one can only be used once though."

"So how does it work then?" Booth asked. "We get one of these spike things and we stab it into one of the shadows, and then what? Is there another spell to check it?"

"I'm not really clear on that," Selendrith admitted. "The description in the handbook says that the gulliant will change color when touched by personal mana and will darken when checked against that person's recorded signature."

"Recorded, meaning the jars they took," Blaise asked.

"That's right," Selendrith said, nodding.

"That sounds like it just needs to be touched by the same signature again," Seth said. "So if we can get one, we could have Duvessa cast on it, and then we'd touch it to another shadow, and if it darkens, it's hers."

"Oh, that would make contamination easier to deal with," Blaise said.

Selendrith was shaking her head. "Touching other spells would still contaminate it. It just wouldn't darken."

"Well, we just don't cast then!" Duvessa said.

"There are hundreds of active spells all over the place," Selendrith said. "Light spells for the streetlights. Locking spells. Privacy wards. Temperature spells. Most of these are on objects or formations, but they are still effectively spells. I would still be worried about contamination."

"We can work out the details later," Booth said. "We don't know if we can even get those spike things. Can we get them ourselves?"

"They are called 'gulliants.' I think they are grown on a sea creature," Selendrith said.

"So, we can't just go pick some then," Blaise said.

"We talked about not leaving campus for a while," Owen said. "We shouldn't go picking anything anyway."

"Right. We should just turn this over to the Circle Tower anyway," Duvessa said. "I'll talk to them tonight."

"About the Circle Tower," Booth said.

"Yeah," Owen said. "That isn't going to work."

"Now what?" Blaise demanded.

"So, yesterday…" Seth gave the girls a brief explanation of what he'd seen in Professor Marjorie's office. "I'm certain the image of your mana tree is wrong, Blaise. Arnold might ask to see the copy you have."

"Oh, that's right! Everyone got one!" Duvessa said. "But yours was wrong too, Seth?"

"Yeah, and the color copy of mine that the guy did was ruined when the yellow ink was sprayed everywhere." Seth glanced up at Mau. She was the one that had caused a lot of that mess.

Mau was standing on the tree branch and meowing at Reginald. He was still copying everything she did and was pretending to stand on all fours, his wings touching the sides of the branch he was standing on.

"Stupid say it!" Reginald said. "Stupid say it! Jay jay jay jay."

It wasn't unusual for Reginald to yell nonsense or for Mau to be annoyed at him. Everyone ignored them.

"So we can't trust what the Circle Tower is doing," Seth concluded. "But if we can get the gulliants from them, that would simplify things."

"They told me it was burnout from overusing the pendant," Blaise said. "They also said they would do more testing. I thought at the time they were trying to be reassuring and not telling me the whole truth."

"Arnold is convinced it's theft," Duvessa said. "Mine included. That means at least some people on that research team must think so, too."

"Saben was told it was burnout too," Seth said. "Arnold's power was lost for a while, but he got it back. He didn't want to talk to me about it much."

"I'd say it's clear that part is all bullshit," Booth said. "Marjorie is blocking finding answers. We can't leave it for the Tower."

Reginald was still repeating, "Jay jay jay jay, stupid! Stupid cat!" Nobody paid him any mind.

"Alright. So we'll ask at the Circle Tower for gulliants, and if they give us some, we'll find more shadows and check them to see if it is Duvessa's power. Booth, you're going to see if you can get answers out of Arnold. Is that right?" Seth asked and got general agreement.

"If someone else has Duvessa's power, does that mean someone has mine?" Blaise asked.

"It would be easy to see if someone had your power, Blaise," Selendrith said.

"Yeah, they'd be wet," Booth said. "We gotta find out if that's what's happening. We should get proof."

"You should ask Arnold about getting new tree readings," Owen said. "If the ones they have are messed up, they'll do new ones, right?"

"Yeah, I can do that," Booth said.

That was feeling settled, for now. Next thing. "Duvessa," Seth said, "we wanted to ask if you knew who Lord Thurstan was? Or maybe you Selendrith? He was one of the names you mentioned was erased from your bookkeeping."

"Hmm. I do remember him," Duvessa said. "He'd lost his wife some months back. There were a lot of people talking about it. I think she was murdered? It was sad, and I didn't really want to hear much about it."

"Murdered?" Booth asked. "Did he murder her?"

"Oh, no. He was devastated," Duvessa said. "One of her guests killed her and some other people and burned her house down. Lord Thurstan wasn't there at the time."

Seth felt really cold all of a sudden.

"He's rebuilding her house. It's out the north tunnel, on the Mariglade side. She was the lady of a farming estate, and there's a small village there. Ah, Lady Jonetta. That was her name."

Seth had trouble catching a breath. Lady Jonetta's estate was where his dad was murdered.