Seth was standing in front of Duvessa's evidence board with Blaise. Booth was eyeing Reginald, who looked like he was trying to tip the lamp over. Owen jiggled one leg where he sat on the velvet couch. Duvessa was at her desk and held up two pieces of paper as she looked between them. Seth thought she was trying to decide which one she liked better.

"What's our next move?" Blaise asked. "How do we get to Thurstan?"

"I think we need to finish getting Booth's family out of the city first," Seth said.

"I want my power back!" Blaise punched the back of the chair. "We just spent over an hour talking about conspiracies! What was that for then if we're just going back to walking around in the woods?"

"We gotta do something about this, too," Owen said. "They'll be planning to snag somebody else soon."

"No, we don't," Booth said. He threw his arm over the back of the plush chair and rose to one knee on the seat to face Blaise and Seth behind him. "We ain't the saviors of some rando's magic powers. I've got to get my sibs out before I do any other shit. If none of you want to help, whatever. I'll be doing it either way."

"I'm important here, too," Blaise said. She pointed to one of the pictures that Seth guessed was Helena. "I want to know how she got my power. I say we catch her and beat it out of her."

Owen interjected his disagreement. "That's suicidal. That mercenary nearly killed us. If that's what we're going to do, we need help, like Seth said."

"No snitching," Booth retorted.

"Blaise," Seth said, "when will you be talking to your brother again?"

"I can send him a message anytime. But unless he comes here to school, I won't be seeing him in person," Blaise said.

"Unless we ask him for help," Seth said, "which isn't snitching because you already talked to him, Blaise, then we can't go after Helena directly, and we should avoid the mercenary."

"I'll put a summons to watch the restaurant," Duvessa said. "What should I have it do? Lots of people go there, and a summons can only do what I've instructed it to. It can't make decisions."

"Don't bother with that," Booth said. "It ain't worth losing more summons if we can't be sure what we'll get out of it."

"Should we go there in person then?" Blaise asked. She turned to Duvessa, looking hopeful. "You and I could go there for lunch or something and see what's going on there."

"I'm not going," Booth said, turning back to sit normally in the chair. "I've got other things to do."

"Booth is on a time limit," Seth said. "I think–"

"I could be on a time limit too," Blaise said. "We don't know if power loss becomes permanent after a while."

Seth's gut twisted. "And my brother's power has been missing longer than yours. It's important to me too, Blaise. It really is. But finding and getting powers back is useless if people get killed."

"No one is getting killed," Blaise said. "You're being dramatic. That guy wouldn't have actually committed murder."

"I don't think he's dramatic," Owen said. "I'm the one that keeps needing healing." He rubbed absently at his thigh.

Seth wondered if it still hurt despite being healed. Bone injuries could be difficult. He glanced around at the others. Blaise was standing near the evidence board with her arms crossed and tapping a foot. Booth was scrunched into the overstuffed chair, and Owen was sitting on the velvet couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Duvessa was capping her ink bottle and putting her blank paper away. Reginald was hopping from lamp to lamp, teetering on the lampshades for a bit before flying to the next one. Seth was sure he'd eventually knock the floor lamp over. Mau had a piece of string she was playing with. It was nice to see her acting like a normal cat for once.

"How about we do both?" Seth suggested.

Booth fiddled with one of the buttons on the chair. "You got some idea that we steal beasts from Thurstan or something?"

"This is the weekend. We've got two days. That's exactly enough time for an overnight trip to Laureli," Seth said. He'd considered suggesting Vernar instead, but it was just too far. They'd miss a week of school. And what was going on in Vernar would probably be too much for this group to handle if Benjamin was there. Seth just hoped Saben was safe.

"Nobody's been to or mentioned Laureli, Seth," Blaise said. "What does that have to do with anything?"

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"We can't be going after them ogres," Owen said. "Professor Carol at the Circle Tower has been doing the healing on me and she said if I come back stabbed again she's going to confine me to campus til winter break."

"You're right," Seth said. "We can't take the ogres. I don't think we should try. But Laureli is further out from Rosia, so we might be able to catch enough small beasts to finish what we need from the bounty."

"But why there?" Blaise asked. "Laureli is specific."

"I have three reasons. First, Laureli belongs to Thurstan. Second, it's in the direction the people that took you went," Seth explained. "It's out the north tunnel and on the way to Mariglade. So we might find some clues about where those people took you. The third reason is when I was thinking about what happened to Saben, I thought it might have happened when we stayed at an inn there. If we went beast hunting that way and stayed at that inn, we might find something."

"That sounds logical," Duvessa said, and nodded in agreement.

"If we are going there to look for magic beasts, I think looking for more old Below entrances would be a good idea," Booth said. "That worked with the weasels. Do we know where any are?"

"I don't have any way of knowing where old entrances are," Seth said. "We could ask around when we get there."

"Oh! Nana and I were talking about that. I made a copy of her map. " Duvessa went to her bookcase and pulled out a leather tube. From the tube she pulled out a large map and laid it on the low table in front of the couch.

Duvessa hadn't drawn this map. It was professionally done, with a map key, terrain markers, and a compass rose. The map covered the whole kingdom, from the edge of the desert to the foot of the mountains. The key differentiated between known caves and Below Entrances, as well as other areas marked as 'high mana'.

"There are a lot of old entrances. I never would have thought there were so many." Blaise said.

"Some of these are really old," Seth said. "Look, there are dates next to each of these. Some were sealed over a hundred years ago."

"Would they be any good then?" Owen asked.

"Of course!" Duvessa said. "Nana said the mana is really high in these mountains, and that's why the Below is so close to the surface here. She was surprised they haven't closed the one that was found recently. She said it was too close to the city to be safe."

"Vernar has an entrance less than an hour from the town," Seth said. "This entrance is a few hours away. Why would it be too close?"

Duvessa shrugged. "Too close to the Mana Wells, maybe?"

"Does that mean we should look closest to the wells?" Owen asked.

"It'll depend on how long it takes to get there. If we walk, it's a whole day," Seth said. "If we walk the long way, and hit places like here or here, we'll be getting there well after dark."

"I'll ask Nana for her carriage," Duvessa said. "She uses summons to pull it. We'll be there in less than half a day."

That surprised Seth. "Her summons can go that far away from her?"

"Oh." Duvessa looked at the map. "Maybe? She has much better range and can summon bigger critters than I can. Unless she sends Reginald the First with us, the carriage can only behave a certain way. It won't stop and it'll follow the road, and at a particular time it will leave to come back. We are on it or we are walking."

"I like this idea," Blaise said. "We are getting Booth's stuff done, and not letting Thurstan get away. We're still working on that too."

"So, what do we do then?" Booth asked. "If we go that way, and run into that mercenary again. Or stars help us, the ogres, what do we do?"

"We run away," Duvessa said and waved her hand. "We don't have to fight anything we don't want to."

"I don't think it works that way," Booth said.

"Yeah, running away wasn't exactly a thing we could do against Chicky-Chicky," Seth said. "We were stuck and had to fight."

"We can all cast Barrier now, can't we?" Owen asked.

"That's right!" Duvessa said. "That's what Selendrith cast to keep Chicky-Chicky away while I shot it with my bow and sent summons after it. If that's enough for a giant wyvern, it'll work for other things too."

"That's probably all we need to run away," Booth said. "We still ain't fighting anything like that."

Seth wasn't really satisfied with that, but the others were, so he let it go. He had a couple of ideas for emergency backup plans. It would only take a little bit of preparation, and he probably had time before they left.

"We need to plan incidentals too, like food, and a way to transport anything we catch too," Seth said. "Canvas bags won't work for more than a couple of hours. We need cages."

"I don't suppose your grandmother can take care of that too?" Booth asked Duvessa.

"Nope. We don't have cages," Duvessa said.

"It's late, but I might be able to wrangle some for tomorrow morning," Seth said. He could ask Professor Isolde if he could borrow a few. She might let him take them, probably for a fee.

"Okay! Meet in the courtyard an hour after dawn and we'll get going! I like adventures," Duvessa said.

"Duvessa, do you mind if I make a copy of this map?" Seth asked. "This is really good information."

"Oh sure! Anyone who wants to can. But I don't have any paper big enough, so you'll have to use what I have, or your own paper."

Seth retrieved his bag and noticed Mau had left string all over the floor that wrapped and tangled in a dozen directions.

"Mau? What did you do?" Seth asked.

A moment later Reginald succeeded in knocking over the floor lamp, likely with a shove from Mau. As he did so a dozen strands of yarn shot up like a rope trap and tangled the shadow raven.

"Traitor! Traitor!" Reginald the Second screamed as he floundered, and the more he floundered, the tighter he was bound in the yarn.

"Oh! She got me too!" Duvessa said. When the yarn had tightened, it wrapped around her legs and tied her to her chair. Everyone else was similarly bound.

"What was that for?" Seth demanded of his cat.

Mau jumped onto the low table and sat smugly. 'Revenge,' she signed.