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The next day dawned windy and dark, and I was raring to go.
While William slept until the very last moment, I paced my tiny kitchen collecting provisions and making traveling cups of tea. One for myself, and one for Luca, who had insisted on coming along the instant he’d heard our plans the previous evening. He’d even gone to Lavender to get the spare key again and conferred with Thorn on our behalf. It was clear he was determined to be helpful. Both our shops were scheduled to be closed, anyway—it was a Rest Day in Market Square—and I could hardly turn down an extra pair of eyes and hands. Not that I wanted to.
I jogged downstairs to my lab, glancing over the experiments and tucking one of Paracelsus’s new journals—along with his letter, for good measure—into my knapsack. The fact that my old mentor was looking for a glowing flower and we’d just found a victim associated with glowing moss had not escaped me. Paracelsus had always had interesting timing like that. It was one of those qualities that either made for a terrific alchemist or a terrifically unlucky alchemist, and I could never tell if he was doing it on purpose or if he was just “in tune with the universe” or something.
When I ran back up the stairs to wake William, I met Luca coming out of the bathroom. Sugar the pixie had flown over too, and was doing her best to stand on his head.
“I’m ready, I promise,” he mumbled. A tremendous yawn dislodged his passenger.
Despite my misgivings, I grinned. Of my friends, I was the only genuine morning person. Except perhaps for Sugar, who didn’t seem to sleep as much as disappear until someone did something to catch her attention.
“Want to draw straws for who has to wake William?” I asked my partner.
A low growl came from the window seat. “I’m up. Though I don’t see why. It’s basically the middle of the night.”
“It’s not even early morning any more,” I retorted. “You just can’t tell because the cloud cover is so thick.”
“Remind me why we’re going out when we know it’s going to storm.” William had yet to move.
As I picked up our breakfast off the kitchen island, I obliged. “Because I need answers, and so does Officer Thorn. And who knows how long this storm will last once it starts. If we’re quick, maybe we can get up there and back before the rain comes.”
Infamous last words, I thought—and then immediately pushed the thought away.
William grumbled, but under his breath. With just a little more shooing, I managed to get my companions out the door. Even in our sturdy water-proof boots and thick woolen cloaks, both Luca and I shivered a little as the wind whipped through the yard behind the shop.
“It won’t be so bad once we’re moving,” I said, hopefully, leading the way to the street.
“There was a time when you wouldn’t have left your house at all in these temperatures,” William observed, trotting alongside us. He never seemed to mind the heat or cold very much.
“Well, we all have to grow up some time.” I smiled ruefully down at him.
“Wait, I—never mind,” Luca said, pausing before recovering and jumping up to join us again. “I thought I left the key, but I have it. The pockets in this cloak are really deep. Hate to go all the way up there for nothing, right?”
I chuckled, but I had the distinct impression that William was not amused.
“Although, Lavender said something funny to me,” Luca went on. “When I went to see her yesterday about the key, I mean. When I showed up it was just after dinner, and things were a little quiet, mostly folks from out of town getting ready for Samhain. So we were chatting for a moment, she was really curious about what we might be looking for. I told her I didn’t know, really, because I wasn’t sure how much of Paracelsus’s ‘homework’ was supposed to be a secret.”
“Oh!” My breath huffed in the air, another little cloud. “I don’t know if it was supposed to be, but thank you.”
“Is this coming back around to something funny?” William demanded.
“Oops.” Luca’s stories tended to be a little long and wandering, and it was only worse in the morning before his brain was fully in gear. We all knew this, though, and he grinned sheepishly as he went on, “Um, not funny-haha, but funny-odd. So after we talked about how you wanted to go back there, Red, Lavender went and got me the key, and as she gave it to me she said something like, ‘at this rate, maybe you’ll find the back entrance,’ or maybe it was more like, ‘maybe you should just use the back entrance.’”
“Is there one?” I asked, startled. My mind immediately went to Officer Thorn and the suspected murder.
“That’s what I said,” Luca informed us. “I said, I hadn’t realized that there was one, and then she said well maybe it was all just an old rumor.”
William, who had been sniffing the air as we entered the forest, tuned back in at that comment. “Shouldn’t she be the one to know if her own property has a back entrance?”
“You would think so,” Luca said, thoughtfully, “but I didn’t, at the time. Someone called her away for a drink or something, and I didn’t think to ask any more about it.”
I thought this over, too, watching the branches sway above our heads in the breeze. “You went and saw Officer Thorn afterward, right? Did you mention it to her?”
“I didn’t. I was so focused on explaining your experiment, and she was distracted because she and Olivia were switching shifts soon, I think. I’m sorry,” Luca added.
“Don’t worry. It might be nothing,” I assured him. “Everyone’s a little rattled these days, it seems like.”
As if to prove my point, after that we lapsed into silence. Only occasionally would someone speak up, usually to point out a particularly spooky-looking tree or to notice that the wind seemed even brisker than it had before. By the end of the hike, of course, we were all breathless anyway, even William.
The three of us stood at the edge of the clearing at last. Luca and I paused to sip tea, and I passed around a bit of pumpkin bread I’d been saving. While we lingered under the tree cover, I told them, “I want to check the area outside the tower first. Especially given what Lavender said to Luca, now.”
“All I see is plain mud,” William said skeptically, plopping himself down on a nearby log.
“That’s why we’re taking a closer look,” I reminded him. “Especially since it isn’t raining yet. How about we each take a section of the clearing and look for anything unusual? You’ve all had a good look at my sample, right?” I held up a glass vial with some of the moss I’d grown yesterday. It was as thriving and glowy-green as ever.
Luca looked closely, his own green eyes shining with a not-totally-dissimilar glow. “Any idea where it might be, Red? Like on rocks, or trees, or just out in the mud, like William said?”
“No, not really,” I admitted. “That’s why I want to cover the whole clearing, just in case. Officer Thorn found her original sample on the victim’s boots, and presumably she had to walk through this area to get to the tower. But bear in mind that Paracelsus is looking for something with a similar glow. So we might not just be talking about moss.”
“Walk back and forth through the wet grass looking for anything glowy,” William summarized. “Got it. I call the middle section with the tower.”
“I’ll take the upper section, then,” Luca said, smiling at me. “All set?”
“All set,” I agreed, closing up my bag. “Let’s get to work.”
* * *
Despite what William might say, it wasn’t the worst work I’ve ever had to do. Trudging back and forth through the long grass, while monotonous, became rather meditative. The smell of wet leaves and nearby pine trees rode on the wind, and with my cloak and boots—not to mention our recent exercise—I was nice and toasty. I had my goggles on and was just inspecting an unfamiliar wildflower near the cliff edge when I heard a shout.
I looked up, alarmed, to see Luca waving. His black cloak stood out against the fading grasses, marking him plainly in the middle of the clearing. But he wasn’t waving at me or William. He was looking up at the sky.
I looked, too, just in time to see a massive shape soaring by. Daisy? I knew her at once, but I was still confused. Why is she flying around here, especially so close to the Outlook? I thought Officer Thorn’s searches were done for now.
There was no time to wonder any further, though, because William came bounding up around the side of the tower. “Red, what about the road?”
“What road?” I asked, still thinking about dragons and flying.
“Exactly,” he replied. “Shouldn’t there be a road to reach the tower? Or at least a path?”
“Not if it’s usually abandoned. But if whoever lived here was routinely going down to the market, with a cart, you’d think there would be,” I realized slowly. “Why do you ask? Did you find wheel marks?”
“No,” said William promptly. “The ground around the tower is totally boring. But should it be?”
At that moment, lightning struck farther down the mountain, beyond the trees. I stood up, straining to see if I had seen right—or if somehow Daisy had been involved? But a few moments later, there was a deafening roll of thunder.
“Let’s continue this conversation inside,” I told William.
“I’ll get Luca,” he agreed, taking off like a shot through the long grass.
I could be just as swift as he was, when I wanted to be. And with the gray sheet of rain advancing over the treetops toward us, I definitely wanted to be. I got to the tower’s front door a moment before Luca and William did. The first raindrops came down riding the wind, flinging themselves into our faces. I held my arm up to ward them off as I watched Luca fumble in his pocket for the key. There was a glimmer—or perhaps another lightning strike?
In the next moment, we were tumbling into the tower’s dark hall.