Jarec and I were sitting around the fireplace, simply waiting for the others. I'd poured him a cup of tea and it'd been somewhere between thirty and forty minutes since he had arrived.

Scraps was laying parallel to the back of the couch while Jarec lounged against the armrest closer to me. I was tucked up into one of the chairs.

That was when the door creaked open, revealing Celica looking exactly as grumpy as I was hoping she would. It was business as usual with her. I liked when things were at least a little predictable.

"Oh good, I'm not late. My brothers were bothering me again and delayed me." Already complaining, an even better sign.

"Well, we're still missing two people so it's not that bad," I commented in an attempt to be helpful. Not that I expected it to stop her, nor did I want it to.

"I hope they have a good explanation," she complained as she strode towards Jarec and sat on the other side of him. Crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap.

Ugh, I missed her.

"It's good to see you," I told her.

She waved it off, "Skip it. I demand details."

"We've got a ghost, a stolen knife still on campus and we're going to hatch a plan to find it without getting caught by anyone," Jarec explained.

"It never left? We're going to need more than a plan," Celica pointed out. She was right, but we didn't know where to start.

"Probably but a plan wouldn't hurt," I said as I considered our options.

"Does anyone but us know it's here?" Celica asked.

"I… don't think so? Vivian didn't give that impression and while the other council members talked about it they barely seemed to know what was going on."

"They talked about it?" Jarec asked.

"Thoth pestered me about it. Not sure who his source is but I didn't tell him anything. I hope he thinks I don't even know what's missing," I elaborated.

"Not a great look, but if he thinks we have nothing he won't bother us," Celica considered. "Plus we can't trust him to not tell the whole school."

"Exactly," I nodded in agreement.

"So it's up to us then," Celica concluded. "We'll figure this out."

Maybe. Hopefully. We didn't have much choice so we had to try.

(*********)

It was about twenty minutes after Celica came that there was a knock on the door. I stood up only to see the door open by itself and Fethris step inside.

"Welcome back," I greeted.

"What'd I miss?" Fethris said as he walked towards us. Instead of sitting, he leaned forward against the back of a chair with his fingers interlocked.

There was a lot of stuff in my brain, making it all form a complete picture was hard.

"Nothing changed over break, and we're the only ones who know," I explained.

"Are we working on a plan?" he asked.

"Waiting for everyone to get here. Just need Russel." Not that it'd stopped my brain from racing to try and figure out something. I had a few ideas but I wouldn't call any of them a plan.

"Certainly a mess, we could be in a lot of trouble." Fethris said that, but I noticed a lack of worry in his voice. It was more like…determination.

I felt pretty certain that we were in trouble. Potentially very serious trouble, at that. The only question was whether or not it was looking for us.

Everyone seemed convinced that it was though. But maybe I could hold on to something that resembled hope. And besides, we still didn't know who the thief was. We couldn't guess what they wanted with no clue on who they were. They hadn't done anything yet either.

But I wasn't stupid enough to convince myself we weren't at least a little involved. And we were the only ones who knew what was going on, so that left us to solve this. Somehow.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

(*********)

Russel finally arrived just as I was starting to go a little stir crazy. Much longer and someone was going to start pacing around the tower, probably me.

"Whoops. Sorry to keep you guys waiting." He sounded mostly genuine with that apology.

I took a deep breath and stood up. Fethris' eyes followed me curiously as I went upstairs and touched the rune on the floor. The pink ladder wasn't much, but I could do it without bleeding or exploding so it was some kind of progress.

And plus, I felt better having this talk in the attic. M was on our side, so he probably wasn't going to sell us out. But I'd rather not risk an accident until this was all over.

"This a result of what happened with the curse?" Jarec asked as he glanced between me and the ladder.

"It's pretty much my limit while still being comfortable."

It was pathetic, but it got the job done.

"Classified conversation time?" Russel asked.

"Something like that. I'd feel a little bit better up here than talking about it down there," I admitted.

I saw him glance over at Jarec who didn't seem to react much, just a little something around his eyes. Then Russel shrugged and followed me up, the others followed not long after that.

Up and into the attic, it was time to start planning and thinking about what we could possibly do about this mess we were in.

I settled myself just under the small circular window, it was about a foot above my head. Jarec was across from me, on the other side of the hatch. Russel was closer to me on my right. Fethris was on the same side but standing closer to Jarec. Celica was on the left and in the middle of that wall.

I took a steadying breath. "We still don't have any clue who has Death's Echo or where exactly it is, all we know is that it's on campus somewhere. M says he can sense it here and it never left school grounds over winter break."

"And M is…?" Fethris asked.

"Malcarg. His ghost is here confirmed," Jarec said. "Apparently, he doesn't want us to use that name though."

"So that's the voice we've been hearing, and he's certain?" Fethris continued.

There was a rumble around us and all four of them froze at exactly the same time.

"Okay, he's certain," Jarec commented. Probably for my sake.

"So. What are we going to do? Because I think it's clear telling people won't help," Celica said.

"Yeah. I think we should keep it between us five unless something dramatically changes." Maybe we could have told Angelina and the others, but involving them unless we needed to felt wrong. It would be putting them in more danger, wouldn't it?

"If the thief finds out someone knows about what's going on, they may target that person, it's safer for them and us if no one knows," Fethris reasoned.

Celica didn't look that happy about it, but she didn't protest. She probably wanted to tell Angelina about some of this. Angelina had been pretty worried when we'd all learned that Death's Echo was missing.

"I have a few thoughts of what we can do about it, hopefully before it ever gets to that point," I told them instead. "Being alone with a ghost gave me more time to think than I knew what to do with."

Celica's eyes snapped from the floor to me.

"We have to find it. Once we do, we can lock it in the Tower. M spawns a room no one uses, we toss it in and close the door," I explained.

"Because no one with easy access to Dragon Tower has motive, right?" Russel asked.

"It's just us, Vivian, and the Headmaster, right?" I asked Jarec. Out of any of us, he would know.

"Them and Professor Carmine, and the last two have no reason to even come in here," Jarec commented. "And it's clearly not safe in the Gallery Hall of Bones."

"It'll be just like it disappeared off the face of the Earth. M already agreed to help with it," I told him.

Jarec leaned further back into the wall behind him and closed his eyes. Was M telling him something? Maybe a few reassuring words. That knife must mean something to him too, given its ties to the Hearth coven. "Better it disappear then spill innocent blood," Jarec said after a moment. His eyes opened and he looked more determined now.

"We know what to do with it when we find it, but how exactly do we do that? Preferably without getting caught?" Fethris pointed out.

And that was probably the hardest part.

"We can track the magical signature," Russel spoke up. "Normally those spells can be a bit vague, but there won't be any other magic from that person causing interference, right?"

I had no idea if that was possible, but he sounded mostly confident.

"In theory. If it's not in one of the Towers that should work. We could match it to the traces here in Dragon Tower to calibrate what we're looking for, but that can only narrow a location down so much," Jarec responded.

"We won't be able to find an exact location with them without being close to our target. And that risks us getting caught or having to explain ourselves to someone," Celica pointed out.

"Forgive my ignorance for a minute," I told them while I thought out loud. "But what about invisibility spells?"

"Way too risky. And if they've put any kind of alarm or trap where they're keeping the knife it won't help us," Fethris explained.

"Definitely too risky for us," Jarec said thoughtfully. "But if we send something small enough to look for us it should be able to avoid those problems."

"How small do you think we need?" Celica asked as her hands fidgeted very slightly in front of her.

"Mouse-sized," Jarec said after a moment of thought. "Paper needs too much magic to keep together. It'll get caught for sure. Think we can do a cloth doll?"

"I can sew one up. Is there anything else we'll need it to be able to do?" Celica's confidence was coming back. It was nice to hear.

"Is there any way that doll can grab the knife once it's found it?" I asked them.

Celica hummed for a moment, "I mean…maybe? It'll be hard for it to walk around with something bigger and heavier than it."

"We could design something to help with that though. Straps on the back or maybe some kind of makeshift sheath?" Jarec considered.

"What if you stuff it with glass beads to deal with the weight issue?" Russel suggested.

"That could work. If they're small it should still move without too much magic," Celica nodded as she spoke.

I was barely following this, but it sounded like the plan was doable, if nothing else.

"I know the spells for energy tracking," Russel offered. "How long do you think it will take to craft?"

"Days probably. Should be done in about a week though." Celica sounded sure enough about it that I was ready to completely trust her.

If she said she could get it done, I believed her.

And it wasn't like I could help.

"So this is our plan? Send a small doll to find it for us then bring it back and then toss it into the bowels of Dragon Tower?" Fethris sounded a little bit doubtful. "How are we going to make sure it isn't caught?"

"Can we send it at night?" I suggested.

"If we time it right, we could send it out the hour before curfew and sneak it back. It's going to take a lot of trips, but being stealthy is important," Jarec explained.

"Slow but careful." I agreed with the approach. There was only so much we could do. And this was far better than nothing.

"The thief's going to get mad, but mad and desperate people make mistakes. Mistakes lead to evidence, evidence gets people caught," Fethris pointed out. I hoped he was right.

I took a deep breath and tried to think of what else could go wrong. It felt like something, maybe everything? But what else could we prepare for?

"Are we sure about all of this?" I asked them.

"I don't know if sure is the right word, but I can't think of anything we missed," Fethris stated.

"Let's keep each other updated, okay? Don't do anything reckless, and just please be careful. Caution is our friend," I reminded them all.

We were all we could rely on for this, and we needed to be careful and keep each other informed. It was the only way we'd keep each other safe.

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