Eyes. Mamoria. Korradine. S?lem.

  So many factions.

  Eyes.

  Or were they moons?

  Artificial eyes?

  How did Kajaro know about them?

  Quinn groaned as she jotted down all the information running rampant in her head. But with each word, her handwriting got worse, and she just wanted to stab the pages in front of her.

  She slept fitfully after diving through her memories and sifting out the specific side-view mirror elements. What bugged her more was that she’d even dived back in briefly on her own and frozen the image back in place and looked at the rearview mirror, thinking perhaps it had caught something else.

  To no avail.

  Which made no sense whatsoever.

  It could only mean one thing - magic. But as their visit to earth showed them, mana and energy basically couldn’t be replenished. So anything they used while there would have been quickly depleted and taken years to fill back up. Literally.

  “Thought I’d find you in here.” Mal’s voice was soft and full of concern as he placed a nice hot cup of tea on the desk in front of her. He stood at the desk looking out through the massive window of the restricted vault, gazing at the millions of stars beyond the Library’s doors.

  Quinn took the cup gratefully, feeling a slight chill for once. Sometimes she just liked it better in here. Not as many people knew to find her, and generally, the Library kept them out. It must have realized that while Quinn wanted to be alone, she was also feeling marginally vulnerable. Mal was a good antidote to that.

  “Thanks.” She sipped her own cup, thankful for the heat against her chilled hands, and turned to look at the stars too.

  For several moments they just sat there, enjoying their tea, each other’s presence, and the view. It leant a level of calm to Quinn’s mind that she’d been sorely lacking. A clarity of mind which allowed her to not be alone.

  Mal scooted down and sat at the opposite end of the bench, his tea easily in reach. “What are you working on, then?”

  Quinn tapped her pen against the paper in front of her and sighed. “That’s just it. I don’t know. The murder board helped a bit. Let me get some of my thoughts in order. But it’s such a huge task, all of this. Isn’t there a book I can just absorb and use wish magic to say: Hey make this all better? And it’s done?”

  Malakai chuckled. “I don’t think that’s quite how this works.”

  “Should be,” she grumbled. “Thought magic could do most things.”

  “With a bit of direction? Yes. With vague gesturing? Probably not a good outcome.”

  Quinn laughed. He had a point. “I know. I’d just like an easy way out of this... shitstorm?”

  “Very apt description.” Malakai nodded in approval.

  So, instead of writing it out, Quinn began to talk. “Sarila is the wild card here. It’s infuriating. The Balisor massacre is basically the odd thing out. Before that, I’d never considered anyone else being responsible for any of this.”

  “How do we know it’s related to the whole Library sabotage?” Mal asked, continuing to sip his tea.

  “What do you mean?” Quinn couldn’t quite grasp what he meant.

  “You know. How do we know it wasn’t a revenge plot on the Balisors by one of the Jenishu clan of Salosiers?” He looked at her over the rim of his cup.

  She wasn’t sure how he’d ever manage to look more like an elf. But she also didn’t like the implications of what he said either. “Because they said we’d never recover from a chaos backlash if we didn’t have Salosier’s to fall back on. Since they have the ability to help stave off being consumed. At least for a while, right?”

  Mal frowned. “Technically, I think. But would that be a reason to almost wipe out an entire branch of a species?”

  Quinn threw her arms up in the air. “That’s just it. You tell me! I have no clue.”

  Lynx popped up in that instant, startling Quinn so much she screamed a short, high-pitched yell.

  “Damn it, Lynx! Don’t do that!”

  “The Library said you were distraught. I got here as soon as I could.” He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t seem upset. Just irritated.”

  “I’m all the above.” she grumbled. Then she perked up at the thought of asking Lynx what he knew. “Are there any eyes in species that you can think of that resemble moons?”

  Lynx raised an eyebrow. “That’s an oddly specific strange question. Does this have to do with the mirror thing?”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  She nodded.

  “Many of us can have moon like eyes, I guess? Depending on whether we’re working in synchronization with the system at the time.” He frowned as he thought it over. “Some Fae species, most golems. Probably some sub-species of sprites too. A lot.”

  Quinn groaned. That wasn’t the answer she wanted. “I can’t figure out who or what it was that showed up in the side-view mirrors. Which is just... I thought it could have been headlights at first, but it was the middle of the day and even the running lights I could see outside of that freeze frame looked nothing like moon like eyes.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lynx leant forward and patted her hand.

  She shrugged. “I just wanted to figure out exactly who was responsible for the accident so I could make them pay when the time comes. I really hope they have like five overdue books so I can fine the hell out of them.”

  Lynx looked at her for a couple of seconds before speaking. “You’ve been spending too much time around, Eric.”

  Quinn laughed. “Did you just come here because the Library told you I was having a breakdown?”

  He chuckled and his eyes flickered briefly. “No. I didn’t. I have a couple of pieces of information I thought you’d like. First up. The trace-back is yielding results and we’ve begun to narrow down the area the signal accessed Jasper’s ritual circle from.”

  Quinn perked up. “Seriously? Like where? Should we go...” she slowed down at the look Lynx gave her. “What?”

  “I said we’re beginning, not that we have the location. Give us a bit more time. But I wanted to make sure you knew we’re getting there much faster than I anticipated given the strength of power behind the trace, and behind Jasper’s initial runes and wards.”

  Quinn had to take a deep breath. Just hearing Jasper’s name so frequently caused her chest to tighten. She really missed her Alyenovor friend. “Yeah, alright. What’s the other thing?”

  “Memories. We’re almost there. Or at least, I hope we are. Library and I should have most of our memories with regard to Korradine retrieved later this afternoon, perhaps tomorrow morning.”

  Quinn blinked. She wasn’t about to get super excited about this. Because it could be that there’d be another hiccup. Just like there always seemed to be when they got even remotely close to anything. “That’s great...” She hesitated.

  “I hear a distinct butt there,” Malakai observed.

  “I don’t know... it feels so surreal. There are Drav and Dro - Library siblings. Then we even have Korradine and the Supervisor. After that there’s the factions we’ve seen led briefly of Aracnio’s, Esposians, Sedementites, and more... And to top it all off, Sarila appears to be playing two sides? Or two attackers of the Library?” She waved her hand around, trying to encompass everything. “It’s just a lot of stuff with a lot of moving parts.”

  “Were you hoping it’d be easy, then?” Mal asked softly.

  She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d expected. But it hadn’t been so complex. “It’s not that. I just didn’t expect to second guess myself at every turn.”

  “You don’t have to, you know?” Mal said.

  “What do you mean?”

  This time, Lynx shrugged. “Your gut feelings, I believe, is what you call them? You should pay more attention to them, actually. It’s one of those things where, when your gut, or perhaps even innate magic, reaches out to warn you of something... then you should pay attention. You haven’t steered us wrong yet.”

  Quinn knew he meant that to sound bolstering. But the yet echoed through her head as if someone had put a pot on it and rapped it with a wooden spoon. He was right, though, wasn’t he? She hadn’t steered them wrong yet. She frowned. “Hey. Can you give me a second? I need to scan my shielding. Keep watch?”

  She didn’t wait. Because she knew both Malakai and Lynx would do exactly that. Her self doubt didn’t often creep in when she was in analytical mode. And she had been for the past several hours. Which meant there had to be something inside her shielding, or because of her shielding that crept through and was bothering her. It meant something had probably come through the memory analysis with her when she came back.

  She’d known she shouldn’t have gone into it again without Milaro present. Not that he’d catch things she didn’t as a general rule, at least not anymore. But he was always there, and his knowledge was older, wiser, and more practiced. He would definitely catch things she missed, if she missed any.

  She scoured her walls. But each of them was as tight and interwoven as it was supposed to be. Smooth, seamless walls rose up to meet each other, slotting perfectly into place, and only activating as she wanted to pass through them to view the rest. They melted before her, only leaving enough room for her to pass perfectly through them.

  No seam, no singular brick was even out of place.

  Quinn frowned and pushed through, heading to where she’d viewed her memory of the damned accident. While sick of viewing it at all, she knew she had to check. And that’s when she saw it.

  At the corner of her peripheral vision she could see one of those little eyes, or well, not so little eyes that had been hovering in the mirror. She realized it wasn’t attached to anything either and that she’d been way off about all of her guesses. It watched her, obviously removed from her memory, yet still attached enough to observe her while she figured out what was happening.

  It’d be tricky, but she needed to capture it, keep it contained within her mind until perhaps Milaro or Nishpa could help her out with it.

  But she had to move swiftly. Biding her time as she walked around the car on the way to its doom again, Quinn readied a cage. It wasn’t too small, but there were no small areas an eye could get out of. Or at least she hoped this one wouldn’t. Since it had what she thought of as wings, she couldn’t quite bind it, so she chose to imprison it.

  It took several passes for it to stop following her like a starving puppy. Finally, she turned around, striking it with a targeted shot of Gravitas and shot it into the cage, which she then proceeded to lock.

  Levitating the cage, she moved it out of the memory ahead of her. The eye flitted about on its odd little owl like wings, the moon like orb watching her as they moved.

  It seemed familiar, and yet at the same time, it felt foreign. Like perhaps she’d seen other eyes like this before.

  She frowned as she got to the threshold of her mind and glanced at the little thing. Would it be okay to take with her? She’d not transferred anything out of a memory. But this wasn’t technically from a memory she didn’t think. Instead, she was fairly sure it was a trespasser of the worst kind and had been sent to gather information on Quinn’s past.

  After a lot of effort and some shrinking of the cage and its occupant, Quinn finally sat upright once again, and released the cage onto the table in the restricted vault.

  “What, in the universe, is that?” Malakai asked.

  “I think I have a little stowaway.” Quinn grinned, a harsh set to her jaw. The flying eye pulled back into its cage and cowered.

  “That’s odd,” Lynx said, and he visibly swallowed. Considering he didn’t need to, Quinn found that telling.

  “Why do you have an eagle eye, Quinn? And how did you pull it out of your head?” Lynx asked.

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