Tower of Memories

Jarec was pacing in front of the wall that led into the Echo Chamber. Compared to when I did it, he looked graceful and put together.

"You wanted to talk?" I asked as I reached the bottom of the stairs.

It was just him down there. Russel was in the main room, but Celica and Fethris had gone to bed.

"I want to do a lot of things right now. Yell, scream, probably cry a little. I've been trying to find the words for this all day."

I couldn't blame him. I pulled out a chair from the table on the other side the room. Picking the chair closest to him and flipping it around so I could sit and face him.

"What are you doing?" He paused his pacing to stare at me.

"Giving you a chance to find the right words you want to say. This…this is a lot. I would be lying to everyone if I said it wasn't. And I also think this is too important to not say anything. So, I'll just sit here for a bit and give you a chance to make sense of your thoughts." If we were having this conversation, I didn't want to rush it. At this point, what difference would a few more moments make?

"I don't think this is about me right now," I wouldn't call his tone angry, exactly. But there was something boiling beneath the surface. He continued his pacing.

"Well, maybe not entirely. But you're involved enough that I think your thoughts are important. Plus, I trust you. If there's something you think I need to hear I know there's a reason. And if you're upset, I want to help. I know I'm not good at much, but listening is the one skill I'm confident in."

"You're not good at magic, but you seem to be just fine at everything else."

"If you say so, I've been running on almost pure instinct this entire time."

He scoffed, "Instinct, huh?" Then he sighed and stopped pacing. Just standing there in front of the hidden door that got us into this mess.

That wasn't fair. We were in a mess before I went down there.

Jarec wasn't looking at me. He was facing my direction but his head was tilted down and his eyes were tightly shut. "We can't avoid fate, Serafina."

"Probably not, no," I commented. I wasn't sure how much I really believed in the design of the fates. Angelina's visons were hazy and up to interpretation. But this was different. We knew too little about it worked.

"So, what do we do?"

"Have you and the others talked?" Either over the group chat or face-to-face.

"A little," Jarec said with an exhale. Then he looked up towards me. "Everyone's been quiet today. And yet you, the one most affected by this, barely seem affected."

"Not quite. And I did a lot of processing last night. As for what we do, let's look at our options." I was intentionally channeling Dad for this. This was definitely his area of expertise.

"Options, she says. Like we have those," Jarec grumbled as he went back to pacing. "Hope is the only way to find Death's Echo. It's doing all it can. We have no way of really narrowing down our search area. If we make Hope's detection stronger it will get caught for sure."

I still wasn't sure on the exact mechanics of how that worked. But Jarec was the one who knew the most about the school's security systems. He hadn't led up astray so far

Hope getting caught would unravel everything. Our ability to be secretive would implode and who knew what the thief would do in response. "Too risky," I concluded.

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"Way too risky. You're already being targeted and our plans not being known might be the only way to buy you more time."

Time.

That's what it all came down to. How much time did I have? Did we have? How much farther did my timeline have before it would end?

I stared past Jarec. At the spot on the wall where I'd once seen a blood-soaked Red knock to open the Echo Chamber.

Wait.

If she died upstairs, when did she come down here to open the wall? She was wounded then, severely. It had to be right after the attack.

My heart started pounding, magma coursed in my veins.

"I have an idea," I said as I tried to remember every time I had seen Red over these past months.

I had a timeline. A rough, scattered one, but I had one.

There was something I'd forgotten in the chaos.

"What's up?" Jarec asked as I stood up from the chair with almost enough force to send it backwards into the table.

"There's something I haven't thought about. Something we've been missing." We'd been so focused on the wraith we'd missed something. But maybe there was a clue hidden somewhere. Something that might make a difference.

I wouldn't be able to confirm it now, but I couldn't not think about it.

I nearly ran past Russel as I made my way towards the stairs.

He sat up from the couch he was laying on in the main room. Clearly alarmed and concerned by what I was up to. I could hear Jarec coming up behind me, probably just as confused.

"What is going on?" Russel asked in a groggy tone.

"Serafina?" Jarec asked.

"We've missed something about my fight with the wraith," I explained as I went up the stairs as fast as was safe. I stood on the landing overlooking the main room. Just underneath the hatch to the attic. "I'm tracing my steps." The steps I hadn't taken yet, and a critical piece of this puzzle.

I could tell by their faces they hadn't really pieced together what I was talking about yet.

So I explained. "The attack starts in the attic. Then the fight goes down the stairs and it slams me into that wall," I moved back down the stairs, following the path Red and the wraith had taken. I stood in front of the spot where Red had grabbed me to tell me something despite the situation. "Where I collapse bleeding. That's when I was told to find the Echo Chamber. We thought that was when Red dies."

"You think we were wrong?" Jarec asked. He sounded more hopeful.

And maybe there was a bit of hope for us. For me. "She goes somewhere after that," I explained.

"How? That wound sounded pretty bad Serafina," Russel demanded.

Healing. Self-healing. It wouldn't fix blood loss but it could stop it. "I've been working with Mom to learn some healing spells."

Even before I knew Red was me. Because of the book she'd practically handed me. I could see the plan as it formed in my mind. To buy myself as much time as possible.

"Enough to get help?" Jarec asked, almost breathless.

"Enough to go downstairs for whatever reason." Why? Why bother going downstairs? What was down there that I needed in this time of need?

I remembered the day the wraith had seen me. Had tried to grab at me. What if past me has ended up as a distraction that helped future me get away?

If the front door was locked…

"The chamber!" I realized. "We saw her bleeding and knocking on the wall to get into the chamber. What if it's to keep the wraith away?"

"If it seals you in and the wraith out…that might buy us time to get to you," Jarec said. He looked like he was going to start freaking out on me.

I was probably in the same boat. The relief that maybe, just maybe we could get out of this.

"We know it's coming and where Serafina will be. If we can get rid of the wraith, we can get her to healers. But I still don't understand why we aren't here, waiting for it when it comes," Russel said.

It was a terrifying truth. Nearly enough to stop the rapid beating of my heart.

Then Russel gasped. "Wait. It's a wraith. They don't attack like this unless someone is controlling them."

"We're going after the wraith's master," Jarec said in horror. "And what, leaving Serafina to die?" He sounded like he was going to throw up.

"We can't know that until it's time," I told him. "Maybe it just wasn't up to you. Or maybe it's going to be like a sneak attack or something." There were so many options. Most of them were awful but the outlook was better now than it had been this morning.

There was a chance. A slim one, sure. But there was a way out of this mess without dying. The relief made my hands shake.

There wasn't a guillotine hovering over my head. I might just live through this nightmare after all.

"I can't stand doing nothing about it," Russel said.

"I know. And we're not doing nothing. Even if it's unlikely, we should still try and find Death's Echo. If there's any chance getting rid of it will prevent this whole thing we have to try, right?" I asked them.

Jarec was looking up at me with a strange look on his face. I couldn't really decipher it, maybe somewhere between awe and disbelief?

Then he was grinning. It was reassuring and meant I probably didn't sound completely insane.

"We can't avoid fate," Jarec said. He was repeating himself, but he sounded less like the world was ending this time. "So you're going to plan for it."

What had Dad said? We couldn't stop a tornado, but we could build a cellar.

Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. But doing nothing would guarantee the worst outcome no matter what. We had to try. I wanted to try. I didn't want to lose what I had found here. My friends were too important to give up now.

I thought about Massachusetts. How empty it had felt being back home. I couldn't go back to that now. I wouldn't. I was going to fight.