Page 66 of The Alchemists

They paused outside the still-dark Metaphysics building. Seb stuffed their entwined fingers into the pocket of his coat.

“You don’t have to come in,” he said quietly.

“You can’t go in there alone.” She almost kept the fear out of her voice.

Seb fished his phone from the jacket pocket and thumbed the flashlight on, handing it to her. He ran through his Words silently, gathering power for potential combat evocations. He could almost smell the Æther as he inhaled, and the night glowed subtly brighter.

They walked in shoulder to shoulder. Seb’s pulse was buckshot, ricocheting inside his neck. He was terrified, not just that Conrad was still here, but of what he would do to Conrad if he were. Reckless energy surged through him, and he didn’t trust himself to control his worst impulses. He was so sick of control.

The phone lit everything with harsh, ghostly light, and Seb thought he saw them just outside its beam, over and over. Lily tensed as she swept the light across the table where she’d been. He hissed in a breath. Her things were scattered everywhere, and several chairs were knocked over.

“Careful,” he said, reaching for her as she moved toward the table.

“They’re not here,” she said flatly.

“How do you know?” He heaved a quiet sigh of relief.

“My laptop is gone.”

Seb frowned. “But you didn’t take any notes on it.”

She stared at him, waiting for him to get it. He didn’t.

He tried again. “Do you back up to the cloud?”

Lily pressed her eyes closed, still as a piece of statuary. “Sebastian,” she said through gritted teeth, fixing him with an icy stare. “That laptop is the most expensive thing I own. I need it. For school.”

Asshole.

He stopped himself, at least, from immediately offering to buy her a new one. She probably didn’t want him to buy her a new one, would probably be furious if he did. He would do it anyway, and she could be furious, but she’d probably be a lot less furious than if she had to draft her final paper for Environmental Aegistics on one of the college center desktops.

“We’ll find it,” he promised, even though he was certain its hard drive was already in pieces.

She nodded, but there were still tears, just unspilled, glistening on her lashes.

“Hey.” He wiped her cheeks with his thumb. He wanted to tell her it would be fine, but he wasn’t sure it would be. “Let’s get your stuff and get out of here.” He found her coat and threw it over his arm.

He let Lily do the breaking and entering into the alchemy lab, feeling useless and cowardly with her book bag slung over his shoulder. She’d explained, briefly, what she’d learned about the symbols and her conversation with Chant. He wondered if Chant knew what it was for, and if he had, whether it would count as faculty help, which was forbidden for the Elumnara.

“And then we melt it down. All together.”

“You want to melt the ring. Cornelius Windermere’s ring.”

“You literally pulled it out of the fire. It literally depicts a chalice flanked by Sol and Luna with sublimated cinnabar and calcinated white arsenic. It could not be more obvious.” Her haughty sigh reminded him of Tori.

“Fine. Fine, yes,” he conceded.

She was right. There was no other answer. If there were, they would have found it by now.

“It has all four alchemical color stages too—white, red, black, gold.”

“You already convinced me. I’m convinced.”

“Good.” She nodded. “Let’s add another barrier ring, just to be safe.” Lily eyed their setup with uncharacteristic nervousness, her gaze lingering on the four ordinary-looking minerals couched in flasks and ovens.

“Couldn’t agree more.”

Seb rolled up his sleeves. Their volume made them uncooperative. They cast together, brows furrowed. “Well, that should do it. I can’t imagine any gases getting through two layers.”