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“I don’t even know what to ask.”
“Don’t go into the corn,” Nic insisted.
An involuntary shudder wracked my body. “Okay, right.” Somehow, I didn’t think they were joking, either.
“So, what do we do?”
“About Dio? Nothing, right now,” Robby said.
“But—”
“There’s not much we can do until we find out what he did with his essence,” Nic said. “He needs to be whole before we can rescue him. If we took him out of there now, we’d have to care for him and they’re not obviously mistreating my brother. I’m also not entirely sure how to get him out while he’s in his current state. Once he’s whole, we can break him out.”
“Did anyone notice the complete lack of mirrors in that place?” Geraint pointed out.
“I had,” Robby replied.
I hadn’t, but now that Geraint mentioned it, I hadn’t seen one in the bathroom attached to Dio’s bedroom.
“So, how do we figure out where he put his essence?” I sighed as traffic slowed now that we were much closer to the city.
“I’m guessing we’ll find clues at the museum,” Robby answered.
“Makes sense.” I glanced at my phone. We weren’t far, as long as the traffic didn’t jam up.
***
“Bless the inventor of air conditioning,” I muttered as we wandered around the cool museum.
It wasn’t crowded, and we went from exhibit to exhibit, trying to figure out what Dio had been interested in when he’d been arrested. The records Ash had tracked down hadn’t said.
“As they could capture Dio, he had likely already separated his essence from his person,” Robby said.
“Are we sure he did it voluntarily?” Geraint was on hand-holding duty while Nic slipped from shadow to shadow, able to cover more ground that way, and I was grateful for the reassuring grip.
“Reasonably,” Robby said. “Based on his response.”
“Was he talking about stars?” I’d been thinking about Dio’s words. It killed me to see my childhood friend in such a strange and debilitated condition, but when we passed the exhibit entrance for the planetarium, his comment about light came to mind.
“Possibly,” Robby agreed. We turned into the exhibit. There weren’t any shows for an hour, but I didn’t really think that was our destination, anyway.
We explored the other space exhibits for a while, but nothing obvious jumped out at us.
“Ember.”
I yelped as Nic stepped out of a shadow.
Geraint twitched, as if about to defend me, but Robby didn’t react. Perhaps he’d sensed Nic coming?
“Yes?” I asked once I caught my breath.
“Come with me,” Nic said.
I followed my prince. Robby and Geraint trailed along behind us.
He led us out of the astronomy exhibit and up a flight of stairs to the gems and minerals. I went in, breath already taken away at the beauty of the various minerals on display.
“Gems of light,” I whispered.
