“I know, but good, it was good. A revelation.” She didn’t have the words to describe the indescribable that was in her heart. “Let’s get back to work.” She squeezed his hand and started looking through the books along the wall. “I need to know what a lodestone is. Sophia mentioned that’s the technical name for my heart light.”
Argan joined her in scanning the books. “How about geology?” he asked. He pulled out a textbook and handed it to her.
“Great. I’ll go with that,” she said. She flipped through. Rocks and crystals dotted the pages. She scanned the glossary for lodestone and turned to its page.
Lodestone: Naturally magnetized rock.
“Hmm,” she said. She had expected more magic than magnets. Before she closed the book, the gem pictured below the definition caught her eye. It was her heart light, whole and perfect, sitting in the center of a golden crown.
“Wow, Lucifer’s crown, just like Ocean said! I almost thought she was making that up.” The picture was drawn very primitively. It didn’t make her heart leap or give her any sense of direction. “It’s hard to believe we’re doing all this to get a piece of jewelry back to its rightful owner.”
“We’re doing more than that,” Argan said. He opened the drawer of the desk to get the stone and got a funny look on his face. “What’s this, Sky?” he asked, holding up a tourist map.
Skylar gaped. Argan was holding the Porta Alchemica game Tamsyn had given her at the Salem Witch Museum. Its plastic appearance was an eyesore among the magical items in the room.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, turning back to the empty mirror. She didn’t even see her own reflection in it, only Argan’s, off to the side.
She picked up the map and shook it in the air. “Thanks a lot,” she said into the ethers.
“What’s up?” Argan asked. He peered out the window, then looked back at her. “I don’t know how much more time we have, Sky. Can this map help us?”
“This isn’t a map,” she said. “It’s a toy. I got a bunch of them at the Salem Witch Museum last year.”
“Have you ever looked at this thing?” he asked.
“Nope,” was her one-word answer before she rambled on about having to do everything on her own.
He took the map in his hands and began to pace in the sunlight. Five minutes into her tirade about self-sacrifice, he cut her off. “Yes, Sky, you’re the hero. Now look at this.” He showed her the map. “This is a map of your journey. Your quest, your purpose, whatever you want to call it, look …”
“Give it to me.” She held out her hand and he placed the map in her outstretched palm. “Okay, well. I never paid any attention to this thing. I have a half dozen of them back home.”
“Something tells me this one’s different,” he said.
She looked at the colorful drawings. It was a map of all of her travels in the last three years, rendered in glorious detail. It showed Rosen and Ocean’s crazy mansion, the black tree prominent in the backyard. Joel’s farm, Cassie’s tiny tree house. Beatrice’s house, flanked by her magical maple. She couldn’t help but smile at the places she’d been. Not all of them held fond memories, but here, laid out as a whole picture, it all fit together perfectly, and she appreciated all of it.
Farther north, among dark green triangles, the map showed the details of the long road leading to Silverwood. The camp was intricately detailed, with the Mess, the Greenhouse, and the Pavilion, and even Cabin 3A and Argan’s cabin, where they had finally made love after two years of failed starts. Off in the distance, the alchemist’s cabin was decorated post-equinox with lush greenery and flowers.
She looked up at Argan. He had been by her side through all of it. And so had Suki. She scoured the East Coast, hoping for a clue as to what her best friend was up to. Her eyes traveled to Washington, DC. She was probably formulating a rescue.
She looked across the page, effectively across the Atlantic, to Italy and Greece. One beautiful woman stood on the shore of a Greek island. It was Leonora. Her long, jet-black hair blew in the breeze. She remembered the dream she’d had of Leonora, and how she had a promise to fulfill—to help Leonora’s son as much as he’d helped her.
The picture of Italy pulsed with ancient and future energy. Skylar sensed Milicent was there, or maybe had been, she couldn’t tell which. Vivienne’s tree glowed fluorescent under the water. Skylar’s eyes followed its roots down into the earth’s core and over toward the landmass marked Atlantis. Argan pointed to the island. “This is where we are now.”
“Yes.” She humored the exercise.
“Now look,” he said, holding the map up to the sunlight streaming through the window. The sunbeam revealed more under the sea. The mountain of Atlantis was actually one of two pieces of land that were connected under the Atlantic.
Skylar gasped. “Oh my god, it’s the Underworld. The land Magus is looking for is so close, literally next door.”
“And look in the middle,” he said.
Skylar squinted and made out a very small, primitive drawing of Sophia’s temple. “The Underworld is on the other side of Sophia’s temple,” she said. “We have to go past her to get there. Heather told me Magus said it was Hell and to never go there. He’s been looking for the citrine wall all this time, but it’s beyond the land he dare not go, the land of the heart.” She bubbled with excitement.
“One thing I don’t understand,” he said.
“One?”
“Why is Lucifer in the Underworld, why not here?” he asked.
“Ocean said he’s been trapped in earth, in carbon form, since the Fall, and as punishment he has shrouded the hearts of man with evil. The Underworld is earthy as it gets. And the citrine wall is the storehouse for all human potential. Magus has tried his best to re-create the heart of Sophia, but it’s synthetic. Look at this place: It’s a fantasyland. All the crystal technology has an emptiness without Sophia’s heart. This place, this world of Atlantis, is the left path, the mind. The right path is Sophia’s, the way of the heart.” She studied the map again. “We have what we need now, both halves of the stone. We can return it to his crown and set him free.”
“Can we?” he asked. “You don’t have a clue how to get that out of your chest.”
“It floated effortlessly out of Rhia because it was time. We have to believe that when it’s time, it will release itself from me too.”
“Say that happens—then what? I saw Lucifer with Vivienne and he said he doesn’t care about the stone. That it’s not as valuable as it once was.”
“I’m skeptical that his words were true,” she said. “The Underworld is our next stop.”
They made their way back down the hill to the beach.
“Where has Magus been?” Argan asked.
“I don’t know,” Skylar said.
“I mean, you could just leave and this would be over,” he said.
“Would it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, I guess it wouldn’t.”
They got to the shoreline. “It would be so much easier if we could use that alchemical door,” she said. “Of all the things I can’t do …” She put two fingers in her mouth and blew, as if whistling for a taxi.