Harry Potter and the Lost Cities

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"It... It's not dangerous... I... is that real?" Sophie asked. It was the only question she could get out, but hundreds of others danced through her mind. Where had Harry gotten it? How? Did the Neverseen know? Was it Kenric's or Fintan's? Or someone else's? What secrets did it hold?

"As far as I know, yes," Harry said, and it took Sophie a moment to remember which question he was answering. "Lady Gisela said she wanted you to have because―"

"Lady Gisela? Woah, hold on, what've you been up to?" Sophie asked, panicking.

Harry sighed. "Where to begin?"

Sophie listened wide-eyed as Harry related the encounter. When he finished, no one said anything for a moment. Then Dex muttered, "Wow. That's... wow."

"Tell me about it," Harry's hand ran through his hair. "So what is this thing?" He held up the cache again.

"It's a cache," Sophie explained. "It contains forgotten secrets."

Harry's brows raised. "Those things that the Councillors erase from their memories or whatever?"

Sophie nodded. "Yeah. The Neverseen had both Kenric and Fintan's. This is..." she took a step closer to Harry and fingered the cache, the cool metal surface smooth beneath her fingers. With a closer view, Sophie could tell it wasn't the same one she used to carry around with her, so... "This one must be Fintan's. But why would they give it to us?"

"Maybe Gisela wants you to do the work for her so she can figure out the secret," Stina suggested. "She probably realized by now that you opened Oralie's."

"That would actually make sense. She did say something about you having opened one before," Harry added.

"Maybe," Sophie conceded. "In that case, we'll have to be really careful. We can't let her figure out whatever's in here."

"Agreed," Harry said. Harry ran his hand through his hair, messing it up. "So do you know how to open that?"

"Not really," Sophie admitted. "The last one we opened required a password― one that we only got because the person who owned the cache was on our side. I don't know how we'd ever figure out the password for Fintatn's."

"I might be able to figure something out," Dex interjected. "Now that I'm working with real caches instead of fake ones, there's gotta be a way to bypass the security. Maybe if I calibrated the function, factoring in the time..." Dex started muttering a bunch of techy words that Sophie wouldn't even pretend to understand.

"Perfect," Sophie agreed. "We'll leave you to it, Dex."

Harry reluctantly handed over the cache to Dex, whose murmurs increased with the cache in hand.

"What was in the last cache you opened?" Harry asked, turning back to Sophie.

Sophie hesitated. "Crazy stuff. It's actually how we managed to get Keefe's abilities back."

"He has his abilities back?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Yep. As of a few days ago," Sophie explained.

"That's good." Harry's hand ran through his hair again, seeming almost nervous. Sophie's brows furrowed.

"Is something wrong?"

Harry bit his lip, as if making a decision, then opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, saying, "No. Everything's good. I should get going, though."

"Okay..." Sophie agreed hesitantly. "See you around."

Harry nodded, then spun around, disappearing with a crack.

"That's so much cooler than light leaping," Dex muttered.

"Wow," Wylie said. "So we have another cache now."

"Yeah..." Sophie agreed, looking at the spot where Harry had disappeared, her forehead creased. There was something he wasn't telling her; she was sure of it. But what? And why?

A chill breeze made her shiver and brought her back to the present. "Well, I guess... back to our meeting?"

The team all nodded and followed Sophie over to the Panakes tree, sitting down on the cool grass. Sophie glanced over at Biana repeatedly as they sat down. She still hadn't said a word. But not talking was better than yelling... right?

"So," Sophie said when they were all settled. "What did you want to talk about?"

Wylie glanced at Stina again. Clearly, they had already discussed this. "We were wondering... you know that Traiser guy or whatever? The one who died in the memory you found with Oralie?"

Sophie nodded with a shiver, this time not from the cold. The idea still made her heart pang for Mr. Traiser. He had just been trying to do something good for the whole world. And it had killed him. Her mind flashed to the image of the magsidian enveloping him, of the flashes of shadowflux and light, of the excitement in his eyes suddenly turned to terror...

She shut the memory down.

"Well, I was thinking... don't you think it's a little weird that Keefe was fine after the whole stellarlune thing? I mean, maybe not fine..." Wylie grimaced. "But he lived. So why didn't Traiser?"

Sophie cocked her head. It hadn't occurred to her, but... "Well, Traiser wasn't actually dead. They said in the memory that he was just not responsive."

"Really?" Stina said. "He was alive?"

Sophie nodded, her photographic memory recalling everything from that memory. "Yeah. That's what Terik said in the memory."

"What did they do with him?" Dex asked.

"I don't know," Sophie admitted. "But I would guess... maybe they put him in exile? They wouldn't want him to be found, so that would make sense logically."

"So they'd put another innocent man in Exile..." Wylie's fists clenched, and Sophie knew he was thinking about his dad.

"Hold on," Stina said suddenly. "How long was Keefe out for after Loamnore?"

"A little more than a week. Why?" Sophie asked.

Wylie's jaw slackened as he looked at Stina, apparently realizing what she was saying. "If he was in Exile, then no one would have been taking care of him or anything, and no one would have noticed..."

It took Sophie a moment to figure out what they were saying, but when she did, her jaw dropped and she gasped sharply. "You're saying that he could've woken up after a week or two... and no one would've noticed."

Wylie nodded. "Which means that there's been an innocent man rotting away in Exile all this time."