“Maybe.” North nodded. He reached back into his pack and took out the black metal rod that he had picked up at Swan Antiques. Energy whispered in the atmosphere. He smiled slowly. “I think Dad found Griffin Chastain’s magic wand.”

Harmony raised her brows. “Are you serious?”

“Better known as a dowsing stick or rod,” North said. “A paranormal GPS and compass combined.”

“Dowsing sticks were used in the old days to find a source of water underground,” Sierra said. “People hired dowsers to tell them where to dig wells.”

Harmony looked thoughtful. “Theoretically, in the hands of a true sensitive, dowsing sticks or rods could be used to find a lot of things. Gold. Lost valuables. Water. But they were almost always used by con men and fake psychics.”

Sierra looked at Marge. “We were told that you escaped Riverview a couple of months ago. Any idea why Loring came looking for you in Seattle after all this time?”

Marge winked. “Expect he finally figured out I’m the one who took his precious notebook. He kept it in a vault, you see. Didn’t look at it very often, so he might not have noticed it was gone until he decided to look up something. And even then I’ll bet he had a hard time figuring out that I’m the one who swiped it. He thought I was just a crazy old lady. But I’ve got a good memory for numbers. I saw him punch in the code for that vault so often it was easy to memorize.”

North watched her intently. “You took his research notebook?”

“Not his.” Marge smirked. “Reckon it’s yours.”

“I’m getting a little confused here,” North said.

Marge bent down and opened a big satchel that was sitting on the floor next to her chair. She pulled out a black leather logbook and put it on the table.

“The night I left I opened the vault and helped myself to this,” she said. “I knew it was important to Loring. That was good enough for me.”

North contemplated the logbook. “Mind if I have a look at it?”

“Nope.” Marge waved a hand. “It belongs to you.”

“Why do you say that?” North asked.

It was Harmony who responded. She picked up the logbook, opened it and glanced at the first page. With a smile she handed it to North.

“Take a look,” she suggested.

North opened the logbook with exquisite care, as if he was afraid it would shatter in his hands. For a long moment he just stared at whatever was written on the first page.

“Well?” Sierra asked, unable to contain her curiosity.

He looked up, dazed. “This logbook belonged to Griffin Chastain. It’s a record of research into the potential uses of energy from the dark end of the spectrum. There’s a note that the work was done in a lab here at Fogg Lake.”

“We knew your grandfather was on one of the research teams here,” Sierra said.

North flipped rapidly through the pages. He paused when he got toward the end.