Fifer had been acting distant lately—ever since they’d gotten home. They’d both noticed that the other had changed, even if they didn’t exactly talk about it in so many words. They used to understand each other so well without having to talk things through, though, so after the other night, Thisbe naturally assumed that Fifer was thinking about the two of them splitting up into separate rooms too. Apparently not.

Thisbe didn’t have time to dwell on it further—she had a lot on her mind, and not knowing anything about the status of Grimere with the Revinir in charge, she felt a lot of pressure to hurry up and go back. With or without her sister. Just as soon as she had the right weapons.

Unsurprisingly, Fifer didn’t show up for their spell brainstorming session, and Seth wasn’t there either. But Aaron was there with Thatcher, Samheed and Lani, and Ibrahim and Clementi. Thisbe soon forgot all about Fifer.

“Let’s start with revising the seek spell,” Florence said. “Does anyone have ideas for how to improve it?”

Aaron spoke up. “Kaylee told me how people communicate over distances in her world. They each carry a device—Kaylee showed me hers, though it stopped working around the same time she arrived in the seven islands. She said people push buttons to create words on the device. You can type whatever words you want to say, like writing a letter. Then they can send the message to anyone, anywhere. The person they send the message to gets it almost immediately.”

“I thought Kaylee said her world wasn’t magical,” Thisbe said.

“She seems to think it’s done by some other means,” said Aaron. “But whatever the case, do you think that’s something to explore?”

Samheed scratched his stubbly beard, then pulled out the small notepad he kept in his pocket and opened it to a blank page. He ripped the page out and held it up, studying it. “Maybe we make the paper a component,” he murmured. “There’d have to be a writing tool to go with it, of course, which could be bulky. But something that can send itself with a short command from the mage. Perhaps it travels somehow like a magic carpet?”

“Or like an origami fire-breathing dragon,” said Lani, seemingly understanding Samheed’s cryptic musings. “Where we command the location it needs to go to—or, rather, specify the person it needs to go to. But I think we can apply the faster trajectory that already exists for the seek spell instead of the magic carpet speed.”

“I imagine that wouldn’t be too hard to instill,” said Thatcher.

Ibrahim and Clementi exchanged a glance, clearly marveling over this opportunity to be so involved in the planning side of spells with some of the people who’d been responsible for designing so many great ones already.