The next time Olivia woke up she was greeted by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Wispy dream fragments faded even as she tried to grasp them. Lightning sparking in mirrors, a fiery maze, the piercing notes of a recorder. Harlan.

She opened her eyes and saw him standing in the doorway of her bedroom, a mug of coffee in his hand. He was wearing trousers and a T-shirt. There was no sign of the pistol or the knife sheath. She felt the familiar whisper of awareness and automatically went into her other senses. His compelling aura blazed.

“Good morning,” he said. “Catalina left when I got back from Swan’s shop. It’s about time you surfaced. How are you feeling?”

The last vestiges of the dream vanished. She was in her bedroom and Harlan was there. She was in the right place.

“Good,” she said. “Surprisingly normal, whatever that is.” She levered herself to a sitting position against the pillows. “That coffee smells great.”

He moved to the bed and gave her the mug. She drank some, exhaled with pleasure and took another sip.

“Catalina filled me in on most of what happened after I crashed,” she said. “I hear the Swan sisters disappeared. I’ll bet Victor and Lucas are exceedingly embarrassed. They hate it when they don’t look too smart.”

“I’m not feeling especially bright, either.” Harlan sat down on the bed. “But you’re a heroine, as far as Victor and Lucas and everyone else are concerned. You shattered the Vortex crystal and stopped the meltdown. The Foundation is now in control of the invisible island with no name. It would have been good to interrogate Spode and Barrow, but North Chastain says that given their long history with the drug, they were both so unstable he couldn’t have saved them.”

“What about the students?”

“All under observation at Halcyon, but Chastain says they will be okay. We found what was left of a small lab in the monastery, but we didn’t find the formula for the serum. Spode must have committed it to memory. After all, he had been making the stuff for decades.”

“His father made it before him. Apparently it worked fairly well until the plants began to change because of the radiation.”

“Arganbright and Pine are not so sure about that. Spode was dying, and so was Barrow. The formula apparently has a destabilizing effect on the aura.”

Olivia shuddered. “So much for Spode’s conviction that it could accelerate human evolution.”

“Victor has a research team on the island,” Harlan said. “The plan is to get the lab secured once things cool down. They’re hoping to find some answers and artifacts inside. It would be good to turn up some old logbooks.”

“Logbooks.” Olivia had been about to swallow more coffee. She paused, the mug halfway to her mouth. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”