Isaac’s face grew hot. “All of you,” he said. “I couldn’t have done this alone. But you gave me your energy.” He paused, then pointed at Kat’s fist. “You’re going to have to show me how you control that thimble. Especially if we have to hunt artifacts like it.”

“She always wanted one thing. Just one,” Kat murmured. “All the bad she did to us, she did for that.”

“What?” Isaac asked. “What did she want?”

Kat said, wistful, “She wanted love.”

“The wraith,” said Isaac, remembering, “it called itself magister. It loved her, too. That’s what I felt when I saw into its mind.”

Amelie looked up into the sky. “Now that I think about her, and even it, that way, it’s terribly sad.” She sighed. “That makes it easier to understand.”

She exchanged a glance with Colin, and he nodded. They were all silent, except for the snorting dragon.

“So. We’re going to hunt artifacts,” said Colin.

“We’ll travel through time and space,” said Amelie.

“It won’t be easy,” Isaac warned.

“But we’ll be the Artifact Hunters,” said Leo with a grin. “Brilliant.”

CHAPTER 57

Isaac

1942

The first task for the children after they dispatched Moloch was to find MacLarren and see what they could do for Gumble.

Kat worked at spells to return the forest to normal (or as normal as an always-enchanted-although-not-usually-evil forest could become) and send the dire wolves back to wherever they came from.

Wyvern allowed Colin and Isaac to fly on his back so that they could search the forest for the teachers.

The moon, once it rose, was halfway to full, so it was bright enough to see as the dragon circled the castle. They spotted MacLarren first, but when they landed they were astonished to find Gumble, too. Both were a mess of filth but in fine fettle, though maybe Isaac and Colin were not as surprised to see the teachers as their teachers were to see the boys riding a dragon.

“We thought you were a goner,” Colin said to Gumble.

“We were strung up like two coneys in a snare,” growled MacLarren.

“Yes, it was quite unnerving,” said Gumble, removing debris from her hair.

“Beatrice was the clever lass, aye,” said MacLarren. “Before that creature was able to do its worst, she created for herself a doppelgänger so that’s what it played with. We got out of the trap but couldn’t escape until it was gone. It were an awful sight to see it with Beatrice’s look-alike and the things it done to it. Knives and mechanical replacements and all.”