“You can call me Fort. Forsythe was my grandfather’s name. Just… just call me Fort.”

“Sure, kid. Fort.”

Fort lay back, dreading any further questions, but when none came, he slowly started to relax and go back over everything they’d done that evening.

Rachel wasn’t going to forgive him any time soon, if ever. Neither would Jia. Cyrus might, but that was more because he was just that easygoing, not because Fort deserved forgiveness.

And was Sierra okay? He’d tried calling her name several times on the way back to his room but eventually had given up, worrying that she was trying to hide or something and couldn’t be distracted. Mostly he wished he had some way of getting news about the outside world down here in the school. There was the room with the computers and the TVs, where he’d first seen Sierra and Damian labeled as terrorists, but that had been filled with soldiers and wasn’t really a place he could just wander in and crank up the volume to hear what was happening.

Of course, he could have used a teleportation circle to find out what was going on. Maybe even go to the airport and try to rescue her and Damian?

Of course, Damian could teleport himself, except that the Old Ones would be watching for it. And even if Fort got away with it, he had no idea where they were. Or which airport they were at. Or what it looked like. Or if he’d get caught by the same agents.

Okay, maybe it made sense to just wait for Sierra to get back to him. If he found out later that Colonel Charles had captured her, he could find a way to rescue her at that point. At least he knew that they wouldn’t hurt her, considering how much Colonel Charles wanted the power of Mind magic.

Or had wanted it, before Sierra’s powers had gone crazy in his office. What had that been? How did her Mind magic work on physical objects? Even if there were spells like that, where had they come from? Had she…

Ugh, none of these thoughts were helping. He was just going to make himself more anxious, if he kept up with questions he couldn’t answer. Besides, he had enough to worry about, with mastering teleportation.

Everything he’d heard about mastering spells at the last school told him he’d need about a week. He’d done it faster at the time, but that had been because Sierra had cheated and stolen spells from other students’ minds for him without realizing she was doing it.