me I can prove myself by sharing this wealth of information you all seem to think I’m hiding—except I’m not. And no one believes me, and instead everyone acts like I’m just being uncooperative. So here I sit, locked in a room with an ogre who keeps reminding me that he can end me anytime.”
“I can,” Bo agreed unhelpfully.
Sophie sighed and glanced at Tam, whose shrug seemed to say, She’s not wrong.
“Fine, you know what?” Sophie said. “There is one piece of information we’re hoping you might have—but if not, it won’t change us wanting to work together. So let’s just put it out there so we can move on, okay?”
She paused for Glimmer to agree but was met with only silence.
“Okay, I’ll take that as a yes,” Sophie pressed on. “We need to find Councillor Kenric’s cache. Keefe stole it from me to prove his loyalty when he joined the Neverseen, and he thought he stole it back when he left, but it turns out that was a fake. So now we need to track down the real one—and we have no idea where to look, so if you have any information that might steer us in the right direction, that’d be awesome.”
“Doesn’t have to be anything huge,” Biana added. “We realize it’s probably asking too much for there to be some sort of secret Neverseen storehouse where they hide all their important things.”
Biana was probably trying to lighten the mood with a joke.
But Glimmer flinched.
Even Tam noticed.
“What?” he asked her. “And don’t say ‘nothing.’ ”
The silence stretched and stretched and stretched.
Tam moved to sit beside her. “These are my friends, Glimmer. You really can trust them. And if you know something that might help, it’ll be better for everyone.”
“No, it’ll be better for you,” Glimmer argued. “All it’ll do for me is prove that I need to stay in this room and have more people annoy me with questions. Maybe they’ll even order a memory break—”
“They won’t,” Sophie assured her. “And even if they did, they’d order me or Fitz to do it, and we won’t.” She took a cautious step closer, like she would if she were approaching a frightened animal. “We’re not lying about wanting to work with you. We need your help.”
A whole lot more silence followed.
“Come on, Glimmer,” Tam pleaded. “If you don’t trust them—trust me.”
Glimmer sighed. “I… heard Gisela mention something to Vespera about a storehouse one time. She didn’t say much else. But it sounded like it was part of the Lodestar network.”
Sophie closed her eyes, wishing she hadn’t let herself get her hopes up.
It felt like a total gut-punch having to admit, “All the Lodestar hideouts were destroyed.”
“Were they?” Glimmer asked. “Or is that what the Neverseen wanted you to believe? I mean, do you really think they’d destroy everything they’d built just because you guys cracked their little symbol? Especially when they’re so good at hiding things with illusions?”
A sharp intake of breath echoed around the room as the gravity of that revelation settled in.
“You know this for sure?” Tam clarified.
“No,” Glimmer admitted. “But… it makes sense, right?”
It definitely did.
“I mean… I know they did destroy some stuff,” Glimmer hedged. “There was this whole annoying power struggle going on, and Fintan was changing up some of the plans and decided to get rid of the stuff he was abandoning. But some of it was left. And it sounded like the storehouse was part of that.”
A tiny spark of hope flared inside Sophie as she whispered, “Where do we find it?”
Glimmer turned to her, and Sophie could hear her sharp smile when she said, “You’re the one who said you wanted to work together. So here’s your chance. I’ll tell you which hideout to go to—but only if you take me with you.”
- TEN - KEEFE
Okay, let’s try this again!” Kesler said, clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention. “And I gotta say, I have a good feeling this time. I think we’re finally onto something! But we’ll know soon enough. Everybody—earplugs in!”
Keefe cringed as Kesler, Elwin, Ro, and Dex shoved the glittering blobs into their ears.
He couldn’t believe he’d let them talk him into sitting through more tests after what happened that morning.
It had taken several panic-filled minutes for him to find the right command to snap the triplets out of whatever weird trance he’d put them in—and even though they’d laughed about how cool it was to watch everyone freaking out while they were stuck like statues, Keefe was pretty