Our journey North had started on the thirty-fourth of the tenth, which in theory should have meant it was cold out. Good Charl had been downright chilly in the morning and evenings, but Erathik was much warmer and we were getting a little closer to the equator every day. It was still cold at night, but during the day we were sweating like pigs.

The good news was that we were making amazing time, because much like our old pack of moskar these ones had little mana capacitors in their crops that Katrin was keeping charged. As long as they had mana, they had supernatural endurance. We still had to stop a lot, since they liked to travel in short bursts, but over the course of the day we covered tons of ground. Our employer, unfortunately, wasn't used to it.

"It hurts so much," Matlyn said, "I feel like I can't walk or stand or sit. I could lie down, but I can't imagine that I'll be able to get back up."

We didn't really have anything to treat saddle sores - Katrin had still failed to learn more delicate healing spells so she was only good at emergency patch jobs, and we couldn't waste the potions on something so minor. There were potions specifically for things like that, of course, but we hadn't thought to buy any. "Well," I said, "I think you'll just have to work through it unless there's someone here you trust enough to have them massage your thighs."

It had been an offhand joke, but for a split second I caught Matlyn glance towards Errod and turn beet red. Hmm. Errod was oblivious, of course, and Matlyn recovered quickly. "I could do some stretches," she said, "I suppose it's not unlike when I got sore from crouching down with the crops."

That was the only real problem for the first two days. Errod and I spotted some shady folks when we stopped for the night, a group of travelers that had camped nearby and were looking pretty intently at the pile of overloaded saddlebags and backpacks we'd made, but they didn't end up trying anything. Probably we looked a little too intimidating as a group.

At that point we reached Hanglescart, which - despite the ridiculous name - was a perfectly normal Erathi town tucked under a cliff that provided extra shade for much of the day. There were pens of moskar, or moskar-like creatures, but these ones were the source of the steaks I enjoyed so much rather than something you would ride. I hadn't seen a lot of livestock since the general masses relied on the fast-regenerating mindless meat things simply referred to as "red meat" "white meat" and "gray meat".

Disappointingly, they didn't have any moskar steak to purchase, as it was all spoken for. Hanglescart was the last stop before Batasun's Shelter where we'd be meeting with Matlyn's sister, but there were two days of pretty empty desert in-between. We refreshed our supplies and took the opportunity to sleep indoors, although the inn just had one big communal room for everyone to sleep in and the beds were terrible.

There wasn't a lot to do in town, but it did give me the opportunity to catch up with Katrin and Errod away from the others. "Nothing new, Matlyn still just seems like a super cheerful super wholesome person. If she's involved in anything shady on Earth I'm going to be surprised."

Katrin nodded. "I've tried to get her talking about Earth, but she's careful to avoid the subject. She just promises to get into it more once we get to the ruins. And I agree, if this is related to whoever tampered with your memories I don't think Matlyn is directly involved."

Errod looked uncomfortable. "I told her about our father. Not all of it, but the fact that he was involved in something we don't understand and was sent to Tarmestal. I feel a little bad about it, like I was manipulating her, but it was the only way I could think of to get her onto the topic of whatever happened with her family. I agree that Matlyn herself seems innocent, but my concern was that she might have learned about Earth from something... suspect... that her family was up to.

"She told me some of what happened, and it doesn't sound related. Her mother stole money from the family, and hid that their employees and partners weren't being paid. She borrowed money to cover things just enough to get by, and then when Matlyn's sister Zee snuck a look at the books and realized they were doctored, her mother... tried to kill Zee."

Katrin looked horrified, but I just nodded. "Yeah, that would explain the desperation. And their dad, she said he 'stepped away from the business' or something, right? I'm guessing that means he didn't handle the news well."

"I think that's about right," Errod said, "but we didn't get into it. At any rate, while it's possible that something more is going on, that the mother or sister is actually part of some Earth-related side business, Matlyn doesn't seem to think the incident with her mother was related. I don't suppose you've recovered any more relevant memories?"

I'd had plenty of time during our non-stop travel, and while I'd been thwarted as always by hours and hours of mundane memories I had made a little progress. "Two things. First of all, I've narrowed stuff down. Basically, everything seems like it was great until really really close to the end. There's a whole year of me just living with Bill, getting more and more comfortable and being a little less of a shitty person every day, and then only a few weeks at most before I got dumped at that other group home with my memories erased. That's good news, because it means as I get better at finding memories I'm going to be able to get it basically all at once.

"Second, I think I might have found the thing that got me in trouble in the first place." I did my best to describe it, although it required going off on some tangents about Earth stuff. I'd located the memory by going to one I'd found before and just... continuing from there. Back in Brinkmar, right before we escaped to Poicelria's old fortress, I'd recovered a memory of sitting in in-school suspention reading Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown. Zoey had been in detention with me, and she'd had two black eyes.

This, clearly, came right on the heels of the memory I'd watched before leaving Erathik. After I'd... assaulted her with a textbook, maybe, and she had poured bleach on me or something. The details were still unclear. I'd waited as the memory went on, and just when I was getting bored something finally happened. I left to go to the bathroom, and when I returned the teacher that was supposed to be supervising us was gone and Zoey was talking to her phone and holding my book.

"It's a fucking kids' book, some Harry Potter knock-off, can you believe it? This ugly-ass foster care psycho who throws things at people and practically growls when you look at her is still reading kiddie stories about magic and unicorns." She wasn't just talking to one of her friends. She was streaming. "Jake Ross plunged his sword into the deadshell... hello, is this a romance novel? Jake plunged his throbbing sword into his trusty horse over and over..."

I walked up to her, looking tired, and tried to just take the book back. She resisted, and based on the way she angled her phone and started mocking me she'd switched to the other camera. "Oh, the baby wants her smutty children's book back. Do you have a crush on Jake and his plunging sword?"

I pulled harder, and then when she pulled back I switched to pushing it towards her. Immediately off balance, she toppled over the desk she had been sitting on - hitting her head on the way down. I stepped around the desk, picked up the book, and walked back to my seat without saying a word to her. She was swearing up a storm and insulting me, but for some reason still streaming. Maybe she felt like she needed to redeem herself.

"Hey goat licker, you're a fucking psycho. Did you kill your parents, or did they just abandon you?"

"Goat licker is really the best you can do, isn't it? Sorry Zoey, I don't have a clever farm animal themed nickname for you. Maybe it's the smashed face, but I just can't tell which one it was you were related to. A pig? A cow? Anyone's guess really. Ask your mom when you get home, see if she was sober enough to remember what knocked her up."

She grabbed my hair and pulled, and that's when Mr. Shane walked in. He... was not pleased. He'd made it clear that he didn't want to be a babysitter, and expected us to just sit there and not give him any trouble. Thankfully, I'd been sitting with a book open in front of me while Zoey had been looming over me with my hair in her fist - and with her phone out, which she wasn't even supposed to have while we were serving our time. I'd given up on the memory a little later when nothing else happened, but it had me thinking.

The book had been in plain view, and anyone that knew the series would have known that the third book was impossible to find. If we were right that my memories were wiped at least in part because I'd read the book, then it was possible someone had seen Zoey's stream and word had gotten out that some random high school kid had a book that was legendary for being totally unavailable. It would have drawn attention from the people that had kept it out of print, maybe.

When I was done relaying the memory, Katrin and Errod agreed it was at least possible that it was relevant - they weren't super clear on social media stuff even after my explanation, but they got the basic idea okay. "So then the question," Katrin said, "is whether or not you can find out more without having to watch every second of the memories in-between. I still have some notes from when we were working on sorting through your memories originally, before we knew for sure they'd been tampered with, and I've been adding extra information as it came up."

"Stalker," I said, "like for real that's stalker behavior. Keeping notes on my memories? You've got a jar of my toenail clippings, don't you?"

Errod smirked. "You would have to ever clip your toenails for that to be possible."

"I'll have you know my feet look gorgeous. If I walked around without my boots on, I'd have so many marriage proposals I wouldn't even know what to do with them. You know who else has nice feet? Matlyn." Errod looked genuinely confused as to where I was going with that. Ah, well. "Never mind. I guess that's a one way thing. Okay, Katrin, if you don't mind getting slightly less restful sleep we can try finding some memories together tonight."

She agreed, and after confirming that the town had nothing in particular to offer in terms of night life most of us went to bed early.

Katrin's notes weren't directly useful, but as we went through them and added more detail she was able to put together a more complete timeline than I'd had before. We talked some about things I could keep an eye out for in the memories that would help us slot them into the right spots, even if they didn't have anything obviously interesting in them, and then I dove in and started searching. As always, there were some absolute duds before we stumbled on anything worthwhile, but this time Katrin was there to comment on everything. She watched for calendars, paid attention to the length of my hair, and listened for any references to what was going on in the world.

For my part, I tried lots of different methods. Clearly, thinking "I want to see who wiped my memory" wasn't working. Instead, I focused specifically on the idea that someone was looking for the Jake Ross books, or looking for me because I had them. And bam, I finally hit paydirt.

Bill was on the phone, and I was spying on him. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Were you watching some random teenage girl's Instagram? ... I see. Well, I think it's very strange. ... It was a gift, actually. ... No, you can't talk to her. I'm her legal guardian, and I take that seriously. ... On her behalf, I'm telling you she's not interested. Don't call about this again."

He hung up and put the phone down, and then after a moment of just standing there he said, quietly, "You can come in now, Calliope. You're not as sneaky as you think you are."

I walked into the room, trying - ridiculously - to look like I had no idea what he was talking about and just happened to be walking that way anyway. "What's up?"

Bill hesitated. "I think you should leave the books I gave you here at the house, okay?"

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"Who was that on the phone?" I asked, rather than actually replying.

"A company that I used to work for. Coelestis Acquisitions. The books are valuable, something happened that meant there's not a lot of copies of the third one in particular. Your friend from school - "

"Not my friend."

He smiled. "No, sorry, I meant that sarcastically. She made a video, apparently, and now this company is asking about it. They want to buy it from you, but they're... a bit shady. If anyone from Coelestis approaches you, get away from them and call me right away. I quit because I didn't like their methods, and... honestly, I thought they were out of business but I just checked some things before returning that call and it seems they're still around."

My eyes were wide as dinner plates. "Holy shit, Bill. Did you work for the mafia or something? I know you said you've had a lot of jobs, but you made it sound like they were all boring. Were you a mob enforcer? Or a cleaner, like they would call you in to dispose of the bodies?"

He put an arm around my shoulder and squeezed, then leaned down to kiss the top of my head. If I hadn't already known this was late in the timeline that would have proved it - rather than looking uncomfortable or squirming, I leaned into it and stayed pressed against him.

"No, kiddo, nothing like that. They're a company that buys rare and valuable stuff, and I had a knack for finding things for them. It was nothing exciting. But, like all of my jobs, I quit and found something else to do. And no, that next one was also not a position as a mob enforcer. I think after that... hmm. After that was a data entry job, and then a training job for a place that did software for hotels - that was interesting because I got to travel around to different hotels all over the world and show them how to do stuff. These days, we'd just do it all online I guess."

"Hey Bill?"

"Yeah kiddo?"

"You're old as fuck, aren't you?"

"Language," he said affectionately, "and yes I am. Let me tell you all about why the 'save' icon on computers looks like it does, and why it sometimes came in handy to have a pencil when you were listening to music on an old Walkman..."

I let the memory end, knowing I could come and watch further if I ever wanted to. Katrin was making a face.

"Coelestis Acquisitions," she said. "does that sound familiar to you?"

Everything from my memories felt familiar once I recalled them, but it was a vague feeling that didn't necessarily mean anything. "No, I don't think so. I can try to find other memories of it, but the name doesn't mean anything to me. Do you think they're the ones that mind-wiped me?"

"I think it's possible. Bill said they collect rare and valuable things, is it possible that he meant... magic things?"

It would make some sense. Clearly someone involved in all this knew about magic, otherwise there was no explanation for my altered memories. But this did raise an important question. "So... did Bill know about magic, do you think? It would be a weird coincidence, but those happen to me all the time thanks to this fate shit. I just... I can't picture it, you know?"

"He might have gotten the books while working for them, and just kept them rather than handing them over. He wouldn't have given them to you if he'd known, would he?"

Presumably not? The whole question seemed insane. "It's possible he really had no idea. He might have just been searching for things for them, like if they knew a thing was out there and needed someone to track estate sales or auctions or whatever. Or maybe he was just supposed to go trawling through antique stores for shit that had funny writing on it or... I don't know. There's got to be ways to identify magic stuff even if you don't know how to use magic. Even if you don't believe in magic."

Katrin didn't look convinced, but she nodded anyway. "There are tools that can distinguish between different alchemical metals, and between alchemical metals and mundane ones. I suppose... if you gave someone one of those tools, they could use them without knowing what they were doing."

And it was possible that this company also dealt in boring non-magic stuff. Hell, it was possible that was all they did and we were just letting our imaginations run away with us. I thought as hard as I could about the name, and focused on finding a memory about them. At first nothing happened, and then when something finally did it was just me writing "Coelestis Acquisitions" in a notebook - but I was wearing the same outfit as I'd been in before, so this was clearly just me writing down what Bill had mentioned. I kept trying, and finally got a new memory.

This one was older, though it was hard to say by how much. Bill and I were walking into an office with fast food, not an office building but just some little shitty office that was just a cramped space with some filing cabinets and security monitors - all turned off. There was a counter that we'd just walked past, with a bell you could ring for service. It wasn't unlike what you might see at a shitty motel, but I didn't think that was it. There was an older man sitting at a desk, a scowl on his face, and he turned to look at us as we approached.

Bill smiled and held out the bag of food, but the man was just glaring at me. I glared defiantly back at him, and after a moment he looked up at Bill and took the greasy sack. "William. You've come to kill me, I assume."

Bill rolled his eyes and reached past the man to clear a space on the desk. "No, Greg. We've come to feed you hamburgers."

"Ah," Greg said, "Not by the sword, but by cholesterol."

Bill nodded. "Yup. I'm playing the long game."

Greg was a bit crooked, and looked like he had been a chain smoker even though he must have quit; he had the same yellow-brown teeth my old neighbor Mrs. Coulson had from nicotine, and his skin looked a little leathery. He could have been either ninety or forty, depending on which features she chose to cover up. After the initial glare at me he smiled a lot, but it was always a kind of bitter smile. He was clearly a bitter kind of guy, and I dimly remembered trying to invent backstories for him that might make him more sympathetic. I didn't succeed.

"Girl. Get me some water."

Yeah, it was all coming back. He was an old coworker of Bill's, and had offered him a job after he stopped being a case manager. A job... somewhere stupid. Somewhere I had felt was beneath Bill, though he didn't seem bothered. I wasn't sure how someone as nice as Bill could stand Greg. It seemed like the niceness should have a logical limit, like to be really nice you should also have to dislike people who were mean. Surely Bill wouldn't be nice to a Nazi or something, right? But for whatever reason he was extremely patient with Greg.

I didn't get him water, though. Bill did, after a moment, and I noticed that Greg didn't say thank you. Instead, after they'd chatted about news and gossip that didn't make a lot of sense to me and didn't seem relevant to anything, he looked at me and the smile fell from his face again.

"You should find this girl another place to live, William."

"She lives with me, Greg."

Greg continued to stare at me, and then shook his head sadly. "Like your jobs, William. Your hobbies. You know you can't keep any of your little projects going for long."

I looked at my memory-self, and she was clenching her fists so hard she was going to break the skin with her nails. I was pissed, or scared, or both. Probably this was right around the time I'd started to feel comfortable and didn't think I needed to run away, didn't think Bill was going to kick me out, and was honestly starting to think it could be a long term home. So having someone say that Bill should get rid of me, and implying that I was just some project he would get bored of and throw away... yeah, not great - even if Bill didn't look amused either.

"Good night, Greg." Bill stood up, and walked out the door. I followed without looking at Greg, but heard him chuckling as the door shut.

I stopped the memory - I was pretty sure I'd already seen the bit that came after this, actually. "Okay," I said to Katrin, "I think... I think Greg used to work with Bill at Coelestis? I don't know for sure, I feel pretty confident that they worked together somewhere, and this memory popped up while I was thinking about Coelestis so... yeah, that's my best guess. I swear I've seen Greg before this, maybe in another memory?"

The world around us flickered, and for just a second we were in a diner, all polished chrome and red vinyl seats. Huh. It was gone right away, with no clear reason that I would have seen it. I'd been in diners like that before, but I couldn't think of what it could have to do with Coelestis or Greg or anything.

"Do you know where that was?" Katrin asked, "I didn't get a good look."

"Yeah. It was a diner, a restaurant. I don't know why. I've been to places like that a few times... they had one in the mall near where I lived for a while, and there was one made to look like it was an old train car near where mom lived, it looked a lot like that on the inside. The place where... huh. There was a place I went on my birthday. I'd gone there when I turned sixteen and seventeen, and then I was planning on going on my eighteenth birthday but never made it because of the shit with Adrian stealing all my stuff and then... well, you know, ending up here. Could be a coincidence, but since I was going there the day I got yanked here it seemed like mentioning."

Katrin asked me to bring it back, but the memory wouldn't come. I tried to picture it, I concentrated, but... nothing. Memories flickered by, but they were of me sitting in Bill's kitchen rather than a diner. I was going to have to find them the long way, by going to a memory close to a time I went there and watching all the way through. I couldn't remember much about what I'd been up to on my seventeenth birthday but I could probably find it. My sixteenth... well. That one probably never happened, since I would have been with Bill. That left the time Bill himself took me there, which I could for sure find.

Katrin was writing on the whiteboard already. "I've put the diner on the list, but can you find anything else for Coelestis?"

I went back to that and tried some more, and eventually something snapped into view. I was standing in a wide alleyway, near Universal Servicing Systems - I recognized the spot - and I was holding Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown over a fire made from wooden pallets. There was a guy there, someone I'd never seen before, with a dark suit on. He didn't look happy. He was wearing a little silver badge, not like a cop though. It said one hundred fifty-three on it, or rather it had four hundred and thirteen which was the same thing in base six. It was, of course, written in Imperial.

"You want this fucking book so bad?" I asked.

He raised an eyebrow at me and took a step forward, and I dropped the novel into the flames and - for good measure - flipped more wood on top of it. The man stopped and then took a step back so he was in his original position. He pulled out a phone, tapped once on the screen, and then held it to his ear.

"Agent zero one five three. Yes. The book has been destroyed. ... Understood." He put the phone away, and tilted his head at me. "I understand you also were the recipient of another item of interest. While it may have found its way into your hands legitimately, that does not mean that it is rightfully yours. You know the item of which I speak?"

"That, you can have," I said, and pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle from my pocket. The man approached, and held out his hand when he was within reach. I just stood there, staring at the cloth rather than the man, and I could feel my heart pounding. I was so fucking nervous. The man took another step forward finally and tried to take the bundle by force, at which point I stabbed him in the kidney, grabbed his hand and pulled him towards me, and headbutted him in the nose as his face swung down. I tipped him into the fire and ran as he frantically tried to get untangled from the burning planks.

The memory shook, trying to change, but I held it firm. I wanted to see what happened next. I made my way to Universal Servicing Systems, and with practiced ease broke in through my secret route - a loose vent by a maintenance door that dropped me directly inside. I ran upstairs, reaching the floor I'd spent most of my time on, and stood there panting for a moment. Just as I'd caught my breath, the air rippled and motherfucking Greg stepped out of nothingness. Well, that confirmed he had magic.

"You've assaulted one of my men," he said, "which is a serious crime. I could have you thrown in jail, young lady."

"I'll tell everyone," I said, "I'll tell the whole world."

He smirked. "Nobody will believe you. Magic? Ridiculous. You're a mentally unstable girl from a broken home, and you've read too many books. Although... just to be safe... I'll most likely remove all memory of magic from you."

Now it was my turn to smirk. "With what? I smashed your stupid device to pieces."

"Oh, child. Who do you think made that device? I have more, but I can also just do it manually. First... let's make sure you're telling the truth."

Lines of energy, the same kind that Katrin had used in the past to tie people up, wrapped me in a cocoon. Greg marched up to me and planted a hand on my head, lips twitching as he silently cast a spell. "Where is the golden brooch?"

I struggled, and for a moment I was clearly trying to tell him to go fuck himself, but then words forced themselves out of my mouth. "I don't know. I lost it. I was going to go look for it after this."

He grunted. "And when you stole from my vault, did you take more than the memory device and the boots?"

"No."

Greg nodded. "Who have you told about all this?"

"Nobody."

"Not even William?"

"No."

"Have you written it down anywhere?" I shook my head but looked confused, and then as Greg continued to stare at me I muttered something about my pocket. He moved the magical bindings just enough to pull a note out, and looked it over. "Destroy device, burn book, find brooch, run away to Scotland. Hmm. A harmless enough note, especially with no context. Anything else?"

Once again I tried to make some comment about his mom, but all that came out was "no".

Greg put a hand on my chin, and smiled at me. "I think... considering how much trouble you've been... I may not bother removing your memories. I think... yes. I can just remove William's memories instead. Maybe you never came to live with him. Maybe you did, for a time, but then left again. I'll decide what's easiest once I'm in there. And for you? Well. Runaway children die all the time. None will miss you, will they?"

The look of rage in my eyes was so intense I was amazed Greg didn't just drop dead immediately. "Bill will look for me. He loves me."

"He does, doesn't he? William has always been a fool. A useful fool, however. Too useful for me to be rid of." Greg sighed. "You are correct, that he will look for you eventually. But you will be long dead, and William does not know what I am capable of. He thinks me an old, broken man, trapped behind a desk, doing menial work while I wait to die. He will find some mention of your death, someday, and he will feel sad for reasons he cannot fully comprehend. And then? He will move on with his life."

A ball of green flame appeared in Greg's hand. "Goodbye, Calliope Smith."

The memory ended in a flash of light and screams of pain.

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