Alice spent most of the next day reading the journal. The ball was in less than twenty-four hours, and she was running out of time to garner useful information.

She managed to work her way through the rest of the writing, and she figured out a few things in the process. Unfortunately, Xavier never wrote anything about his plans for the upcoming ball. Instead, he detailed the rest of his time with Falina, as if he needed to remind himself that she existed.

But... it wasn't quite love, or at least it wasn't love as Alice understood it. This seemed more like an obsession, like someone he needed to have nearby because it kept him in check. She had turned into more of an object than a person over time, a treasure lost to time, someone Xavier desperately reached for through the ever-thickening fog of his memories.

Why, though? Why focus on her like that? He didn't seem to have any future plans involving her, and she was long dead.

If he was incapable of loving her... then what was the point of this obsession?

Then again, maybe that was all love could be to him in his current state: obsession.

By the time Falina passed away, she was no longer the mentor. She was absolutely, entirely obedient to Xavier, and she was just as power-hungry as he was. In the end, that search for power killed her in a magical experiment. Xavier did not record the details of that day, but he did say that her loss was devastating. He felt he'd lost the one person who truly knew him, who understood what he'd gone through.

He also said that the same experiment that failed for Falina, killing her, succeeded for him.

It turned him into a spirit in exchange for his soul, protected from psychopomps, able to move freely in incorporeal form, never aging or dying.

He was still left with a mortal mind, though, and that was why he needed his journal. He'd found a way to slowly keep his memories moving forward, but what was lost could not be restored through any means so far available to him.

However, if he had more power, he might have the means to restore his memory, to become a person truly at his prime once more.

Xavier wanted to live forever, yes, but... he wanted to control that forever. He wanted to oversee not only his future, but the lives of everyone around him. Xavier wanted to build a world for himself, and in essence, he wanted to become the new god of that world.

The idea of a human elevating themselves to the status of a god only made Alice more convinced of what she needed to do. Anyone with that level of hubris and greed, anyone with that lack of emotion and empathy, couldn't be trusted to fight for anyone except themselves.

He needed to be gone. Permanently. Trapped, caged, or dead— she cared less and less as time went on. Granted, Alice wasn't sure she had the stomach to kill someone. If anyone had earned it though, if anyone had plotted and planned and murdered their way to where they were, and if anyone planned to keep going, it was Xavier.

That didn't make her feel all that much better about her chosen solution to this situation, though.

She shoved her hand into her dress pocket, feeling for the now familiar, cool metal of the pocket watch. In her other pocket, she felt for the bottle of holy water— she didn't have a plan for it at the moment like she did for the watch, but it made her feel safer.

"Come on, Missy," she said firmly. "I've got a job for you."

"Reporting for duty," Missy said cheerfully, scrambling up from her position curled on the pillow.

"Let's go. Quick," Alice said, beckoning her forward.

She didn't know how much time they had before Xavier returned, but it probably wasn't much. Alice picked up Missy and practically sprinted down the hallway, tracing the now familiar paths down to the apothecary room.

Luckily, it didn't seem like anything had been disturbed since their last visit. That made her feel a little more confident. At least there was one place inside the palace that Xavier wasn't aware she'd been.

Missy hopped down on the counter, little feet making pawprints in some of the dust that hadn't yet been swept away in their previous trips to this room. While she investigated some of the mysterious books and jars on the shelves, Alice got to work.

Alice was not a master herbalist. However, she knew a few things from Ellie. She knew more things from the animals in the woods. Combined, she knew one very important thing: smelling like the stinky, wet ground in the fall woods made you invisible in the fall woods.

As she started pulling bottles from the dusty shelves, Missy sniffed at them and hissed.

"What are you doing? I thought you didn't know how to make herbal brews," she squeaked, skittering a little farther down the counter.

"I don't," she said flatly, starting to open various bottles and dump them into a bowl. "I need you to get a message back to Ellie. Ya think you can do that for me?"

"I'd tell ya I could if the creek don't rise, but I'm a good swimmer, too," she said proudly.

"You be careful, though. I can't lose you."

"Oh, you're stuck with me for a long time, trust me. You're too much fun."

"I mean it, Missy," Alice said firmly. "You better come back."

"I'm comin' back with help behind me," she squeaked. "Now, get me the message."

"Gimmie a minute," she mumbled, tossing her bright orange curls over her shoulder as she pounded the herbs and water into a pulp. The whole mixture quickly turned brown and slimy, looking particularly unpleasant in the low lighting. It also smelled unpleasant, though Alice resisted the urge to pinch her nose.

It was perfect.

"Stay still for me a minute, okay?" Alice scooped up some of the slimy slop on her hand as she spoke, rubbing it between her fingers to check for texture.

Missy hissed a little, but she didn't run when Alice practically ground the mixture into her fur, working it into the hairs like it was shampoo.

"Ewwwwww, it smells!" the possum whined, shuddering and fidgeting.

"This'll help hide ya from anything tryin' to sniff ya out on your way there. It should last about eight hours, I think," Alice mumbled, picking up another handful of the foul-smelling rub.

"You owe me for this," Missy grumbled, hissing something in pure possum tongue that Alice couldn't quite translate.

"For the message?" She kept rubbing in the goo, trying to stay as calm as possible. No point in alarming Missy.

"No, for making me smell like this! I know I live in the woods, but I bathe," she groaned.

"Okay. I'll get you a treat if this all works out, I promise," Alice said.

Missy seemed perfectly happy with that solution.

Alice, on the other hand, just prayed that they'd all make it out of this alive. Every new piece of information seemed to make it clear how dire their situation really could be, and she couldn't risk anything going wrong. It wasn't just her life on the line now. She didn't even want to think about what Xavier could accomplish, given enough time to plan for it.

They had to stop him here.

Missy headed out immediately after Alice tied a note around her neck. There shouldn't be a problem with finding the path— the little possum had a good sense of direction. She just hoped that Missy could deliver the note in time.

On the way back from the apothecary room, Alice made a brief stop in the gardens, calling out for Florian by the oak tree. She didn't have much time. With any luck, he'd be there, considering it was one of his usual haunts, but she wouldn't be able to wait long if—

"You called?" Florian asked, eyebrows raised as he stepped out from behind the tree.

She could have cried with relief. There was one more piece of information she needed, and he was the only person who had it.

"You had to exchange true names to complete the bargain, right? What's his?" Alice asked, jumping straight to the point.

"Xavier Havelock was the name he gave me. Why?" He sounded hesitant, shoulders tensing. On some level, it was hard to blame him. The entire situation was tense, and they were running incredibly short on time with only a vague idea of a plan.

"I've got an idea. Need his full name for it, and it's not in the journal," she mumbled, fidgeting with her skirts. It wasn't her favorite idea, certainly, but it was the best one she'd had so far, and the most likely to work.

"Why do I think I'm not going to enjoy this idea?" Florian sighed, shuffling his weight from foot to foot, hands shoved in his pockets.

Her ideas weren't historically that bad, were they? Risky, yes. That was something she was working on, though! And this wasn't risky so much as... rash.

Rash, and also one of the only options available.

"I think I'm gonna have to use my emergency out," Alice said, resting her hand on the outside of her skirt pocket.

Florian's eyes went wide as he realized what was in her pocket. It had been in her pocket for weeks now, ever since she found it in the hidden desk compartment.

"You think it'll work?" he asked, cutting his eyes back up towards her face.

"I think it's worth a shot." Not to mention that it was the only thing they had left to try that stood any consistent chance of working. Reliability was the best they could hope for at the moment.

"Fair point. I haven't been able to think of anything else with as much of a chance to work as this, and... I can't say I'd be upset to see him gone," he admitted. Though Florian couldn't meet her eyes and his posture was slumped, she couldn't blame him for feeling that way. Xavier had stolen his body and his life, but not only that, he'd stolen the memory of Florian's existence. It was

"I've been turning things over in my head, and this is it, yeah. At first I thought maybe I could turn the ritual around on him and steal his magic instead," Alice said, crossing her arms over her chest. "But I... don't know how. Also, I'd still have to sleep with him, and I really don't wanna do that."

"Thank all that is holy," Florian said with a sigh, leaning back against the tree.

A smile tugged at Alice's mouth, and she couldn't quite force it back down.

"Oh?" she asked innocently. "Why's that?"

Florian floundered, suddenly very fascinated by the grass under his feet.

"Well,,, it's... it's just that I don't want you to do anything you'll regret."

"Nothin' at all to do with the fact that it's your body?"

"If I'm honest..." Florian trailed off with a sigh.

"What?" Alice pressed, laughing, but her laughter stopped when she saw the look on his face.

He seemed almost shy. His pale eyes settled on the grass, the tree roots, and then her face, but quickly back to the flowers in the distance.

"You said he seemed like he had the capacity to care," he said slowly. "I think it's bleeding into my body... from... me." His voice grew softer with every word.

It was adorable.

"Well that... makes sense why he suddenly developed... something," Alice stammered, absolutely floundering. She felt like a little girl with a crush, but the situation was already much more serious than that, and what she felt for Florian was far more than a casual crush.

"I don't think he's ever cared about anything, at least in the fifty years that I've known him," Florian grumbled, blushing as he tried to change the subject.

"He did at one point, I think," Alice said, frowning as she thought of the way he wrote in his journal. "It's gone now, though."

"What are you talking about?"

"I think he did love Falina— from the journal. Once. Maybe," she said hesitantly. "Not now, though. Now it's like... she's a fixation or something, based on the way he writes about her."

"What... happened?" Florian asked, blinking.

"He forgot her, I guess. At least partly," she said with a shrug. "At least... he forgot how he felt, I think. I don't know, though. He might have just forgotten that he knew her, too."

"She's a fixation that he forgot? That's a very poor fixation, if you ask me," Florian grumbled.

"I don't get how it works, either, but I think we snatched something more important than we realized when Willow took the journal," Alice said, pursing her lips. "He says over and over in the writing that it's there to help him remember. I think... something happened when Willow and I removed it. He didn't have it to remind him, so he started changing."

"Changing... how?"

"He seemed a little softer when I came back," Alice admitted. "It was almost like he... had the capacity to care, but it was really, really fleeting."

She still didn't quite understand where that had come from. It did make sense that he'd gotten those emotions from Florian somehow, considering that they were effectively sharing a body. It didn't make sense that it had taken this long for them to show up, though.

Florian had showed her kindness from the beginning. He'd been genuinely caring from the very start. Logically, shouldn't that have somehow taken root in Xavier during the past decades, before Alice even arrived at the Shadow Court?

"What if the journal isn't just to help him remember?" Florian asked slowly. "What if it's more?"

Alice blinked.

"I... don't follow," she said.

Though a part of her was happy she felt comfortable enough to admit not knowing something, and without feeling stupid at all in front of Florian, a bigger part of her was simply confused. What was more than memory?

"What if it's an anchor for his entire personality?" he explained, clapping his hands together. "Without it, he's lost his memories, and he's more susceptible to changing into someone else. He'd be a different person without fixating on who he was and what he wanted."

"And he can't stand the idea of losing the future he worked so hard to plan for," Alice said slowly nodding along. "That makes sense."

"Can we use that to our advantage?"

"I don't know," Alice admitted. "It might take too long."

"That, and..." Florian muttered something under his breath, looking annoyed.

"Eh? What's that? Speak up."

"I don't like him drawing off my emotions," Florian said, sighing. "It feels invasive, not to mention unfair to you. He's not even really feeling what he's feeling... as strange as that sounds."

In any other case, that sentence wouldn't have made any sense at all. However, there weren't exactly many cases of body stealing that it would apply to. Alice certainly hoped there weren't any more cases out there, at least. This one was difficult enough to deal with on its own.

"It's okay," Alice mumbled, forcing a small smile. "I've seen enough of him to know what's really hidin' under there."

Florian slid a little closer to her, so near that if he were corporeal, she might have been able to feel his breath on her skin. He reached out and traced his ghostly hand across the curve of her cheek, but Alice didn't feel a thing.

"You have no idea how badly I want to touch you," he admitted, pale eyes fixed on hers.

"You could. The times you're in your real body." She ignored the heat in her cheeks and tried to maintain eye contact, but it was incredibly difficult to do so.

"I won't," he said, shaking his head. "I won't until my body is mine again."

"You don't... feel the same, ya know," Alice mumbled.

"What do you mean?" he asked, brow furrowing.

"He feels cold to me. It's like there's no blood in your veins when he's in control, but you..."

"What do I feel like?" Florian asked, a small, mischievous smile on his face.

There was only one word she could think of.

"Sunshine."