~Astra~

For the first time in a very long time, I found myself in the void.

It hit me as I glanced around, trying to quickly get my bearings, that I hadn't been here since before... well, before everything. I hadn't ever been in the habit of trying to come here myself, of course, but Cassie had been calling me back here pretty consistently every few weeks, it felt like. But now it was nearly November, and I hadn't had time to notice.

Or, more accurately, I hadn't really wanted to noticed. To face her.

I still didn't want to, honestly. She was standing in front of me now, watching me. In her nightgown, with that forlorn expression on her face, she looked every bit the Victorian-era ghost. I just wanted her to smile, break the image, make me not feel so bad. I bit my lip. "Hi, Cassie."

"Wren said you didn't mean to leave me behind."

"I... I didn't. She's right."

"She said that sometimes grownups make promises they can't keep."

"Yeah." I crouched down so I was at eye level with her. "I shouldn't have done that. I'm so sorry."

Cassie just stared at me, eyes wide and blinking as she hugged herself tightly. She looked like she was searching for something, but I hadn't said or done that something yet. I swallowed. Had I really messed this up? Absolutely. I should've tried to talk to her that night, but I hadn't been able to. I should've apologized, explained, done something to help her understand. She was so little, and I'd just left her to fend for herself in more ways than one. That had been so unfair of me.

I closed my eyes and sighed. "I handled everything wrong. My friends and I, we underestimated it all. A lot of people got hurt that night." Cassie nodded hesitantly, as if she was remembering it. I had no idea what she'd witnessed, and wasn't sure I wanted to know. "I'm sorry you were one of the ones that got hurt," I said softly.

She glanced down. "I told Wren you weren't my friend anymore."

"That's because I wasn't a very good friend, hmm?" She glanced up in surprise, and I gave her a grim smile. "I'm so sorry. I know that doesn't fix it all, but I am. And I'd love to be your friend again someday, if that's okay. It doesn't need to be today, if you don't want."

Cassie considered that for a moment. "If you're my friend, too, that means I'll have three friends, right?"

"Three?"

"Nico, and Wren, and you," she said, counting on her fingers as she went. "That's three."

I blinked. Nico? Like, Nico Jasper? He was her friend? Now's not the time for that, I reminded myself. I needed to focus on Cassie. "Yeah, I guess you would have three, then."

"That's better than two, isn't it?"

Was it manipulative of me to say yes? Maybe a little bit, but this seemed like it was forgivable, if so. "I think it is."

She smiled brightly. "Okay!" Before I could ask if that meant we were friends again, she hugged me tightly. "Did you know I have a tutor now?"

"A tutor?"

"He's teaching me how to read. And magic!"

"You're learning magic?"

Cassie shrugged. "Well, only a little. Aunt Katreena says I can't have my own wand until I turn eleven, but there are things I can learn now. I can make it light up!"

"That's so cool!" I managed to say, even though I really just wanted to caution her away from anything 'Aunt Katreena' was having her do.

"Will you ever come see me?" Cassie asked. "I can show you."

Ah, there it was. I pursed my lips. "I want to. I would love to see you do that." I hesitated, then decided it didn't really matter. Stillens apparently couldn't see in her head, so I could say what I liked. "My friend and I, we're trying really hard right now to get to you and Wren. For it to actually work this time. And... I don't know if it will. But I'm going to try."

Cassie nodded seriously. "You can't promise, though?"

"No. I'm sorry."

"Okay." She seemed disappointed, but nodded again.

I cast around for something else to talk about. "So, um, you've been hanging out with Wren?"

"No."

"What?" I blinked in confusion. "But you just said you'd been talking to Wren."

"We weren't friends until tonight," she said matter-of-factly, as if that explained everything.

"Why not?" I couldn't imagine that had been voluntary. Wren knew who Cassie was, after all. Did this mean she'd been locked in the dungeon? From the way Cassie had been talking about her just now, I'd assumed she'd been at least in the manor, able to have conversations with the little girl. And why would they suddenly be friends tonight?

Cassie was staring at me as if I was the one who wasn't making any sense. "Because she was your friend," she said, tilting her head. "I thought you didn't like me anymore, so she wouldn't, either."

"Oh." Well... maybe that made sense. I shook my head. "That's not true, so you don't need to worry about that."

"I know." Cassie gave an exasperated sigh that was so adorable I nearly laughed. Instead, I struggled to keep a smile off my face as she explained, "Wren told me."

"Did she also tell you to come talk to me?"

Cassie nodded. "She wants us to be friends again. And she said she wanted to know if you were all right."

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine." My eyes widened a little. "Is she with you?" The little girl nodded, as if surprised I needed to ask. I suppose it made sense that she would be, but I'd wanted to make sure. "Can you stop looking at me, and see her?"

"Why?"

I hesitated. The explanation involved reminding her of last time this had happened, which I don't think was a happy memory. Last time, she'd been with Magnus Caldwell, and when I'd touched her arm, I'd been able to hear him.

And I desperately wanted to hear Wren.

I knelt down and held my hand out to her. She took it without question, still blinking at me curiously. "I think, if you're looking at Wren, I'll be able to hear what you're hearing."

"Oh, okay." Cassie shrugged, then squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. When they popped back open, they were blank and white, and she was kneeling on the floor, but I was hardly paying attention to that. She glanced to the side, smiling, and said, "Hi! I'm back!"

I'd braced myself to hear Wren, but I still caught my breath when her voice said, "Oh, already?"

"Well, only partly." Cassie held up my hand. "I'm still talking to her, but I'm looking at you now."

"Oh," Wren said, in a tone that sounded confused. "All right."

"Tell her I say hello," I said quietly.

"Astra says hello!"

"You can tell her the same thing," Wren said softly. "How is she?"

"I'm all right," I responded. "Tell her I'm not the one I'm worried about."

"She's all right," Cassie repeated, "and she says she's not the one she's worried about? I don't know who she's worried about, though."

There was a pause before Wren asked, "Cassie, can she hear me?"

"Yeah!"

Another pause. "I... that's amazing. How?"

"I don't know! She told me she could!" Cassie glanced in my general direction. "How does it work?"

"I have no idea." I chuckled. "I don't really understand any of this, to be honest."

"She says she doesn't know," Cassie relayed.

"Oh, okay." Wren hesitated. I couldn't imagine what she was thinking, of course, since I couldn't see her face. I could imagine, though. She was probably hesitating because she was conflicted, because she was still angry at me for leaving her there, for dragging her there in the first place, for not having the strength to kill her when she asked me to.

"Cassie, tell her I'm sorry, please," I said quietly. "I'm really sorry, about everything."

"She said that she's sorry," Cassie repeated. "About everything?"

"You don't have anything to be sorry about," Wren said promptly.

"No, I do. Tell her I do. And I am really sorry."

"She says she does, and she is sorry." Cassie was frowning, clearly unable to figure out what we were talking about. "Why are you sorry?"

A thought occurred to me. "Cassie, do you think you could hold her hand, too?"

"Why?"

"I just want to test something, is all."

Cassie frowned in my general direction, but reached her hand out to grasp something I couldn't see. A moment later, I heard the smile in Wren's voice as she asked, "What are you doing now?"

I pursed my lips, closing my eyes and praying this would work. Somehow. I didn't understand why it would, of course, but I didn't understand much of anything that happened in this void. "Wren?"

She gasped immediately. "I... Astra?"

"Oh my gosh, Wren, I miss you so much," I whispered, because anything louder and I might not have been able to keep myself from crying.

"Are you all right?"

"Of course. Are you? I'm so sorry, Wren. This is all my fault."

"It's not," she said softly. "Don't feel bad. I'm okay."

I couldn't see her, but with my eyes closed I could imagine she was actually sitting as close as she sounded. I resisted the urge to reach out to her. "I love you, you know."

"I know. I love you too." Wren's voice wavered only a little. "There is something important, though, that I was going to ask Cassie to tell you? Stillens has someone tracking you, and I'm afraid she's really powerful—"

"Is it that Asian girl?"

"You've seen her?"

"Ran into once, yeah." I pursed my lips. "She blew up all the streetlamps in Purdue's neighborhood. I only got away because I had the cloak. And she found the camera I set up."

"You need to be very careful, Astra. She's dangerous."

"We're staying low. Don't worry."

"We?"

"I..." Maybe it wasn't a good idea to let her know I was with James? It was one more thing she'd need to hide, after all. So was this whole conversation, really. Maybe I was already making things worse. "I'm staying low, I meant."

She took a moment to say, "Oh, okay."

"I miss you," I said softly. "I just—"

"Cassie, are you all right?"

My eyes popped back open, and I realized that Cassie's hand was shaking in mine. The little girl had squeezed her eyes closed, and seemed to be concentrating very hard. But her face was getting very pale, and it wasn't just her hand that was shaking, but her whole body. Like she was holding us both together, creating this connection. Maybe she was.

What I wanted to do was close my eyes again and pretend that I hadn't seen anything. I wanted to talk to Wren. I wanted to ask her so many more things, hear her voice and be convinced that she was still here, still alive, if not okay.

But Cassie clearly was struggling with this. She wasn't strong enough to keep whatever connection this was going for much longer, and I couldn't. ask that of her. She was a child.

I let go of her hand. "Tell her goodbye for me, Cassie. I think you should go back, now."

Cassie's eyes opened slowly, as if she was exhausted. She blinked in my direction, eyes no longer white. "Oh, are you done?" Before I could answer, she slumped to the side. A mistiness settled around her, and I sat back. Watched as Wren, invisible to me, pulled her into her arms. She must have carried her over to her bed, which appeared as Cassie was laid down in it. The blankets were pulled over her by invisible hands, though I could tell where Wren was. I swallowed hard, blinking the threat of tears away, then closed my eyes tightly and willed myself out of the void.

I opened my eyes to the dark of our hotel room. I could hear James's heavy breathing from the other bed, telling me he was asleep. No need to wake him up. I would remember all this in the morning.

Would Cassie be okay? I hadn't realized it would be that draining on her, or I wouldn't have tried. Surely she would be okay. Six-year-olds were pretty resilient, after all. Before I really had time to think about it much, I'd drifted back to sleep.

As expected, James was much more interested in hearing about Wren than about Cassie the next morning. I told him every detail at least three times until he was satisfied I hadn't left anything out. Afterwards, he grew kind of moody. I didn't press him to talk. I didn't really know how to talk about it, either.

I missed Wren, and I felt horribly guilty about the whole situation, but there are only so many times you can say that before it starts to mean less than your feelings. We'd hit that point a long time ago, and since neither of us seemed to have the ability or motivation to delve deeper, we'd spent a lot of time not talking about any of it.

We'd restarted our search for the Langston house. We still hadn't figured out who Langston was, but that was less important. I'd had the bright idea of getting a map (yes, it only took four months to think of this) and try to figure out logical places based on what we already knew. We had the manor's location marked, as well as Purdue and Hart. We'd decided to narrow our search for Langston to a few villages that might reasonably complete a triangle around the manor.

Our search methods involved a lot of pulling into villages and snooping around. James would walk around the streets, looking for signs of wizardry, while I would sneak through back gardens under the cloak. So far, while we had found a few pubs, nothing unusual had shown up anywhere.

We were still watching for the girl, but even with Wren's warning, I'd begun to relax a little. We hadn't seen any sign of her for weeks.

Grudgingly, James had let our excursions out to wizarding pubs continue, on the condition that we never visit the same pub twice. He'd practiced transfiguring his own face and hair until he felt confident enough to do it on me, so we'd done away with the cheap makeup and wigs. James still kept the cloak in his bag, though, ready to toss it over me and make me slip out if necessary.

The news was bleak, to be sure. Apparently, the Quibbler had started the rumor circling that Kyler Dillam, head editor of the Prophet, worked for Stillens. Instead of responding directly, the Ministry had simply outlawed the Quibbler, claiming that it was a propaganda machine that was causing nearly as much damage as Stillens himself.

I knew that hadn't stopped the circulation of the Quibbler, but the DA had to be struggling to get it to people now. How could they convince anyone else of the truth if all that was allowed were lies?

Thoughts like those filled my thoughts as I wandered through people's back gardens, checking for signs of lingering magic with a spell James had taught me. There had been nothing to find so far. Every tiny village we went to had no grander secrets than the next one, it seemed, and I was beginning to lose hope that we would ever find Langston. Who knew there were so many villages in Wales?

One afternoon, I sat in the back of the truck waiting for James to come back from asking in at the post office if there were any families named Langston in town. From the safety of the invisibility cloak, I watched the cars passing by and the people walking around. The truck was parked outside a shop on the main road, so it didn't seem out of place. I watched as mums walked by with their small children in tow, school-aged kids walked home from class, old men sat smoking on doorsteps. It looked the same as every other village I'd seen this week, and I was beginning to get bored of it all, honestly. A middle-aged lady called to her friend down the street. A man dropped his shopping bag, and all his vegetables went rolling all over the sidewalk. A kid darted through a group of old women and nearly knocked them down. All in all, nothing that exciting.

And there was James, stepping out of the post office and starting back to the truck. He glanced around at every window, doorway, and alley, barely concealing his paranoia with a play at nonchalance. At least none of the muggles around him seemed to notice. In fact, a group of teenagers took so little notice of him that they walked right into him when he was looking the other direction. I stifled a laugh (wouldn't do to have disembodied laughter radiating from the truck) as James quickly reached out to steady the girl who had actually run into him.

But then he froze, face growing paler as he stared at her. As her friends carried on, hardly seeming to notice that she wasn't following, James and the girl stared at each other.

I realized it was an Asian girl.

Bloody hell.

He recovered himself quickly and started to cross the street, but I could see his face betraying the fact that he'd recognized her, too, once he was past her. I'd already leapt down from the back of the truck, careful to keep the cloak over me. "I'm here," I whispered as he reached the door. He barely nodded in acknowledgement, then opened the front door and tossed his bag into the cab of the truck. While he glanced around the street as casually as possible, pretending to take his time, I slipped past him into the car.

As soon as the door had closed, James cursed under his breath. "You saw her, too?"

"Yeah." Still under the cloak, I turned in my seat to peer out the back window. She was still standing across the street, watching the truck with mild curiosity, as if she was really just some random muggle watching the fairly attractive guy who had walked into her drive off. But I recognized her. And though I knew she couldn't see me, meeting her eyes still gave me chills.

"She's not following us," I updated him as we drove off. "But she's watching."

"Well, we're done in this village, then."

"Wait, no!" We rounded a corner, and I pulled the cloak off once we were out of sight. "Doesn't the fact that she's here confirm that Langston probably is, too?"

"Not necessarily. She might just be good at following us." James glanced up and down the side street we were passing before saying, "I'm not sure that it would matter even if Langston was here, though."

"What? Why?"

"What'll we do if we find them? Set up another camera for her to take down?"

"I mean, I guess?" I shrugged. "What else are we supposed to do?"

"Honestly?" James glanced over his shoulder one last time as we drove out of town. "If our goal is to rescue Wren, and Cassie, I don't think finding Langston will help. We've known all along we probably wouldn't be able to use the tunnels, right?"

Well, yeah. That was true. But watching the tunnels had given us a goal, something to work towards. Without that, I wasn't sure what we were supposed to be doing.

"Maybe it's time we actually started thinking about what this will take," James said after a few moments. "Maybe we should start focusing on ways we can actually do this, instead of putting it off."

"What do you mean?"

"I think we should just start staking out the manor?" James was gripping the steering wheel tightly and keeping his eyes on the road, as if he was very purposefully not looking at me. Like he was afraid of my reaction. "See what protective enchantments it has, how easy it would be to break in? We've got the cloak, and if we take our time, we might be able to find some blind spots where we can slip in. At the very least, I doubt they'd be expecting us to be that direct. It might throw our friend back there off our trail. But... I mean... what do you think?"

Honestly? I was completely on board, but that in itself made me a little wary. I knew I was prone to rushing into things too quickly. Things I thought were logical and safe usually weren't, and I was constantly being told I needed to be more careful. So if I was agreeing with this plan immediately, maybe it wasn't really good?

"I... I don't know. Is that safe?"

"I don't know that anything is really safe," James said. "I'm not saying we run in there unprepared. I'm saying we start staking the manor out. Learn everything about it. Make sure we think of everything that could go wrong, and plan for that. It could be another month or two before we even start to have an actual plan."

I bit my lip. "We're not rushing into it?"

"Absolutely not."

"Are you sure?"

"Astra, the only thing I've wanted to do for the past five months is go straight to Stillens front door and challenge him to a duel. I promise, I'm not going to let us rush into anything. That wouldn't help Wren at all."

"I... okay. If you're sure."

"I am." James glanced at me. "Don't worry."

I almost told him I couldn't help but worry, after what happened last time, but I didn't. It wouldn't be helpful to bring that up. Instead, I managed a weak smile. "Okay. I'll try not to."

"It's all going to work out. Not because we're going to try hard, or do our best, but because we're going to think absolutely everything through." James's expression grew hard as he watched the road ahead. "Whatever happens, I'm not going to leave without her. We'll get her out."

~~~~

Question of the Day: If you're on TikTok, what side of TikTok are you on?

Answer: Hello, yes, I am nearly 21 years old and I spend entirely too much time on TikTok. I'm not afraid to admit it. Consistently, I'm on Star Wars TikTok and political TikTok. I end up on booktok or Harry Potter TikTok or ATLA TikTok or college students with anxiety TikTok pretty often too, though!

Vote and comment!

~Elli

Word count: 3752