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Weird.

“Maybe he’s a witch looking to brew up a potion?” I suggested.

“He doesn’t know who he is,” Harker reminded me. “And he doesn’t have any magic either.”

“Ok, but it could be an echo, a last memory burnt into his mind right at the moment this happened to him.”

“But what happened to him?” Jace wondered.

Yeah, he totally didn’t believe this was all because of a magic waste puddle either. That was just a cover story. A big fat lie to hide the fact that the Legion didn’t have a clue what was happening to these people.

“Whatever happened to that guy, it was something so traumatic that he rememberedsomething,” I said. “Even if it’sjust an echo, that echo might be the clue we need to figure out what happened. And maybe, just maybe, we can track that clue back to the source—and figure out what’s causing people to lose their memories before the problem balloons beyond just a few isolated incidents.”

Jace nodded along as I spoke. “I’ll get the Interrogators on it right away,” he said.

Honestly, I didn’t think the Legion’s Interrogators were the right people for this job. They didn’t exactly have a subtle touch, and a subtle touch was precisely what that man needed right now. His mind was broken enough already without the Interrogators taking a metaphorical sledgehammer to it.

I would have searched his mind myself, but that could take a very long time given his current state. And I didn’t have a lot of time. I had to go save Bella before the Night Prince killed her. I just had to hope the Interrogators would exercise some modicum of restraint when they questioned the prisoner.

“Bella is on a world called Midnight?” Harker said to me. “A place in the Veil’s Forgotten Territories?”

There was something about the look in his eyes that had me worried.

“Harker, wait,” I said.

“I’ve already been waiting for over two months, Leda,” he growled under his breath. “I have to go.”

He was going to run off alone after Bella. I just knew it.

“Wait, Harker.” I caught his arm as he turned away. “Vertigo said my family and I have to be the ones to save Bella.”

Harker glanced at Vertigo, who was humming to herself. “You know better than to take advice from lunatics, Leda.”

“If you could just wait a few hours for me to set my plan into motion…”

“I’m sorry, Leda.” He peeled my hand off his arm. “But I’m not just going to sit here and wait to see if your plan will workout. Bella doesn’t have that much time. The telepath said Bella’s going to die if she goes into the Night Prince’s fortress alone. I will not let that happen.”

“And you think I will?” I demanded. “Bella is my sister, Harker!”

“Then you can’t argue with my wanting to save her,” he said, then turned and walked away.

“Of all the stubborn, hardheaded…”

Jace’s chiming phone cut me off before I started swearing. His eyes panned down the screen, then his shoulders relaxed.

“Good news?” I asked.

“Yes.” He tucked his phone into his leather jacket. “My father survived the Nectar. He’s an archangel now.”

I patted him on the back, grinning. “That is good news!”

Jace glanced at me, brows arched. “Hmm.”

“I mean it,” I told him. “Your dad and I might not exactly be best buddies, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him dead. Though I bet he’s going to be even more insufferable now that people have to call him ‘General Fireswift’.”

“Yeah.” Jace inhaled slowly, then exhaled twice as slowly. “Well, I guess I’d better go pay my respects to the Legion’s newest archangel.”

He sighed like he wasn’t looking forward to seeing his father. They had a complicated relationship, and mostly because Xerxes Fireswift’s idea of father-son bonding time was to break Jace’s bones. He was an avid subscriber to the suffering-builds-character school of thought. In fact, a lot of angels were.