Page 128 of Magical Mischief

I flipped to the next page, and my blood chilled.

Gideon is getting close. We told him he can’t have what he’s searching for because it does not exist. It only made him angrier.

So she knows what he’s searching for?

More notes. Diagrams. A sketch of the Academy’s central ward system that was more detailed than anything I’d seen in the official records.

And then another chilling note.

Gideon won’t stop until he gets what he wants. The question is whether we will give it to him.

My heart hammered in my chest.

“You said not all of these are hers?”

She nodded. “Same period, give or take a year. I think they knew each other. Maybe worked together, but this person didn’t appear to be at the Academy. The other one’s handwriting is messier. Angrier. You’ll know which ones I mean when you get to them.”

I glanced at the stack again, heart ticking faster now. “Then why would my grandma have someone else’s journals?”

“I don’t know.”

“She never told me any of this,” I said.

“I don’t think she told anyone,” Bella replied. “And whatever they were working on, it wasn’t sanctioned. Many of these entries reference places and practices that are no longer allowed. They haven’t been allowed for at least fifty years. And something else. I think they were trying to find the source of the Academy’s instability. Or maybe it's origin. It’s hard to tell.”

“Only to strengthen it, I hope.”

I turned another page. There were pressed flowers between two sheets—wilted, darkened with age. Next to them, my grandmother had written:

Only bloom when the leyline is disturbed.

“I thought I knew her,” I said.

“You knew the parts she shared,” Bella said quietly. “That doesn’t mean the rest wasn’t real.”

I closed the journal gently and set it back on the stack.

“I’m going to read all of them,” I said.

“I figured you would.”

I looked around the room. No chairs, candles, or lingering scent of warm tea or fire. Just old paper and secrets.

But I’d come this far.

“I’m headed to my room. Come there if you need anything.”

I nodded and pulled the stool from under the table, sat, and untied the next journal.

Outside, the world kept spinning. But down here, in the belly of the Academy, it was just me, my grandmother’s words, and a past that wasn’t finished with me yet.

I read through half of the first journal before the words started to blur. It wasn’t just fatigue or the poor lighting. It was the sheer weight of it all. Each line of my grandmother’s looping script felt like a stone added to my ribs. She hadn’t been scribbling down idle thoughts or student gossip. These were careful notes, observations, and theories. The kind of writing that came from someone chasing something they weren’t supposed to chase.

I closed the book slowly, pressing my hand against the cover as if it might pulse with heat or echo some long-forgotten spell. The leather was warm from my touch. The room had grown quiet, more so than before. As if even the air knew better than to interrupt.

I stood, the stool scraping softly against the stone floor, and stretched my back. The journals were still in their fragile towers on the table. But the shelves lining the walls… hadn’t called to me until now.

There were no labels. No tidy sections. Just an uneven sprawl of old bindings, frayed scrolls, loose pages stacked inside cracked folders. The kind of mess that only exists when no one’s touched something for decades.