10. Sympathetic Connections #2
It was a brilliant, comforting theory—and disturbingly compatible with almost everything they had seen. It explained the timing, the missing time, and the lack of external malicious energy. Maybe Garrett was simply triggering an old booby trap left behind by his captors.
Ginnie was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when Dr. Darcy Thorntree let out a loud, dry snort and tapped her pen against her tablet in a staccato rhythm. "You're telling me his subconscious mind may have built a Magical filing cabinet out of household jewelry and hair accessories?"
Ginnie leveled a flat stare at the young physician. "That is an offensively simplistic description, Doctor."
"Is it inaccurate?" Darcy countered, raising an eyebrow.
A long, heavy pause stretched across the kitchen. "Not entirely," Ginnie admitted reluctantly.
"If my mind is collecting these connections…” Garrett interrupted. “…why am I doing it? What is the function of the road?"
"That," Ginnie whispered, her eyes tracking the sunlight on the floorboards, "is what frightens me. Magic of this caliber doesn't organize itself without an objective. A pathway goes somewhere. A circle does something. A collection always serves a purpose."
"We need to run a full inventory," Garrett commanded, his tactical training taking control.
He stood up, his voice turning clipped and authoritative.
"If this thing is collecting personal anchors, we need to know exactly what else is missing from this property.
We don't panic. We sweep the sectors systematically. "
The Heatherton Homestead transformed into an active search grid within fifteen minutes. There was no chaotic shouting, just the quiet, methodical focus of an elite Guard unit.
Sydney spent an hour systematically checking her vanity, her closets, and her personal storage boxes.
Ginnie went with Carrick, and they ran a high-security sweep of the main house's safes, desk drawers, and ceremonial wardrobes.
Grey and Star coordinated an inventory of every single item they had touched, unpacked, or moved over the last week.
Garrett had been around almost everyone in the family during his good days. If his subconscious was hunting unique signatures, the potential target list was massive, but Ginnie knew they could find whatever had been taken… If anything had been taken.
By midday, the family reconvened in the kitchen of the main house. The results were negative across the board – until Ginnie walked up to the island, her brow furrowed as she looked at her daily planner.
"My fountain pen is gone," she said, her voice dropping into a tight, quiet register.
Sydney looked up. "The heavy silver one?"
"Yes," Ginnie nodded, her chest tightening. "The one Carrick gave me after we got home from our honeymoon. It’s solid silver, engraved with my initials, and I use it every single day to log my work. It’s completely caked in my personal resonance."
The reality of the collection hit the room with a cold, terrifying precision.
The Ribbon: Highly personal to Sydney.
The Tie Tack: Deeply connected to Carrick and Alastair's heritage.
The Pen: Infused with Ginnie’s Necromantic energy.
If Ginnie's theory was right, Garrett's subconscious wasn't hunting for legendary artifacts or weapons of war; it was seeking the everyday objects that carried the deepest, most concentrated spiritual signatures of the people who loved him.
"Where did you stash them, Garrett?" Grey asked, his legendary focus locking onto his brother. "If your subconscious is filing them away, they have to be somewhere on this property. The creek bank? The attic?"
"I don't know," Garrett muttered, his hands gripping the edge of the counter. "The camera logs showed I never left the bed last night. If I took Ginnie's pen, I don't know when the hell I did it."
"Let me find out," Ginnie said, stepping forward.
She didn't need an elaborate ritual or a dangerous summoning circle.
She knew the exact, intimate frequency of her own fountain pen.
Pulling a small, elegant silver pendulum from her pocket, suspended by a delicate silk thread, Ginnie held it directly over the center of the kitchen island.
Closing her eyes, she murmured a low, rhythmic command, calling to the displaced object through the Law of Correspondence.
Everyone watched the silver charm with bated breath.
Ginnie expected the pendulum to twitch, to swing outward, pointing its silver tip toward the bedroom upstairs, the mudroom closet, or out the window toward the dark tree line of the creek bed. She was sure it would point her in the right direction.
So, they waited… And waited… And just when Ginnie thought it wasn’t going to work, the pendulum began to spin.
Gaining velocity rapidly, the silver weight blurred as a high-pitched hum filled the quiet kitchen. Then, with a sudden, violent jerk, it stopped. The pendulum shot out parallel to the island. Floating perfectly straight, it was as rigid as an arrow shot straight from her heart.
Following the invisible line, Ginnie gasped. It pointed directly at Garrett’s chest.
Frowning, she blinked, then shifted her hand two inches to the left, trying to clear the spatial variable. The pendulum instantly corrected, swinging back with a hard, magnetic snap.
It wasn't pointing at Garrett’s bedroom. It wasn't pointing at his clothes or his boots.
The tracker was pointing directly at Garrett himself.
The kitchen froze.
The pendulum remained completely rigid, its silver point indicating Garrett’s chest like a compass needle locked onto magnetic north.
"It's not on me," Garrett said, his voice flat as he immediately began patting down his pockets.
Pulling them inside out, he dropped a few coins and a receipt on the counter.
Unbuttoning his cuffs, he held out his arms as Grey and Carrick stepped forward, running a quick, systematic physical search of his clothes.
They found nothing. No silver pen. No hidden compartment.
Ginnie let the pendulum drop, took a deep breath, and reset the thread. She repeated the Mystical command, calling out to the silver and the ink of the pen. The pendulum began to spin, blurred, and snapped hard into the exact same trajectory. Garrett.
Dr. Darcy Thorntree leaned over the island, her brow furrowed. "Could the Tracking Spell be reading simple contamination? He's spent the last two hours analyzing files with you. He touched the pen. He touched the maps."
"Possibly," Ginnie admitted, keeping the alternative explanation tucked in the forefront of her mind. "Residual energetic transfer can confuse a low-level locator."
Adjusting her grip on the silk thread, Ginnie shifted the phonetic cadence of her Spell. She altered the parameters, commanding the Magic to explicitly distinguish between Garrett's organic physical body and the misplaced fountain pen's specific resonance.
The pendulum began to behave strangely. It no longer pointed at Garrett’s chest. It started to vibrate violently, the tip twitching in a tiny, rapid arc.
It looked like a compass needle caught between two competing poles.
The silver tip wasn't trying to terminate at his body– it looked like it wanted to pass through him.
Ginnie's eyes snapped open wide, a cold realization washing over her features. "He's not the destination."
Carrick moved closer to his Mate. "Then what the hell is he?"
"He's in the way," Ginnie whispered. "The Spell is trying to trace the pen's energy somewhere else entirely, but Garrett's unique Magical signature is sitting directly between me and the destination. It’s blocking the path."
A heavy, unnatural silence descended on the room.
Garrett stared down at his own chest. "The pen passed through me?"
"Maybe," Ginnie said tightly.
"Like the tie tack?" Garrett murmured, his voice sounding hollow as the pieces of the puzzle began to violently collide.
Sydney's hands trembled against his shoulder. "And my ribbon."
They finally knew one thing for certain: whatever happened to the missing objects did not end with Garrett slipping them into a pocket and hiding them somewhere on the Homestead.
Somehow, his Magical signature stood between the objects and wherever they had gone.
Garrett folded over the island as if someone had punched the air from his lungs.
“Garrett!” Sydney caught his arm.
His eyes remained unfocused. “Han sees the circle again.”
Ginnie held perfectly still. “What changed?”
“Three lights. The same colors as the missing objects.” He paused, listening inward.
“There are more stones than lights.”
“Meaning?”
Garrett's face tightened.
“Han says it isn't finished.”
Realization hit the room like a bomb. Whatever Han was seeing, the pattern was incomplete– and the three missing objects appeared to correspond with three occupied positions, but they had no idea who was drawing the blueprints, what the function was, or how to stop the construction.
"I need to be locked down," Garrett instantly commanded, his soldier instincts taking complete control.
He stood up, his jaw rigid. "No sleep. Medical restraints.
A high-level Magical ward around a containment cell.
Put me in isolation. Whatever keeps me from getting within a mile of anyone else's belongings. "
"No," Sydney shut him down immediately, stepping directly into his space with absolute, unyielding iron in her eyes. "We already established that starving yourself of sleep harms you and Han. You aren't punishing yourself for a booby trap."
Carrick nodded in agreement. "Physical restraints may actually make things worse, Garrett. If this transition is happening purely through a Spiritual or Magical pathway rather than your physical hands, tying you to a bed won't stop the conductor from conducting."
Darcy checked her tablet, her tone thoroughly clinical. "From a neurological standpoint, I need you asleep under active observation to map the energy spike. Isolation solves nothing."