Page 37 of The Cursed Sebastian Storm

Sebastian was officially smiling like a fool, his heart overflowing with affection.

Sebastian

You’ve definitely figured out what to do with me now.

James

Yes. I missed you in my bed last night.

Sebastian

Me too. I’d tell you exactly how badly, but sexting with your brother two feet away feels weird.

James

LOL. OK, I’m going swimming now.

Sebastian

I’ll be picturing it.

James

What? Why?

Sebastian

Oh my god, James, you’re hot. Now go work out so I can imagine you all wet and out of breath, muscular chest heaving, etc., etc.

James

You’re a nightmare. Now I’m going to be distracted.

Sebastian

Whatever. You love it.

James

Yeah, I do.

In the clearing, Eli ripped off the sections of paper that had data recorded on them and slipped them into five separate folders. He noted the time he did this for each mechanism.

Sebastian peered over Eli’s shoulder. “What’s the time for?”

Eli glanced up from his notebook. “For cross-referencing. I recorded the time each device started making measurements, and a measurement was taken every minute. Noting the time I cut off the paper means I can check if the right number of measurements were recorded.”

Sebastian had no idea why that might matter. “Oh.” He glanced at Parker, who shrugged.

Eli smiled. “If the time that’s passed since we started recording and the number of measurements don’t match up, then we’ll know something went wrong and the data isn’t accurate. Also, it will allow us to see when any changes in magical flow happen.”

That seemed to make sense. “Like if it spikes at a certain time of day or something?”

“Yeah. Or if energy spikes in the different branches of the intersection at different times.” Eli closed his notebook. “I’ll type these up and import them into my stats software, but we’ll probably need more than a day’s worth of data to see anything happening.”

It didn’t look like the shades had tried to mess with their setup, or if they had, Parker’s wards had held strong. The sky was still dark enough that they feared a heavy rain was coming, so Sebastian led the other two to the barn to try and find something to cover the mechanisms.

The best they could do were a few old crates covered in tarps, but with the tarps secured to the ground, hopefully, they wouldn’t blow away, and combined with the moisture-repelling spell, it would be enough to save the paper in case a storm hit.

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