Page 76 of The Tree of Spirits
“We have to fix this.”
Vivi raised one eyebrow. “Do we? The Watchers have made our lives a nightmare. They’re always hunting us, no matter how much we help them. They think we’re evil, Conner. And now they’re gone. Well, good riddance. As I see it, whoever did this to them did us a favor.”
“It’s true the Watchers are a nuisance to us, but they keep the peace,” Conner said as I got to my feet. “Imagine what will happen now that they’re gone.”
I sidled up to him. “Chaos on the streets.”
His gaze flickered briefly to me. “Yes.”
“This must be the Templars’ doing, and they certainly didn’t do it for your benefit,” I said. “Think about it. With the Watchers gone and the Knights busy fighting the Cursed Ones in the Park, there’s hardly anyone left to guard the Spirit Tree. This is the perfect cover for the Templars to escape with the Apprentices.”
“Agreed,” said Conner, then he called Angel and Cedar back into the room.
Angel was a pretty talented Alchemist. In no time, she’d gained access to the Black Obelisk’s security camera footage.
“There,” she said, pausing the video. “This is from about an hour ago.”
I stared at an empty corridor of the Black Obelisk. “What are we looking at?”
“Just wait.” Angel rewound a few frames, and a Watcher suddenly appeared.
“He turned invisible,” Conner noted.
“There’s more.” Angel switched to a different camera. “Here’s that same Watcher, just a few minutes earlier.”
“How do you know it’s the same Watcher?” I asked. “They all look the same under all that armor.”
“After a while, you learn to tell them apart,” Conner told me. “It’s all in the way they stand, the way they walk, even in the way they move their heads.”
I squinted at the screen, but I just couldn’t see it. There were now two Watchers standing side-by-side, but they both looked exactly the same to me. Even so, the Rebels could not only tell them apart, they knew all their names too.
“Ok, see Fergus there is meeting with Adams. And now see what happens as Adams walks toward the edge of the screen. There!” Angel pointed at the screen.
“Adams disappeared,” Vivi commented.
“He turned invisible. And a few minutes later, Fergus did too.” Angel cycled through the cameras. “The Black Obelisk’s security videos from the last few hours are full of scenes like this. Watchers turning invisible.”
“Ok, so when did they learn how to do that?” Cedar asked. “They’re human. They shouldn’t be able to use magic.”
“They’re not using magic,” I said, looking away from the video. “Magic is using them.” My gaze slid to the four Rebels. “I think the Templars infected the Watchers with the invisibility flu.”
Vivi glanced at Conner. “What’s an invisibility flu?”
He shrugged. “Never heard of it.”
“I encountered it last week during a Discovery Quest,” I said. “A Dreamweaver asked me to help her find her sister and a bunch of kids who’d suddenly disappeared. It turned out they’d been infected with a highly contagious spell that made them—and anyone they’d come into contact with—turn invisible. I managed to track the Dreamweaver’s sister to where she and the other kids were trapped, in another dimension. And then I went there and pulled them back into our dimension.”
“And you think the Templars infected the Watchers with this same invisibility flu?” Conner asked me.
“Not only that, I think the Templars were the ones to infect those kids in the first place. It was probably a test run for this.” I pointed at the screen, where a Watcher had just blinked out of sight. “If it’s the same spell, we can use the same solution to get the Watchers back.”
“The solution sounds like a life force spell to locate them and a dimensional jump spell to pull them back to our dimension.”Conner looked at Angel. “Do you think you can whip up an artifact that can do that?”
Angel already had her suitcase of supplies open. “Sure thing. But I’ll need you to weave the spells into the artifacts, Conner, since none of the rest of us have Dreamweaver or Sorcery magic.” Angel started crafting. “How many rings do you want me to make?”
“Three. One for each of you. Red and I have other problems to tackle.”
“Is that code for: you two want some alone time?” Vivi wiggled her eyebrows at him.
