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She really had no self-control, Sadie thought, sitting in the backseat of Lewis' car. As promised, Baz sat up front, quizzing Lewis on sustainable urban regeneration. Lewis answered him haltingly, attention split between the road and the questions. Sadie got the sense he'd much rather be doing this somewhere much less chaotic, and she didn't blame him.
They were looking, Baz informed her between questions, for a Gate. Apparently, Casper Franklin visited Eseran several times during his lifetime, dutifully waiting for years between each blue moon, when the gap between Stonebridge and Eseran was weakest and people could travel between worlds. It all seemed far-fetched to Sadie, but she still remembered the number of people who'd disappeared from the city during the blue moons.
Baz had narrowed it down to seven locations. Sadie scanned the list he'd scrawled onto a piece of notebook paper while Lewis took them through the city, sticking to the back roads to dodge the traffic.
"I mean, is there any point in looking for it now?" Sadie said, at the third location. They'd climbed up onto the square roof of the The Grouse Inn downtown, overlooking the busy High Street. Just like the other locations on the list, through the lens the place was daubed in dense foliage. Colourful insects flitted between tall, silver-barked trees. "If this gate only opens during a blue moon, are we even going to find anything?"
"I don't know," Baz said. "But the fact the lens is picking something up at all of them means we're onto something." He looked at Sadie, then Lewis. "Right?"
Sadie shrugged.
"I'm more interested in the locations of these 'windows'," Lewis said. Sadie glanced over his shoulder and noticed he had a map of the city opened on his phone. Pins marked the locations they'd visited. She hadn't realised he'd been keeping track. "There must be a pattern."
"I found a bunch of other places the other day," Sadie said. "I can add them on if it'd help."
"Oh," Lewis said. "I...didn't realise you were looking again."
"It just kinda happened," Sadie said, adding the locations she'd found yesterday to the map. "I didn't think you'd come out today," she added. "I thought you said there was no point in looking."
"Well..." Lewis adjusted the strap on his satchel. "What Baz said the other day hit home for me." He sighed. "The truth is, things have...only just started to feel normal again for me. And I suppose I didn't want to risk getting my hopes up and then go through it all again. Especially with my thesis defence just round the corner."
Sadie glanced up at him, brows raised in surprise. His words were a perfect mirror of her own thoughts.
Lewis must have mistaken her look for judgement, because his face flushed and he glanced away. "I know it must sound quite self-absorbed," he said quietly. "But—"
