I'm sorry it took me a week longer then I said it would for me to update. But I finally finished the chapter and have a plotline for the rest of the story. Now that The Inevitable winding down, I have more time to work on this. So hopefully I'll be able to update more frequently. I know this chapter is a little...shorter, but this was the best I could do without giving too much away.
Rex sat in Madeline's house while she slept, once more sorting through the lore. They had found another stack of papers and books, all in more disrepair than the others had been. Beth sat next to him. She had a pen poised over a pad of paper, ready to record anything interesting Rex might come across.
"Anything?" she asked for the eighth time in twenty minutes.
"Shh," Rex hissed.
Beth rolled her eyes. Watching Rex read the lore was boring. Always had been and probably always would be, since he never found anything helpful. Every once and awhile he would try to engage her in a conversation over some other dull aspect of being a Seer, but she figured he was just trying to show off how much he knew that she didn't. He knew full well that she was only there in case they could find a way to rescue her sister.
'Maybe he just likes having an assistant,' she thought glumly, 'Maybe he really has found something but didn't tell me because he wants me to keep working for him.'
But she brushed these thoughts away and began to doodle on the paper pad she held. It was ten more long minutes before Rex's head suddenly shot up out of his handful of papers.
"What?" cried Beth, "Did you find something? Did you!?"
"It's something I've never seen before, but I-" he stopped and looked at what Beth had drawn, "The Firebringer symbol. Nice work."
Beth's eyes flicked from Rex to her drawing of Jessica's lore symbol and back to Rex again. A look of irritation crossed her face.
"Can you just tell me what you found?"
Rex raised an eyebrow at her. 'Oops,' she thought, 'Maybe that wasn't the best idea…' She had learned quickly that angering Rex meant angering his darkling side. And angering a darkling wasn't the smartest thing a person could do. Even Beth, a non-Midnighter, knew that.
"I don't want to tell you what I know until I know that I know it for sure," he told her. Beth frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. She was glaring at Rex with all the little-sisterly power she possessed. Rex shrugged.
"I don't want to get your hopes up if it isn't something that could save Jessica," he explained.
It made sense. And that was enough to get Beth even more irritated. Beth knew that he was right, and that just made everything worse. She slumped back into her previous position and began to draw again.
Rex's eyes scanned the page, taking in everything that he read. There was a way to save Jessica. There was evidence in the one page to tell him that much. But there wasn't enough. The bottom of the page had been ripped in a jagged line.
Frustrated, he ran a hand through his hair.
"Beth," he said softly. Beth's eyes darted up to his face. Rex sighed. "We have a lot of work to do."