Jessica still sat in the attic, Seth's head resting in her lap, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Seth, can you hear me?" she whispered, desperately, again. He seemed to move, but, she was unsure of whether he had actually moved, or if it was just a hopeful hallucination. "Seth, please. You've just got to wake up!" She slight shifted her position and leaned against one of the heavy boxes piled against the wall, oblivious, now, to the rats and other creatures sharing the house.

"What do you mean, 'That's the only one here!' There's GOT to be another one. It had all the information about the teachers from Dad's school in it!" Christine told her mother, excitedly. "It's probably important---it's GOT to be there!"

"It's not here, Christine. Calm down, though. We'll find it. It's got to be around here somewhere," Amanda suggested.

A short ring of the phone caused both Amanda and Christine to jump, and then stand in the middle of the room, frozen.

"Who could that be?" Amanda asked.

"What if it's Jessica?" Christine said, turning to run to her parents' room, Amanda close at her heels.

"What if it's Sargant Malin telling us that they FOUND Jessica..."Amanda suggested, and they both stopped, frozen in the hallway.

"Hello," they heard John answer, "Magnall Residence."

"Who is it?" Amanda asked, as they entered the room to see John on the phone.

"Shhh!" Christine suggested, cupping a hand to her ear.

"Why, yes, Doctor Savage, he's staying here...he did?...No, he's not here right now. Can I take a message for him?...oh?...Well, yes, I will have to report that...How did you?...Oh, well, I couldn't ask a magician to reveal his secrets. Thank you, Doctor Savage; I'll let him know." John hung up the phone and glanced up to see the puzzled expressions on the faces of his wife and daughter.

"I suppose you want to know what that was all about," he grinned.

"No, not all," Christine suggested sarcastically.

"Doctor Savage? Is it about Jessica? Is she all right?" Amanda asked.

"No, now, girlie. Those are all very good questions. I'm just trying to decide whether or not I should share this information with you."

"Jess?"

Jessica awoke to a voice that sounded familiar, but distant.

"Jess, are you okay? Did they hurt you?" Seth asked, looking at up her.

Jessica thought for a brief moment that it had all been a dream. That horrible Victorian Mansion. Being locked in the attic. Seth, poor Seth, arriving in the attic, beaten and barely breathing. She yawned, quickly, and then she silently lectured herself for falling asleep for any length of time. She was over-whelmed by relief that Seth was all right, and feeling terrible for dragging Seth into the mess she had gotten them into, and, she was afraid, wouldn't be able to get out of.

"Seth! Seth, you're all right!" she cried, now fully awake, and gently kissing his forehead. "I'm so sorry! Not just that I fell asleep, but...but that you've been drug into this, and you're obviously hurt terribly, and I feel as though it's all my fault and I..." Jessica's run-on sentence, a rare occurence, prompted a response from Seth.

"Shhhhhh. Stop," Seth told her, holding his hand to her mouth, as though she needed a gesture as well. "Woman, do you honestly think I'd let you go through all this alone?"

"But I didn't THINK before I just drug you into something dangerous...it was terribly irresponsible and I..."

"You didn't drag me into anything---except the city of Chicago."

"But I..."

"Could you STOP talking and listen to me for five minutes?" Seth asked her, struggling to sit up. "I chose to come with you. I chose to protect you. I chose to fight back. You, even as stubborn as you are, couldn't have stopped me. They were after YOU, Jessica. I had to do something."

Seth, sitting up, painfully, by this point, leaned against one of the heavy boxes and pulled Jessica close to him, where he held her.

"How could you do that for me, Seth? Look at you! You...you've been nearly killed! There's no excuse for that!"

"I didn't do it for you, Jessica. I did it for me. Because if I hadn't, they would have killed you. And if they'd have killed you, I would have had to have begged them to kill me, too. I couldn't get out of here without knowing you were at my side."

"Oh, Seth!" Jessica cried, gently hugging him.
"I love you, Jessica," he told her, kissing the top of her head, which was now buried in his dislocated shoulder.

"I love you, too, Seth," she replied, her tears forming more dark spots on Seth's shirt.

Sorry it's so short, but, it was fun to write. And sappy. So, so sappy! lol.I might be able to drag this out longer than I thought;). At least now I've figured out who Emma Donnovan's accomplice is. And why.