Lyra was the kind of little sister who took no pleasure in seeing her rookery mates apprehended and punished by the grownups, so Sister was reasonably certain that she would not tell anyone about the book unless she was concerned about a direct threat of danger. But she knew that it was only a matter of time before Orion came looking for her and there was no way she would get this plan past him!

As soon as she separated from Lyra, she raced to the stairwell, and headed for Adelpha's room, where she hoped no one would think to look for her. She sprawled out on the futon and opened the notebook, carefully examining all the pages with writing and clippings of articles and photocopies.

It didn't take her long to realize that the criminally insane sorceress who had compiled these notes had not been writing for an audience. There was very little in the book that Sister understood. She had almost expected a magical cookbook, with detailed lists of ingredients, steps, and instructions for doing magic. What she found was a strange collection of what seemed to be unrelated medical research. There was a study on patients in long term comatose as well as case studies of children who had been born from embryos that had been frozen for many years. There was information on various psychiatric ailments, and a very sketchy article about a woman who believed her son was the reincarnation of a fighter pilot who had been killed during World War II.

Most of the pages bore excessive highlights, marks, and notations in a scrawly handwriting that Sister could hardly make out.

"Even the handwriting looks like it was done by a lunatic!" she muttered to herself in disappointment.

She found nothing that looked like an incantation or spell at all. Sister couldn't even make a connection between what she found in this book and the Coldstone project, much less curing Elisa's illness. She sighed as she thumbed through the last pages of the book, all of which were blank. On the inside cover, she found several neatly written lines of random letters, words, and numbers which puzzled her a bit. She wondered what this undefined list was for. Perhaps it was coordinates or measurements? Or maybe the item codes for different materials Demona had needed to build Coldstone? Whatever it was, it seemed decidedly un-magical. Sister realized that she had hit a dead end. She closed the book, tears streaming from her eyes. Her world seemed to be falling apart and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

She needed help, she realized. She couldn't decipher Demona's notes on her own. But there was someone who had claimed that he could help her. Sister felt a chill on the back of her neck, accompanied by a sick feeling in her gut.

Coldsteel had been part of the original Coldstone project. Their bodies had been reconstructed and ensouled by Demona's magic. It made sense to Sister that he would know something of the magic that had brought him back to life.

"I must be crazy," she chastised herself, "Why would he want to help me?"

The answer was obvious. If he did help her to save Elisa, it might be enough to make Goliath consider a more lenient punishment for him. This was hardly a new concept to Sister. Elisa often decried plea bargains, which allowed the criminals who the police had already apprehended to face a lesser sentence if they cooperated in providing evidence against a more important criminal.

If this was a common practice in the human justice system, why wouldn't it be reasonable for Coldsteel to earn some brownie points with the clan? She realized, of course, that it was likely that Coldsteel was only interested in helping her for this reason, but as long as she kept this in mind and didn't let herself get too friendly with him, she didn't really see why that mattered. On the other hand, she knew that it often turned out that these criminals had fabricated the testimony they gave in exchange for lesser sentences, so Sister would have to be careful and judge whatever Coldstone told her very suspiciously. But she couldn't see any harm in hearing what he had to say.

Tentatively, she climbed down from the futon and retrieved the laptop. Her imagination wanted to frighten her with fantastical images of the possessed machine sprouting mechanical arms and creeping away from its hiding spot, but she found the computer, still and silent in the dark closet, just as she had left it the night before. She took it back to the futon, and with a deep breath, opened the lid and turned it on.

"Is that you, Sister?" the text in the dialogue box immediately asked.

The strange messages left a chill in Sister. She would need to find out what Coldsteel actually knew about spells, while revealing as little information to him as possible.

"What do you want?" she asked him.

"I wish to speak to Goliath! He is a just leader. I know if I can only get the chance to speak with him, he will be merciful with me and give me the chance to prove my loyalty to the clan."

Sister had not expected this response. Coldsteel couldn't be nearly as cunning as Coldstone and Coldfire had insisted he was if he actually thought he was going to get one over on Goliath. Deceiving their leader was not an easy task, not even for the grownups of the clan. Goliath had a way of looking into a person's mind and heart and seeing through falsehoods. His specialty was the lies people told themselves.

"Don't bother with that," she admonished the dark spirit, "He'll see right through you!"

"I'm counting on it! Goliath always sees the good in people. He will believe me when I tell him that I wish to make amends, and the others will listen to him."

Sister had to admit that she suspected Coldsteel was right on that. Goliath was prone to give the benefit of the doubt, sometimes to a fault. Sister had heard Xanatos say so, as well as some of the adult members of the clan. And though she'd never heard him speak of Coldsteel before, she was certain that he grieved the loss of his own brother to betrayal. She wondered if Goliath would want to give Coldsteel a chance to redeem himself when he returned.

"If he ever returns!" she thought to herself grimly, remembering the task at hand.

"Why have only Lexington and the human, Xanatos, communicated with me? Where is my brother? Where is his second? Surely he knows by now that I am here?"

Sister was not quick to reply. She had the sense to guess that he was fishing for information, and she could see no benefit to letting the devious Coldsteel know anymore than he had already surmised.

"He knows," she wrote to him finally, "But he's got more important things to deal with than you."

"I thought perhaps my brother and sister were keeping me from him. Perhaps they fear that if he speaks to me directly, he will wish to afford me some mercy, and their cruelty will be exposed to the clan?"

"Cruelty? Really?" Sister wrote with a smirk, "Don't you think that's a little over dramatic? Didn't you burn down half of Cleveland?"

"Did my brother tell you that?"

"He said you tricked a man into trying to murder his family!"

"Did I? Was it I who set the fire?"

"No. Not directly, but you're still responsible."

"Did I force the man? Did I tell him he should kill his own children?"

Sister didn't care for the way this conversation was going.

"Gargoyles protect," she argued, "Why didn't you stop him?"

Sister prepared herself for the typical convoluted adult response. She endured several minutes of suspenseful silence, during which she imagined the wicked traitor furiously composing his well-written reply, justifying his own vile actions and scolding her for being an impertinent, foolish child who couldn't possibly understand such complex adult matters. So, she was most surprised when, with a ding, she received the briefest and most unexpected response possible.

"You are right."

Sister's eyes opened wide, then narrowed suspiciously. Adults never conceded arguments to children so easily.

"And?"

"And because of my failure to act, my brother and sister will soon have me condemned to an inescapable oblivion of solitude and torment."

Sister frowned as she read Coldsteel's description of his own fate.. It seemed so extreme. 'Worse than death', the grownups had called it, and if it wasn't, Sister had a hard time thinking of any sentence that could be worse. Coldsteel had tormented and manipulated his 'owner', but when it came down to it, the man was responsible for his own actions. It was a terrible punishment. Yes, even 'cruel'.

"...Unless I can prove myself redeemable to the clan. But how can I when I am trapped in digital space and I cannot reach Goliath, even to plead my case?"

Coldsteel's words stirred a memory in Sister. From her social studies textbook, she had learned that all citizens in the United States had a right to a fair trial. Of course, their gargoyle clan was far too small to provide a panel of twelve jurors, but it certainly seemed reasonable for Coldsteel to have some sort of meeting with Goliath to plead his case before he was sentenced to such a harsh punishment. She was certain Goliath would want it to be so, because he had talked with Orion and Sister for a long time about the Bill of Rights and why it was so important for the clan to remember, especially in the heat of battle, that most of the criminals they fought were mere suspects and had not been convicted of any crime. Goliath said it was better that a guilty human be allowed to escape justice than to unjustly punish an innocent person for a crime it turned out they had not committed.

"Don't worry," she wrote to Coldsteel, "I know that Goliath will give you the chance to tell your side of it when he returns."

"Goliath is still away from the clan then? How much longer will he be gone?"

Sister growled at herself in frustration. How had she been so rapidly dubbed into spilling more information than she had intended?

"He will be home soon," she replied.

"Wonderful! Does that mean your friend has recovered?"

Sister sighed.

"No. Not yet," she replied.

"Goliath won't return until Detective Maza has begun to show signs of healing. I fear I will be kept in this cursed state until then and who knows how long it will take! If only we could find Demona's spellbook. I know there is a spell in there that could help us!"

Sister's eyes widened. This was exactly what she wanted Coldsteel talking about, but she would have to be careful. She needed to get as much information out of him as possible, without betraying too much herself.

"What kind of spell?" she wrote, "I never heard of Demona healing anyone with cancer."

"She was a healer of all manner of battle wounds, once, long ago. But the spell she used to bring our bodies back from cold stone to living flesh is what could restore your friend. In fact, the power of this spell could heal her from nearly any injury or sickness she could ever face. The original spellbook that contained the incantation was destroyed, of course, but I'm certain Demona would have copied the incantation into her notes."

Sister scowled. She had looked the whole notebook over and not found anything that looked like an incantation, but she wasn't quite willing to let Coldsteel know that she had the book in her possession yet.

"Why would she? If she had the Grimorum as her talisman, what reason did she have to copy the spell into another book?"

"Because, in order for the spell to fuse together both the living and the mechanical parts of Coldstone's body, it had to be translated into a code that Coldstone's operating system could read."

"So, the spell would be written in a sort of computer code?" Sister asked earnestly, "But how does that help Elisa? She doesn't have an operating system!"

"Of course not! But all one would have to do is input the code into a computer that knows how to translate the code, and it would restore the original incantation."

Sister's heart was racing. She was sure now that the strange code she'd found inside the back cover of the notebook was the computerized version of the spell that had restored Coldstone's life.

"So, if I did find the spellbook, could I just put the code into Google to find out the incantation?" she asked hopefully.

"Certainly not! Xanatos wasn't fool enough to use a universal language that any computer could understand! He has his own code, encrypted for use on his own projects and prototypes. No, the code would have to be put into one of his computers in order to restore the incantation."

"One of Xanatos' computers?" Sister thought out loud. She had seen lots of computers in Lexington's laboratory the other night, and several that had stickers on them with barcodes and Xanatos Enterprise logos on them. She wondered if any of those had the ability to decipher this unique code. But even if she was successful, she realized, the incantation would be useless without a talisman of some kind. But Sister decided to cross that bridge when she came to it. Slowly, she closed the laptop, retrieved the note book, and then resolutely made her way to the laboratory.

By the time she had reached the door and peeked in at all the eerily glowing lights, she was quite out of breath from both running and her own excitement. The first thing she noted was that the laboratory appeared to have been tidied since she'd last been there. The desk where Coldsteel's disembodied head had terrorized her and the twins had been organized, the menacing robotic head removed, and top cleared so only a single Xanatos Enterprises laptop lay on it, connected by cables to several small components which she could not identify.

As she approached the desk, she glanced at the corner where the collection of Coldsteel's physical parts had previously been laid to rest. The ominous pile of strange shapes under a sheet was no longer there, and the floor was mostly clear of clutter now. Sister sighed with relief. She sat at the desk and laid her own laptop on the recently cleaned surface. The Xanatos Enterprise laptop had been left open on the desk, and to her surprise, it came to life at her first touch.

Perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the first thing it did was ask for a username and password. Sister frowned. She should have foreseen this. Lark and Lyndon knew several of Lexington's passwords, but they weren't with her at the moment and she didn't have the first clue what to put in.

Finally, she decided to try the only username and password she knew, which was her own, which Lexington had given her to access the Castle Cloud. To her great astonishment, the combination seemed to work and she was allowed access to the computer. The system seemed to recognize her at once, greeting her and welcoming her with a copy of her own desktop. Goliath's admonition of "Truth, Beauty, and Virtue" stared back at her as she studied the screen in surprise.

Part of her was suspicious that she had gotten in so easily and she that she felt a sudden wave of panic that she might have tripped a warning to Lexington that would soon have the grownups banging down the door.

"Well, in for a penny, in for a pound!" she muttered to herself and opened the search engine that Lexington had designed for the Castle Cloud. She didn't know what application would be required to translate the spell, so she decided to input the code into the search bar and see if it brought anything up. Typing the long ledger of seemingly meaningless patterns accurately was tedious and nerve wracking work, considering her fear that she might be discovered any minute. But she knew that a single mistake would probably corrupt the code and leave it meaningless. At last, she had typed in every pattern on the inside cover of the infamous sorceress' notebook and pressed the input button. To her excitement, a dialogue box opened with a long string of words that appeared to be Latin. Clumsily, she fumbled around in the desk drawer, looking for something to write with. Of all the junk in this room, did Lexington not own an ink pen? Finding nothing in the drawer, she began to frantically search the shelves of a nearby cabinet. So intent was she on her search, that she didn't notice that more and more code was appearing in the dialogue box. She did turn around, however, when she heard a strange beeping sound. Curiously she bent over the laptop, trying to determine what the sound was supposed to alert her to. Finally, she discovered a green indicator light, flashing on a small device that had been left hooked up to the laptop. The beeping was coming from a thin, square box that looked like a small drive. Quickly, she disconnected the device from the laptop, but the box continued to beep.

Then she was startled by a loud whirring sound behind her. She spun around, and seeing nothing, she calmed herself and decided it was just a noisy air conditioner that must have kicked on. Though she didn't feel the typical gust of cool air coming from anywhere. The whirring grew louder, and was accompanied by a sharp, metallic bang that made Sister jump. The noise seemed to be coming from a large, heavy metal cabinet in the corner. Sister turned on the light and crept toward the corner, eyeing the strange container mistrustingly. It was tall, narrow, and appeared to be made of thick steel, more like a safe than a simple cabinet. More scraping and banging sounds seemed to be coming from inside it and Sister boldly approached the door and pulled on the round handle, which did not turn for her.

Clearly there was some sort of machine in this cabinet that Lexington didn't want anyone getting into. She gave the door a disapproving look before heading back to the desk to continue looking for a pen, when she was paused by a new sound. This time it was like a fast scraping of metal on metal, almost like a saw or a drill. Sister took a step back, as the handle on the door began to rattle. Then suddenly, the handle burst from the door and a strange undulating shape emitted from it.

Sister gasped as a long, waving tube, like a segmented worm, seemed to feel its way around the door. It drew toward her and she backed away in repulsion. Then, the metal door of the cabinet began to fold and peel off as a second, and a third steel tentacle emerged. Sister had the sense to put the heavy work table between herself and this strange creature-like machine, but one of the tentacles reached underneath and got her ankle in a tight grip. She shrieked as it pulled her off her feet, drug her under the table and toward the now fully open cabinet, as if it meant to draw her inside the opening so it could devour her. Sister dug her claws into leg of the table and drug it along with her.

Aside from the one holding her by the leg, there were now three more mechanical tentacles slithering around the opening of the cabinet, which Sister could now see contained several shelves of robotic parts. With terrifying speed, these uncanny octopus arms grabbed individual pieces and began to assemble a machine. Sister watched in horror as arms, legs, wings, and tail appeared before her with a fanfare of scratching and hissing sounds. The oscillating tentacles wriggled their way around the cabinet, seeming to search for something. The great steel legs of the creation stomped forward with loud clanks and Sister was drug unceremoniously across the tile floor behind it. She clawed desperately at the vice-tight coil around her ankle and the machine released her for a moment, only to regain its hold around her neck and mouth. The machine silently exhibited its strength and dexterity and Sister felt her head and neck squeezed threateningly at her every resistance.

Meanwhile, the machine began attacking the cabinets on the other side of the room. Cupboards were reduced to splinters as their smashed contents littered to the floor around her like storm debris. At last, the machine found what it was looking for; a heavy, locked compartment hidden beneath a counter. The room flashed with purple, arcing light and the scent of smoldering wires and circuit boards filled the room. The mechanical arms reached for the safe and pulled it open, revealing the face of Coldsteel's menacing head. The machine's talons groped around the safe for a moment, then lifted the head to secure it to its neck.

Sister cried out in dismay, despite the strange, wormlike arm smothering her mouth. Coldsteel's lifeless eyes began to move, methodically searching the room. He made a sound like a cross between a groan and an a haughty laugh and Sister shuddered in her place on the floor. Instantly, his eyes turned down to her, glowing red with fury. But then, the machine paused, and its robotic facial features contorted into the more eerie and uncanny of smiles.

"Little Sister!" Coldsteel crooned almost affectionately, "Just what have you done?"

Unable to answer with Coldsteel's tentacles muzzling her, she replied with an indignant snarl in the back of her throat.

"Oh, let's have a look at you!" the cyborg crooned again in a tone dripping with insincere fondness and Sister felt herself helplessly lifted from the floor and drawn toward Coldsteel until her own eyes were level with his.

"Put me down!" she demanded in a trembling voice as the tentacle subsided from her face. Coldsteel chuckled, like a teasing uncle, and gripped her tightly by her shoulders as he reached a steel claw to caress her face.

"Now, now, Little One," he gently scolded, "A warrior must be brave! And you and I must away from this place!"

"No!" Sister pleaded, but he merely laughed again and the tentacles seized her tightly against his torso as he crashed through the door into the corridor. Sister felt the thrust of his jets as they were propelled through the hallway and to the landing at the bottom of the eastern tower. From there, Coldsteel jet-lifted himself to a window and crashed through the pane. Sister shrieked, though she was uninjured and cried in dismay as Coldsteel carried her over the city, further and further from her home and the safety of the clan.

They crossed the river, leaving the great skyline behind them as they flew over neighborhoods, parks, harbors, and beaches. By the time Coldsteel landed at last, there was a slight glow at the horizon and Sister's face was soaked with tears.

"You were never going to help me!" Sister accused him once he had deposited her on the belfry of a large, brick terminal beside a massive train yard, "You tricked me!"

"I?" Coldsteel asked as if scandalized, "But I did nothing! You are the one who released me! You took the book from Xanatos, did you not? You snuck into the laboratory. You entered the code."

"You said the spell would help Elisa!" she countered.

"And so it shall!" Coldsteel assured her, "Once you've found a talisman that can control the magic."

Rage and sorrow filled Sister and erupted from her in the form of a sob.

"There, there, Little One," Coldsteel soothed her patronizingly, "I shall help you find what you need. Come with me!"

"No!" she shouted angrily, "I was stupid to even speak to you! I should have told Lexington you were on my computer when I had the chance! There's no way I'll ever trust you!"

"But where will you go?" Coldsteel asked in a concerned voice, "The city is a wild and dangerous place for a hatchling like you, especially a rogue!"

"I am not a hatchling or a rogue!" she replied bitterly, "I have a clan!"

"I'm afraid you won't have one anymore, once Brooklyn discovers what you have done," Coldsteel told her slyly, "They won't have you back. And then where will you go?"

Dread filled Sister's eyes. Such a thought had not crossed her mind.

"You-You're wrong!" she stammered, "Of course I can go home! Brooklyn wouldn't banish me! We're clan!"

"I was clan too, long ago," Coldsteel reminded her, "And Demona was clan. She was Goliath's own mate, and he banished her for doing sorcery."

"That's not true!"

"Well, sorcery among other sins," he conceded.

"No. I mean, it's a lie that Demona was Golaith's mate!" she argued confidently, "Adelpha has always been his mate, since they were youths. They've told us so many times."

Coldsteel's elongated jaw opened as if to protest this claim, but then he froze for a moment and fell silent. His mechanical gaze studied Sister earnestly, as if trying to solve a puzzle.

"You say, Adelpha has always been Goliath's mate?" he asked cunningly, "Tell me, my beauty, were you born of Adelpha?"

"No," Sister answered cautiously, "I was born of Angela."

"Ah!" Coldsteel replied hastily, almost as if relieved to hear this news, "I should have guessed. There's a clear resemblance."

"Angela was born of Adelpha," Sister explained and Coldsteel jolted so suddenly that Sister drew further away instinctively. He turned away from her and seemed to pace the circle of the belfry.

"How is this possible?" he muttered under his breath. It was hard to say without a human face, but Sister sensed that this information enraged Coldsteel for some reason. Sister watched him curiously and suspiciously, until he turned around to face her again.

"Tell me, child," he said frantically, "Does Adelpha live with you in the castle?"

"Of course," she replied, "Except for right now. Brooklyn sent her away because of Coldstone and Coldfire. They hate her."

"Do they?" Coldsteel replied, regaining his composure and smiling with a crafty smile, "Then she has been banished as well? What a shame! But I'm sure Brooklyn will treat you mercifully! You are only a child after all! Then I suppose you and I shall have to part ways for now. Thank you, my dear one, for your help. I shall someday repay you!"

"Yeah, right," Sister grumbled.

"I give my word," Coldsteel replied in an unsettling voice as he gave her a respectful bow, "Be well, little Sister!"

His jets fired again, and he took off to the south. Sister gave the trickster a disapproving growl as he faded into the lightening horizon. She looked back toward the north, where the soft haze of the city's lights on the distant clouds shone back at her. Try as she might, she couldn't even see the Eyrie Building at the horizon line. Sister's stomach ached as she thought about what Coldsteel had said to her.

"Of course I can go home!" she told herself defiantly. But she realized that the clan was probably discovering the destroyed laboratory even as she stood there, alone, in the gloaming. Soon they would piece together what had happened and what Sister had done. She thought of what Brooklyn would say, and worse, what Angela would say.

"Not yet," Sister whispered to herself as she looked longingly back toward the city, "I can't face them! First I have to make this right!" Tears streamed down her face as she glided from the belfry, to the pavement below.