Chapter Fifteen
Alistair was surrounded by takeout boxes, soda cans, pencils, paper, and her phone. She hadn’t worn pants in twenty-four hours, hadn’t left her bed in twelve, and hadn’t seen direct sunlight in almost forty-eight. At some point, she started taking notes to keep track of everything she found interesting, relevant, or worth further research in the two volumes of The Monarch Papers. At first read, the series seemed like a strange, heady mix of real and fictional, actual locations and real people mixed with make-believe supernatural events and histories. Just enough reality to ground it, and just enough magic to stick it in any bookstore’s fantasy section. The gist of the story was that magic used to exist in our world, then something happened to erase it and our memory of it.
