"Genie? Genie!"
Two words burst from Christina's lips. She seemed to have forgotten that the other party could hear her as long as she formed the intention to "speak" in her mind.
Beside her, Dorothy first glanced in confusion at Tina's hand fumbling over her shoulder bag, then realization dawned:
"Did it fall out on that street?"
When "Magician" Merlin had sent them here just now, the Genie, who hadn't dared utter a word inside the church, had still distorted their hearing and vision, turning the complicated Intisian into easily understood Loenese. Now, however, he was nowhere to be found.
That left only one possibility: something had happened on the old street of antiquated buildings behind them.
"Impossible. The bag's intact, and I never took the Magic Wishing Lamp out..."
Tina reached into her shoulder bag and searched carefully, confirming that the Sealed Artifact hadn't shrunk itself and hidden in a corner, but had truly disappeared. Yet the bag had no tears or gaps. The Golden Lamp, several times larger than a fist, couldn't possibly have slipped away without a sound.
"Could someone have stolen it..."
She murmured to herself, recalling the black-haired man who had briefly spoken to them earlier. Looking back, there had been something guilty about the way he had hurriedly urged them to leave. Perhaps he was now holding "0-05," which looked valuable and was indeed far from cheap, and grinning foolishly at it.
The "Out of the Ordinary" song-and-dance troupe opposite the man's bar, "The Solitary One," was also extremely strange. Could a thief have been hiding among the three customers in short suit jackets and monocles who had passed Tina? Could all three have been thieves?
Although none of those four suspects had made physical contact with Tina, the Genie had spent the entire