You Promised

At 5:10 in the morning, the sound of wheels rolling over the flagstone road came from outside Grimmauld Place, Number 13.

Vivi turned away from the window and watched as the cast-iron gate was pushed open.

Cassandra walked into the entrance hall carrying a small travel bag, with Nasser following behind her, a bulging backpack on his shoulders. Their robes still carried the chill from the far side of the Atlantic Ocean, and their faces held the distinctive exhaustion of a long journey, but Cassandra's gaze remained sharp. The Silver Compass and the Basalt Compass hung side by side at her waist, gleaming cold white in the gaslight.

"Twelve notebooks. All here."

Cassandra set the travel bag on the Old Oak Table and pulled open the zipper.

Vivi looked down. Twelve thick leather notebooks were stacked neatly inside the bag, their covers worn pale, their corners curled. Some still had dark stains on the covers that looked suspiciously like coffee marks.

On the inside cover of every notebook was a photograph of the Jotun Hermon Stone Ring, and on the back of each photograph was Cohen's familiar handwriting.

She picked up the first notebook and turned to the first page.

Cohen's handwriting was very small, densely packed across the page, but every line was written with extreme neatness.

The title on the first page was—"Log of Unknown Magical Signal Tracking, January–March 1987." Below it was a brief introduction.

"In the winter of 1986, beneath the Old Mill in Providence, I detected for the first time an inexplicable magical signal. The signal's frequency did not fall within the normal fluctuation range of the ley lines, nor did it belong to any known magical phenomenon. After three months of repeated observation and recording, I confirmed that this signal was not naturally generated.