Chapter 213 - Weight Off The Chest

"That's…" I wasn't sure what to say. I dropped my hands from the circle. Ghost's words had wisdom, but fear and JJ didn't connect well in my head. Not at first, not when I thought about his complete surety of himself, of his actions and beliefs. And new things—wasn't looking for them the entire point?

But then… Then I remembered the shadows in his normally so bright eyes, shadows that the century of sleep in a sealed coffin put in there. And maybe other things, too. JJ had fears, just like any other person… and if my cohabitation with him taught me something, is that even now he preferred to sleep as rarely as he could without dropping with exhaustion.

When I remembered that, the idea of him running from something didn't seem that implausible. He promised to return, that was true—he stuck to his obligations, just like he stuck to the fact that he needed to keep himself rested. But…

"I didn't look at it from this perspective, Ghost. You are right that he's old and seen everything—I can't even start thinking what can scare him to do something like that, except…" I paused. There was that one option, but I was afraid of thinking about it myself. "Well, I can barely think of anything. I mean, if it was some physical enemy, he'd tell me." That I was sure about.

"Many fears seem foolish from the perspective of an outsider, so no wonder that when two perspectives cross—like yours and Jean-Jacques's now that you try to think about it, it's hard to think of anything connected. Hey, from my perspective, all fears are foolishness! What's there to fear in the world? Be cautious is one thing, but fear," Ghost shrugged with one shoulder. "I'm glad I don't have that anymore. Why would anyone ever be scared, or sad, or angry? I'm sure the moment when it fell off me was an amazing one, and too bad I can't remember it."

"I think that one can't really appreciate anything without having something to compare with. Contrast." I shrugged. "But you are right about JJ… I wonder, after everything, if I really understand him as much I think. Either way, whatever made him leave couldn't have been anything good. And you are right that I should go to him. Maybe it's high-handed of me, but," I snorted, "worse comes to worst, I had best intentions in mind. And action is always better than non-action."

As soon as I said that, I felt a weight I didn't know about fell off my chest. Yes, this was the right decision, the only one I could pick. "Ghost, thank you for your help, but I have to find a good diviner to find JJ."

"I wish I could point you at someone, but I'm really unsure who's who nowadays…"

"That's alright, I will get it on my own. Don't worry! Or, well, what you do instead of worrying."

"I make a guess about the level of potential harm and how much I don't wish for the worst consequences to come to life. It's all a complex thought process, but right now I know you will find your way, my student. Why wouldn't you?"

I smiled at him. "Right."

⠀⠀

To save myself time, I asked Prom Queen, who knew everyone in her coven, who then pointed me at another one of her distant cousins—an older witcher who looked like a total bookworm from the first glance. From the second glance, I found out that he was a total bookworm with dreams of grandeur. In the first ten minutes of our acquittance, he mentioned his future grand opus twice, and most of that time I spent explaining to him what I wanted.

Either way, he agreed to help for favour he'd ask from Prom Queen, who owed me a lot of favours after my interview on TV, so it was basically for free. And he promised to use non-invasive divination methods. Specifically, triangulation by focus points, beacons for which he added to his divination seal—they were bits and pieces that belonged to three certain places in the world.

He didn't even need my participation—all I had to do was to watch him work most of the spell was hidden behind the bookworm's well, but there still was the triangulation itself to see—the bookworm drew pencil lines and circles on the map with almost machine-like precision.

When he left his trance and opened his eyes, the map had plenty of marks, but most of them connected at a single point. North, and next to a sea. Close to Murmansk, actually.

"He wasn't moving, your vampire. It's day, of course, so he could just be hiding from sun somewhere, but here you got it. As far as divinations went, this was a simple one… besides the fact that we looked for a vampire with the help of blood of his, uh, donor, there's nothing worth to be put in my book. I can even show you the point more precisely if I will have a closer map. But no electronics! I can't work with electronics."

"Great, I wouldn't want that to be in any book." I leaned towards the map and tried to measure the distance between Petersburg and JJ. My patience for it lasted about three minutes, after which I opened my maps app and looked there. If what it told me was correct, even approximately, JJ needed to drive towards the place for an entire day and night to get there.

Since he didn't know how to drive, I could only assume he hitchhiked. Either way, even if he left at the latest time possible—the morning I found his note—he still had a few hours' time to stay in this place. I could only hope that he'd keep staying there, because where I went, there would be no divinations and no other witches for kilometres… no other people, either.

Though, first, I'd need to find a road atlas for the bookworm.