Aconite

I had missed the lecture.

I stood in the doorframe of the empty lecture hall and felt as if I had stepped on empty air in a stairway. I had never missed one of my own lectures. Never.

I sank into an empty front row seat and lifted a hand onto my temple. I couldn't roll back time. I knew that. I tried anyway.

I stood in the doorway of the empty lecture hall. I sighed and closed the door. The good news was that this specific lecture had been for a witchy audience. I wouldn't need to try and find an excuse. They were witches. They knew.

But tomorrow I would have a class with a non-magical audience. I needed it. I needed the mushrooms. I hadn't even realized how dependent I had become on the medicine. Now, with a full week without my special drug, I was absolutely lost. I had relied on the medicine for time keeping for over twenty years. My head was a drifting place without it.

No. It wasn't drifting. I had no problem with focusing on correcting exams or going through research resources. That wasn't the case. I just forgot the time. And there were moments when I found myself watching the dark screen of a smartphone unsure of what I was supposed to do with the digits displayed on the lock screen. How did they work again?

I left for meetings too late or too early. Sometimes by various hours, as was the case just now.

And I didn't dare ask Plume to return my dark treasure. I didn't dare ask him to give me some of his venom. I still had good amounts of merfolk hair at home in an aquarium. It was forbidden to have anything of the humanoid creatures. But I couldn't easily restock those. And the aquarium was too large to move.

And it wasn't a human liver with odd fungus growing on top.

If the witch elders went through my closets at home, I believed the hairs were the worst they could find. And there were other unfortunate things for them to find as well. But all that could be explained.

A human liver couldn't. Especially after they would find out how I kept it alive. Or to whom it had belonged. It was just unthinkable for the witch community to know. It would jeopardize everything we had been working for.

"Aconite!"

I jerked my head up.

Rosemary was standing in front of the door to my office. I racked my brain for yet another missed appointment or a lunch date or anything. I couldn't come up with anything.

I stopped.

It was such a silly thing really. But they really looked like each other. Short and determined with a fragile, lean build. Always dressed smart. I could see Plume's young vampire features in every line around Rosemary Scale Tongue's eyes.

I wondered what she would do if I leaned in and kissed her. And what would Plume think of me if I did.

No, I decided then. They looked nothing alike. The light reflected on Scale Tongue's gray hairs that streaked her long black mane. And the lines around her cheeks had been wrought by beautifully full human years. She carried herself with the grace of a real dancer, by the strength of decades of ballet. And Plume would never wear a colorful scarf like hers, a little extraordinary detail against her otherwise harmonious outfit.

"Are you busy right now?" She asked. "I was wondering if you wouldn't fancy a walk outside? It is a bit cold, but there is hardly any wind today."

I found myself nodding.

"Of course. I have had a bit of a busy week. I would love a walk."

The lines deepened around her dark eyes as she smiled.

She made me feel like a teenager. I would have wanted to reach out and touch that pattern, tell her how beautiful it was, how attractive. And I would have wanted to offer her some of the warming ice cream against the cold autumn air. I would have wanted to take her to smell the roses in the Witch district.

But I also wanted her to remember this moment with me, so instead I asked:

"How about we go to the greenhouses?"

She gave me a surprised look but didn't protest as I took her to the university's botanical garden. Some of the plants held there were tropical and had been housed in greenhouses. It was some distance from the university's main organs and I was starting to regret my decision as we crossed one of the more trafficked streets. But then we entered into the humid, fragrant air inside the glass building and I relaxed immediately. I felt a smile spreading.

"I didn't know you came here often." She commented.

"Well. I come sometimes," I said. I liked Great Star, the Witch Town, better in the cold winter. But I could never explain that to the professor, so I didn't add anything but simply smiled at her.

"Do you remember my brother?" She suddenly asked.

"Your brother?" I asked and led her to sit under a palm tree. "Sure. Plume was his name. Has he contacted you recently?"

Rosemary shook her head. "I don't think so. I... I was wondering... Actually... I meant to ask..." She was reddening. "Is there a chance you might know him?"

"That I might know your brother?" I repeated.

I felt my pulse doubling. Was it possible she was starting to remember? It had been roughly thirty years since Plume had turned into a vampire. I knew he had seen her many times since. And then he had stopped the meetings, yet Plume was never far from his sister. He circled her life. Knew every nook of the university. Even some of my secret passages, though not all of them.

Here at the campus was how we had met. I had run into Plume one earlier morning on my way to breakfast in the school canteen. The vampire sitting on a windowsill, bathed in sunlight, had drawn my attention. It was that morning when I had stopped going to Hellebore for vampire venom.

Ten years ago.

"I... I have met him." I confessed. "He had come to see you, but you were unavailable. I had just gotten my lectures' position. He was perfectly polite. We stopped to talk for a while."

"Oh. I didn't know. Have you seen him since?"

I hated direct questions. I still often instinctively answered those straight away without thinking. And just then lies didn't roll freely from my tongue. I was agitated about my missing lecture. I was afraid of the elders. And I was very infatuated with this beautiful human being sitting next to me.

I buried my face in my hands in surrender.

When I surfaced, she was waiting.

"I... He really cares for you," I said.

"Has he forbidden you from telling me you know him?"

How did she keep her voice so even!? And why was she asking?

I closed my eyes. Why today when I was stuck in time? Why not next month when I could have turned time back enough to evade the conversation, or at least to come up with convincing lies.

Why today when I only had the present?

I felt a hand on my thigh.

"I am not angry with you, Aconite."

I opened my eyes. She was very close. A long strand of dark hair had fallen from behind her ear and hung now close, near my shoulder.

"I am just trying to understand. There seem to be people at the university who know him. I was just wondering if you wouldn't be one of them."

"Listen, Rosemary," I said. "He is a monster."

A white fungus flashed in my mind's eye.

I am a monster.

Her eyes widened. "What!"

And truth spilled out of me into her steady brown eyes: "Your brother is a monster. He is protecting you with the distance. Yet he cannot help but check in on you. The details would only bring you sadness."

I talked too quickly and certainly made little sense.

Her eyes were wide. She drew back.

"What do you mean by a monster?"

"Everything," I said. "He is not human," I declared.

"What do you mean by that?"

Just then the phone rang in my pocket.

I lifted a hand to signal her I would silence it and continue presently. Then I actually took the little device out of my pocket and saw the number. Or numbers, for the sequence didn't stay steady. Some digits changed as I looked, as if the whole device had become haunted.

All other thoughts evaporated into thin air.

"I am sorry," I said to the incredulous Scale Tongue.

And then answered the call:

"Valerian, my brother, What can I do for you?"

"Aconite Shatter Hat. I want you here within the minute." The voice was Fern's.

All blood drained from my face. There were no doubts left of where they were.

I left Rosemary calling my name.

Some seconds later I emerged from a downstairs closet in my own home. There were voices around me in the house. The living room had been upended. Out of habit I straightened a chair.

As I was checking the aquarium, Laurel came into the room. He was a young light-haired witch. And my son.

"He is here!" he shouted back his shoulder.

Sounds above my head stopped. A silence fell.

"Laurel," I started. "What is the meaning of this?"I said it as if I hadn't been expecting to be searched.

I gestured around me at the chaos in the living room. The household spirit was just lifting an upturned plant back to its place above our heads on a decorative ledge crafted just for plants.

"This," answered a voice behind him from the stairs. Fern Shatter Hat came downstairs accompanied by a distressed ghost. Her white hair had escaped her usually neat bun and her dark old fashined skirt was in places smudged with gray dust. The elder of the Shatter Hat family looked like she had maybe battled with a dragon rather than simply upturned my house. "This is quite the collection of the most interesting artifacts I have seen for some time."

"Is it?" I challenged her. "I do admit some of the ingredients I am inspecting are somewhat peculiar... But surely nothing that can take my own mother by surprise?"

My eyes drifted past her to the aquarium in the middle of the room.

"Well," I amended. "About that though..."

"I am not interested in a small amount of algae, Aconite. Instead, tell me what this is."

She held to my inspection a slender tube connecting two needles. Or rather, one needle and one empty slot for a needle. Though the slot was meant for a very ordinary metallic point, the one needle actually connected to the tube was white in color and unpleasantly thick, long and somewhat curved.

I reached a hand to take it from her, but Fern feigned ignorance. I let my hand drop.

"I honestly cannot imagine what it could be for," she went on. "As I take it by the spells in it, it seems to transfer blood between two individuals. And this," she continued, "I don't know what this is. But I do suspect." She gestured at the white needle.

I nodded. And shrugged.

"You must know I work with the Court. They pay extremely well in human currencies."

I saw Laurel's face twist in what must have been pure loathing. Valerian was pointedly taking interest in the work of the spirit that had started repairing a broken lamp.

"So," Fern asked, "am I to understand this little device here is meant for the use of those human puppets the vampires call links? For transferring their blood directly into a corpse."

She looked at me levelly. It was obvious she had figured out the spellwork on the artifact. That specific one wasn't meant for human blood. Though, I made many enchanted objects for human blood. Mo did pay well. It wasn't a lie. And many vampires preferred not to suck directly from an open wound. I had crafted countless vials to preserve the easily spoiled human blood, to conserve the living link of blood. Vials that could be easily drained like as many glasses of apple juice. There were not that many witches willing to craft those.

But she wasn't brandishing one of the vials at me. There was a huge crate of them forgotten in a corner of an empty upstairs room. Fern must have seen them and deemed them uninteresting. What she was holding was a device meant for direct transfusion of blood, vein to vein. And she knew that.

"No, that's not for a human," I admitted.

The spellwork on the tube was meant for very specific type of blood. And that wasn't O negative.

"In that case, Aconite Shatter Hat. You have some explaining to do. I shall repeat myself: What is the meaning of this artifact?"

"Would you like a pot of tea, mother, son?" I offered, thinking hard.

"I would take answers, father," Laurel said. He was looking at me.

I found it hard to look Laurel in the eyes. We had both chosen our grounds. I disapproved of his line of work. Laurel was coming in my footsteps. It wasn't what I would have chosen for my son. Mastering the magical poisons wasn't a high merit. And Laurel couldn't stand the fact that I had chosen to take care of Clover and her mother in the human city. And get involved in the vampire affairs.

And not just vampires, they had just been a side effect of my chosen company. I had known Julia the last time. When I had been young and foolish, and easily seduced by the old magician.

"Aconite!" Fern said sharply. "Could you please tell me why you own a device that is clearly meant for sucking witch blood and moving it on inside a vampire? Vein to vein."

I sighed. If I said I used my own blood for a trade with Plume, it would raise the questions of what I got in return. And then I would need to invent a use for vampire venom. Had I still served as the assassin of the Witch Town, I could have maybe come up with something credible. But that title belonged to my son now.

I opened my mouth. Would I dare?

"I have a lover," I said. "A vampire lover."

It was a credible lie. My choices in romances had been notoriously unfortunate. That was actually probably why Fern hadn't been too surprised by the hairs in the aquarium...

"A vampire lover?" Laurel sounded beyond shocked.

I looked at my son again. He looked very young. Unlike Valerian's ghost, Laurel had no idea of the truth of what had really tied me to working for the Court. And it was far too late for the two of us to start dealing in truths.

"His name is Plume," I stated, imagining the vampire in my mind's eye. "He has some trouble taking linking. And as it is impossible for a vampire to latch onto a witch's core as they do to mortals, it is safe for us to share what we share. He can postpone the next victim by weeks. The witch blood also helps him shift his nocturnal cycle to a diurnal one for the same period of time, which results convenient for him. As to the method of transfusion..."

I looked at the tube again. Now, hanging from the elder's hand like a dead snake, it did look somewhat hideous with the white fang resembling more a knife than a needle. But you couldn't really pierce a vampire's skin with anything else. I hadn't really thought much of it when Plume had suggested a direct line. I had had my head in my own research and the Queen had asked for weirder objects. And it had even been kind of convenient. I disliked bottling my own blood. A wicked witch could do much harm with the contents of such a bottle.

"It is convenient," I finished.

In the following silence Fern and Laurel both looked at Valerian expectantly. The ghost was vigorously investigating the patterns of my carpet. As the witches continued to stare, he eventually cleared his throat.

"I have... heard of this Plume. Son of Blizzard, son of Mo herself. Would be in his human fifties."

"You knew of this?" Fern asked.

My brother's ghost cast a glance in my direction before continuing: "I am as surprised as you here. Aconite has been tight lipped about his love life of late..." He grew pensive. "Which though, now that I said it out loud, should have alerted me. No new romances in a decade. I should have known."

Fern let out a sigh. She looked a century older when she turned to me.

"Are you now absolutely sure this is what you want me to believe? If there is any other explanation, I would be interested in hearing it. You are my son, after all."

I closed my eyes for a moment. Opened them.

"I have traded with the Castle for decades. I see vampires every other day. And they are not difficult to look at. Plume is... fascinating company. Tangled in the human life, yet not quite touching it. I almost relate. I am actually colleagues with his human sister at the university and..."

Fern lifted one beringed hand in surrender.

I let them go. And sank into an armchair. Valerian stayed with me. He couldn't do anything, just looked, as I watched the ceiling.

"You know," he started. "Had you not enchanted me, I would have told her everything. Vampire lover... indeed."

I looked at him.

I found nothing but a raised eyebrow. I lowered my head back.

"It is good I tweaked the ghost Valerian left behind. Truth be told, were you still alive, I would be in deep trouble. If Valerian was here, flesh and blood, he would have told mother at this point."

"I wonder where I would have started," he said. "From the mushrooms, where you grow them, whom the liver belongs to, how you made a pact with Hellebore for the fungus, how you killed the male incarnation... Maybe I would start with the mudboy, actually. The one your children killed."

"Mudboy? What Mudboy?"

The ghost had now my undivided attention. He was smiling wickedly. "And you don't even remember how you paid your debt to the alchemist. But I do. And I have no reason to tell you. Give my daughter her memory back and we can negotiate."

I frowned. I had paid my debt?

Really?

I felt around the idea. I actually felt like I was debtless indeed. Yet I was very sure Hellebore had emphasized how hard it had been to find the fungus. Not to mention half the other ingredients I had initially required, all the vampire venom I had used...

It most definitely hadn't been enough that I had murdered a young man for the liver. But no, I had had too much of my own interest in that game. That was a shared interest, I could understand why Hellebore had chosen him. The logic was clear. I had even agreed in my younger years. And now I had too much invested in the plot. Including my nephew's memory.

But what mudboy?

I actually stared at my brother's ghost for some time while he leered at me. Was it possible he was teasing me? But no... I had studied the memory for some time to understand that while the actual remembering of some events could be erased, the feelings and related knowledge stayed. And I knew I was a debtless man. And I knew I didn't remember paying that debt.

I was haunted by many thoughts as evening stretched into night and the house arranged itself around me. The spirit worked its magic arranging my belongings and preparing broken objects as I slumped in one of my favorite chairs looking onto the river through high windows. I didn't live in the Witch Town, not anymore. Valerian occupied our old house, and I enjoyed the city as it was, living in the old center where the houses were old and made to hold many families. The river view was nice. I was high enough from the bank to not fear any floods, yet I had an unobstructed view of the waters over a wide stretch of grass where people came to play ultimate in good weather. Though today it was too cold for that.

I considered calling Plume to ask him return my treasure now that the apartment had been combed through. I considered calling Hellebore to ask about my debt. I probably should have called Rosemary to explain my sudden disappearance. And I would have wanted to call Clover.

Yet I could not bring myself to do anything but to entertain these ideas.

Eventually I rose and took onto my desk a book I had intended to translate. It had been written in old Atlantean that most students found difficult to understand. There were some chapters I wanted to bring to class one of these days. I hoped to hand out copies of the text, or at least a pdf. But I knew half the students wouldn't be interested in reading if they couldn't decipher it.

Halfway through the book I rose to find a copy of another book about the Mother Goddess Iris. Then remembered I had left it at the office. I sank back to the chair, and stared hard at the black and white screen of my laptop.

I was absolutely sure the book wasn't in my office. I had loaned it to someone. But who?

I couldn't bring to mind a name, nor a face.

I nearly yelped as I suddenly heard a hard peak tapping at a window.

I let Plume in through the small airing window. The bird glided over my head and perched itself onto the back of the chair where it considered me with hard onyx eyes.

"Quoth the raven 'Nevermore'," I muttered, placing my book on a side table.

Plume cocked his bird head.

I almost saw it, though not quite. The change seemed to happen just when I blinked and suddenly it was a man who perched on the back of the chair, holding perfect balance and seemingly impossibly not overturning the seat.

"Quoth the Raven?" The vampire asked. His head was still tilted to a side, a bit too far to appear quite natural.

"Just a poem by an American horror writer," I answered. "I was reminded of it by your entrance. How can I make your life more interesting tonight?"

Plume slid to his feet soundlessly like a shadow. It had become dark in the room without my noticing, for I had sat there a while and the laptop's screen was lit. Plume favored the colorless dark tones of night in his style. And the near light, a red glow to his eyes, really gave him the appearance of a shadowy fiend of the dark.

A lover? Oh, but Valerian was right to laugh at the lie. While Plume could still sometimes agitate my heart, it most certainly wasn't because of passion.

"We would like your expertise on a matter," he said. "There is a... thing no one seems to be able to explain."

"A thing?" I repeated, raising an eyebrow. "That is awfully vague of you. How do you mean a thing?"

"You need to see it for yourself. As I said, I do not understand it. Nor does anyone else. We don't know what it is."

"What's the time?" I asked, out of habit. Then realized I wouldn't do anything with the answer. "Actually, never mind. Where is it? In the Castle?"

Plume wore a frown.

"No. At Blizzard's."

I felt my hackle rise. I saw the girl, Valentina, standing guard beside me as I took Clover's memory. Blizzard, unlike Plume, had excellent control over the souls linked to him.

"I have never been there." It wasn't quite an objection.

"I will be your navigator. At least we are at the right side of the river."

I looked out, my heart sinking. I had an easy shortcut for the Castle, but driving to the lair of a foreign vampire at this hour... I sighed. Not that it mattered what time it might have been.

I felt Plume's hand on my shoulder.

"It is important. For all of us."

The car was cold, and the front window had frosted over and needed to be cleaned before we started the engine. The engine protested. Winter was coming. So it did every year. And I was still surprised by it.

The night traffic was nicer than I had really expected. I didn't drive often, and even less at night. I only ever needed to go to the University, to Great Star or to the Castle. And there were better ways to get to those places than driving.

I wasn't too surprised when Plume directed me to the richer south. And I wasn't at all impressed by the spacious yard in front of a tall ornamented building. I left my car under a leafless birch tree and turned to the house. The entrance wasn't hard to locate as it was marked by two Corinthian columns and a decorative pediment they supported.

But I was a bit taken aback as the door was opened by a dark haired girl of latin origins whose eyes weren't at all clouded or confused. It was also very clear of Valentina's expression that she knew full well who I was and what I had done to a friend of hers. If she could have burnt a hole through me by staring, she would have. And I am sure she considered just hitting me instead.

"Oh," I said, at a loss for any words at all.

Valentina seemed to be lacking in verbal arsenal as well. She didn't actually clench her fist but looked aside as she let the two of us enter.

We came into an echoing hall with stairs to upper floors. The house around us was mostly silent. But it was warm and clean and smelled of lemon or maybe vervain. A collection of jackets and coats in all colors had been left to hang just by the door, and as we ascended, I couldn't help paying attention to a toy spaceship left on one windowsill. The house was obviously inhabited by people. Maybe even by more than just one family. But the hour was late. The humans, the links, were sleeping.

On the second landing a door had been left ajar. Behind it was a spacious room. And a huge open vault, a doorway made of metal from floor to ceiling, heavy metal bars protruding from the side. In the vault was a dimly lit bedroom.

A huge vampire came to meet me by the vault's entrance.

"Master Aconite," he greeted me, taking my hand in a heartfelt greeting. "So good of you to come."

I had never truly met Blizzard before. I had maybe seen him on my short visits to the Castle, but my business had been with the Queen. And later with Plume. I knew little of the ways of the giant now holding my delicate witch's hand.

He had a very different presence from Plume's. Plume showed emotions that changed and flowed. But there was steadiness in Blizzard. I felt as if greeted by a boulder the size of his house. An entity that had watched the world change around him and had deemed it best to stay put until everything would calm around.

There was a type of magnetic silence to him. I could feel he had lived hundreds of years. And I felt the pull of that silent experience in him.

Mo had a silence surrounding her as well. But it was the silence of a forest pond or a spring in the woods, calm and collected, but somehow transparent. In sharp contrast, Blizzard left an impression. He had a type of magnificence reserved for the great monuments of history, like the roman amphitheaters, or the Egyptian pyramids.

Even so, he flowed on like a dancer, or the years passing, as he showed me inside into what must have been his private chamber.

On a very modern bed, on top of gray covers lay a glass skeleton. The room was lit by living flames, and the skeleton reflected light like a crystal object made to shine.

Valentina gave way to gravity and sat on an armchair on the other side. She closed her eyes there. As it was the only seat inside the vault, I seated myself on the bed. Plume sat on the floor, and Blizzard loomed by the doorway.

"Can I touch it?" I asked.

"Please," Blizzard acceded. "Would you like something? Tea? Something to eat?"

I shook my head

I tried to pick one of the small fingers of the nearest hand to bring it closer to my eyes, but found out that, even with no visible joints, the skeleton formed a whole and the arm followed the finger. It was very light. Put in water, it could have floated. If it had been an object of the scientific world, which it most obviously was not.

Everyone stayed silent as I went through the entity, one bone at a time, and eventually came to a very startling conclusion, which I finally voiced out:

"I can find no witchcraft in this," I said. "Though it seems clear the magic has a greater concentration around the cranium. If there has been a spell included in making it, it has been there, but either its missing, or the artifact has absorbed it. Most definately this is not made by humans. It seems to be made of pure magic, and I do not know how that is possible. I have never heard of a magical being surviving with no physical links. Nothing of earth."

"What do you mean?" Plume asked before anyone else had time to react. "I have nothing physical about me. I have not one living, real cell or organism. Isn't a vampire a being of just magic?"

I shook my head. "You need blood. And human blood mostly. A spirit is tied to a place, an object or a phenomenon. A ghost is tied to a memory and a spell. The merfolk are made of magic and living algae. A demon needs a body to inhabit and a mind to feed on. No being is just magic. This one is lacking the physical. Or at least, most of it."

I turned to the skeleton. Frowning.

"Plume told me something of an explosion. I think the fire ate away the other half. And this is what is left. Like an empty vampire."

"Yet a vampire drained of all blood is a dead vampire," Blizzard noted. "And a dead vampire is a puff of smoke."

"Yes. And that is what puzzles me the most," I said. "Why isn't this a puff of smoke? If I burn down the house I live in, the spirits living there will be gone. And if I pluck every single hair out of a mermaid's head, I will be left with a handful of algae. So. I can see here nothing organic, nor any other type of matter anchoring this shape to the physical realm. So: How is it here, and what does it want?"

"Want?" Plume's interest was picked.

"A vampire want's blood, a demon needs a mind, an elf lives in symbiosis with the Forest, though more I don't know of them." I pondered this, looking down at the skeleton. "Have you actually tried offering it something? Starting from blood. If it's foreign, it might want for anything. Bugs, leaves, berries, thread, herbs..."

"He is not foreign. And it isn't blood. Of any type."

I looked up at the huge vampire. The words had come out as a sigh.

"He?" I framed the pronoun as a question.

"That is one more piece to puzzle out, master Aconite," he said. "I remember all our time together. And no one else does, except for Valentina and Moura. You might have known him. He was a student at the University. Until a few days ago. He was a vampire before that. And he was something else after."

He looked at the skeleton. "He tasted like a human a few weeks ago. But he had a vampire's aura. A magical aura. I suppose it was because his bones weren't bones."

He leaned onto the bed.

"If only any of us knew how he managed that. If there were any clues as to how this started, but everyone who knew him has forgotten his existence. His sister doesn't know she had a brother, and Mo doesn't know she had a child. Even Hellebore doesn't remember. Though he is the reason why I do, as the alchemist somehow forced Valentina to remember. So everyone in this house knows Timothy, through our shared link. But outside these walls he never existed."

I was stunned into silence.

I opened my mouth then: "But didn't you say that Alfons... Julia does know him as well?"

Blizzard shook his head slowly, not in negation of my words but to indicate it mattered little. "She only knew him for a very short time and is of little use. And Julia is an unpredictable force of nature, she might help, or she might not. And right now this incarnation isn't even stable yet."

Suddenly I understood the odd atmosphere. The three people in this room, two vampires and a dozing Valentina, were mourning. Or at least Blizzard and Valentina were. Though it seemed Plume knew he was missing a piece inside of himself even without his memories of this being. He seemed troubled.

I cleared my throat.

The vampires turned to me. Valentina turned in her sleep.

I put a smile on my face.

"Gentlemen," I adressed the two vampires. "The magic is here. He isn't dead yet. That much is clear to me. We will just need to find the missing elements of this puzzle."