Alan carefully returned the ametrine portkey to its abode, settling it cautiously to make it look untouched. He couldn't get more thankful as he withdrew the lock from his pocket that was the exact replica of the one he had broken. Hemant had a similar lock coincidentally and had readily given it to his client to aid him from being caught. The memories of the magical servicing agency were vivid and lively, something Alan vowed to never forget.

It had given him new experiences, new lessons and new beginnings, but most importantly, clarity and the right path. He was now fully aware about what was happening in Pandora, which turned out to be a major key in the mystery.

Placing the chest inside the wooden cabinet, Alan revised the details of the information he had gleaned from Hemant. He had to narrate each and everything to Pristine, not because she was smart or anything, but because she would be the only person to trust his words.

As he replayed his conversations with Hemant, he gleefully skipped through the wooden steps of the attic, humming loudly.

This all feels surreal! Finally, I have seen the place I dreamed of visiting!

In spite of the terrifying experience accompanied with a loss of power, Alan was proud of himself for embarking on a solo journey to the magical realm. A sense of maturity had elevated his downcast mood and the information he had convened was going to be the building blocks of finding Andrei's killer.

Excessive pride and rampant delight made him hum louder and skip slower, causing him to become alarmingly noticeable. As he capered through the corridor leading to his room, his humming and breathing ceased after spotting a very familiar figure across the hallway.

Arabella approached the overjoyed Alan with sacks of skepticism hanging through her eyes. She paused midway as she patiently waited for Alan to reach, who had now altered his appearance to a very silent and distraught boy. Cowering his head and slipping his hands into the pocket to protect the vial, Alan attempted to tilt his direction and completely avoid his stern sister. But Arabella was not that soft to let him slide away.

She held out her hand, easily beckoning his brother to cease his walk and surrender to her questions.

Alan gradually relieved his neck from the coil and faced his sister's eyes with pupils of stolidness.

"When did you come back?" Arabella inquired, her voice hinting at concern.

"From where?"

Oh, shit! Did I just voluntarily step inside a quicksand?

"What do you mean from where?" her brow arched as she crossed her arms, "You had gone out after the fight, how am I supposed to know where you went?"

"Ah, yes. I – I went to visit Andrei's grave," a neatly woven sentence with fibers of empathy left his mouth, as Alan narrowed his eyes towards the floor. Though the fibers were organic, it was the cloth that turned out to be defective.

"Oh, okay" Arabella empathized awkwardly. She still couldn't forgive him for what he had done, but standing in his shoes, she realized it was extremely hard for him to analyze his surroundings. As she sought to search for words of solace within the large dictionary in her brain, something felt off.

"Wait, then why are you coming down from the attic?" she directed her suspicion towards her brother, who was now swamped in a pool of anxiety as he tightened the grip over the vial.

"To refer to your books, I have a thesis to submit on Mass Communication and I figured out you had those books," Alan answered with an unwavering tone, hopefully raising his credibility.

"You could have asked me!"

"Would you have responded if I had asked? After labeling me as paranoid?" Alan snapped in utter fury. Even if he had been deceiving his sister at the moment, there was no good in concealing the impertinent behaviour his family had cornered him with.

Arabella blinked in guilt. After all, guilt was the only food she had been served the whole day. Guilt of not saving the victim, guilt of not finding what happened to Pristine, guilt of not checking the cri-sors and now, a new recipe that contained guilt of her crude behaviour.

"I am sorry," a silent sniff escaped from her once-haughty face. Her eyes wandered towards the ceiling, a discreet way of sending the over-flowing tears back inside.

"I am sorry for yelling," Alan repented. He had hurt everyone's sentiment for the death of his friend; he realized that upon witnessing his sister's silent tears. The frustration of being avoided by the society had clogged their heads, making the Alteiners incessantly get emotional. Everyone, especially their family, had a rough time, so it was a basic family right to empathize and support each other.

"You can go," Arabella dismissed him silently. Their conversation on the whole had been awkward, blended with outrageous emotions of anger and remorse and that made Alan accept her demand and end their talk.

He gave a nod as Arabella arched herself, giving way for her brother to cross.

Life had literally taken a downhill for the Alteiners and made them internally distant. A single murder had taken down the happiness from their faces, replacing it with wild wrath and vain defiance, but one boy remained immune to the trauma, laughing victoriously, because finally, he had got what he had been criticized for.

***

"Let me get this straight, so Romine is a criminal from Pandora, right?"

Alan rolled his eyes and face palmed as Pristine sat facing him with confusion and curiosity.

"Maybe if you don't interrupt me, then you won't ask these kind of foolish questions," Alan hurled back, plainly asking her to keep quiet.

Internally infuriated, Pristine pursed her lips from parting any remarks; she had to know the story and only he can tell him. Maintaining the placid expressions, she lent her ears to his story.

Alan pushed a strand of hair behind his ears and continued, "Hemant reckons that a shape-shifter, not a criminal, had killed Andrei. Romine was one of the SPA, service providing agent, who worked in the Magistrate, and suddenly had vanished out of the blue. Rumours say that her last client had asked her to kill Andrei and that's probably why she left."

"So, someone had ordered a service from Romine to trick me into killing Andrei," Pristine summarized, earning a nod from the no-more-manipulator.

"Your intuition was right..." her words trailed in loudness on seeing a shade of smugness spreading across Alan's face.

"Anyways," she hindered the pride-plague's path by causing a sudden twitch, "Why can't those magicians find out the client?"

"It's not easy apparently. Not the city, but the whole realm has been searching for Romine and no Etherial has laid eyes on her until now."

The air filled with silence, allowing their brains to work in clarity.

"Magic is a mysterious being; it reveals for one and conceals for the other," Alan said thoughtfully.

Pristine scoffed and said, "Stop being rhetoric!"

"That's what Hemant said, not me!"

"Hemant can say; he is a magical person, but you aren't, right?" the term 'Etherial' still didn't seem to register in her mind.

"That doesn't make any difference, miss!" Alan scorned.

"No wonder Andrei hated you, you were a nuisance!"

"What?" Alan detected an anguished tone as the mist-eyed woman blinked.

Shit, no! Wrong timing!

More than the reality that Andrei was dead, the revelation that Andrei despised him ate up Pristine's esteem and sanity. She had thought herself to be different from the other girls who had constantly tried to woo her crush. She thought that she had a unique aura, a special bond between them. She thought that whenever Andrei glanced at her, she shined like an angel and that her smile would erupt butterflies in his stomach. She had only thought and thought and thought...

"I didn't mean it in that way!" Alan quickly returned, barely attempting to break the delusions Pristine underwent through her blubbering eyes.

"It was just to – to stop you! I mean, you were judging me so hard that I had to defend myself with such remarks so that you would stop!"

Alan was exhausted from lying by now. He had reached his maximum limit and now had crossed it. But that's what humans like – to hear flowery lies rather than the bitter truth.

This made Pristine hue in the same shade as her long crimson hair.

"Don't. Say. That. Again," she gritted.

Taken aback by her fury, Alan realized how he had almost made everyone around him turn mad.

Am I a Horcrux or something...

"Continue what you have got to say," Pristine demanded, barring Alan from going into another vain thinking.

"Yes, um, what was I –"

"Are there no CCTV cameras in that agency? They could just look up through the footage!" Pristine snapped.

"No, apparently the use of more technological inventions disrupts the magical equilibrium. All types of radiation that are emitted by electronic devices are not compatible to be in a magical ambience."

"This is ridiculous!"

"This is magical science, Pristine. We don't have a say in it."

Alan's conclusive statement had silenced the vexed victim. Yes, they had no say in anything. All they could do was watch what happened.

"The potion?" Pristine inquired, setting aside the negative thoughts to bring the positives out.

"There you go!" Alan handed the vial in her hands and demonstrated its usage.

"Wear it only when necessary," Alan warned as he watched Pristine hastening to wear the necklace.

Atleast, Abigail listens to me!

The thought that his youngest sibling adores him and respects his words filled his view with happy memories before he was obstructed by a clamouring Pristine.

"My hands! Oh! Alan I can't see myself! This is legit!" the air that filled his classmate's presence screamed.

"But we can hear you, so that means you need to be careful," Alan talked back to the air.

Pristine slowly removed the necklace and placed it on the table nearby. This was the first time she had experienced something truly enchanting and couldn't suppress her excitement. As she gazed at the simple necklace, a question dawned her senses as her face turned serious.

"What is the price for this necklace?"

"Why do you ask?" Alan was genuinely confused.

"I want to pay you back. I know there is a different currency but you can convert them right? Tell me the price, I'll pay you back even if its expensive."

Alan smiled; he didn't know whether he looked helpless or sympathetic but he awed Pristine's kindness.

"It's not something you can pay Pristine."

"Alan, please! You are making me feel more guilty! Please tell me the price, stop hesitating," Pristine appealed. On seeing his hesitation, she discerned the amount to be hefty and futurized her plans on working part-time jobs to fill the loan.

"Pristine," Alan chuckled, "the payment is not money, it's my power. They took it away."

***

The rest of the evening was spent with heated talks from both sides of the party – the victim and her savior. Pristine was greatly disturbed by monsters of remorse that regularly hinted at her pitiable situation. She couldn't bring herself to comprehend the fact that Alan had ineptly traded his power to protect her; it simply wasn't the right thing to do.

Alan convinced till his throat ran out of saliva. He repeated Hemant's promising words for the umpteenth time and her questioning and concern brought back the weeds of apprehension he had mowed earlier. Even though cynicism sprouted back its poisonous flowers, Alan chose to trust Hemant. He was not just an agent to him, but a genuine Etherial brother from another mother.

The hands of the clock raced to pass the time; they themselves were irritated by the incessant argument and pushed themselves forward. The darkness enshrouded the city like every other night and simultaneously, tranquility diffused across the heated room.

Grumbles from the duo's stomachs echoed through the room as they awkwardly ignored it in the initial stage. As the deep voids of hunger expanded, Alan sought to sneak food from the kitchen.

He returned back with a handful of snacks and chocolates, carefully avoiding eye contact with his family members so that they remain in the intuition that he is angry and upset.

Alan and Pristine chomped the food in front of them, avoiding each other's astonished looks.

Once the food was over and the night had sunk in, the rise of another major problem made both the teenagers uneasy.

Were will Pristine sleep?

Alan could not go out and sleep with any of his housemates, it would increase the swarms of suspicion around him. Pristine could not step out of the room, she would be killed the next instant.

As the uneasiness mushroomed amidst them, Alan spoke out, "I'll sleep in the couch and you can take the bed. If you are still uncomfortable, you can go to your home and use the invisibility and take shelter."

Pristine looked bewildered by his statement.

"It's fine," Alan added feebly, though he was never asked.

"I can't go home. While you were away, I saw my mom packing bags, locking the house and leaving somewhere. It would become even more suspicious if someone noticed movement within the house nor can I break the windows and intrude in like a criminal."

Her reasoning concluded one statement: she can't go home.

"Anyways, I was going to sleep in the bed, but thanks for asking,"

Her shamelessness intrigued Alan's previous notion about her.

"Also, don't expect me to be like those shy, timid girls you often see in web series', who wake up with their makeup intact and hair untouched."

Alan watched her set his bed as he reclined on the couch.

She is a different breed!

Alan chuckled as he extended his bony hands and turned the light off. As his eyes drowned in drowsiness and the day's tediousness seemed to settle, Pristine's voice echoed through the dark.

"Also, I snore."