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Greenhill. His parents own the Greenhill Bistro. You can ’ t smoke in here. ”
    “ I know, I know. Bad habit. I wasn ’ t planning to light up. I ’ ll go. You can expect your first lesson in witchcraft sometime tomorrow after school. ”
    “ How? ” Abbey started as Ian climbed up onto Simon ’ s desk.
    “ I ’ ll come to you. ”
    A loud knock came at Simon ’ s bedroom door, and Ian practically swan-dived out the window into the rosebush. To his credit, he didn ’ t yelp.
    Simon cranked the window closed and grabbed the screen to pop it back into place while Abbey made for the door. It remained closed. Abbey let out a small puff of relief. It would be Mark, then. He was the only one in the house polite enough to wait for someone to open the door after he knocked. These days their parents would just pop a head in, looking the other direction, and ask what they were up to.
    She opened the door after Simon had replaced the screen and settled onto the corner of his desk with what Abbey was sure he thought was a look of casual insouciance. Still, she felt a rush of strange gratitude that he was her brother, and that they were in this together.
    Mark stood in the hall, clutching a sheaf of large papers. He had his hair slicked carefully and tidily back, as usual, but his blue cardigan hung a little bit more loosely on his large frame than it had three weeks ago. Ocean padded into the room ahead of him and leapt onto Simon ’ s bed.
    Mark entered and stood stiffly, staring at his papers. “ I require the map of Coventry Hill, ” he said. “ To further my contour line analysis. ”
    “ Okay … and how do you want us to get that for you? We ’ re not allowed to contact Dr. Ford, or Mantis, ” Abbey replied. She wondered if her habit of slipping into a slow and patient tone of voice when talking to Mark was appropriate, or if she should just talk to him like a regular person, like Caleb did.
    Mark ’ s face bunched up in frustration, but he took some deep nose breaths and elevated his eyes carefully to hers. “ It ’ s important. ”
    “ You think there was something on the map that we need to know? ”
    Mark nodded.
    “ Can you tell us what? Is it the X ’ s? ”
    Mark shook his head and strode into the room. He laid the papers on the desk. Abbey saw that he had again replicated the map of Coventry Hill by hand — this time on paper — and had extended the map out to include all of Coventry City, as well as the Circle Plateau. Midway up the hill, the stones, rosebush, and Madrona were neatly rendered and accounted for in the legend. Her breath almost caught in her throat.
    “ You ’ ve done a really nice job with your map, Mark. ”
    Mark ignored her and unfurled a sheet of transparent paper over top of the map. It had the X ’ s, the letters “ BP, ” and a strange line that wound around the bottom of the valley, along the Moon River, through the downtown of Coventry. Mark extended one of his stubby fingers to the transparency.
    “ I need to confirm the precise locations of this line and the BP dot. ”
    “ Why? Do you have a hypothesis? ” Abbey regretted this instantly. She should have said theory like everyone else would have. She should stop using science words just to show off.
    “ This line is on the five-meter interval, ” Mark said.
    “ So …” Abbey said.
    “ The contour interval of the map is ten meters. ”
    “ So …”
    Mark expelled one of his usual huffs of impatience. “ Elevation contour lines join points of equal value, or elevation. They are used to give a sense of the terrain or relief of an area. Applications also include planning artillery fire lines, calculating the volume of hills, architectural planning, predicting flooding, identifying air sheds, road design, trail building —”
    “ Right, right. We got it, Mark, ” Simon interrupted. “ Why do you think this line is important? ”
    Mark ’ s shoulders slumped slightly. “ I don ’ t know. ”
    “ Well,