There were not many magic users living in Lake Point, and most of them were low-level. None powerful enough to cast the spell that Sarah had detected on a particularly crisp spring afternoon, and none reckless enough to cast one so closely linked to another magic user, even one as weak as Sarah.
But as she flipped through her mental rolodex, Sarah realized that none of the local magic users were realistically within a reasonable radius to have cast it anyway: Athena DeVries was out sick that day. Steve Farber was traveling for a track and field meet. Nadine Ferguson's mom had just pulled her out of public school before break, after learning that she could not prevent the LGBT Student Union from meeting on campus. And Mr. Kassum was always in the science lab, surrounded by so much sufficiently advanced technology that it was indistinguishable from magic and interfered with any spells.
So Sarah McMillan, initially, had no good leads regarding who must have cast the spell. Momentarily shutting out the distraction of her fellow cheerleaders gossiping around her, Sarah closed her eyes in a moment of meditation. In a way, she was lucky: she was not skilled enough to trace any normal spell. But because this one was linked to her, she could grasp at the ends of its metaphysical threads, pull them towards her, and follow their vibrations back to the source.
Karyn Black.
Karyn Black!? She wasn't a magic user. She wasn't even a potential magic user. How could she have crafted such a sophisticated mimicry spell? It was a perfect partial duplication! She must have used an artifact. And, knowing that an artifact was involved, Sarah tugged ever so slightly at the metaphysical threads once more, using all her concentration to tease out the source of the spell.
The Stone.
How had Karyn, of all people, come into possession of The Stone? No. It wasn't even in Karyn's possession. Jon Gibson had let her use it. Jon Gibson was the owner of an artifact as powerful as The Stone? Sarah's mind boggled. But there was no time to worry, this was an opportunity she needed to seize. She made up some excuse to leave her gaggle and skipped off while casting a rudimentary scry. With something as powerful as The Stone, it didn't take much to detect it, and now all Sarah had to do was find a way to use this opportunity to go from being the weakest magic user in Lake Point to the most powerful in the state.
