Forbidden (The Seeker Saga, #2) by Sarah Swan

all saw them.”
    “Somebody could have taken great care to make them look that way,” Eve said. 
    “We’re just going deeper in the rabbit hole,” Madison said with a sigh.  “The more we learn, the less we understand.”
    Liz shook her head.  “Nonsense.  We just haven’t had time to process everything yet.  I’m sure there’s a pattern here.  Eve, if you’re certain…” Liz waited, but Eve didn’t hesitate in nodding, “…then we’ll have to go look at the wall again.”
    “If somebody carved these down there based on this,” I said, “then they meant for someone to find it.  Why?  The markings are what led you to the crystals, Liz.”
    “Maybe somebody wanted us to find them,” Ashley said.  She shivered conspicuously.  “I don’t like thinking of that.”
    “No,” Eve said.  “Not us.  This paper’s too old.  It would have taken years for it to yellow like this.  Decades, probably.”
    “Alright, well, let’s keep looking,” I suggested.  “We can take that with us when we go.  Along with anything else we might find.”
    “Hey, wait a minute!” Madison exclaimed.  I hadn’t noticed, but while the rest of us were talking, she had slinked back to look under the shelf again.  “There’s something else wedged in here that I didn’t see before!  Way at the back.”  She put her arm in and wiggled it around.  “Ugh.  I can’t reach it.”
    “Let me try,” Ashley said, coming over beside her.  She bent down, looking inside the hiding space.  “Does anybody have a light?”
    “You can use my cell phone,” Liz said, handing it to her after turning the camera LED on. 
    Ashley shone it into the space and nodded.  “I see it,” she said to Madison.  “I think I can reach.”  I didn’t notice before, but the raven-haired girl had probably the most slender arms I’d ever seen.  I looked at mine and felt a tiny stab of jealousy.  She was blessed with very graceful arms while mine were thicker and wider.  Not abnormally so by any stretch, but not as nice as hers.  After a minute of prodding beneath the shelf, Ashley pulled her arm out clutching a crumbled piece of paper.
    “Nice one!” Madison said, and Ashley smiled proudly.  She gave the sheet to Liz, who straightened it against her thigh.  I watched her eyes run left to right as she read whatever was on it.  By the third line, her eyebrows had reached the very top of her head.
    “What is it?” I asked.  The rest of the girls were all leaning in intently.  Liz held a finger up to me, continued reading, and then exhaled heavily and put the paper down.   
    “If you thought the drawings were something,” she said, “just wait until you see this.”  She put the smaller piece of paper on top of the other one, and turned it around so the rest of us could read.
    At first glance, it looked like the front page of a research report.  A large title followed by a paragraph summary.  There was a rip in the top left corner where it looked like a staple had once been.  I read the title, and found my own eyebrows crawling up:  A Theoretical Exposition of Potential Physical Phenomena Derived from the Valency of Vitreous Silica Formations.
    “Vitreous Silica,” I said under my breath.  “Does that mean…?”
    “Crystals,” Liz confirmed.
    “This is a paper about the power of the crystals!” Madison exclaimed.
    “That’s right,” Liz said.  “But, this is just the paper abstract.  And it doesn’t say much.”
    I scanned the paragraph below the title.  None of it made sense.  There was mention of the “physical valency of quartz objects” and reference to “undefined phenomena associated with lechatelierite and tridymite” and a promise to “expound upon the abstract values of atomic energies,” but it was written in complete scientific jargon and was way over my head.
    “Where’s the rest of it?” Eve asked.  “Madison, is there anything else under the shelf?”
    “Just