"What do you mean 'his are gone'? They can't be! This- this is the Tooth Palace; Jack said that this is the second safest place only beaten by the Warren. How can something just vanish in a place like this?" Jamie started running his hands through his hair, shaking his head back and forth. "No, no… No no no."

"Jamie, you must calm down," North said, watching nervously as Jamie paced the floor of the platform. There was a terrible scratching sound as Jamie lost his footing and started to fall off the edge. "JAMIE!" North lunged forward and Tooth flew with rapid speed to catch his shoulders before he fell off the platform to the spires of cages below. When he was back settled down safely, Jamie's eyes were wide and glistening, his heart pounding and mind racing.

"That can't be it." He said, wobbling in a poor attempt to get up.

"W-what?" Tooth said, confused with what he meant.

"That can't be it, it can't. Jack's teeth aren't missing. There's no way. How could… who would—" His thoughts rested on one possibility, the only possibility. Tooth and North didn't need to hear the name because they already understood. "Pitch."

"But that's impossible! Pitch couldn't have gotten in here, there is no way at all that he could have gotten in here," Tooth fussed, "My fairies would have seen him, there are no shadows in my palace." North stood to the side, scanning the palace from his vantage point and she was correct; there were no shadows anywhere. Everywhere where there should have been a shadow, in corners and under the roofs of the cages, there was only light. It was as if Tooth's energy itself fueled the light of her palace.

"She is right," North said to Jamie, gesturing to the light all around them, "not one shadow in any place of palace. Pitch could not have gotten in by that transport… and I surely doubt that Pitch would walk right in past all these baby teeth to search for Jack's teeth." He crossed his arms and rubbed his beard in an attempt to keep a smile from his lips as he imagined Pitch sneaking in like a child worried of being found out in order to rummage through piles of contained teeth. Jamie didn't find it so amusing.

"Okay well if it wasn't Pitch, then who? It isn't like there are many other enemies on the Guardians' radar. I mean, who would want to pick a fight with people so powerful? Pitch had been at his prime when he chose to attack again and even then, it wasn't enough." Jamie looked down at his feet, embarrassed, as North and Tooth shared a knowing look; it was because of Jamie that they had been able to defeat Pitch; he had been the One Light. Jamie scuffed the toe of his shoe against the edge of the platform as he continued to think about people who would want Jack to forget who he is.

"There really is no one else," Tooth said, unstacking and restacking memory boxes mechanically, "I mean, sure, Cupid has his off days and sure, the Ground Hog fishes for too much attention, but none of those other magical beings would have any reason to be mad at us or even go so far as to steal Jack's teeth." Tooth finished restacking her third pile and whizzed around her palace to quickly check on her fairies.

"Tooth has point, Jamie," North said with a shrug, "There are no magical beings besides Pitch Black who dislike the Guardians enough to want to hurt Jack like this. It makes no sense," North scratched his beard again and started to wander away to the other side of the platform.

"Fine," Jamie threw his hands in the air, "fine so it wasn't Pitch and it wasn't Cupid or the Ground Hog," he said, his tone growing more impatient with each word, "Then who? Like, don't you keep a list of visitors or something, Tooth? Someone must've seen something going on at some point. This is crazy to think that Jack's teeth just magically up and left!" Jamie could feel his frustration mounting and he tried to calm himself by running his hands through his hair. "I just—this doesn't make any sense." He sat down on the floor with a small thump, defeated. North looked down at Jamie and back at Tooth who had finally rejoined them on the platform. Tooth hovered in the air a few feet away from Jamie, looking down until a start in her memory made her jolt up in a split second and gasp.

"We do!" She exclaimed, waving one of her fairies over to her side, "We do keep a record of visitors! I haven't had the need to visit there in years, but there are a few fairies interchanged each month that track people who come in and out of the palace." She asked the fairy for the registry of visitors from the past two years and the little creature nodded once and flew off to a high cage that hung close to the main entrance of the palace. "She should be back soon," Tooth said affirmatively. In less than five minutes, six fairies were on their way down from the registry cage with two leather-bound books that seemed much too heavy for the poor girls. They huffed the books all the way to where Jamie sat and then plunked them down right in front of his feet before flying off again.

"So this is it? Two leather-bound books of names?" Jamie peered at the books and scrunched up his nose as he realized something; "We're going to have to read each name?" Tooth spared him a sympathetic look before settling down in front of him and opening the first book.

"Well, we'll have to think back to the last day that we saw him as himself and then we can rule out any dates before then. Otherwise we'll have to read both books for any name that seems to stand out. Knowing the last day Jack was himself will help narrow down the timeframe and knowing the first day his wasn't himself will assist in the search as well. We can't assume that this was a change that occurred in a single day, we have to guess that there were days between our last time of seeing him as him and the first time we noticed something was wrong." Tooth's logic made sense once Jamie thought it over a bit more, and he started to think back to the last day he spoke to Jack, his Jack. Regretfully, the date he came up with was from two years ago, November 19th. Today was the 21st of October and Jamie had no encounters with Jack between that last night in November and the run-in earlier today. He felt guilt begin to settle in his stomach as he made that realization and so he chose to ask the two, present Guardians about their meetings before he was asked for his.

"Hm… It must have been the summer solstice of last year," North said, closing his eyes as if he could see the memory better that way, "yes, it must've been then, but I have not seen Jack since, only Sandy can tell us more." He looked to Tooth for affirmation and she nodded her head.

"Sandy should be able to leave post for an hour or so, I'll call some of my fairies to invite him." Tooth whizzed off to find her messenger fairies and returned in less than a minute. "There, three of my fairies are off to get Sandy, he should be able to tell us more about how Jack's been." When she saw the look on Jamie's face, her own expression softened with sympathy. "I know this must be hard for you Jamie, but we'll find out what happened." She laid a small, firm hand on his shoulder and faced North with a steely look; they were going to find out what happened to Jack, they had to.

I'm really sorry that this update took so long, I've just been feeling stressed and wasn't able to finish this chapter as soon as I'd hoped (by a long shot.) My next updates will probably be longer waits as well, but I'm not giving up on this story.

For those leaving reviews, thanks :) it really means a lot to me when you leave comments and side-notes. Those are what keep me going, most of the time.

So again, sorry for the wait and thanks for bearing with me! I'll really try to update as soon as I can.