stopped walking and concentrated. No, too weak to be human. I took another step. My feet felt lead-weighted, as a niggling uncertainty plucked at my brain. Too strong to be a cat, too weak to be human. So what was it?
Ahead, the men stood in a huddle, voices carrying to me only as waves of sound. Lucas saw me, but didn’t wave me over. Tacit permission to continue searching. So no harm in checking out that presence. I traced it to an adjoining alleyway. I turned to show Lucas where I was going, but he’d left the group. Gone to find and calm Griffin, no doubt. I’d zip down the alley and be back before he noticed I was gone.
I tracked the presence along the connecting alley to a doorway. The door had been propped open by a wadded-up piece of cardboard. Wet cardboard, bracing a door that opened inward. I checked the door itself for signs of dampness, but it was dry. A windless night and a drizzling rain wouldn’t explain the sodden cardboard, meaning it had been brought in from the alley within the last hour or so.
I hesitated outside the door, readied a fireball, then shifted my light to the entrance, where it would illuminate the room within. I eased around the doorway. The room was empty, save for a pile of rags in the corner. The presence I was sensing came from that corner, somewhere under those rags. As I pulled the light-ball closer, I saw that the heap wasn’t rags, but a moth-eaten filthy blanket. Protruding from under it was a high-top sneaker emblazoned with the ubiquitous Nike swoosh.
I ran across the room, dropped to my knees, and yanked away the blanket. Underneath was a man, curled in fetal position. I touched his bare arm. Cool. Dead. The presence had weakened even more since I’d first detected it. Dissipating as the last traces of body heat faded. A pang of sadness ran through me, chased by a guilty surge of relief that this wasn’t the boy I was seeking.
I moved back. As I did, my shadow fell from the man’s face, and I realized it wasn’t a man at all. The size had fooled me, but now, seeing the soft features and frightened eyes, I knew I was looking at Griffin’s son.
My hands flew to his neck, feeling for signs of life, but I knew I’d find none. I rolled him onto his back to check for a heartbeat. As his arms fell from his chest, I inhaled, seeing the bloody patchwork of his T-shirt, crisscrossed with stab wounds.
“Paige!” Lucas called from somewhere outside.
“In—” My voice came out as a squeak. I swallowed and tried again. “In here.”
I got to my feet, then caught sight of Jacob’s bloodied shirt and bent to pull up the blanket. His wide eyes stared at me. People used to believe you could see the last moment of a man’s life imprinted in his eyes. I looked into Jacob’s eyes and I did indeed see that last moment. I saw bottomless, impotent terror. I bit my lip and forced myself to tug the blanket up.
A noise at the door. A large shadow filled the door frame.
“Troy,” I said. “Good. Keep everyone else back until I’ve had a chance to tell Lucas—”
The man crossed the room in a few long strides. Even before I saw his face, I knew it wasn’t Troy.
“Griffin,” I said, jumping back to block Jacob’s body. “I—”
He grabbed me by the shoulder and threw me out of the way. I hit the floor. For a moment, I lay there, dazed. That moment was just long enough for Griffin to kneel beside his son and pull back the blanket.
A howl split the air. A curse, a scream, another howl. The slam of fist against brick. Another. Then another. I looked up to see a fog of brick and mortar dust and, through it, Griffin beating the wall, each blow punctuated with an unearthly howl.
“Griffin!” I shouted.
He was past hearing me. I cast a binding spell, too quickly, and it failed. From outside came the sound of voices and running feet, then Griffin’s enraged grief drowned them out. A hail of broken brick pelted down, mingled with slivers of wood and stone. A falling shingle glanced off my shoulder as the building quaked under the force of Griffin’s blows.
In a few minutes, something would give—the roof, a wall, something. Through the dust, I could see the open doorway, beckoning