the remaining power wins. But he had to have some idea of who would know how to break into the lab. Who would know that the disks were here.
If I could Hound it, I’d know. I’d be able to read the spell used to take the disks, because even to my untrained, un-police-officer eyes, I could tell this wasn’t a standard break-in. Magic had been used.
And I needed magic to Hound.
“Are there any of the disks left?” I asked Stotts.
“Not in the drawers.”
“Anywhere else in the building?”
“There hasn’t been anything else taken,” he said. “We haven’t begun looking for other disks. There are no other storage rooms, no other walls like this.”
I paced, looking at all the closed cupboards, thinking of all the rooms in the building. There might be a disk somewhere, a reject, a defect, a trial run. How much time did I have? How much time before the storm hit, before Zayvion stopped breathing, before the hospital’s backup spells gave out and Violet lost the baby?
Dad? I thought. Are there any other disks stored here?
A strange papery scrub flicked at the corner of my mind. Kind of like pages being fanned by a thumb.
There might be, he whispered. In our . . . office. Down the hall.
“I need to look down here,” I said.
Stotts took my declaration in stride. He was used to working with Hounds. Everyone knew Hounds were quirky at best, and more often crazy. I found the door my dad had remembered, tried it. Locked.
Oh, come on.
“I need in there,” I said.
“Why? Crime happened back there.”
“Listen—” I looked over at Stotts, realized he had not been in the loop of my conversation with Dad. “Listen,” I said a little softer, “there might be another disk in there. And the disks hold magic. I can use that small amount of magic to Hound the scene.”
Stotts was already nodding. “I won’t ask you how you know there might be a disk in there,” he said. “Yet.” He tried the latch. “Do you know what this room was used for?”
“Maybe an office?”
He pulled something out of his coat pocket. A key or a lock-picking tool, I didn’t know. But whatever it was, Stotts knew how to use it. He unlocked the door on the first try, and pushed it open. He stepped in front of me, blocked my access, and scanned the room, then flicked on the light switch. Fluorescent lights crackled to life, revealing a room filled with mahogany furniture and expensive glass artwork tucked into bookshelves. The desk in the middle of the room probably cost millions and was dead-on for my dad’s tastes. So were the luxurious couch, chairs, and wet bar along one wall. The carpet probably cost more than the building I lived in.
Stotts’s eyebrows perked up. This room was decadent, but just understated enough to say it wasn’t merely money behind the arrangement; it was a fortune.
For her, I heard Dad whisper. I made it for her.
Okay, I did not need a lovelorn ghost in my head. Not right now.
Change that: not ever.
You thought she’d like this? Did you even ask her what she wanted? I asked.
Do not—his words were a little louder now—speak to me in that manner.
Okay, a pissed-off ghost wasn’t going to do me any good either. Especially since he knew where the disks might be.
Where is the disk?
He hesitated and I wondered whether I’d be able to strangle an answer out of him. Considering he didn’t have a neck, and I didn’t have mental hands, it offered some interesting difficulties.
The shelf.
Terse. Good going, Allie, piss off the dead guy.
I walked across the room to the shelves behind the desk. Stotts was dividing his time between watching me and taking in the details of the room.
The shelves were beautiful and smelled of polish and something that gave the faint perfume of jasmine blossoms. Books, all leather bound, probably worth thousands, lined the middle shelf. Below that was intricate glass artwork. Lights cleverly positioned in the shelf brought the art to life, glowing deep blues, red, yellow, and smoky gray. Beautiful. I lost a second staring at them, and wondered why they reminded me of magic, of the different disciplines of magic being worked together.
Wondered why they reminded me of Zay.
I swallowed hard. I’d been trying not to think about him. Every time I did, a knot in my throat and a weight in my chest made me want to cry, to go to him, curl up with him,