as if somehow touching him and being with him would make the world go away.
As if somehow just being with him would bring him back to me.
I cleared my throat and blinked until the room was no longer blurry. The disk. Maybe there would be more than one. And I could use one to find out who did this, then use the other to go kick their teeth in.
On the top shelf were notebooks, a leather bottle, probably antique, and a lovely collection of crystals.
And one of the crystals looked a lot like a disk.
Well, not exactly a disk. It wasn’t a perfect machined circle like the disk in Greyson’s neck; it wasn’t silver, slick, glyphed. This disk was made of crystal, and looked like it had been carved, magical glyphs scoured into it, deep in some places, barely a scratch in others. It was white, with highlights of soft pink and blue. And it was beautiful.
Did you make this? I asked Dad.
Grew, he said. We grew it.
I didn’t have to touch it to know it was filled with magic. I could smell the magic in it, a sweet scent like roses in the rain. It looked harmless.
Is it going to hurt me if I pick it up? I asked.
Not that I know of. And if he hadn’t been suddenly so curious to see what happened when I touched it, I would have just gone right ahead and done that. Instead, I decided to clue Stotts in on all this.
“I think this is a disk. A prototype of some sort. It’s holding magic.”
Stotts strode over to me, his loafers hushed against the deep, soft carpet.
“The crystal?” he asked.
I pointed. “That crystal.”
“Do you want me to pick it up?”
“No, I just thought I’d tell you what I was doing in case I ended up on the floor or something.”
“Maybe I should pick it up.”
“Let me. I’m the Hound.”
I reached over, careful not to touch the other crystals, and put one fingertip on the disk.
My dad, in my head, chuckled.
Shut up, I thought at him.
Of all the times in your life, it is now that you develop a sense of caution? he asked.
Okay, peanut-gallery dead guy wasn’t working for me either.
No buzz, no shock, nothing beneath my fingertip but the slightly oily feel of the magic-infused crystal. I didn’t absorb it like a sponge—yes, that thought had gone through my mind, since I usually carry magic—and it didn’t explode or anything.
So far, so good.
I picked it up.
If the crystal had been beautiful from a distance, it was absolutely mesmerizing in the palm of my hand. Soft, pink, it didn’t seem to sparkle so much as glow against my skin. The glyphs carved or maybe grown into it seemed to shift, slowly, slowly, as they made a snail’space path through the crystal.
Are the glyphs moving? I asked Dad.
Growing, he said. Slowly.
Not so slowly that I couldn’t see it.
Stotts leaned in for a better look. He whistled. “That’s amazing.”
“It is.”
“Does it have magic in it?”
Oh, right. I was here to do a job, not to look at the pretty baubles.
I licked my lips and concentrated on the disk. Yes, it very much did hold magic in it. But it held it in a natural sort of way. The magic didn’t feel like it filled every speck of crystal, but there was plenty enough in there for one spell.
It reminded me of the void stones, reminded me of the cuffs we wore to feel one another during a hunt. It felt natural enough, I had a hard time believing it had been made in a laboratory.
It wasn’t, Dad said. We simply enhanced it in the lab. He was proud of that.
Where did you find it?
He hesitated and I could feel his unease. In St. Johns. A long time ago.
Strange. St. Johns had no naturally occurring magic. A magical stone out there didn’t make any sense. Unless someone had taken it there, left it there.
Is there more of that I should know? I asked.
No.
That was quick. He was lying. I could taste the bitter wash of it across my thoughts.
Just tell me if it’s going to blow up on me, okay? I thought.
“Allie?” Stotts asked.
How long had I been standing there staring at the rock and talking to my dad? “Sorry,” I said to buy myself some time to think of what he had last said to me.
He wants to know if it has magic in it, my dad offered with droll patience.