strange to have my dad helping me out at all. He’d never been this helpful in all the years I had known him. It made me suspicious. The man never did something without getting something out of it for himself.
Hound the spell, he said, not angry, just calm and quiet, the way he always sounded right before he got killing mad. Find out who hurt Violet.
Ah. Revenge. Now, that I could understand.
“Yes,” I said before my silence got out of hand again. “It has magic in it. I think enough for a spell. Maybe just one. I’d like to Hound the safety-deposit boxes. Does that sound good?”
Stotts let out a breath he’d been holding. I had to give it to him. He put up with a lot of crazy to get information out of Hounds, and I wasn’t doing much for Hound reputation right now.
“I think so.” He motioned for me to leave the room in front of him, which I did, holding the crystal away from my body like it was going to turn and bite me at any minute.
Which it might.
Stotts shut the door and then we were both in the other room again, in the lab. A couple people from the police department, I assumed, were there, taking pictures. Stotts asked them all to leave so he and I could look at the room alone for a few minutes.
They left and I walked around the room, deciding what my best view would be if the magic gave out quickly.
“Were Violet and Kevin in this room when they were attacked?” I asked.
“I didn’t tell you they were attacked.”
“They were taken out on stretchers. What was I supposed to think?”
“It could have been an accident in the lab.”
Huh. He was right. It could have been. But one look at the empty drawers told me it was not.
Stotts knew that too.
“Well, that looks like a robbery to me,” I said, pointing at the wall of boxes.
“Anything you want me to do?” he asked.
Since there was no magic, Stotts couldn’t even cast Sight to watch what I was doing.
“Nope, I’ll do this old-style. I’ll repeat everything I see. If you want to take notes, that might be good.”
He pulled something out of his pocket. A tape recorder. He held it up, then thumbed the button down.
Good idea.
I calmed my mind, sang my jingle, set a headache Disbursement, then traced a glyph for Sight and Smell. “Sight and Smell. I don’t know how much magic I’ll have at my disposal, so I don’t know how strong the spells will be.”
Then I very carefully closed my hand around the crystal and urged the magic out of it and into the glyphs that hovered, invisible, in the air in front of me.
Magic didn’t so much flow as uncoil out of the stone and then stretch out into the spell. A tendril of magic stayed hooked in the stone, like a root set deep.
I shook the crystal a little. The tendril, the root, did not let loose. Okay. Strange. But then, I’d never used magic by pulling it out of something like this. Maybe it was supposed to stay attached.
My dad didn’t have anything to say about it, and I didn’t have any time to waste.
“Using Sight and Smell,” I said again. “There was at least one caster here. A man, I think. Give me a minute.” I took a couple steps toward the wall of boxes. “There’s a spell here, maybe more than one. But they’re really tight. Tangled. Like they collided or were crushed. Hold on.”
I leaned in closer to one of the spells that clung like a spit hair ball the size of my head, near the middle of the boxes. “Okay, there’s a big spell here. Not Illusion. Something with force. Impact? Oh.” It came to me in a rush. “Unlock. Nice. It’s masterfully cast,” I continued. “Even wadded up and kind of tangled, I can tell someone knew exactly how to throw this spell.”
“Blood magic?” Stotts asked.
“I’ll check.” I took a deep breath, through my mouth and nose to get the taste and scent of the spell at once. And it was not the sweet smell of cherries that I caught. It was the heavy mineral stink of old vitamins.
I knew that smell.
When? Where?
“No Blood magic,” I said to give myself time to think. “But I have smelled the scent of this spell before. Have smelled it on someone.”
My father brushed the back of my mind. Gently. Like he was