Stone was just a statue. A big stupid rock who left dust all over my apartment and wore my socks on his nose. But he was my big stupid rock. I was going to miss the hell out of him.
I tried not to think about it. Because I didn’t want to show up in front of Stotts crying.
Shame drove like he knew right where the lab was. And maybe he did. Maybe the Authority kept the lab on its watched list. But even if Shame hadn’t been driving, it wouldn’t have been hard to find the place.
Three police cars blocked the street. Beyond them the big white van of Stott’s MERC team parked half on the elm-lined sidewalk. A few police officers stood outside the building, which was more of a house, and two more at the street to keep people at a safe distance. I didn’t see Stotts’s crew: Julian, Roberts, and Garnet.
More police tape, a sullen yellow smear in the dying light, roped off the sidewalk outside the building.
The building really did look like a house out of a storybook. Old hand-placed stone walls scalloped the edges of the sidewalk. The Tudor-style house was set up on the small hill and faced the trees and golf course across the street. At least two stories, the house looked like a home rather than a lab, brick and stucco on arched doorways beneath steeply gabled roofs. The windows, slender and multipaned, had little light behind them.
In the driveway was Violet’s Mercedes-Benz.
My heartbeat did double time.
“Stop,” I told Shame. “I need to get out.”
Why would she be here? I thought she was moving in with Kevin. I thought she was being smart, being safe. Making baby blankets or knitting diapers or something.
Stress is a weird thing. I got out of the car and heard the door slam shut, but I didn’t hear the car drive away. I didn’t know what the cop asked me when I jogged past her. I didn’t feel the police tape skim my back as I ducked under it and made it to the driveway up the walkway.
No blood on the concrete. No blood anywhere that I could see. That was something. Maybe Violet had arrived after the break-in. That made the most sense. Stotts must have called her. Like he called me. To look at the damage inside. To fill out an insurance form or something.
I turned to go into the building.
Stotts’s hand landed on my wrist, warm and callused, and brought the world suddenly back to me.
“Stay out of the way.” He pulled me to one side, near a line of bushes. Didn’t let me get close to the door.
There wasn’t any room for me to go anywhere. Men filled that door and came through it with stretchers.
One stretcher carried an unconscious and pale Kevin Cooper. Blood had been wiped off his bruised face, but still leaked in his light brown hair, turning it dark on one side. An oxygen mask fit snug against his face. They moved him past me so quickly, I couldn’t see where else he might be injured. But I could smell magic on him. A lot of it, a lot of spent magic.
“Who?” I said. “Who did this?” I was trying to ask who could do this. There just wasn’t that much available magic to be able to do this much damage. “How long? When? When did that happen to him?”
Stotts hadn’t let go of my wrist. Smart. I’d probably go in there and ruin evidence in this state of mind.
“You’re here for that,” he said. “To Hound the scene. Tell me what you see. There’s more.”
And he was right. There was more.
More EMTs, men and women, and another stretcher. This one with tubes and monitors. I knew who it was from the shape of the prone figure even before I could see her face.
Violet.
Dad scratched at the backs of my eyes, no longer a moth-wing flutter, but something made out of sharp edges and teeth.
I exhaled to stay calm and pushed at Dad, needing him in a corner, away from my conscious thoughts, away from seeing Violet on a stretcher. I must have tried to pull away from Stotts too.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t get in the way. Let them do their job.”
Violet, my dad said. No. Please, no.
I pressed my lips together to keep his words from forming in my mouth. He was in my head, but he had no right to use my body. Even if Violet was hurt.
She was in better hands than mine right now. I was not a doctor, and neither was my father. Getting her to the hospital as quickly as possible was the smart thing to do.
As they passed, she opened her eyes.
My dad struggled, shoved at my control. Violet, he thought.
“Daniel?” she whispered.
No. Hell no. I didn’t care how much they loved each other-I was not going to let my father talk to her, was not going to let him use me or my mouth or thoughts that way, and was not going to stop the EMTs from getting her medical attention.
The EMTs moved swiftly past me. With Stotts’s hand still clamped to my wrist, I held my ground while Dad battered the edges of my control. Then the EMTs were gone. Violet was gone, placed very carefully into the back of an ambulance that drove away, lights flashing and sirens blaring. I pulled my hand away from Stotts.
Dad went dead silent. Angry.
Too bad.
Okay. Regroup. First the job. Hounding. Hounding the crime. Without magic. Then checking on Violet.
“Anything you’d like to tell me about this before I go in there?” I asked.
He looked at my expression, puzzled. Then glanced over my shoulder at the ambulance. Maybe at something beyond that. “Violet and Kevin were here when it happened. Violet was semiconscious when I arrived. She can’t remember anything.”
“Head wound?”
“She’s been hurt,” he conceded.
Yeah, well, I figured that out all on my own. “Is she going to be okay? Is the baby in danger?”
He looked down at his shoe, then back at me. “They don’t know yet.”
Fuck.
And the cool wash of my dread and my father’s anger melded into something else. Resolve. Whoever had done this, whoever had attacked my wife-I mean my friend-and my unborn sibling, was going to suddenly have a very bad, very short life.
I strode into the building, past the fallen door that looked like it had been blown off its hinges, and into the main room.
Stotts followed.
The first room was a reception area, though there was no desk. Just a couple small clean couches, a TV mounted on the wall, and a computer and a phone on a table.
I didn’t have magic at my disposal. None of us did. I glanced over at Stotts to see if he was uncomfortable with that. He looked calm, composed. Didn’t look like having magic or not having magic made any difference to him. Sort of an “If I don’t have my gun, I can kill you with my hands” kind of look.
Very cop of him. And it meant he wasn’t all that surprised that magic had suddenly died out.
“Do you know why magic’s gone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m thinking it might have something to do with that gut feeling of yours. The storm. We’ve had magic black out on us before. But never this long.”
“Okay, so you know I can’t Hound without magic.”
“I’d just like your eyes on the place.”
There were already police officers and other specialists working the scene. Stotts’s MERC crew was inside, using a few gadgets that looked like they were low-magic but useful, like the glyphed witching rods, and nonmagical things like cameras and fingerprinting tools. Very old-school police procedural.
I felt out of place-I didn’t know what all the stages of investigation would be. All I ever did was Hound magic, track spells, identify casters, and not get involved in the cleanup and meticulous recording of the event.
Stotts had once told me that I was different from other Hounds he’d used, and I saw things in more detail than they did. I guess we were about to find out if that was still true without magic.