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“Empty,” he declared, re-joining them, the sound of his walking stick slapping the tiled floor like a war drum. “All of them.”
“I had a feeling,” Gabi replied, her heart speeding.
They’d seen the records room through the spell, but it felt like a trap, as if Katrina hadwantedthem to come. The practically empty lobby, the guard by the lifts, the sense of something beingwrong…
Again, the image of Victoriya, scared and bound and bloody, spun through Gabi’s mind. She had to act quick, even if it meant throwing procedure out of the window.
“What are the chances Griswald has been hexed?” Gabi asked in a low voice.
“High,” Salma answered from behind her. “See his eyes?”
Gabi looked into the guard’s face … the change was difficult to describe, like ice forming over his eyeball and melting, then icing over again, repeating the process. A spell, then.
“Peregrine?” Gabi asked blandly.
With a long look at her—he was nowhere near in control of his emotions and every bit of hurt and hope and fear shone through his hazel-brown eyes—Peregrine rolled his shoulders and exhaled a long breath.
Gabi’s arms prickled, hairs standing on end as his magic worked. Griswald inhaled sharply and began to sway. The thud of him hitting the ground made Gabi flinch. She didn’t let herself dwell on any of it—the innocent man they had used offensive magic on, the longing in her brother’s eyes for her to hear him out, the startled cries of the witches, or the shivering that wanted to move though Gabi at the sight of Peregrine affecting the air, making it a strange sort of anaesthetic on the guard.
The things he could do … Gabi could not begin to imagine them.
“Second floor,” Gabi said, punching the call button on the lift. It opened with a too-pleasant ding and breathless, quiet, they crowded in.
A trap, her subconscious warned. But what option did they have? Forsake Victoriya to the witch killer? Let a murderer go unpunished, free to kill again?
Gabi found herself pressed between Eilidh and Bo. She wanted to relax when her dad’s hand brushed her shoulder, wanted to let that comfort find its mark, but she needed to stay vigilant. The moment that lift door opened, they were in danger. And even if her dad was here, everyone wasGabi’sresponsibility as the current Pride.
Peregrine whispered a direction in Elteri, coordinating their exit, and it squeezed something fragile in Gabi to hear it spoken after so long.
She and her dad used English or the little Mandarin she knew, and all her fellow students at uni had been witches or humans. That didn’t stop the elven language being second nature; when Peregrine slanted a look at Gabi, she nodded.
Bo would take the left, Peregrine the right, and Gabi would be a step behind them, in the centre. Covering the witches.
She held a hand behind her, signalling the coven to hold back, as her dad and Peregrine exited slowly, hands twitching at their sides as they magically communicated with their surroundings, connecting to the wood panelled walls, the concrete floor, ]the canvas paintings lined along the corridor beneath swinging white lights.
Gabi didn’t bother calling on her own magic—despite being a child of two talented parents, her magic had always been sporadic. It could as easily deny her request as react to it, and it was safer to rely on consistent weapons. She held the telescopic baton at her side, already snapped to full length, and swept the corridor with her eyes as she stepped out of the lift.
Eight doors, four on either side of the hall—bright white monoliths in the dark wood corridor. All of them were shut.
At the far end, two glass doors led to a staircase. Gabi had no idea where it would bring them out. She hadn’t seen a staircase connect to the ground floor. The roof maybe, or the next corridor up? At least it was a second exit; she made a mental note of it.
“Stay behind us,” Gabi murmured to the witches. Not because they were harmless and needed protecting, but because a spell from Katrina could easily take all of them out at once. If Gabi, her dad, and Peregrine went down, they needed the witches to be okay so they could get Victoriya out.
That was what they had all agreed on—the three elves would distract Katrina while the coven rescued Victoriya.
Gabi couldn’t remember exactly which door led to the record room, so she looked to her dad. Bo was laser-focused on the second door on the left, his hand trembling on his stick, brow creased with the effort of calling elven magic.
Gabi’s breath caught when the door collapsed, solid wood turning to liquid that splashed around their feet. It rushed like a stream down the corridor before rushing back together and solidifying into a wooden door on the tiled floor.
At the open doorway, Gabi tensed and raised her baton as she fixed her attention through the door. No sign of movement so far, but that didn’t mean it was clear.
With a nod, Gabi sent her dad and Peregrine through first. It was the most logical course of action—with their magic, they could better defend themselves—but it still sent a sharp pain through Gabi, to send them into the unknown in her place.
From the doorway of the well-lit room, Gabi watched her dad and Peregrine search the room with both eyes and magic. It didn’t take long for Bo to wave her inside.
Gabi’s heart pounded as she stepped over the threshold and into the old-paper-scented room, adrenaline pumping through her system even as she tried to master her emotions.
It looked exactly as it had when Gabi had last been here—rich wooden planks hugged the bottom half of the walls, cream paint above it, and waxed floorboards reflected the lamplight, filling the space with greenish light. Around them, rows upon rows of chrome filing cabinets stretched from end to end of the room, utterly normal, not a file out of place. But when Gabi inched further into the room, a heavy copper smell joined the scent of old books, and Gabi’s stomach turned.
