“If there’s a limit to the trigger area, I can’t find it,” I said. I’d been looking through potential futures and I couldn’t find a single one where we went down there without fighting the thing. “And it’s sensitive. It’s not just set to living things, objects are going to trigger it too.”

“There has to be some way to avoid it, right?” Sonder said. “Maybe a password?”

“I’m not sure there is.”

“Really?”

“Look, I’ve seen a lot of magical defences and they usually have a pattern. They’re designed to let the right people in and keep the wrong people out. This one isn’t made that way. It’s the kind of ward you set up if you don’t want to let anybody in. Even Deleo would have trouble disarming this without setting it off first.”

“Why would she do that?” Sonder asked.

“If she wasn’t coming down here either,” I said. “This trap is the equivalent of filling a room with poison gas and then sealing it from the outside. You don’t do it if you’re planning to use it.” I looked at Caldera. “Deleo hasn’t been using this mansion. The only reason she comes here is if someone trips the burglar alarm, so she can reset the wards.”

“You mean that’s what she’s been doing until now,” Caldera countered. “She could have set this ward up to last for ten years and be planning to disarm it when Richard came back.”

“Which we’ve seen absolutely no evidence for.”

Caldera looked down the steps with narrowed eyes. “If we took this thing on, could we beat it?”

I looked at Caldera in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Well?”

“I have no idea! Combats are way too chaotic to see more than a few seconds ahead. I can tell the thing’s going to go out of its way to try and kill you, isn’t that enough?”

“Why her?” Sonder asked.

“Because she makes the most noise.”

“So make an educated guess,” Caldera said. She folded her arms and looked at me. “Can we get past this thing?”