I scanned the monitors until I found an angle that showed my friends. Eva, Finn, and Roslyn were still clustered around Phillip. His eyes were open, and he was gazing up at Eva. He didn’t look to be any worse, but I couldn’t really tell without seeing him in person. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t going to get any better just lying there.

That mental clock in my head started ticking a little louder and a whole lot faster. Because every minute, every second, that passed was one that might mean the difference between Phillip living or dying. As the Spider, I’d done jobs on specific timetables, but a friend’s life hung in the balance tonight. There was nothing I could do about the time that had already passed, but I could control how I took down Clementine and her crew—the sooner, the better.

So I turned my attention to the last monitor, the one in the bottom left corner that showed Clementine and Owen. I squinted at the screen. The two of them seemed to be standing in front of a very large door, with three of her men waiting behind them. The angle sucked, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so I started pushing buttons, sliding controls, and toggling the joysticks back and forth. It took me a few seconds, but I was finally able to zoom in on the two of them. I hit another button, and the sound of the giant’s country drawl flooded the security center.

“Isn’t it a beauty?” Clementine said. “Why, it’s almost a work of art itself.”

She paced back and forth, walking in and out of the view of the camera. For the first time, I noticed a lock on the door, along with a large round wheel, and I realized exactly where Clementine had taken Owen: the museum’s vault.

“The vault walls are marble, just like the rest of the museum, but the door itself is reinforced silverstone, more than six inches thick,” Clementine said. “That’s the tricky part, and that’s where you come in, Mr. Grayson.”

Reinforced silverstone? Well, the Briartop directors had certainly gone all out. Silverstone was one of the strongest metals around, with an insanely high melting point. It wasn’t something you could just blast through with a couple of sticks of dynamite or a brick of C-4. No, you needed real power to get through any kind of door with silverstone in it—elemental power. Even then, you’d need to find someone with a whole lot of juice, since the metal could absorb all forms of magic. Or you could do what Clementine had done and find someone with an elemental talent for metal to help you.

Someone like Owen.

“Really?” he asked. “Why is that?”

She looked at him and smiled. “Because you’re going to open it for me.”

* * *