In the next moment, she knew why they were there. This was no natural blizzard. It might have begun as one, but it certainly was not natural now. She sensed the magic outside, magnifying everything the storm was doing. Air Magic . . . but other things too, things she couldn’t identify. The defenses that she, Rosa, Mother and the dwarves had put on this place turned it into a fortress against magic as well as against more physical attacks, but this storm was going to completely isolate them from the outside world. And from the feeling she was getting . . . that was exactly what the people steering the storm had in mind.

A light sprang up on the floor below, coming up through the stairwell. “Rosa?” she called.

“You feel it too?” Rosa replied, and her voice had steel in it. She, too, knew what this meant and she was not amused.

“Of course. I think . . . I think that watcher followed us somehow. He’s not alone.” She did her best to keep her voice steady.

“I’m coming up,” Rosa said, and a moment later, she padded up the stairs, wrapped in a huge woolen shawl. She joined Giselle in her bed, and the two of them pulled the eiderdown around themselves. “This is an attack,” she said, flatly.

“I get Air Magic, and something else,” Giselle said. “The Air Magic has a bitter scent if that means anything to you.”

“It means it’s stolen,” Rosa replied, staring at the shuttered window as if she could somehow see through it. “And I told you how magic can be stolen.”

Giselle shivered.

“There’s Fire Magic there too, but it’s been turned to its opposite—cold. That can only be done by making a bargain with an Elemental of Cold, and none of the ones I know of are good. There’s also some other magic, but it’s not from an Elemental Master or even a mage. So it has to be a sorcerer or a witch. By the dark feel of it, it’s all fueled by blood.”

Three different kinds of magic? What had brought all this down on her head? “What do we do?” Giselle asked. “You’re the one who hunts out things and destroys them, not I!”