We go through four rooms in silence. I lift up the lids of the pianos, bend down to search under them and their matching benches. In each, the air is stale, and Sel stands much too close for comfort. Sel’s presence, even in the expansive hallway, makes every space feel too small, too tight.

In the very last room on the left, I see it. A plain stone mug shimmers sea-foam blue in the darkness underneath the back leg of a piano. I don’t bother hiding the joyous sound that escapes me when I rush to grab it. Sel leans on the doorjamb, watching me.

I examine the mug in my hand. Its light pulses in a slow rhythm. “Why does it go in and out like that?”

“Aether is an active element. I’m holding its shape in place.” He turns and walks down the hall. “You’ve spent twenty minutes looking for one object. Better hurry if you don’t want to end up in the bottom two.”

I stuff the mug in my bag and jog to catch up to him, curious in spite of myself. “You’re holding all forty objects together? Right now?”

Sel rakes his fingers through his hair and sighs impatiently. “I created them all at once, but I can sense them at a distance and reinforce them if this lasts more than a couple of hours.”

“Wait, what?” I stop in the hallway. “You can cast aether remotely?”

“Yes.” He pivots on his heel. “Are you coming?”

I shake my head, trying to imagine the effort of keeping up with forty anythings, much less forty castings—and that’s not even mentioning his hellhounds. I don’t know what it feels like to cast, but what he’s done tonight sounds impressive. Impossible. Both.

“You’re burning moonlight.” He stares at me incredulously. “Or do you want to interrogate me and forfeit instead?”

I catch up with him again, and we run through the building for the exit.

I work through five more items on the list without much trouble—and without any sight of a hound. The only one that catches me off guard is the one about the books. To reach the “floor with no books in sight,” I’d had to find the extremely well-hidden door to the roof on the eighth floor of the library.

I’m not particularly fond of heights.

And it took me twenty minutes to find the jewelry box inside a vent pipe.

Sel, on the other hand, had kept himself occupied by walking on the four-inch-wide raised brick perimeter of the roof, perfectly balanced. While whistling.