My heart sank. “So, it’s a malfunction?”

“In a manner of speaking. As of now, the scanner is an imperfect instrument. It registers humans in various shades of light blue to silver, but it frequently fails to document the subtle tint of their magic. Almost anything except the most radical variations, such as purple for a vampire or green for a shapechanger, escapes it. A clairvoyant and a diviner of roughly equal power would register in the same color, even though their magic inclinations differ. And,” Saiman allowed himself a thin-lipped smile. “It registers all fera magic as white.”

“Fera as in feral? Animal magic?”

“Each animal species exudes its own specific magic. The common m-reader documents it as white so we don’t even see it. Recently some bright minds in Kyoto examined a wide variety of animals using a hypersensitive scanner. They conclusively proved that each species of animal produces its own color. Faint, pastel, but distinct, and always a derivative of yellow.”

“So the yellow lines mean animals?”

“On a superb scanner, yes. But on our piece of junk the animals would most likely register white. The only way we would notice them is through mixing with some other magical influence.”

“You lost me.”

“Look at your lines. They have a light peach tint. It’s very faint but that peach is the only reason we can see the lines in the first place. It means that you are facing something that is mostly animal but has been tainted with something else.”

My head swam. “Okay. Let me reiterate this. All animal magic registers as white but is truly pale yellow. A very weak yellow that is easily dominated by all other colors. There is no way to see that pale yellow, except when it’s mixed with some other color. The yellow of the wolf mixing with blue of a human makes the hunter green of a lycanthrope. By this reasoning, the wolfwere, an animal shapeshifting into human, would register as swampy green. Am I right so far?”

He nodded.

“The fact that I can see the yellow lines means that the scanner showed the presence of something with strong animal magic and a touch of something else. Since the lines are peach, then the likely suspect would be . . . orange.”

I bit off the last word. Orange came from red and red was the color of necromantic magic.

Saiman confirmed my deduction. “It’s an animal that has some connection with necromantic magic. I don’t know of what kind. It certainly isn’t an animal zombie. That registers as a dark red. Have fun.”

I groaned.

“Time is money,” he said, “so I suggest you save your ruminations for later. Do you have anything else for me?”

“No.”

He looked at his watch. “Thirty seven minutes.”