“Yes. It’s an ifrit, a very powerful one. Coal-black and red in color and very fond of fire.” If it had been a marid, folklore said it would’ve been blue, and we had to go by folklore until real life disproved it. “He has a hell of a lot of power, and for some reason he’s keeping Eduardo in a cage.”

I had seen a bowl of water in Eduardo’s cage, but no food. His shoulders had been sticking out of his T-shirt and his face was gaunt, so he was likely starving. An average human could survive roughly twenty days without food. A shapeshifter had to consume two to three times as many calories as a human of the same size. Their regeneration slowed down the starvation somewhat but not enough. If we didn’t get Eduardo out of that cage in the next three days or so, we wouldn’t need to bother looking.

A piercing shriek tore through the silence. It came from inside the building.

CHAPTER

15

LUTHER JERKED THE door open and sprinted down the hall. Julie and I chased him.

“What the hell is that?” I yelled over the shrieks.

“My alarm! Someone just broke into my lab.”

We rounded the corner and almost collided with four other people, one in a suit, two in scrubs, and one in a biological containment suit without helmet or gloves. Each was charged with enough magic to level a small building. Luther shoved past them and thrust the door of his lab open. The metal hood was raised, the body of the draconoid out in the open. A deep puncture wound gaped in its side.

“Damn it!” Luther dragged his hand through his hair. “He stabbed my specimen!”

Someone had gotten into the building, bypassing all of the security measures, and broken into Luther’s lab. If the press found out that Biohazard, the repository of all things strange and dangerous, had had a security breach, there would be no end of heads rolling.

“This way!” a woman screamed. “He’s going out the front door!”

The mages spun and gave chase. The guy in the biocontainment suit shoved the nearest window open. Flames burst over his fists. He punched the air. A fireball broke free of his hand, streaked down to the street, and exploded.

Oh boy.

Everybody except for the firebug ran for the staircase. I decided to run too, just so I wouldn’t be left out.

We collectively burst out the front door. The street lay empty. Nothing but five-foot-wide scorch marks.

“Where did he go?” Luther yelled.

Nobody answered.

“Where is Fluffy?” a woman asked.

“Jana took her on a job,” a man answered.

“Oh, come on! What good is a tracking dog if she’s never here to track?” Luther threw his hands up.

A fireball tore over our heads and splashed flames onto the street.

“Garcia, will you stop setting things on fire?” Luther roared.