They stared at the rock. A little larger than a softball, it resembled pyrite, fool’s gold, except it was bluish white and glowed gently with a cold, dispassionate light. Most of it was rounded, but on one side the stone ended sharply, as if a part had broken off. The hair on the back of his neck rose. He couldn’t explain why, but something about that rock made him wary. If he were in his wolf form, he would’ve circled it on careful paws and left it where it lay.

“Do you see anything?”

Julie frowned. Sensates like her saw the magic in an array of colors, something other people tried to duplicate by building m-scanners.

“Pale bluish silver glow.”

“Divine?” Divine objects and creatures glowed with silver.

“No, not divine. White and blue. Different kind of white.”

“What registers this kind of white?”

“Elemental magic.” She looked at him, her eyes bottomless. “They killed the Iveses for this?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head and peered at the rock. “What are you?”

He half expected the rock to answer, but it stayed silent, glowing weakly.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Someone jumped Luther,” she said.

“Luther? The Biohazard wizard?”

“Yep. Kate is out with Curran, so I took the call. They didn’t kill him, probably because they knew he worked for Biohazard, and they didn’t want a whole gaggle of mages hunting them down, so they hit him over the head as he was stepping out of his car. He doesn’t remember it. He remembers parking and then waking up on the ground with a headache and a bloody head. That afternoon someone brought him a rock. They claimed it fell from the sky and glowed under moonlight, and they wanted a thousand dollars for it. The magic was down by the time the rock got to Luther, so he bargained them down to three hundred bucks. He tried to get a sample to analyze, but he couldn’t cut it at his lab—nothing worked—so he took it to the Mage College, where they managed to slice a small flake from it. He was bringing the rock back to Biohazard when he was attacked.”

She reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a small plastic vial. Inside, a tiny crumb of the rock glowed. “Luther is down with a concussion, so he couldn’t go look for it.”

And he wouldn’t ask his colleagues for help, because they’d ask why the hell he’d taken a possibly magic rock out of the Biohazard building. She probably hadn’t told him she would be the one doing the job. Most likely Luther thought Kate was on it. He would’ve done the same in her place. Why worry the client? As long as the job gets done, it doesn’t matter who does it.