“That will alert anyone who may be inside.”

“A chance we’ll have to take if we want to get some answers.” I wrinkled my nose. “But I don’t think we’ll find the pixie responsible for this in there. It’s lost some of its shine, so it’s at least a couple of hours old.”

Whether Aram or anyone else was inside was another matter, but something within me doubted it. While smaller pixies did magically downsize their bodies in order to allow flight, the restrictions of weight and mass ratio meant they remained visible to the eye.

If someone had been inside, they would have seen her. Or him. So, either the pixie was a client—unlikely—or she’d been sent here after something. Gadahn pixies, who were the smallest of the two flighted lines, did have a special love of stealing.

Mathi rose and booted the center of the plywood door. It crashed back hard enough to send plaster dust flying. The pixie dust remained on the knob, which was basically confirmation there was some form of ill-intent behind it.

The room beyond was small and, despite the two large windows facing the main street, full of shadows. Thunder rumbled ominously, and the rain was torrential, hitting the glass so hard it was hard to hear anything else. A table sat in the middle of the room with four chairs around it—three at this end, one at the other. To the left was a small office area, and to the right, stairs leading up to the next floor.

The area looked and felt empty, but I nevertheless entered warily, scanning the floor for any indication of traps or further pixie dust. Nothing.

I walked across to the office, but it contained little more than a desk, a chair, and a filing cabinet. The drawers had all been opened and obviously searched, given the number of files dumped on the floor and paperwork strewn about. Of course, it was possible that our spellcaster was the world’s messiest record keeper, but I doubted it, given how neat the top of his desk was. I squeezed past Mathi and walked around to the back of the desk. There were three drawers, and they were all open. Blue dust decorated two of the locks; our pixie had definitely been looking for something.

“We can check this mess out later,” Mathi said. “We need to get upstairs and see what our pixie has done up there.”

I nodded and followed him out the door. Once we neared the stairs, I again took the lead, keeping my back against the wall and my gaze on the floor above as we slowly climbed. My knife remained inert, but there was a sprinkling of pixie dust on the newel cap. At least this time it was gold rather than blue; our pixie had taken flight here, though whether she’d gone up or down, I couldn’t say.

I pulled the spare glove from my pocket and carefully scraped some dust into it. Flight dust wasn’t entirely universal—there were always some minor tells that could lead you to the pixie it had come from. Whether there were enough tells in this scraping was another matter entirely—and something only a dust specialist could tell me.