There were two halls leading off the landing. The one directly ahead was empty and held four closed doors. I carefully peered around the corner. One further door and window down the far end.

I slipped around, knife held at the ready even though I had no sense of immediate danger. There was no pixie dust on the first doorknob; Mathi pushed it open, revealing a generous-sized bathroom.

Which left the doors down the other hall.

The inner tension cranked up a notch, but I didn’t say anything. The first two doors were unmarked by dust, and the rooms—which were bedrooms—empty.

The third doorknob had the faintest sprinkling of golden dust. Our pixie had gone in here. I touched the knife tip to the knob, just to be sure there was no spell, then tugged my coat sleeve over my hand and opened the door.

It was another bedroom, but this one was messier than the others, and the film on the half-finished black coffee sitting on the right bedside table suggested someone had been in here fairly recently.

One room to go.

Mathi led the way down but stopped short of the door. I soon realized why. The whole thing was covered in dust. The blue kind.

And the energy rumbling across the outer reaches of my senses suggested this wasn’t a spell either of us should be messing with.

“We can’t risk kicking this door in.” Mathi’s voice was grim. “Not with the amount of dust on it.”

I nodded. “I’ll call in a specialist to deal with this. Do you want to head back to the office? Hopefully we can uncover some clues as to what she was searching for.”

He nodded. “I’m not liking the feel of that spell, though, so be careful and don’t get too close.”

“I’m sometimes irrational but I’m not stupid.”

He smiled, touched my arm, and then walked back to the stairs. I bent and placed the knife on the floor, keeping it pointed at the door just in case whatever spell had been layered over that door activated. It might not help, of course, but I felt decidedly safer.

I dragged my phone out and googled dust specialists. They could be found in all major cities and towns, but Elsmoot was a port, and pixies tended to avoid the sea—even the Malloyei, whose element was water rather than the usual variant of flora control.

Google told me there were a couple in the area—one in Deva, who I actually knew, and one in Warrington. While Deva was the closer of the two towns, the amount of traffic on the road coming up here meant the Warrington specialist would probably get here faster.

But before I could ring her, light jagged down the knife’s blade. It was just a brief flash, but my tension and pulse rate nevertheless leapt.

My gaze swept the door, but I couldn’t immediately see any change. I warily stepped closer, and that’s when I saw it. The gentle specks of blue had begun to move and form tiny clusters. Each of these was then drawn into the next, becoming larger and more visible each time. The vibration of their energy grew at the same rate, becoming sharper, hotter, stronger. As the door paint began to blister in multiple spots, a memory hit. Gran, regaling us with the time a friend of hers—a Gadahn pixie—accidentally exploded a small smattering of blue dust while she and her family had been out collecting it. Though it had been just the dust from under one mushroom, she’d ended up with singed clothes and hair. Of course, Gran had never said how she’d set the dust off, but the description of the event was close to what was happening here.