Caldera gave Landis a sceptical look. “Weren’t you on standby for the Rayfield case?”

“And wasn’t it fortunate that it turned out to be related? Happy endings for all!”

“Lucky for some.” Caldera glanced at me. “They have any idea who those people were?”

“Leo was connected to White Rose.” I looked at Landis, keeping my expression carefully neutral. “They seem to be the obvious suspects.”

“Yes,” Landis said, drawing out the word. “They do, don’t they?” He jumped to his feet. “Well, I’ll leave you in Verus’s safe hands. If you see Vari, let him know he can take off for the night, eh?”

“I’ll tell him.”

Landis hopped out of the ambulance, and I took his seat with a sigh. Caldera cocked an eye at me. “You all right?”

“I should be asking you that.” I nodded at Caldera’s side. “How bad was it?”

“Oh, you know life mages. Always make it sound worse than it is.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Not quite sure that’s true.”

“Yeah, well, they’re going to keep me out for at least a day. You okay to go to the War Rooms as my stand-in?”

I nodded. “I’ll be there.”

“Good.” Caldera paused. “Sorry for giving you a hard time in there.”

I looked at Caldera in surprise. “About the kid,” Caldera said. “Wasn’t your fault. Just pissed off at myself.”

“For what?”

“Don’t like not being strong enough to do the job,” Caldera was silent for a second. “Don’t like losing people, either.”

“Neither do I.”

Caldera glanced up at me. “Why’d you go back?”

“When?”

“Middle of that fight, after the second icecat went for you and the kid. After you were done with that, you went straight for the golem.”

“Yeah.”

“Wasn’t Leo out the door by then?”

“I thought you were too busy with the golem to notice stuff like that.”

“I’ve been in enough fights to know what’s going on around me.” Caldera looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Don’t dodge the question. You could have gone after the kid. Why didn’t you?”

“There was a force mage covering the door,” I said. “At least one other guy too. If I’d gone after Leo, it would have meant going one-on-one with a force mage in an open street. I couldn’t have won that. The best I could have managed would have been to get away in one piece, and they probably would have got Leo anyway. And I knew the golem was going to kill you if I left you. I figured that two on one, we had a chance to beat it. It was a choice between losing two people, and giving up one person to have a decent chance of saving the other. I picked the battle I thought we could win.”

Caldera snorted and closed her eyes. “Always the pragmatist.”

A man I didn’t know stuck his head around the corner. “Hey,” he said. “We’re heading back. You riding along?”

I shook my head. “It’s just her.”