A shape bolted for the window, trying to pull it open. Caldera was on him in two strides. The shape turned on her, there was the flash of light off a blade, then they were struggling. I held back: if I went in, I’d only be in Caldera’s way. I heard a thud, fast breathing, then a clank and a pause. More struggling. Silence.

Caldera spoke. “Get the light.”

I flipped the switch. Yellow light flooded the room and I shielded my eyes.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw that Caldera was holding on to a boy dressed in ragged jeans and a sweater. He was young, no more than ten or eleven, and small and thin to the point of looking actively malnourished. His chest rose and fell with rapid breathing, and his eyes flicked back and forth, trapped. A knife lay on the carpet in front of him; I stepped forward and picked it up.

“Like I said, I’m not going to hurt you,” Caldera said. She was holding the boy by his wrists, and compared to him she looked like a giant. Even without her magic, she could probably have picked him up one-handed. “If I let you go, you going to stop trying to stab me?”

A pause, then the boy nodded.

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Yeah,” the boy said in a high voice.

“You going to tell me your name?”

“. . . Leo.”

Caldera let the boy go. He stepped back, watching us silently, rubbing his wrists. Futures in which he made another dash for it flickered and disappeared. Caldera pointed to the bed. “Sit down.”

It was an order, not a request, and the boy sat instantly. “There anyone else around?” Caldera asked.

The boy shook his head.

“You hurt? Hungry?”

Another head shake. He was watching the two of us very closely.

“Go check out the house,” Caldera told me.

I nodded and left the room. Behind me, I heard Caldera start questioning the kid.

The house was small: an open-plan living room and kitchen on the ground floor, a bedroom, spare room, and bathroom upstairs. There were basic furnishings, but no posters or paintings on the walls and no books or DVDs on the shelves. I hadn’t seen any personal items in the bedroom either. It was the sort of look a house has if it’s just been rented or sold.

I took a closer look at the knife I’d taken from the boy. Kitchen knife, black-handled. No blood on the blade. I opened one of the kitchen drawers and . . . yep, this was where it had come from. The kid had taken the knife upstairs. What had he been scared of?

Checking the cupboards, I found canned and long-life food. Judging by the date stamps, all had been here for some time. I used my magesight to study the wards and found a similar story. This place hadn’t been used in a while.

I went back upstairs to find Caldera and the boy talking quietly. To my surprise, Caldera wasn’t pressuring the kid—she was firm, but her voice was gentler than usual and she wasn’t pushing him too hard. I guess after seeing how Caldera had dealt with Anne and Xiaofan, I’d been expecting her to play the threatening cop, but she wasn’t, and the kid seemed to be responding. “No,” he said. “No one.”