“I don’t like this.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“Not just that.” I gestured around to the house. “This. The kid’s been here for two days. Okay, what you said, if he’s a slave . . . why hasn’t someone from White Rose come to get their property back?”

“It’s warded. They can’t find him.”

I was silent. “What’s getting to you?” Caldera said.

“Something about this feels wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“I don’t know. Just . . . out of place. Do you ever get the feeling you’re being set up?”

“You looked for danger?”

“As far as I could. Nothing I could see.”

Caldera didn’t answer. “You think I’m being paranoid?” I asked.

“No, I was getting the same feeling.”

I looked at her in surprise. “If you got this address, other people might have got it, too,” Caldera said. “Besides . . . it’s White Rose. There is a lot of shit going on with that group. I’ll feel a lot better when we have some support.”

I nodded. “I’ll watch him. You make the call.”

Caldera disappeared downstairs and I heard her start talking into her communicator. I hesitated, glancing through the futures again, but with Caldera talking they were too unpredictable to search far ahead. That’s the problem with divination—it doesn’t handle free will well. If I’m on my own somewhere deserted, I can look ahead hours, maybe even a day or more. But when you have people talking to each other, making decisions, then the futures keep changing and fuzzing, like clouds in a strong wind. You can see the shape, but they change so quickly.

I went back into the bedroom. Leo was still sitting there, tense. He hadn’t relaxed, and now that I knew what to look for, I could see the signs. His expression was blank, but his eyes didn’t move away from me, always watching. He was looking for any signs of a change in my mood. I wanted him to trust me, but I knew that would be almost impossible. The best I could hope would be that he would answer my questions.

“You remember two nights ago?” I said, sitting down. “When you went to the station at Pudding Mill Lane?”

Nod.

“You had something with you, didn’t you?” I said. I was careful to make my voice normal, unthreatening. “A little green marble.”

Leo hesitated, but I already knew the answer was yes. It’s one of the tricks of divination: by looking ahead to catch glimpses of replies, you can see all the possible answers that someone might give. Very revealing when someone’s deciding whether to lie. More experienced mages know to guard their reactions, making it harder, but Leo was too young. “Yeah.”

I looked to see what would be the best path to take. I wanted to find out who’d given him the focus, but that line of questioning would make him freeze up. I’d have to go the other way. “Were you supposed to take it to someone? Give it to someone?”