“I think I’ve found Dawson’s safe—so to speak,” I murmured to Caine.

He looked up from the papers. “Can you open it?”

Picking a door lock was one thing. I had a tougher time getting into a traditional metal safe without Finn’s help—or some explosives. But Tobias Dawson didn’t have a traditional safe. His was made of stone—my element, my specialty. Still, we’d been inside more than three minutes now. No time to be subtle.

So I pulled off my glove, put my hand on the granite, and listened to its vibrations. Slow, steady, solid, just like the rock itself. There was also a sense it was guarding something, protecting something important, valuable.

Tobias Dawson’s secrets, whatever they might be.

I drew in a breath and focused my magic on the granite.

Peering at the rock, into the rock. And I realized the stone was only a couple inches deep. Any thicker than that, and Dawson wouldn’t have been able to put much of anything inside. Also, the silverstone I’d noticed earlier formed a wide, circular shape in the middle of the granite, roughly marking the size of the hollow space inside.

The dwarf probably had the metal triggered to his magic, so that no one could open it but him. Since silverstone could absorb magic, anyone who tried to force their way inside like that would probably spin their wheels for quite a while.

But I was a Stone elemental, just like the dwarf. I didn’t have to go through the silverstone—only around it. I held my bare index finger in front of the granite and reached for my magic. A silver light sparked on the tip of my finger like it was a tiny blowtorch. I leaned forward and pressed my finger against the granite, forcing my magic into the stone, deeper and deeper until I broke through the rock shell to the hollow space inside. Once I made the initial break, it was easy enough to drag my finger around the perimeter of the block, forming a square shape much bigger than the circle of silverstone at the heart of the granite.

Less than a minute later, I made the last cut in the stone. The rock creaked, and I used my magic to form a small groove in one side so I could hook my finger inside and pull it out. The granite was heavier than I’d expected, and it took me a moment to lug it out of the case and set it on the floor.

Donovan looked up at the sound of my grunts and did a double-take. “How the hell did you do that?”

I flashed him a smile. “I have many talents, detective.”

I turned my back on him and stared inside the safe. It was an even smaller space than I’d expected, and it was curiously empty, except for a few sheets of paper.