If Jack wasn't careful, those looks were going to get him in trouble. Adam felt volatile. The prospect that they'd come all this way just to find a dead end was pushing him over the edge in the worst way.

Jack and the others could think what they wanted. Adam's intuition told him Claire was still here somewhere. He wasn't giving up until he found her.

Adam stopped in the middle of the corridor, wan light filtering in through the rooms where he'd kicked open the doors. Heat flared in his palms, a reaction to his heightened emotion, and he viciously tamped it down. Adam closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the musty, rust-tinged air.

Jack's boots bit into the grit of the floor as he approached. "Adam?"

Adam ignored him, instead focusing on Claire, the way Mira had taught him. Only blankness and blackness met his efforts. Nothing. It could have been for a million reasons. Most likely it was the wardings in the hospital, which dulled everyone's magick to a mere tired yawn of power.

It could have been his own lack of air magick that made him find only blankness. It could have been because he needed to achieve that certain rhythm of brain wave activity that could only be reached through deep meditation or near sleep. It could have been because Claire was unconscious.

Adam couldn't bring him himself to consider the other possibility.

Then he thought of something. He opened his eyes. "The maintenance areas. I bet no one's checked those yet."

"Let's go," answered Jack.

They descended, past the main floor and into the darkness of the basement. Mold and damp air filled their lungs as they opened the door to the boiler room. Here Adam and Jack were forced to turn on the flashlights they'd brought with them, hanging on the belt that girded the swords sheathed to their backs.

Once this area had been filled with the low, steady hum of the boiler, furnace, and other heavy machinery needed to make a hospital run. Now it was as dead and silent as a morgue.

The hair on the back of Adam's neck rose. Here he could believe the hospital was haunted.

The heavy metal door squeaked when they opened it and shut with a final-sounding click when it closed behind them. They were plunged into darkness, save for the core of light emitted by their flashlights. Something to their left scampered past on small animal feet.

At least, Adam assumed they were small animal feet.

Soundlessly, he moved into the large room, ducking under bare pipes and rounding cold machinery. Here no graffiti marked the walls and no drug paraphernalia littered the floor. He could understand why trespassers had avoided this area.

Carefully, he and Jack paid attention to the path they took, so they could find their way back. With the sputtering, feeble amount of fire magick Adam possessed, he sooted the floor with flashes of heat. Otherwise Adam was sure they'd never find their way out and Thomas would return years from now to find their time-whitened, rat-gnawed upon bones in a corner somewhere.