“Silver holds magic.” Noah put the bowl in the middle. “So does water. There’s enough things here for more than one try. I’m not assuming anything. First thing I’m going to do is find them like you’d go north. But I’m changing the value of north.” He turned the compass over in the light, pulled a screwdriver out of the things still piled up to the side and tried to get the compass apart. “Of course, I’m looking for north in a big puddle of magnets, but I’m hoping I can get the specifics right.”

“How do you tell it what to look for? That you want Ylli and Zoey, and not whatever artifacts are tucked away in that museum or hidden in the ground?” So much of how magic worked still eluded Lindsay, but he wanted to understand it. Needed to.

“Magic and will are close in nature. I’m hoping the fact that I really want to find them helps. We’re all from the same house, you and Kristan and Ylli and I. That gives us a bond I’m banking on as well—my magic should be in harmony with Ylli’s. If this doesn’t work, we’ll go with old divination tricks. Nature knows what’s coming. If you can get her to touch your magic, your magic will show you what she sees.

That’s why Cyrus—because he was so close to the element of air—had that gift of precognition.”

The compass finally came apart in his hands and he rescued the needle from the rest. The liquid smelled flammable.

“If I were a hundred years old,” he muttered, “this would be a doddle.”

“I don’t see a damn thing.” Kristan came trudging back. “Unless Feathers forgot that the rest of us have to fucking walk and left me a message twenty feet up.”

“I may be able to sense them when we’re close enough to catch them in my illusion.” That wouldn’t tell Lindsay which way to go to find Ylli—or if Ylli, specifically, was out there, because he’d never been in Ylli’s mind enough to know the taste of it—but he would feel if someone was there.

“If it won’t hurt you to do it.” Noah paused before pouring water in the sugar bowl.

“I’ll let you know.”

“Come here.” Noah beckoned to Kristan.

“What?” She came close, looking wary.

“I need one of your hairs to add to this to help find Ylli.”

You are wise. Most surrender such precious things too easily. Lindsay remembered being told that when he’d refused to let a mage take his blood to determine his lineage. A hair seemed equally precious, though in this situation, Lindsay’s objections were the least of their problems.

“I know what you’re thinking, and just because he has a dick... I’m not a slut.” Kristan took three steps back. She could still put his teeth on edge, no matter what.

“I am,” Noah said unapologetically. “Or I was. Probably will be again.” He grinned at Lindsay, that wicked grin that—like the first time—startled a laugh out of Lindsay. “You’re Vivian’s. So is he. But you don’t have to give me one. It’s cool.”

“Oh, God,” Kristan groaned. “Stop being so fucking nice.” She reached up and plucked a wisp from her temple and offered it to him. The winding strand glinted in the candlelight.

“Thank you.” Noah took the hair and wrapped it around the needle. “The process will destroy it—I won’t have it to use again.”

He put the needle down carefully and picked up the tiny pocketknife. It was a folding knife with only a single blade about an inch long. Once it was open, he stared at it for a long moment, like he was weighing something. Then he drew it across his left palm.

In the dark, it was hard to see how much damage a little thing like that could do, and Noah kept his hand closed. He put the knife down and picked up the compass needle. That went into his left hand as well and he clenched his fist around it.

“Here we go.” Noah picked up the sugar bowl full of water and backed away from the car. “Someone else want to put that stuff away?”

“I’ll get it.” Lindsay tried to keep an eye on Noah while he was at it. He didn’t like the idea of Noah slicing his hand open, however shallowly it might have been, and he had no idea what Noah might do next.

The water bottle, compass pieces and mirror all went back in the bag with the black cloth. Lindsay left the bag in the trunk and, after checking that Kristan had the car keys, closed it up. “What now?”

“Now we get directions.” Noah held his hand out and light began seeping through his fingers. For a moment, the blood running down his wrist was visible, and then the fire flared white, sucking the blood into it. Lindsay could feel raw heat coming from the flames; it was like standing next to a torch. “This had better work.”

Noah opened his hand and the fire rolled into to a red-orange globe on his palm. The compass needle was a tiny shadow spinning on top. Moving carefully, Noah slipped the ball of fire into the bowl, where it sank beneath the surface until only the needle remained on top, lit from underneath by the burning globe.

The spinning slowed once the needle met the resistance of the water, and it wiggled about before selecting a direction that would take them deep into the circle of the mound.

“And why do we not know how to do this?” Kristan flicked her flashlight on.

“Excellent question.” Lindsay could think of a few reasons. “Poor timing, maybe. It isn’t as though we haven’t been busy with other things.” Like Moore.

“I need to focus on this little bastard,” Noah muttered. “Must be your influence, Kristan. Thing won’t stop nattering.” The colors of the globe oscillated like it was trying to get hotter, flaring and subsiding.

“Someone else can find the best path.” He held his wounded hand out to Lindsay.

In the light from the bowl, Lindsay could see it was clean except for a few beads of blood gathering along the edge of a clotted gash across Noah’s palm. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had Noah’s blood on him—there wasn’t anything of Noah that Lindsay hadn’t touched, nothing of Noah he couldn’t have. He was struck all over again by how much Noah was his. He slipped his hand into Noah’s and guided him around a rock.

“I feel like an idiot doing parlor tricks,” Noah murmured when they stopped to let Kristan go ahead and find the best way around a small gully. “I’m sorry if this doesn’t work. If we end up outside a liquor store, we know what happened, though.”

Lindsay snorted quietly. “We’ll figure something out.”

As they walked, Lindsay stretched his illusion out in front of them. For a long time, there was nothing. This was a magical place, though, and even the nothingness was filled with eddies of magic flowing around them. The last time he’d been in a place this full of magic, everything had been different. In Ezqel’s cave, Dane had stood beside him, had held his hands and kissed his lips and washed away his fear.

Now, Dane was lost and Lindsay was alone with his fear.

Finally, the illusion snagged on one person, and another. He kept going, feeling for more, until he started touching the crowds of the residential areas, clumps of minds, all sleeping, dreaming.

And something more. The wild, raw taste of chaos. They were human, but not, and every one of them felt somehow familiar, though not all the same. Hounds, Lindsay realized, ripping his illusion back into himself as quickly as he could. There were Hounds near here, Hounds that tasted like Jonas.

The soft sounds of Noah and Kristan breathing reminded him he wasn’t alone. He could tell them what he’d found... But there was nothing any of them could do about it now.

Slowly, he sent out a fresh wave of illusion to conceal them, and with it, he sought those first two minds he’d caught before.

“There’s someone nearby,” Lindsay said quietly. “Two people.” He’d never had Ylli or Zoey in his illusions before, and the magic around him was too intense to tell if any of it belonged to either person.