When I walked into the bedroom, I found Sindari with his tail up and his butt pressed against the comforter on the bed.
“What are you doing?”
Scratching an itch.
“Are you scent-marking that duvet?”
Absolutely not.
“I don’t believe you. You’re leaving your scent all over the place to terrorize that poor cat, aren’t you?”
Only in this place, and not to terrorize her, certainly. Only to inform her that a superior feline was here. I am an apex predator. It would be against my instincts to mask my scent.
“I bet the dragon doesn’t do this.”
We didn’t discuss how dragons mark their territory while he was chasing me across your ocean.
I sighed. “Did you find anything suspicious in here?”
I do not detect anything magical in here, but I have not completed my search. He lifted his nose and wandered out into the living room again.
I found a bottle of odor-eliminating spray in a cabinet in the bathroom and liberally squirted the duvet. Did other service-animal owners deal with this?
In here, Sindari called from the kitchen. And I know what you’re doing.
Good. Keep your butt off things.
I joined him in the kitchen as he pawed open the cabinet under the sink.
Check that black cylinder attached to the sink, he told me.
“The garbage disposal?” I leaned forward and looked into the drain dubiously. “There are blades in that thing, you know.”
I sense something.
“You sure it’s not in the trash can?” I poked through a bin hanging inside the cabinet door, the coffee grounds inside starting to grow fuzzy mold. Colonel Willard must not have expected to be admitted to the hospital when she’d left, or I was certain she would have taken out the garbage.
It is in the cylinder.
“Of course it is.” Reluctantly, I slid my hand past the plastic flaps and probed around the blades, trying not to imagine the disposal turning on of its own accord and cutting off my fingers. “What am I looking for?” There were more grimy, still-damp coffee grounds inside, and I grimaced.
Something very faint.
It must have been. I couldn’t sense anything magical. But my fingers brushed something that felt like a tiny vial, and triumph rushed through my veins.
I pulled it out, brushing off coffee grounds, and started to reach for the faucet lever but paused. If something interesting had been in the container, I shouldn’t wash it.
“Is this what you sense?” I grabbed a paper towel and wiped it but not vigorously.
It was a vial of some kind, though the stopper was missing. Transparent and only two inches tall, with a narrow neck and a bulbous bottom, it had heft that suggested glass rather than plastic.
Yes. Sindari gazed at it. As I said, it has a very faint magical signature. Less than what even the weakest of your charms gives off.
“Coming from the vial itself or some residue at the bottom?” I peered inside, but I couldn’t see a smudge or stain to hint at what it had contained.
I can’t tell.
“I wonder if Willard has any police friends that I could send this to. Maybe someone in forensics could scrape enough residue off the bottom to look at under a microscope.” Though I doubted magic would show up in a mundane crime lab.
Besides, whoever had left the vial had probably washed it out. Otherwise, why leave a clue behind? Unless the person had been on the verge of being caught and had shoved it in the disposal, certain someone would use it and destroy the vial before ever seeing it…
You should not let it out of your sight, since that’s your only clue. Do you not have police friends you could ask?
“No. I don’t have many friends. I’m discussing this dearth with a therapist.” Not that I intended to go back.
Perhaps it is because you mask their scents with offensive odors.
“I’m positive that isn’t the reason.”
Hm. We should— Sindari spun toward the door. The elf is back.
He sprang into the living room. I will chase her down.
But before he reached the door, something clattered onto the outdoor walkway.
Danger! Sindari shouted into my mind.
Before I could do more than shove the vial in a pocket, an explosion roared, white light flashing as the windows facing the walkway blew into a thousand pieces. Glass flew everywhere, all the way to the kitchen where it pelted the side of my face even as I whirled away. Cracks and snaps echoed, and the living room wall collapsed. Flames roared to life, creating an orange wall of fire along the walkway.
Instinct told me to go out the kitchen window and get far away from the building, but there might be neighbors in danger—including the man caring for Willard’s cat.
Get the elf, I ordered Sindari and sprinted into the fire.
He sprang from the third-floor walkway and raced across the parking lot.
My fire charm activated automatically, protecting me from the flames, even though I felt the heat as if I’d jumped into an oven. I ran to the next apartment, shouting warnings and banging on doors. The walkway creaked and groaned ominously under my feet.
People raced out of their apartments and fled to the parking lot.
“Is Dan here?” I yelled, not certain what Willard’s neighbor looked like or which door was his.
“Here,” came a call from a doorway at the end of the walkway. Smoke hazed my view as flames burned the exterior of the building and leaped up to the eaves and the roof. “I’m trying to get the—”
Cat? I rushed to the door and found a chain still holding it most of the way shut.
“Are you Colonel Willard’s friend?” I asked.
“Look out,” he barked.
Something furry darted through the crack in the door.
The man swore. I bent, reflexes honed from battling magical threats, and plucked up the cat. She raked me with her claws, but I grimaced and held tight.
“Got her,” I said.
She raked me with her claws again, drawing blood. Lots of it. I understood she was scared, but I felt less bad about Sindari rubbing his butt on the duvet now.
Dan opened the door fully, rushing out with a cat carrier. He must have been trying to capture Maggie.
“Thanks.” He hefted it, the little gate open. “Put her in—shit.” He stared at the flames eating their way closer and higher on the building.
Sirens wailed. Fire engines on the way, I hoped.
Getting the scared cat in the carrier was like stuffing a fat square peg into a round pinhole. A fat square peg with vicious claws. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a charm that could help with the task. Sweat gleamed on both of our faces and blood ran down our wrists by the time we got the cat inside.
“Thanks,” Dan said again. “Uh, how do we…?”
He waved to the stairs. They were blocked by the flames now, bits of the roof breaking off and burning on the treads. With my fire charm, I could run down them easily, but I doubted it would protect Dan or the cat.
“Over the side.” I pointed at the railing near his door. The roof above it wasn’t burning yet. “I’ll go first, and you can hand Maggie down to me.”
I hopped over the railing and slithered down the framework, pausing on the walkway railing below so he could hand the carrier down to me. From there, I jumped to the pavement. People were gathering in the parking lot, staring up at the flames. The air stank of burning wood and tarry roofing material.
Dan almost fell on his way down, and I was glad I’d taken the cat carrier, even if Maggie was screaming so loudly that my ears were in danger of falling off.
“My place,” Dan moaned, backing up and staring at the third floor. “All my stuff. I didn’t even get my laptop.”
With glasses and a lanky build, Dan looked to be barely out of school. I had a bad feeling about what the answer to my next question would be.
“Do you have anywhere to go with… a cat?” I held up the carrier. Maggie screeched.
Dan shook his head. “Only my mom’s place, but she’s allergic. Uhm, can you…? You’re a friend, right?” He snapped his fingers. “You knew her name. You must be.”
I wasn’t sure from his triumphant expression if he was delighted because he’d been afraid he couldn’t care for the cat now, or because the cat was so much work that he wanted an excuse to foist the duty off on someone else.
“Yes.” I traveled so much that I couldn’t even keep the plants in my apartment alive, but I would figure out something.
“Good, good.” Dan patted me heartily on the shoulder. “Do you know how she’s doing? The sergeant?”
“She’s a colonel, and she’s… receiving treatment.”
“Oh, is she? She yells at me a lot about my posture and cleaning up my apartment. I assumed she was, like, a drill sergeant or something.”
“She was once.”
“I knew it.”
Fire engines wheeled into the parking lot, and uniformed men leaped off, issuing orders for people to get back. Dan went one way, and I went another, Maggie complaining loudly about her night thus far.
I paused at the sidewalk to make sure I still had the vial. If I’d lost that, I would have lost my only clue.
It was still in my pocket. I held it up to the light of the fire to make sure it hadn’t been cracked. And twitched in surprise. Some kind of hieroglyph or sigil glowed red on the bottom of the clear glass.
“That was not there before,” I muttered. No way would I have missed that.
It was surprisingly intricate considering the diminutive size of the bottom of the vial. It reminded me of the books in my mother’s house, books I’d flipped through as a child, books on the elven language.
As the soft drizzle fell on the vial, the sigil faded. Was it heat activated? Or magic activated? I had no idea if that had been a magical explosive or a mundane one.
The elf got away, Sindari admitted from wherever he was. She opened a storm grate, jumped through, and locked it behind her with magic. She ran into a passage flowing with water, and by the time I got into it, I’d lost the scent. And picked up odious other scents. Do your people defecate under their cities?