When I saw Tan standing there, I blew out a relieved breath. “Hey.”
He grimaced. “I’m so sorry about your ward, Dain. I know I haven’t been back to reinforce it, but it should’ve held anyway.”
I waved him off. “It’s not your fault.”
He made a face, and I knew he didn’t agree with me. His hands moved around in the air, his fingers wiggling, and if I didn’t know him, I might’ve thought he was doing a weirdo wave or something, but I did know him, so I knew he was feeling for the ward.
After a few seconds, he sucked in a sharp breath. “Holy shit. Someone burned a hole through the ward.”
“What do you mean?” Garrick—the freaking king of Sedoba—asked as he walked into my place, staring at his viramore.
“It’s like… it’s like someone used some kind of tool to cut open a hole, the way you would a chain-link fence. The ward isn’t broken entirely. It’s still standing, but now there’s a person-sized hole in it. Holy fuck, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Garrick grumbled under his breath, then sighed. “So what you’re saying is that someone figured out how to break through wards?”
Tan nodded. “Seems like it. I need to call Seb and Ailin.” He turned to me. “Do you mind if I have my dads come take a look?”
I knew the Ellwoods, obviously, although I didn’t know them well. But they were good people from everything I’d seen and heard about them, so I nodded. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” He shot me a determined look. “We’ll figure this out so it doesn’t happen again. You’ll be safe here.”
I sure as fuck hoped so. “Thank you.”
While he worried about that, I went into my bedroom to check over my things. If someone went through all that trouble to break in, they had to have taken something, right? Why else would they break into my apartment? Unless they were just testing out their anti-ward spell or whatever it was. But… my apartment was on the third floor, and I knew there were other apartments in my building with wards. So why mine?
They had to have been looking for something.
But what? It wasn’t like I had a ton of money or owned anything of serious value.
I glanced at my bookshelf, but everything seemed to be in place, so I checked my closet. Still nothing missing.
Hm. What in the world could they have taken? And if they didn’t take anything, then why in the fuck had they broken in in the first place?
I glanced at my nightstand, and a gasp left my lips as I rushed over to it.
Even though I couldn’t see it there, I felt around all over the nightstand frantically. “No, no, no, no, no.”
“What’s wrong?” Anton asked from the door. “What’s missing?”
I dropped to my knees and began searching the floor, under the bed, behind the nightstand, everywhere.
It was nowhere to be found.
My eyes felt wet as I turned to Anton and whispered, “Lanche’s icicle’s gone. It… it was on my nightstand.” Last night, I’d had trouble sleeping, so I’d brought the thing in here with me. Having it close by had… soothed me and helped me fall asleep quickly. I had no idea why, but I’d wanted it close by. “I can’t find it.”
Anton’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t say anything. He walked over and looked for himself, then moved my entire bed and nightstand out of the way, just to be sure. I kept looking, crawling around on the floor, pulling my sheets off the bed, even checking in my closet, although I had no idea how it could’ve possibly gotten there from across the room.
“It’s not here,” Anton muttered after we searched for another five minutes. “You’re sure you didn’t move it when you woke this morning or before you left for your date?”
I covered my face with my hands, not wanting Anton to see the tears that decided to leak from my eyes. “I didn’t move it. I even… before I left the house, I came back in here to… to run my fingers over it.” It’d been a weird compulsion I hadn’t been able to ignore. “It was here when I left.”
Anton stood from where he was feeling around on the carpet. “Okay… okay. So… someone broke into your home and stole Lanche’s icicle. Who knew you had it?”
I shrugged. “Um… everyone at work, plus Oakley and Roman, I guess? Uh… Tan knows, so maybe Garrick too… Anton, these are all people I trust with my life. I mean, they’re… they’re all your family, aren’t they?” Hell, most of them had come here to help me just now.
“None of them would’ve done it. So… that leaves Lanche’s people, I suppose. We’ll have to find out who he told.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “Unless someone at the bookshop overheard us when you opened the box. We were in thebreakroom, but that doesn’t mean someone didn’t overhear us. We weren’t trying to be quiet.”
True enough. “Okay, so… can we look at footage from the shop if nothing turns up from them tracking the guy?”
