He shrugged. “Not really. Found a bunch of property deeds, birth certificates, passports, and been working my way through them.”
“And when you broke into her houses?” I asked. “Did you find anything enlightening?”
He hesitated, gaze narrowing fractionally. “If I say, will you let me go?”
“You’ve already been told your options. Full release is not one of them.” Mathi’s tone was flat, which meant his annoyance was rising. “What did you find?”
The kid sighed. It was a very put-upon sound. “Fine. I found a necklace that held her vibes. Thought I could hire a tracer and find her that way.”
I frowned. “How do you know it held her resonance? Are you sensitive to that sort of thing?”
“I’m not, generally, but when I use the pectoral, it can see sounds and the like.”
Did that mean me seeing the harp’s notes wasn’t due to my godly blood, but rather a quirk of the relic? “And this necklace—and all the other items you stole—are currently where?”
“In Dorcha Dearg, of course.”
“How?” Mathi asked. “The Myrkálfar have a watch on all your family’s residences and a ‘find and detain’ order out on your immediate family.”
“It’s not exactly hard to slip in and out of places when you can become invisible.” Another shrug. “It’s as safe there as anywhere.”
“What about the book you stole this evening?” I asked. “Have you still got it on you, or did you stash it somewhere for retrieval later after you’d spotted me?”
“I didn’t steal a book.”
I rolled my eyes, handed Mathi my coffee, then stepped forward and patted him down. He wriggled and cursed, which delayed me finding it for all of two seconds. I pulled it from his pocket and discovered hewasactually telling the truth—he hadn’t taken a book, but rather a small wooden trinket box. It was simple in design but obviously well cared for, because its frail but gentle song spoke of happiness. I stepped back, found the latch, and opened it. Inside there was a lock of dark hair tied by a faded yellow ribbon and a collection of baby teeth.
My gaze jumped back to Macsen’s. “These are hers?”
“The pectoral says they are. I’m not gainsaying it.”
The pectoral was also a locator? The Codex’s archives had said nothing about that, but given the pectoral’s sudden resurfacing and the fact that its godly creator had now enteredthe ring, maybe it was a recent addition. Nothing was impossible when it came to the gods and their addiction to the game.
I glanced at Mathi. “You got any decent tracer contacts?”
He nodded. “I’ll liaise with Cynwrig, though, just to be sure we get someone who is clean.”
Clean in terms of being free from the rat god’s influence. “I might also know someone, though I’m not sure if she’s in Deva or not. She was planning to relocate last I heard.”
Margaret Falconer—who’d worked with Loudon and his now dead partner Gannon running a magic shop—was an amplifier medium rather than a tracer, meaning she could talk to spirits and through that hear their resonances. From what she’d said, a maker’s resonance always stuck to their creations, and it was that song she could trace if the item still existed in this world.
“Contact her, then, but we’ll still work on a backup list, just in case.”
I nodded. “Whichever way we go, it’ll need it done quickly. If my last vision was anything to go by, Carla’s getting a bit antsy about my presence.”
“Define ‘antsy,’” Mathi said, eyes narrowing dangerously.
“She wants to get rid of me. Her boss is saying they need to keep me around until the Harpe is found.”
“Well, let’s all hope he has her well and truly leashed.”
“Indeed.” And if there was one comfort about knowing my death had already been written into the game, it was the fact that it came at the hands of her boss rather than her. Of course, game plans could change—we were dealing with gods after all, and they were fickle beings at the best of times. Besides, while hers might not be the hand that ended me, she could certainly cause me serious harm. I wasn’t about to say any of that to Mathi, however. “If what I heard is true, he literally holds her life in his hands.”
Mathi’s eyebrows rose. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, she has some sort of implant in her brain that will kill her.”
“Don’t suppose you know what can set it off, do you?” Macsen growled. “Because that would save us all a whole lot of time and trouble.”
