fifty-five

I frantically searched my bag for my phone to call Tobias. When I found it, I also found I’d missed several text messages from him.

Get back here.

Where are you? All OK, but we need to go.

Zoe, where are you??? Why don’t you ever check your phone? Nick woke up, left the trailer. Attracted unwanted attention.

Will call to let you know where we are.

I called him back, but the phone went straight to voicemail. I tried Dorian next, using our coded ring system, and he picked up the phone.

“Les flics have not arrived,” he said. “You may return home. It is safe.”

“I’ve lost them.”

“The police were chasing you?”

“Not them them. Tobias, Nicolas, and Perenelle.”

“Pardon?”

I told Dorian what had happened.

“And you say I am the reckless one because I practiced flying at the river?”

I gasped. “The waterfront where the warehouses are. That’s where you found the phoenix pendant. Which we now know that Ward dropped … ”

“Though I cannot see you, I can tell you are thinking more than you are saying.”

“When I first met Ward at the art gallery, he told Cleo he was glad she used this space for the gallery. That means she owns more warehouse spaces, many of which are still empty—”

“You believe Ward could safely use these spaces, and this is where he has gone.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I know one way to find out.”

The cab driver dropped me as close as I could get to the spot where Dorian told me he’d found the phoenix pendant.

What had Ward been doing by the river? Why had he been here with Logan Magnus’s pendant? And what had led him to abandon it? I walked north along the path and realized it wasn’t as far from the Logan Magnus memorial gallery as I’d imagined. How many of these warehouses did Cleo own?

It was now nearly sunset. My energy would be fading with the sun, so I had to act quickly. A dim street lamp clicked on overhead as I circled a cracked asphalt parking lot. I walked from building to building as the sunlight faded. Most were empty spaces, so I was alone. I kept my senses on alert, but there was no sign of Ward or anyone else. It wasn’t the presence of a person that made me stop walking—it was a scent. The acidic aroma of paint.

Given that there were warehouses around me, it could have been paint used for some legitimate purpose. But I was in the lot of an abandoned-looking building. A stone-and-metal exterior, wooden boards over two windows, and a padlocked door. Yet the scent came from inside. Along with my connection to plants, my sense of smell has always been acute.

I tried the padlock. It didn’t budge. I wished I had Dorian’s claws, or at least his lock-picking skills. He’d told me it was a skill that could be taught …

When I pulled my phone from my bag to call him, I saw I’d missed a message from Tobias with the location of the RV park where they’d moved to. He assured me he’d keep the Flamels inside until they were better acclimated to this century.

“Dorian,” I said when he answered my call, “can you walk me through picking a lock?”

“The first step is the most important.”

“I’m listening.”

“Try the handle.”

“What?”

“The door. It has a handle, no? It is amazing how many times a door is unlocked to begin with.”

“There’s a large padlock. I already tried it. It was properly locked, as I expected.”

But I didn’t expect the footsteps behind me, or the searing pain that crashed down on my head.