Read Online Stone Cold by Devon Monk - Free Book Online

couch as possible, looking just as uncomfortable as it sounds. Sunny leaned against the bookshelf picking at a plate of fruit.
    â€œIs this it?” I asked.
    â€œThis is it,” Zay said.
    â€œI expected as least Mum to stay,” I said. “Not like her to miss out on a hunt.”
    â€œI asked her to give us some time,” Zay said. “This isn’t her mess to deal with.”
    And by that, he meant Mum wasn’t a Soul Complement, and therefore wasn’t a walking magical weapon.
    Interesting.
    I took the open chair. “Dashiell, mate, you’re on. Tell us what you know about Davy.”
    Dash bent and pulled a file folder out of the messenger bag at his feet. “There’s a company up in Spokane that handles testing for agricultural chemicals. Pesticides, fertilizers, that sort of thing. We’ve been getting the word out that we’re looking for Davy, Eli Collins, and Krogher, the man who we think is keeping Eli under his employ and using him to kidnap the people who were infected with tainted magic back before the apocalypse. But we’ve been careful about our investigation, using only verified channels, verified people. So the search has been slow.”
    I glanced over at Sunny. She just stood there, a grape in her fingers, eyes trained on Dash. She was pretty much running the Hounds in Portland now that Davy was gone, but not every city was as organized as she was when it came to freelance magical P.I.’s.
    Portland was one of the first to make strides in the Hounds being compensated fairly for their work, and for their work to be legitimized.
    We might have a network of Hound eyes and ears here in town, but it wasn’t the same everywhere. I was pretty sure the Hound situation in Spokane wasn’t nearly as well run as what Allie had started and Sunny and Davy had perfected.
    â€œWe finally got eyes on the ground,” he continued. “One of our people got into the plant and took a look around. “The entire place was cleaned out. Not a desk, test tube, or latex glove left behind. No record of a sale. Wasn’t bankruptcy. One minute the company appeared to be in full operation. The next, it was gone.”
    â€œOdd,” Terric said, “but not that unusual. They could have pulled up tent stakes for any number of reasons.”
    â€œOvernight?” I shook my head. “I’m going with Dash on this one. Company that size doesn’t blow out of Dodge without some warning. So why do you think Davy was there?”
    â€œOur person on the ground got this.” He pulled out a photo, handed it to Terric instead of me.
    Old habits die hard. Sure, both Terric and I had been Dash’s bosses, but Terric had stuck with it twice as long.
    â€œA Containment spell?” Terric said. “Anyone could have drawn that.” He handed the picture to me. Concrete warehouse floor, yellow safety tape marking
x
’s and
t
’s where equipment or maybe pallets would have been.
    But it was the spell on the floor—not drawn, burned into the concrete—that drew my attention. “This isn’t Containment,” I said, turning the picture upside down. “This is Crossing. See the faint double arc?”
    Zay leaned forward and I handed it across the coffee table to him. Crossing was a spell that could be used for getting over a river or across a border safely. But Crossing could be used for other sorts of difficult passages if you had the will for it. Might even be used for getting out of shackles, getting out of a jail cell, or getting out of a warehouse.
    And Davy had a hell of a will.
    â€œIt’s both,” Zay said. “Containment and Crossing. One on top of the other. Sunny, are they Davy’s signature?”
    She walked over, took the photo, her gaze tracing through the lines of the spell. “The Containment isn’t him, but the Crossing? Yes.” She handed Zay the photo. “Are we done talking