Were the guards watching me from the darkness of the yard, struggling not to laugh? Or inside, at the monitor station, busily taping the footage to pass around a Cabal e-mail loop: look at the guy, he’s so paranoid he can’t even walk up to his dad’s front door without hiding under a spell.

No one could have broken into my father’s house.

Paige had joked earlier that I hated to use the word impossible, in case I was proven wrong. But this situation came as close to impossible as I could imagine.

The front gates couldn’t be operated without a signal from within the house, and anyone climbing the fence would set off an alarm, notifying two patrolling guards, the house guard and Troy. But we’d climbed the fence…and no one was rushing out to stop us.

I pushed back the thought in favor of the hope that I was making a monumental fool of myself.

My father was fine.

Even if someone breached the fence, he couldn’t get into the house. My father refused to employ illegal or supernatural security methods in the yard—he couldn’t risk having a drunken teen scale his fence and slam into a barrier spell. But with the house, he had no such compunctions.

Even the Cabal vaults—which contained not only a fortune in bearer bonds, but all the powerful spells and supernatural secrets accumulated in centuries of Cabal-hood—were not as carefully guarded as this house. My father was more valuable to the Cabal than any bond or spell. Lives had been sacrificed to provide the highest security the supernatural world knew.

There was only one door, which had to be opened by the guard within. Once inside, the visitor found himself in a completely secured concrete box. To get into the house proper required another door to be opened, which could only be done by my father or Troy.

There was another way through the front door. Should my father be in the yard or on the beach, he’d hardly want to knock at his own door, so a retinal scanner allowed him access. It was also set to recognize one other person: me. As for why I might need to get inside without him, he never said, only that I’d find out if the need arose.

After motioning for Paige to stay back, I stepped in front of the camera and waited. If, by chance, the perimeter security was malfunctioning, and all was well inside, the guard would spot me and open the door.

I counted sixty long seconds. Paige stayed where she was, asking nothing.

I activated the scanner.

A whir as the lock electronically opened. I cracked open the door and cast a sensing spell, checking for signs of life. It came back negative.

The room within looked like any vestibule. Even the guard’s desk was decorative teak, with the LCD

security screens inset in frames.

The guard sat in his chair, head on his arms, which were folded on the desk, as if he’d fallen asleep. Only the spilled take-out coffee cup told me otherwise. Paige brushed past me, her fingers going to the man’s neck.

“Dead,” she said. “But what…?”

She let the sentence trail off, knowing I’d be asking the question already. There was no blood or other sign of trauma. He seemed simply to have laid his head down and gone to sleep.

Paige bent to sniff the spilled coffee, and I knew her conclusion before she voiced it.

“Poison.”

That made no sense. None of it did. But questions flew from my head as I turned and saw the interior door propped open with a pen. As I stared at that crude instrument, brain insisting I make sense of it, Paige pointed to a pencil by the main door. Half a pencil, the other half presumably outside, after it failed its purpose in keeping the heavy door—

The interior door was open. The guard dead. My father inside.

It took all I had not to throw open that door and run in. I cast another sensing spell, then slid through the interior door. I heard her cast a cover spell, and quickly did the same, annoyed that I’d lacked the forethought to do it without prompting.

The cover spell let us stay hidden, as long as we remained still. I looked around the living room. There was nothing that I couldn’t scan in an instant and say “yes, that belongs there.”

Paige tapped my arm and motioned toward the kitchen, meaning she’d check in there. While part of me wanted to keep her close, another part knew that if my father was in danger, every moment was critical.

It didn’t take long to search the house. It was only a couple of thousand square feet, my father being the sole inhabitant and not inclined to entertain. Paige met me next door to my father’s bedroom suite, in a small room where Troy slept. To get to my father’s, an intruder had to pass through here, adding an extra layer of security.

Paige cast a privacy spell, though I now doubted the precaution was necessary. We’d cast sensing spells and if someone was here, even hidden or unconscious, we’d know it.

“If Troy realized someone broke in, and he got your dad out, they’d call so we wouldn’t walk in on a killer.

If they took your dad, they’d leave Troy behind.” Dismay touched with guilt crossed her face. “Troy…”

“No,” I said. “Yes, it may be a logical explanation—Troy kills the guards with poisoned coffee and kidnaps my father—but no. Not Troy.”

“Maybe not willingly,” she said slowly. “But if he was blackmailed. Or someone in his family was threatened…”

“He doesn’t have any family. No long-term girlfriends. No children. No vices that he could be blackmailed with. He is, in short, the perfect bodyguard.”

As I defended him I wondered how much it was rooted in affection, rather than conviction.

“I cannot believe he’d do it,” I said. “But, in light of no other obvious explanations…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Is there anyplace else your dad could be? On the property? I know there’s no basement, but—”

My head jerked up. “The panic room.”

LUCAS: 9

“I CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT—” I strode into my father’s bedroom. “It’s accessed through the bedroom. Where, I don’t know. But surely it’s equipped with a method of communicating with the outside world.

He should have been able to call for help.”

I walked around the walls, lifting paintings, mirrors, anything that could conceal a panel. Or would it be as small as a latch? I crouched at the dressing table and began examining the underside.