The small glass orb Caleb had given me proved to be the source of both. Yesterday, when Briar had been at the door, the sphere had glowed a soft yellow. I was guessing flashing and blaring sirens were not indications of anything good.
In the hallway, I discovered I wasn’t the only one who’d been startled awake by the ward alarms. It was like a small flash mob of people holding blinking orbs had formed in the castle foyer. The sound that had been obnoxious and startling in my room was deafening when combined with three other wailing spheres.
“You all had to bring them with you, didn’t you?” Caleb yelled above the din. Out of Falin, Rianna, Holly, him, and me, Caleb was the only one who wasn’t clutching a madly flashing glass ball. Of course, he and Holly shared a suite of rooms, so they probably only had the one between them.
Caleb walked over to each of us in turn, touching the spheres we held and muttering under his breath. Magic snapped in the air, and one by one, the orbs fell silent, though they kept flashing, the eerie red light bathing the gray stone of the castle.
“Does this mean someone attacked the wards on the house?” I asked, once only the hollow after-echo of the sirens remained.
Caleb shook his head. “An attack on the wards would get an alarm and orange flashing. Red means someone made it through.”
We all turned in the direction of the castle door, as if we could see through it and over the distance of the folded space to the house beyond.
“So someone is in our house.” Holly said it matter-of-factly, but there was a thinness in her voice that spoke of shocked fear. “We should call the police.”
Obviously. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to grab my phone. I glanced around. Caleb was in baggy sweatpants that clearly had no pockets. Holly only wore an oversize shirt that probably belonged to Caleb. Rianna had on a cute pajama set and was gripping her flashing orb in one hand and had the fingers of her other hand buried deep in Desmond’s fur. Clearly no phone. By contrast, Falin was all but fully dressed in his jeans, white undershirt, and shoulder rig complete with gun. He had no shoes, but I would have bet money he had a phone on him. Probably a few hidden weapons as well.
“Falin?” I asked, looking at him.
Sure enough, he pulled a phone out of his back pocket. “I’ll call my agents, and then I’ll go check it out.”
Holly crossed her arms over her chest. “I said police, not the FIB.”
Falin paused, his thumb still poised over the call button. “Caleb is the homeowner. He is fae. Whoever broke in is probably after Alex, who is fae. This is clearly an FIB matter.”
“Just call everyone,” I said, exasperated.
Falin frowned at me, but nodded. Then he turned away to make his calls—hopefully to both police and FIB, though I didn’t relish the idea of either going through the old house.
I should have been exhausted—I couldn’t have gotten more than two hours of sleep—but I had too much nervous energy to stand still, so I ended up pacing the length of the foyer. Holly watched me walk one full circuit, then joined me, fidgeting with the side seam of her oversize shirt as she fell in step.
“What’s the likelihood whoever broke in will find this folded space?” Rianna asked. In contrast to my and Holly’s need to move, Rianna stood completely still, both her and the doglike fae at her side doing a good impression of statues.
“I imagine that depends on where they entered from,” Falin said, hanging up his phone. “I’m going to go check it out.”
“Shouldn’t you wait for the cops?” Holly asked, and Falin gave her a look I couldn’t quite interpret.
“He is the cops,” Caleb said, crossing his arms over his chest. “And he might as well be of some use since he lives here.”
I stopped pacing to shoot him a dirty look. Caleb made no secret of his distrust of Falin, but usually he wasn’t outright nasty to him. Of course, someone had just broken into his house, so he got a little leeway for stress.
I turned to Falin. “I’ll go with you,” I said, crossing the room.
“No,” Falin and Caleb said simultaneously, and Holly said, “Not happening.” If Rianna added her thoughts as well, I missed it under everyone else.
I frowned at the group collectively, though in truth, I didn’t really want to go surprise someone who’d probably broken in to do me harm. But I also didn’t want to wait for whoever it was to find the door to the folded space. If someone found their way in, they could hide in the area surrounding the castle for who knew how long. The castle had no wards on it like the house, or locks for that matter. I’d have to look into remedying both of those situations.
It was clear no one here was going to let me out of this castle, but I doubted I could keep Falin from going, so I simply said, “Be careful.”
“I’ll call when it’s clear,” he said, and then he was gone, hurrying out the door.
“I wonder what the burglar thought when they found the house empty?” Holly said, the titter in her voice that verged on amusement a clear sign of nerves.
I had serious doubts about burglary being the goal of the person who broke in, but I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “I’m going to go get dressed. Caleb, will the orbs change when the person who broke in leaves?”
“It depends on how badly they damaged the wards on the way in.”
So in other words, maybe. I nodded and headed back to my room. I dressed for the day, because despite the fact that it was only a little after four in the morning, I likely wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight. I left the orb behind. No reason to carry around a flashing crystal if it likely couldn’t give me any more useful information.
When I returned to the foyer, it was empty. I slipped out of the front door unseen, but I didn’t head to the house yet. The path was lit only with moonflowers, and I didn’t want to go wandering in the mostly dark when I didn’t know who else might be out there. Instead, I stepped back, turning to search the front face of the castle.
On a ledge not too much higher than the door perched a menacing-looking stone statue. The gargoyle was nearly three feet with a wingspan twice that, and looked like she’d been carved about to swoop down on anyone who dared trespass into the doorway. I’d never seen Fred move, but her current stance was way more aggressive than her typical pose. Either she was reacting to the tension inside, something more had happened, or something was going to—the gargoyle was a precog who sometimes seemed to have trouble telling the difference between present and future.