I pulled Mychael aside. “So, is there a user’s manual for the Saghred?” My words were for his ears alone. Thanks to our saboteur, I didn’t know who could be listening.

He looked honestly baffled. “A what?”

“User’s manual, directions, instructions, why the damned thing fought two master spellsingers, but rolled over and went to sleep when Piaras sang to it.”

“The Scriptorium has several books on the Saghred.”

“Good. I want to read them.”

“They’re in Old Goblin.”

“Not a problem. I read Old Goblin.”

Mychael seemed reluctant. I knew why.

I waited a few seconds until my voice wouldn’t sound as exasperated as I felt. “Yes, the Saghred’s been in my head,” I said through only partially clenched teeth. “And I am well aware that you can’t entirely trust me as long as there’s a chance it will come back. But do you really think it’s going to help our cause to keep me locked away and stupid? If any of those books can tell me how to unhook myself from that rock, I want to know about it. And I’m not the only one in danger here.” I glanced at Piaras; he was talking earnestly with Ronan Cayle. I lowered my voice even further. “I want to know everything that Sarad Nukpana knows, and then some.”

Mychael hesitated, but not for long. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Sir?” came a familiar voice from the doorway.

It was Riston. I couldn’t help but notice that he had a bad case of bedhead, and he still looked a little dazed. Piaras winced apologetically. Phaelan’s laugh came out as a snort.

“Sir, the chief watcher is here to see you.” Riston looked puzzled. “And he said he brought you a hairbrush.”

The man in Mychael’s office was wearing enough leather armor and blades to make him feel secure in the nastiest sections of town. I’d once found out the hard way that when a man was that big and that heavily armed and wearing an expression that grim, it was good to wait and be properly introduced.

Mychael greeted him with a warm handshake. I couldn’t help but notice that Mychael’s entire hand vanished in the man’s enormous paw.

“Raine, this is our chief watcher, Sedge Rinker. Sedge, this is Raine Benares.”

I crossed the office and cautiously extended my hand. Members of my family were generally greeted with hand-cuffsby law enforcement, not handshakes. Rinker hesitated a moment, then took my hand in a firm yet surprisingly gentle handshake.

“I was in the square this morning and saw what you did.” Rinker’s voice was a basso rumble. “Impressive work—and I don’t mind saying a little scary.”

I grinned. I couldn’t imagine anything scaring this man. “I scared me, too,” I told him.

Sedge Rinker didn’t look like a man who sat behind a desk all day. His dark beard was trimmed neatly enough, but he hadn’t fussed with it. His hair was efficiently short, but style wasn’t something he bothered with or cared about. However, his armor and weapons were of the highest quality and in immaculate condition. I’d seen his like among watch officers many times—they were utterly devoted to their work and the people they protected.

“Did you get anything useful from those two Nightshades?” he asked Mychael.

I gave Mychael a sharp look. “You took two alive?”

“We did.”

“And?”

“And our investigation is ongoing.”

It was his paladin voice, the voice that wasn’t about to tell me anything. His expression wasn’t volunteering information, either.

Rinker looked uneasily from Mychael to me. He’d assumed Mychael trusted me. So had I.

“Janek Tawl is a friend of mine,” Rinker told me, deftly changing the subject. “He says you’re the best seeker he knows. I was glad to find out you were visiting us.”

Janek Tawl was a friend of mine, too. As chief watcher of the Sorcerers District back home in Mermeia, Janek’s path had crossed mine on a regular basis. Janek occasionally sought my expertise as a seeker, and from time to time he was able to give me leads on cases I was working on.

“Janek’s a top-notch watcher and a fine man,” I agreed. “I’m honored that he thinks so highly of me.” I tossed Mychael a meaningful glance.

“Mychael tells me you want to help us find one of our missing students.”

Small talk was over. I liked a man who got right down to business. “I want to do everything I can to help,” I told him.

Rinker pulled a cloth-wrapped object out of a leather bag. He carefully handed it to me without unwrapping it. Good man. He knew his business, and more important, he knew mine. More than once I’d been called to a crime scene only to find that the object I most needed to use had been handled by nearly every watcher on-site, contaminating it and rendering it useless for seeking. It was their emotional imprint I’d get, not the victim’s. So the only person I’d find was the stupid watcher who’d last picked it up.

I took the wrapped hairbrush. “Did anyone touch this before it was wrapped?” I asked him.

“No one,” he assured me.

I smiled at him. “Thank you, Chief Watcher. It’s always a pleasure to work with true professionals.”

He nodded. “I understand you were there when Miss Jacobs was taken through that mirror.”

“Megan Jacobs is the student’s name,” Mychael clarified.

“Yes, I was,” I told the watcher. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t in a position to do anything to prevent it.” I frowned. “I can’t make up for what happened, but I want to help you find her—and the man who took her.”

“You’re familiar with Banan Ryce?” Rinker asked.

“We’ve met,” I said flatly. “It wasn’t professional, but it was hardly social.”

The watcher didn’t ask me to explain, which was good, because I had no intention of doing so.

I turned to Mychael. “May I use your couch? Hopefully I won’t need it, but better comfy than concussed.”

“Of course.”

I went to the couch, sat down with my back against the cushions. Even before my Saghred-enhanced seeking skills, I made it a point to try to sit someplace soft when working. The impressions I got from an object could be vague or jarring, and since I was attempting a direct link with a hopefully still-living person, the disorientation from that link could very well put me on the floor.

I held the wrapped hairbrush in one hand and peeled back the fabric with the other. It was a small silver brush of fine quality. Even better, there were a few long, blond hairs caught in the bristles. Last week, I got to experience a murder victim’s last seconds right along with him—all courtesy of the power boost the Saghred had given me. The victim had been killed the day before, so I’d gotten nothing from his personal object but last impressions and a mild case of the whirlies.

Megan Jacobs was still alive, as far as we knew. I’d never been inside a living person’s head before. I was pretty sure I could do it; I just didn’t know what to expect. Being the control freak that I am, I always want to know what to expect. Too bad I rarely get what I want.

I picked up the brush and clasped it in both hands.

The connection was immediate, crystal clear, and unnerving as hell.

I was disoriented, but what I felt was sick. I took shallow breaths and blew them out in short puffs, willing the contents of my stomach to stay right where they were. My stomach listened, and I saw the world through Megan Jacobs’s eyes.

The girl was alive, conscious, and scared to death. The scared part seemed like an appropriate enough response to being dragged through a mirror by Banan Ryce. As best I could tell, Banan hadn’t been keeping her company. That was good. What wasn’t so good was that she wasn’t in any place I could easily identify.

It was cold, damp, and almost completely dark. A single small candle in an iron holder was on the floor with her. The floor and walls felt like stone to me, probably subterranean, judging from the temperature, though whether it was natural or a man-made structure such as a cellar I had no way of knowing—and neither did Megan. She wasn’t tied up and could have gone exploring. I know I would have. She just huddled in a corner, shaking. The shaking I could deal with, but if she didn’t stop breathing like she was trying to outrun a demon from the lower hells, she was going to pass out and take me right along with her. She certainly had the right idea about Banan Ryce, but he wasn’t in the room with her now.