“Smugglers.”

Nick nodded.

“If we assume that the earring passed from that man to Rogers, that means he had it in his possession for over a week,” I said. “He must’ve been remarkably strong-willed, because the djinn subverted Lago in forty-eight hours.”

“Rogers was a conscientious, principled man,” Nick said. “He did a lot of charitable work. He was a harder nut to crack than a merc.”

“The two of you are forgetting Samantha Binek,” Luther said. “The knight who is missing. The djinn broke through the Order conditioning in less than a day. He is getting stronger with each host.”

“Tell me about Binek,” I said.

Nick grimaced. “Thirteen years in, knight-archivarius. She wasn’t one of mine. She came down from Wolf’s Head specifically to determine if the earring can be moved to the HQ vault. She had a sterling reputation. She went into the Vault to examine it. A knight-defender escorted her. Three hours later Maxine went to check on them. Binek had activated one of the artifacts in the vault, incapacitated the knight, and taken off.”

“What did she use?” I asked.

“An iron mask. He spent two hours thinking he was trapped in a slave ship. He’d ripped half of his nails out trying to break through the walls.”

Knights-archivarius were specifically trained to handle dangerous magic objects. This woman would’ve had all of the training, she would’ve evaluated hundreds of artifacts over the years, and she would’ve taken every precaution. This wasn’t good. We had to get to the djinn before she made her wishes and transformed. The amount of destruction he could unleash with her body would be catastrophic.

“My turn,” Luther said. “I analyzed your glass sample. It’s sand that has been cooked by very high heat. The sand contains concrete dust, so it was likely part of a building, and magically charged algae. It doesn’t look like algae got into the concrete and sand naturally. It appears the algae has been deliberately mixed into it.”

“Algae?”

He nodded.

That was what those in our business called a clue or potentially a gift from above. How many buildings in Atlanta could have magic algae in them? I was betting not that many. I got up and dialed Raphael’s number.

“Yes?” he said.

“It’s me. I need help.”

“I’m here,” he said.

I put him on speaker. “Is there any reason why debris from an old building might contain magical algae?”

“Lazarus Builders,” Raphael said. “About two years after the Shift, when they started seeing the first evidence of magic-induced erosion, a builder firm came out with a surefire way to proof the buildings against the magic waves.”

When it came to magic, there was no such thing as surefire anything.

“They found that a particular type of algae had the potential to absorb a lot of magical energy, so they mixed it into their concrete. Initial tests suggested it would be magic-resistant. It worked great for about five years, and then the first flare hit.”

Flares were like magic tsunamis—several days of uninterrupted, ridiculously strong magic. It was the time when gods could manifest.

“Turned out the algae was like a water balloon. It would absorb some magic, but when the flare overloaded it, it popped. Everything they built with Lazarus concrete fell either during the flare or within a month after it. It was one of the bigger scandals in Atlanta real estate.”

“How many buildings are we talking about?”

“That’s the bad news. They licensed the recipe. They even mixed it into stucco and claimed it would magic-proof residential construction. Lazarus was the darling of the business community back then, because everyone panicked and rushed to have new magic-proof corporate headquarters built. Basically anything built between the Shift and the first flare will have that crap in it. It’s so common, I don’t even have a separate file on it.”

Fate sucker-punched me in the face and then laughed.

“I can go through all of my files and pull every somewhat large building out by date, but it will take a while. A couple of days. Do you want my guys to do that?”

“No.” Eduardo didn’t have a couple of days and neither did the city. “Thank you, Raphael.”

“You’re welcome. Any time, Kate. I mean it.”

“Dead end,” Luther said. “Lovely.”

“There is something else we can try . . .”

Someone knocked on my front door. I got up and opened it. A tall man stood in the doorway, carrying a backpack on his left shoulder. He looked older, close to sixty. He wore dark trousers, loose enough to not restrict his movement, tucked into tall boots, a sweater, and a gray cloak over it, a common outfit for someone on the streets of Atlanta. His shoulders were still broad and his posture straight. He must’ve been very strong once, but age had stolen some of his bulk. I could tell by the way he stood that he carried at least one knife under the cloak and he was ready to use it at a moment’s notice. Lines marked his olive skin, but his dark eyes behind round glasses were smart and sharp. Gray sprinkled his once-dark hair and a short precise beard hugged his jaw. He reminded me of a human version of my father.