Since I'd crapped out with the walls, I dropped to my hands and knees and scoured the floor, looking for lines cut into the thick rugs. Nothing. Not so much as a single fiber out of place.
"This is weird," Donovan murmured, shining his flashlight across several sheets of paper.
"What?" I asked, still crawling around on the floor.
"It looks like Dawson's hired several gemologists in the last few weeks from a variety of firms," the detective replied.
"There are receipts here made out to Jeweltones, Gems, Inc., and Grayson Enterprises, among others."
I frowned. "What would Dawson need with gemologists? He's mining coal, not precious stones."
"I don't know." Donovan pulled out his cell phone and snapped copies of the receipts to examine later.
By this time, I'd made a complete circuit of the office on my hands and knees, and I still hadn't found anything useful. Besides Dawson's obsession with the Old West, the only other thing interesting or noteworthy, at least to me, was the dwarf 's rock collection. Such collections weren't uncommon among Stone elementals. Even I'd had one as a kid, before my family had been murdered.
A tall, wide glass case against the back wall of the office housed the collection. Three shelves full of rocks perched above a large block of black granite shot through with silverstone. Some of the stones were worthless. Polished quartz you could find just about anywhere. Odd bits of fool's gold. Others had some serious value. A sapphire almost as big as an egg. A teardrop-shaped ruby. A lovely square-cut emerald. I could hear the stones, of course.
The soft, pretty murmur of the quartz. The sly whisper of the fool's gold. The flashy elegance of the gemstones.
My eyes dropped to the bottom shelf, and I focused on the slab of granite. It was nothing compared to the gemstones, but still, I wondered why Dawson would even have it in his collection to start with. The others rocks varied in value, but they were all uniquely shaped or interesting in some way. The granite was just a slab of granite. Black and rather boxlike in its appearance. I knelt down and peered at the stone even closer. Hmm.
There was a lock on the glass case, but I took care of that with a well-crafted Ice pick. Behind me, Donovan kept sorting through papers. I opened the door on the case. The stones' various murmurs washed over me, but I forced the melodies aside and focused on the granite. Its vibration was low and muted in comparison to the other rocks, but I rather suspected that was the point. Still, it only took me a second to attune myself to the stone. And I realized its vibrations sounded... hollow. As though the stone was only a thin layer covering something else - like a secret chamber.
"I think I've found Dawson's safe - so to speak," I murmured to Caine.
He looked up from the papers. "Can you open it?"
Picking a door lock was one thing. I had a tougher time getting into a traditional metal safe without Finn's help - or some explosives. But Tobias Dawson didn't have a traditional safe. His was made of stone - my element, my specialty. Still, we'd been inside more than three minutes now. No time to be subtle.
So I pulled off my glove, put my hand on the granite, and listened to its vibrations. Slow, steady, solid, just like the rock itself. There was also a sense it was guarding something, protecting something important, valuable.
Tobias Dawson's secrets, whatever they might be.
I drew in a breath and focused my magic on the granite.
Peering at the rock, into the rock. And I realized the stone was only a couple inches deep. Any thicker than that, and Dawson wouldn't have been able to put much of anything inside. Also, the silverstone I'd noticed earlier formed a wide, circular shape in the middle of the granite, roughly marking the size of the hollow space inside.
The dwarf probably had the metal triggered to his magic, so that no one could open it but him. Since silverstone could absorb magic, anyone who tried to force their way inside like that would probably spin their wheels for quite a while.
But I was a Stone elemental, just like the dwarf. I didn't have to go through the silverstone - only around it. I held my bare index finger in front of the granite and reached for my magic. A silver light sparked on the tip of my finger like it was a tiny blowtorch. I leaned forward and pressed my finger against the granite, forcing my magic into the stone, deeper and deeper until I broke through the rock shell to the hollow space inside. Once I made the initial break, it was easy enough to drag my finger around the perimeter of the block, forming a square shape much bigger than the circle of silverstone at the heart of the granite.
Less than a minute later, I made the last cut in the stone. The rock creaked, and I used my magic to form a small groove in one side so I could hook my finger inside and pull it out. The granite was heavier than I'd expected, and it took me a moment to lug it out of the case and set it on the floor.
Donovan looked up at the sound of my grunts and did a double-take. "How the hell did you do that?"
I flashed him a smile. "I have many talents, detective."
I turned my back on him and stared inside the safe. It was an even smaller space than I'd expected, and it was curiously empty, except for a few sheets of paper.
"Here." I plucked out the papers and handing them to Donovan. "Photograph these."
The detective spread the documents on the desk and used his cell phone to snap off some pictures. I reached back into the safe, wondering what other secrets it held.
My fingers closed around a small plastic vial, which I pulled out. I played my flashlight over the container. Black foam filled the inside of the vial, cradling a diamond.
The gemstone was small, not much bigger than one of my fingernails, and rough around the edges, but it still sparkled with an inner crimson fire. Definitely a high-quality stone. One that would polish up quite nicely.
But its sound - oh, its sound. That's what held my attention.
The diamond practically sang with its own purity.
The gemstone's inherent vibration was beautiful, breathtaking, enchanting, even. Like a Bach composition played by the master himself. I could have sat there listening to the diamond's clear, pure song for hours.
Too bad an alarm blared out and cut into its lilting melody.
Chapter Nineteen
For a moment I froze, crouched there on the floor, the diamond vial in my hand. The alarm continued to blare like a police siren wailing in my head. Donovan Caine kept sorting through the papers, as if he couldn't hear the unending, violent shrieking. He'd have to be deaf not to hear it.
I frowned and stared at the granite safe. The stone's low murmur had transformed into a sharp, piercing alarm. A rune flashed to life on the front of the safe, on the slab I'd cut out of the rest of the block. A tight, spiral curl burned a cold gray in the middle of the black granite like some sort of all-seeing eye. A spiral curl - the rune for protection.