Gunmetal Magic: A Novel in the World of Kate Daniels

library.”
    His enthusiasm visibly deflated and he emitted a tragic sigh. “But ‘library’ and ‘kick-ass’ are two concepts that don’t usually go together.”
    “That’s the nature of the business. Five percent of the time you are killing monsters. The rest of the time, we’re digging through the dirt for a tiny piece of the perpetrator’s pubic hair.”
    “Ugh.”
    I was fighting on two fronts. One, he was a fifteen-year-old boy equipped with the body of a monster and flooded with hormones. He was desperate for an opportunity to let some steam out. Two, he was a bouda. We were an easily bored species. In nature hyenas relied on sight more than scent in theirhunting. We didn’t do dogged wolflike pursuit, we didn’t travel single file, and we didn’t typically track. Following the trail of breadcrumbs went against Ascanio’s natural instinct. But as I’ve pointed out to him before, the human part of him was doing the driving. I would prevail.
    “You can always stay here and practice broom drills.”
    “No, thank you,” he said and produced a dazzling smile. The kid was something else. “May I drive?”
    “Yes, you may.” I had to give him something as a consolation prize.
    We locked the office and went on our way.
    “So why are we going to the library?” Ascanio asked.
    I leaned back against my seat. “Don’t take Magnolia. Take Redberry instead.”
    “Why?”
    “Redberry has some sort of weird yellow vines growing on the buildings. I want to check it out. To answer your question, we are going to the library because it’s the only place accessible to the public where we can tap into the Library of Alexandria project.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Years ago—before you were born—people had access to a network of data called the Internet. If you needed an address, for example, you could type it into your computer and it would pop right up, with directions of how to get there. If you needed to look up something like the boiling point of hydrochloric acid, you could do that. Instant knowledge at your fingertips.”
    “Wow.”
    “Yeah. Well, when it became obvious that magic was going to wreck the computer networks, people tried to preserve portions of the Internet. They took snapshots of their servers and sent the data to a central database at the Library of Congress. The project became known as the Library of Alexandria, because in ancient times Alexandria’s library was said to contain all human knowledge, before some jackass burned it to the ground. Since the tech is up, we’re going to dig through that database.”
    “What are we digging for?”
    “Facts. Let’s look at what we have. First, Raphael buys a highly contested building, leaving all other bidders in the dust.Then Raphael’s crew finds a secret vault that wasn’t in any of the documents they had. Someone went to Raphael’s site, attacked the shapeshifters guarding it, and opened the vault. Then they left the site, leaving most of the vault’s contents untouched. What does that tell you?”
    Ascanio frowned. “It wasn’t random.”
    “Right. There are easier places to rob and a guarded tunnel isn’t like a bank. It doesn’t automatically look like something valuable is hidden in it. Also a random robber would’ve emptied the vault.”
    Ascanio looked at me. “So the thief had to know about the vault and what was in it.”
    There was hope for him yet. “Exactly. We have two avenues of investigation: one, find out who knew about the vault and could’ve accessed it, and two?”
    “Find out what they were after,” Ascanio said.
    I smiled at him. “Good. We know that the building was owned by Jamar Groves. If the Blue Heron had a secret vault, Jamar had to know about it, because he was the one who had put it there. We know that Jamar Groves collected art and antiques. It’s logical to suppose that the secret vault contained Jamar’s personal stash. We also have the catalog of the vault’s contents, which I made at the scene. We’re going to search the archives for any mention of Jamar and his collection and compare it against the list of items in the vault.”
    Ascanio arranged his pretty face into a martyred expression.
    “The Central Library sits on the edge of Centennial Park,” I told him. Over the years the park had exploded in size, swallowing additional city blocks, and the library was one of its victims.
    “So?” Ascanio asked.
    “Centennial Park is owned by the witch covens. They provide