The parlor still smelled of its charred remains. Rowan peeked in tentatively, though it was hard to pick out many details in the blackness. The Blueblades had cordoned off the building entirely, and passerby gave the entrance a wide berth, perhaps fearing that the rest of the building would soon collapse on itself.

  “They never found who did it?” he asked Eamon. The larger man had agreed to come with him for the outing, citing a few errands in the city, but Rowan knew better; Eamon came to keep an eye on him, though Mariel only knew why. Eamon peered up at the building solemnly, his gaze darkened with grief.

  “Happens sometimes with these,” he said softly. “Most of them are run by the parlor’s own Fulminancer, but ones like these let you pay a bit of extra cash to use your own. Like as not, it was someone like your Bloodcrawler friend with too much power and not an ounce of control.”

  Rowan stared at the ruins for a few moments longer, then ducked inside, under a beam that was cracked in several places, the wood splintering ominously. Eamon swore and tried to grab him, but Rowan’s thinner frame slipped through the gap before Eamon could stop him. Instead, Eamon settled for grousing nervously from just outside the structure.

  “The whole thing’s going to come down any minute, and with you inside, lad,” he called. “No discovery’s worth your head.”

  “It should be fine,” Rowan said, though he wasn’t as certain as he tried to sound. Overhead, the beams creaked, and Rowan flinched. “If it’s lasted this long, it’s not likely to collapse now.”

  “The Drystorm would like to have a word with you, boy.”

  As if in response, a strong wind blustered forth, kicking up ashes in a swirl of dust. The building groaned ominously, and a few pops made Rowan look up. He froze for a moment, then forced himself to move forward. With courage and a bit of stupidity, perhaps he could find something that other people had been too afraid to examine.

  He found the source of the blast immediately—a several foot wide radius around the twisted metal remains of two nearby chairs. Whoever had been in them had obviously been vaporized in the blast, judging from the rest of the building. Rowan crouched there, examining the black smudges as Eamon continued his litany of worries outside.

  This was where it was worst, he thought, following the explosion with his eyes away from the chairs. Evidence of its power was wedged into the wall as shrapnel of varying sizes and shapes, but there was a distinct lack of damage in what remained of the wall above the former window. Rowan stepped over the twisted remains of another chair to examine the window frame more closely.

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  Something blocked it here, he thought, heart hammering. Overhead, the Drystorm wind buffeted the building again, and an ominous rattle shuddered through the structure. Rowan picked through the debris back to the source of the explosion. Rather than the uniform char he expected from such a thing, there was an odd little bubble where no soot or char had been deposited at all. In fact, the line extended all the way to the window. He blinked, surprised. It had been hard to pick out that distinct line in the darkness of the ruins, but it seemed clear as day now—a lack of damage where there should have been.

  Fulminancy could block other Fulminancy, but it was finicky, and was best saved for an occasion when a Fulminancer knew an attack was coming. Whoever was in that chair had no warning at all, Rowan thought, still studying the blast. They would have had less than a second to throw up a shield of some sort. A reaction like that wouldn’t have stopped an explosion of that magnitude. And yet, Rowan saw evidence of its success right above the window, and all along the floor of the building.

  Was it more evidence that what had happened in his workshop was something more? Or was it some fundamental rule of Fulminancy that everyone simply took for granted? It seemed bigger than that to Rowan. He’d often found that progress could only be made by studying the tiniest, most forgotten of things. It was when people assumed they’d discovered everything there was to know about a subject that the most intriguing discoveries were made.

  And here, looking out over the parlor with the window to his back, Rowan realized he’d discovered something else.

  “Eamon—“

  He didn’t have the chance to finish his statement. A crack and a louder groan than before shook the building. Overhead, an odd sort of whirring noise spun up, and the hair on Rowan’s arms stood up. Uphill or Downhill, every child of Hillcrest knew that sound.

  A Gasp.

  Beams creaked, cracked, and snapped as Rowan nearly tripped over himself in his haste to leap out the window. Only Eamon’s yank on his shirt got him away from the parlor before the Drystorm Gasp heaved a massive volume of air over the building and flattened it entirely.

  Splinters erupted from the structure, and glass and stone alike crunched succinctly. Rowan threw an arm over his head and turned away from the building as a blast of wind sent debris flying into his back, several tiny pieces thumping him in the head with a sharp, searing pain.

  The eeriest part of a Gasp was how quickly it was over. They were aptly named for what most people had time to do before their entire home became a smudge on the map. When Rowan looked up, the building was gone, flattened by the strength of the wind. Perhaps it would have survived in its prime, with its sturdy beams and stone walls, but its former strength was now just a memory.

  Rowan winced at a few bleeding cuts on his forearms and one on his cheek as he straightened, and found himself suddenly grateful for Eamon’s ever-watchful eye. It had likely saved his life.

  “Well lad, if we’d just waited a few minutes, you could have done all your investigation without worrying about the building,” Eamon said, dusting off his own clothes. “Please tell me you at least found what you were looking for.”

  “I don’t know,” Rowan said simply. “But I know this—whoever was in that blast is still alive.”

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