Sir Flanagan McSpeilmein pushed open the warped door of his rented shack and froze. For eleven years, he had hunted one grimoire — a dead mage's work on binding memory to objects. His rooms held every scrap of that hunt. And his rooms had been touched. The sprawling map of notes was wrong. Pinned letters, auction records, and inked threads covered the back wall like a dead tree dripping its tangled branches. One pin sat a finger's width off. A page hung crooked. Someone careful had been here. On his desk sat the cracked crystal ball he used as a paperweight. Its purple glow pulsed faster than it should. A small clawed print smudged the dust beside it. A scarlet-faced imp, then. Sent by whom, he could guess at, but not prove. Flanagan moved fast. He pulled his truest notes from beneath the floorboard — the collector's name, the auction ledger, the lead he had not yet spoken aloud. His hands shook only a little. He carried the bundle out past the moat of the old castle ruin nearby and pressed the pages into a hollow stone beneath its gate. Eleven years would not vanish tonight. Not into some imp's claws. Not into any warning dressed as concern. He walked back to the shack with empty hands and a steady pulse. The searchers would return. Now they would find nothing — and he would know exactly who was watching.