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“So what did you find?” I asked Petra. We could discuss coyotes later, too.
“More null spots than Black seemed to suggest,” she said. The overhead screen became a satellite image of Chicago with our ward map as an overlay. The wards, Cornerstones, and ley lines were visible, as were thousands of little black dots. It looked like a swarm of gnats.
“Nearly four thousand magical voids detected using this method,” Petra said. “Those are spots in Chicago with an absolute-zero magical signature.”
“Those can’t all be Cornerstones,” I said.
“Oh, definitely not. Like I said, Chicago has a lot of ambient magical energy floating around out there, so most spots in Chicago are going to register some kind of magic. And there could be lots of reasons for spots that show up as absolute zero. Bank vaults. Geological quirks. The remains of the Manhattan Project lab, which sounds fake, but is totally real.”
“That’s so many places,” Theo said. “How does that help us?”
“Well,” Petra said, “it’s a finite number. A limited number of sites is better than all the sites, at least in my mind. But you’re right. We can’t search that many spots in person. So I did one more analysis.”
Another map filled the screen. This time, the gnats had been replaced by a few dozen blue dots spread across town. She looked at us with the smile of a proud parent. “Anyone want to guess how I narrowed it down?”
“Leo’s coffee locations?” I asked, natch.
“No.”
“Starbucks?” Theo asked, and Petra rolled her eyes.
“It is not coffee-related, you addicts.” She lifted her brows, waited. “Since there are no takers, I’ll tell you.” She glanced at me. “You said something at the warehouse that intrigued me.”
I waved a genteel hand. “Carry on.”
“You pointed out that the Cornerstones were voids. But the wards were not.”
“Oooooh,” Roger said, “I got it. These aren’t just voids. They’re voids beside powerful magic.”
“Bingo,” Petra said. “Of those few thousand voids, there are thirty-four that are next to something powerful.” She flipped to another image. This one looked like a weather radar image—a splotch of green with a smaller splotch of red beside it. “Zero magic, high magic. I’m calling them ‘hot spots.’ ”
“You’re a freaking genius,” Theo said.
“Feel free to pass that on to Dr.Anderson,” Petra muttered.
“Thirty-four hot spots—while undeniably genius—is still a lot of ground to cover given our deadline,” Roger said. “We’ve got two days. Can we narrow that down?”
“I’m going to check in with Armin about his algorithm and see if we can make some predictions about possible ward locations. Unfortunately, that’s where we’re stuck, unless the CPD wants to send folks out to every possible location.”
“And have them literally digging in the dirt?” Roger asked. “Unlikely.”
“I don’t think we have to do that,” I said, looking over the map. The pattern appeared random, at least based on geography or leyline location. But that didn’t mean they weren’t ascertainable. “In fact, I bet Rosantine’s already done some of that for us.”
Theo narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean?”
“Rosantine said she could ‘tell’ where the wards were.”
Petra nodded. “I see where you’re going—maybe she can sense the voids, too. Maybe that’s how she figured out Cornerstones existed in the first place.”
Roger sat forward, linked his hands together, and there was eagerness in his face. “And has been working through the hot spots systematically, looking for an unguarded ward.”
Theo nodded. “So, if we can figure out the ones she’s already eliminated, we can mark them off our list.”
“She feeds off chaos,” Petra said. “So maybe we search news stories for the last few days that suggest the kind of chaos chain reactions she can trigger. If it’s near one of these thirty-four hot spots, we mark it off the list and don’t need to check there.”
Theo looked at me. “Because if she’d actually found a ward and Cornerstone, it would have signaled, and we’d already know about it.”
“Exactly,” Petra said.
