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the blood forests of Portola, the wired skeleton of a wolpertinger, souvenir spoons from at least thirty cities. Worst of all, the intruders smashed the hunk of volcanic glass carried back from the underwater dome city of Halcyon. Recruited to the developer’s engineering team, my parents fell in love while funneling salt water near enough the volcanic activity to heat it for the medicinal spas. They shared a Submersible to the surface and were inseparable ever since.
    “What’s happened?” Nic gave the back of my jacket a shake.
    “Someone broke in.” I towed him farther into the room. Surprisingly, the perpetrators spared the stained glass Aquaria that spanned the length of the far wall, with its pale green depths and coral-colored goldfish. However, one of the panels had been shifted to the side, revealing the inner workings of the gas lamps that gave the glass waterweeds the illusion of movement. Beyond that were several large and well-greased gears, two pulley systems, and a small rectangular wall safe. The latter was open, its papers scattered over the floor and the desks. “They’ve turned the room upside down and broken into the wall safe.”
    Nic pulled me back half a step with a hissed, “They could still be in the house.”
    “I don’t think so,” I said with a slow glance about to take in every detail. “They smashed the face of the carriage clock when they were here. Happened about an hour ago.”
    “About the same time as the explosion at the factory,” he said, unwilling to let go of me. “I somehow doubt that was a coincidence.”
    Gently prying my clothing from his grasp, I knelt in the debris and retrieved a glass daguerreotype. It was from the day Cygna was born and the only picture of the four Farthing children together: Nic and I at age eight, holding the baby between us, and eleven-year-old Dimitria standing behind. The glass was cracked down the middle, so I was quite literally picking up the pieces of our family. “I need to message Mama and Papa again. All of this is going to come as a nasty shock.”
    Nic tried to pick a path between the marble chess figurines and promptly fell over the remnants of the mirror that should have been hanging over the fireplace. Behind the desk, he squinted and reached for something.
    “You might want to call in the police now.” He held up our father’s pocket watch by its long gold chain. “I think Mama and Papa were here when it happened.”
    Most men and women in Bazalgate society carry a watch that requires regular winding, one composed of balance wheels and screws and gears, but our father’s elaborately engraved case held instead a miniature sundial set over a compass. Given the fact that my parents would rather crash through a jungle atop an elephant than bask in wooden deck chairs, the gift served its purpose more than once. It was a unique timepiece, commissioned by my mother for a wedding gift, and my father was never without it.
    My Ticker responded before I could, accelerating until I could hear my pulse in my ears. “Do you think the burglars hurt them?”
    Peering ineffectually around the room, Nic shook his head. “I think they
took
them.”
    The pit in my stomach widened until I was afraid I might fall into it, never to climb back out. I walked over to Nic and took the pocket watch, wanting to believe that it somehow wasn’t my father’s. When I opened the case, though, there was the metal dial folded down over the compass. “But why—”
    The sound of a boot snapping a bit of broken glass came from the hallway. I whirled about and raised the charged Pixii.
    “Penny, don’t,” Nic warned, trying to catch hold of me.
    Skirting an overturned table, I evaded his reaching hands. “Shut up and get down.”
    It was only a few steps back to the study doors, and I eased through the gap between them. Clouds wrapped sulky arms about the sun; in the resultant gloom, everything in the hallway was the enemy, from the broken furniture to