Lyra POV
Lyra leads him up the stairs to the seventh floor of the building.
It’s laid out just the same as the two floors below it. Unlike the fifth and sixth floors, though, it’s clear that someone has been here, and recently. The desks have been pushed up against the walls, for one thing. In the center of the room, the carpet has been scraped up to reveal cement, and there’s a dark circle there.
Cassian squats and touches it.
“Looks like someone was burning something,” he says.
I nod. That much is obvious, and not what I was concerned about.
“Over here,” I say, taking him by the wrist and pulling him to the far wall beside the windows.
I point.
“Oh,” he murmurs. “Damn.”
There are strange shapes—figures—painted on the wall in a muddy red. The first one, all the way to the left s
