Was it even still there?
He was still looking for what he had discovered earlier that day. And Lily examined the idea that this entity was no longer present at all. Perhaps someone had picked it up off the rails, or a passing train had hit it.
The scent was strong
But shouldn’t the puppy have lost its smell by then? Since he was trapped in that cage, the animal had regularly reacted to something. Even now, it was catching a whiff of something. If whatever it was hunting for was already gone, it couldn’t have left such a powerful aroma!