Night's Black Agents
Date: 2018-06-27 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Urban Fantasy; Fantasy; Action
Description: Paxton Locke saved the day, killed the witch, and got the girl... after a fashion.Recovering from his battle with the witch, Paxton and his new partner--don't call her a sidekick--Cassie are headed to Phoenix. A spate of mysterious, ritualistic murders has the police baffled. Who better to find the perp than someone who can speak to the dead?While Paxton hunts a killer, far deadlier creatures stalk him. In the Valley of the Sun, a mystical cold war is about to go nuclear.Harry Dresden's sorcery goes on a Supernatural-style road trip. Cool car sold separately.
Publisher: Silver Empire

NIGHT’S

BLACK
AGENTS

PAXTON LOCKE
BOOK 2

DANIEL HUMPHREYS

NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS

PAXTON LOCKE BOOK 2

By Daniel Humphreys

Published by Silver Empire
https://silverempire.org/

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2018, Daniel Humphreys

All rights reserved.

For Evan and Kent.

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,

Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,

Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day

And with thy bloody and invisible hand

Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond

Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow

Makes wing to th’ rooky wood.

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;

Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

William Shakespeare

MacBeth — Act 3, Scene 2

CHAPTER 1

Paxton

Joplin, Missouri—Monday morning

I was halfway through a stack of pancakes when the dead guy walked in the door.

Well, to be more precise—he walked through the door. I guess not having to carry keys is one of the few advantages to being dead.

Despite the fact that it was only about the tenth-weirdest thing I’d seen that week, I froze for a moment with my fork halfway between the plate and my mouth. I tried to cover for my surprise by exchanging the forkful of syrup-dripping sweetness for my cup of coffee, but my companion had already noticed the hesitation.

Cassie turned in her seat and scanned the diner behind us. A couple of trucker types in jeans, flannel shirts, and baseball caps bent over the counter, intent on their meals. One of Willy Loman’s coworkers sat primly in the corner booth, paging through a newspaper and sipping coffee. The ghost that she couldn’t see stood by the door and gave me a pleading look.

She turned back and cocked an eyebrow at me. Thanks to the fickle hand of fate, my new partner—she stomped on the concept of ‘sidekick’ with both boots—had recently gotten a full introduction into the eldritch shadows of our reality. I still ached from the experience, but for Cassie, it had been merely mind-blowing. Of course, I’d exhausted reserves I didn’t know I had to bring her back from the brink of death.

I reminded myself that I’d promised to be as honest as possible with her. I took a sip of coffee and picked my fork back up. “We have a visitor.”

She didn’t turn back to look again. My tone told her that it wasn’t the sort of visitor she’d be able to see. “Does that happen often?”

I swallowed and grimaced. The pancakes were getting cold, falling apart under their own weight. “No. They don’t usually come out in the daytime.” I studied the ghost as I spoke. At first glance, he was an average-looking twenty-something in khakis and a windbreaker. But most people that age weren’t semi-transparent with massive chunks of flesh missing from their neck.

“So, what do we do?”

I’d been starving less than an hour ago, but the apparition’s sudden appearance had spoiled my appetite. I wiped my mouth with a napkin and signaled the waitress. “We pay the check and we see what he wants, I suppose.”

My name is Paxton Locke. Ten years ago, I was a normal sixteen-year old. My interests consisted of video games, girls, and comic books—and not always in that order. My unassuming teenage life derailed when my mother began to dabble in dark magic. By the time the dust settled, she’d killed my father and left me with me magical inheritances of my own in the form of an ability I call the push and a mysterious, leather-bound book of magic. The grimoire defied belief. The cuneiform text within not only translated into the reader’s native language, the information it displayed varied depending on the desires—spoken or unspoken—of the reader. My childish innocence meant that the first few spells I learned were useful but benign.

The push is much more dangerous. It gives me the ability to control other people. And while Mother was a few cans shy of a six-pack, my dad raised me right. I don’t push people unless I have no other choice.

When I made the mistake of wondering what she’d sought in those ancient pages, the glimpse that I got of what she sought terrified me to such an extent that I doused the book in diesel fuel and burnt it to ashes. Suspecting that a magic book might leave behind magical—and potentially dangerous—ashes, I collected them and buried them for safe-keeping.

The ordeal that Cassie and I suffered a few days before came about as fallout from my mother’s machinations . After we’d made it out by the skin of our teeth and, perhaps, quite a bit of divine intervention, I’d recovered the ashes. After I did I learned that my suspicions that they were still dangerous had been correct.

A simple healing spell I’d learned so long ago had restored the grimoire to an intact state. Maybe I should have left it buried, but I couldn’t risk its potential discovery. For the moment, the safest place for it was with me. Us.

Of course, the safest place wasn’t always the most convenient. I grumbled under my breath as I shouldered my way out of the diner. I had the strap of a canvas messenger bag running diagonally across my chest, and the grimoire thumped against my hip with each step. My legs were still healing from last week’s multiple beatings. The combination of the encumbrance and my own injuries imparted an awkward hobble to my movement that would have been funny if it weren’t so annoying.

These were the kind of hassles they didn’t mention in the Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook. What I wouldn’t give for a bag of holding. I held the door for Cassie and turned to the waiting ghost. “All right, what’s up?”

His lips moved, but I didn’t hear anything. Well, I don’t usually hear them when they talk, but in this case, I got nothing. I sighed.

“Look, I’m still fumbling my way through the rulebook here, but you don’t need a throat to talk to me, dude. Try again.”

He waved his hands and seemed to be shouting, but I still didn’t hear a thing. I muttered under my breath.

“I’m so glad I didn’t finish breakfast so I could play charades with a smart-ass ghost. Where are we going?”

He looked as annoyed as I felt, but he gave me a tight nod and pointed to the side of the diner. It was an add-on to a larger truck stop convenience store. Thankfully, it was a slow morning, or people would have been pointing and staring at the nut who was having a conversation with thin air.

“Back parking lot?” He nodded. I frowned, but I turned to Cassie. “Pull around, okay? I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?” We’d parked my new-to-me RV in the front lot, next to the tractor-trailers that I assumed belonged to the guys at the counter in the diner. I winked at her and gave her my best Han Solo grin.

“Hey, it’s me. I’ll be fine.”

She rolled her eyes, but dug the keys out of her jacket pocket and trotted across the parking lot toward the RV. She’d been getting a lot of practice driving lately since Mother and her coven burned down my childhood home and torched my old RV—and my wallet—in the process.

All things considered, I’d rather mess with a pack of witches and their familiars than the DMV any day. At least you can shoot the witches.

I shoved my hands in the pockets of my own jacket and followed the sidewalk around the side of the building. A twenty-four hour truck stop never shuts down, really, but the parking lot was pretty much empty save for a couple of big rigs and a dusty sedan. If I had to make my guess, they belonged to the folks inside the diner.

I looked at the sedan and frowned. The sign at the front had directed vehicle traffic to separate lots—semis one way, passenger vehicles another. We’d parked out front. The sedan should have been there, as well.

The ghost popped back into view next to the car and gesticulated wildly at the trunk. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it. Keep your pants on.”

As I approached the car I pulled my sleeves down over my hands and wished I’d stuck some gloves in my pockets. A few magic spells in my arsenal did not a superhero make, and if the trunk held what I figured it did, I sure as heck didn’t want my prints on it.

The car bounced up and down a bit as I tugged on the trunk lid through my sleeves, but it didn’t give. I glanced up to ask the ghost if he could pull the emergency release—the suckers have thrown enough knick-knacks at me, it wouldn’t be asking too much for them to do something useful—but it was nowhere to be found. “Typical,” I muttered.

The brake lights flashed, and the door locks chirped.

I looked up and caught the brief flash of a smile on the salesman-type as he rounded a corner. He had his folded-up newspaper tucked under his arm and he strolled like a man without a care in the world.

“I’ll be glad to give you a look,” he called out, and there was something in his voice that made my knees go a little wobbly.

I’d learned a valuable lesson about being ready for anything after my experience with the meathead triplets last week. I popped my hands out of my sleeves, focused, and pushed. “Stop.”

The grin on his face widened just a tad, but his heels kept clicking on the pavement. “Oh, my. A magus. You’re going to be a tasty treat, aren’t you?”

Well, shit. Here we go again.

Helen

Iowa City, Iowa—Sunday night

The guard manning the shack looked equal parts bored and tired as Roxanne rolled the window down. Helen Locke sat in the front passenger seat, and as the guard studied the occupants of the vehicle she favored him with a warm smile. If he noticed, or cared, it didn’t show.

“Visiting? If you don’t have a parking sticker, you need to turn around and park in the lot on Capitol Street.”

“Oh, we’ll be right in and out, my dear. That won’t be a problem.” The vague undercurrent to Helen’s words had an almost tangible weight to them, and the guard rocked back on his heels even as the light in his eyes dimmed.

“Of course, miss. That won’t be a problem.” The tone of a bored clock-puncher had turned, if possible, even more robotic. Helen’s smile widened. Oh, how I missed that.

“Splendid. Now be a dear and open the gate. Close it behind us. If anyone else tries to come in, tell them this area is temporarily off limits. If they don’t listen—well, you have that nice, big gun, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

Helen leaned back and luxuriated in the plush softness of the passenger seat as the security guard raised the flimsy barrier. It was more of a philosophical wall than a physical one, but that was fine. It had given her the opportunity for an object lesson.

And she did so enjoy teaching.

“The palm of your hand, ladies. When the time comes, you must remember to maintain your focus. Your desire is sometimes more important than the words.”

Roxanne pulled through the open gate and glanced in the rearview mirror. She did her best to conceal the smile that flashed across her face, but you didn’t survive in prison without being able to read faces.

When the four—three, now, thanks to Paxton, her would-be paladin of a son—had written to her, she’d nearly discarded the letter as another bit of inane fan mail. But there’d been something about it, a feeling not unlike that she’d gotten when she’d made the discovery that led her down the rabbit hole of magic. The letters had been tedious, couching the words in terms that wouldn’t alert her jailers. She’d kindled the flames of the nascent power she’d sensed over the period of months, leading them to various caches of arcane material. The authorities had discovered more than a few of them, much to her annoyance. Forensic accounting, it seemed, was a class of sorcery all its own.

The apprentices showed their worth four nights ago. They broke the physical shackles that kept her out of the world and shattered the metaphysical chains her son had used to prevent her from making her escape on her own. After a decade of confinement, her power sung as it coursed through her veins, and she had a hard time not laughing out loud every time that she considered the situation.

“That was epic, Mrs. Locke,” Kelsey chorused from the back. She was a petite little thing, barely five feet in height, with her brunette hair cut in a pageboy style. She’d worn a different Tinker Bell t-shirt each day since she and the others had broken Helen out of prison. In spite of her fashion sense, she was the most obviously loyal of the group, though her talents seemed middling at best.

That’s fine. Even witches need someone to fetch coffee.

She favored the girl with a smile. “Just a little taste, child. And it’s Helen.”

Kelsey’s companion in the back seat rolled her eyes. Giselle’s expression was neutral enough that it was debatable what she was rolling her eyes at. Tall, willowy, and sarcastic, she kept her honey-blonde hair tied back in a loose ponytail. Of any of the three, Helen was most suspicious of her. She was a quick study, but she also seemed bored and aloof with the entire endeavor as though she was hanging out until something better came along.

“This is it,” Roxanne announced. She pulled up to the curb in front of a large, two-story stone building. A crowd of people wandered across the lawn, plastic cups in hand, and the rhythmic beat of dubstep filled the air. If that didn’t provide a good idea what the place was, the Kappa Sigma on the side of the stone wall proudly proclaimed it.

Helen resisted the urge to curl her lip in disdain and reminded herself to stay focused. They weren’t here for her. They needed reinforcements.

“Shall we?” she asked, airily.

The four of them exited the car and strolled up the walk. Helen drew back, letting the others take the lead. Roxanne struggled to keep up—she was only a hair taller than Kelsey and much heavier. The unfortunate girl had a body like a crate, though she possessed a model’s features and red hair that was too gorgeous to be anything but real. While she’d had pegged Kelsey as a gopher and Giselle as someone to be wary of, Roxanne was the one with the most potential. She had a focus the other two lacked, and it would serve her well—as would her innate self-doubt. Never have to worry about her trying to take the reins.

At the door, two frat boys in identical outfits of khakis and polo shirts sneered at the foursome. “You two can come in,” one said, indicating Kelsey and Giselle. “But you’re too old, and you’re too fugly.”

Helen wagged a finger at him and made a tsk-tsk noise in the back of her throat. “There’s no need for rudeness. Sit in the corner and keep your mouth shut until I tell you otherwise.”

The second frat boy gaped as his friend stepped to the side of the porch and sat down, legs crossed. “What the . . .” He started, but she interrupted him.

“Now, you’re going to let the four of us in. No one comes in behind us. Understand?”

“Yes,” the frat boy said.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Be a gentleman, open the door!”

Two of three girls giggled as the pounding rhythm washed over them. Roxanne’s face blazed red with anger. Helen clasped her by the upper arm. “Use it,” she murmured in her ear. “It’s power, now. Make it work for you.”

Lips tight, the younger girl nodded. Proud, Helen beamed as they stepped into the main living area. “Heed me!” The magic lent an otherworldly echo to her shout, and she quivered a bit at the thrill of it. “Someone shut off the music. The rest of you, have a seat on the floor.”

The sudden silence was almost eerie, but even stranger was the near-simultaneous collapse of the crowd of revelers. They sat as was their preference, as she hadn’t gone into that much detail, but the implicit command in her tone forced all of them to sit facing her. She hadn’t commanded their attention, but the effect of her push left most of them in stunned silence. The others were reduced to quiet, conspiratorial whispers.

Helen strolled in front of the group, the ghost of a smirk spreading across her face. “Choose your protector, ladies,” she said to her companions. She indicated the crowd with a luxurious wave.

The girls seemed hesitant at first. If they hadn’t participated in such a casting before, Helen might have wondered if they were having some sort of moral crisis over what they were about to do. From what she’d heard, the three-way split the familiar spell had made of the now-deceased Melanie’s boyfriend Trace had resulted in three babbling idiots that had been unable to keep the fourth member of their club—coven seemed so pretentious, though she knew the girls preferred it—safe from Helen’s son.

She kept her expression blank, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. When in doubt, read all the words, children.

Helen scanned the crowd as her protégés picked their way through. Most of those who made eye contact with her looked away in terror, but one girl refused to break eye contact. Interest piqued, she made her own way into the crowd and crouched.

She wasn’t certain how things worked, but the girl didn’t strike her as the frat party type for whatever reason. She’d dyed her hair in pastel streaks, shaved on the sides and twisted into a braid that hung down her back. Dark lipstick, a nose ring, and heavy eyeliner completed the look.

“You seem to be staring daggers at me,” Helen remarked, studying the girl’s outfit. She wore thick-soled boots, cargo pants, and a pink tank top much too small to contain the bounteous curves of her chest. Scrub her face, pull out the metal and give her a normal hairstyle and clothing and she’d be quite lovely. Kids today.

“I saw you on the news,” the girl said. She jutted her chin out in defiance. “I’m Chloe.”

Amused, Helen said, “Hello, Chloe.”

“It’s true, then,” the younger woman said. “What they said. You’re a—” She hesitated, as though reluctant to speak the word.

“A witch, an enchantress, a wizard. I’m particular to sorceress, myself,” she admitted. “Is that all?”

“Can I—” Chloe glanced at the people on either side of her. If they were her friends, they looked as though they’d give anything to be anywhere else. “Can I come with you?”

Helen smiled. “Well, that depends,” she purred. She reached down and took Chloe by the hand. She turned her palm over and ran a finger along the inside of her forearm. The would-be acolyte shivered, and not just from the physical sensation of Helen’s touch. Something not-unlike a spark crackled from the top of her finger to Chloe’s skin as she pulled her second hand away. “Do you have what it takes?”

“I do,” the girl blurted. “I must.”

Helen gave her a sad look. “Alas, you do not.” She patted the top of her hand, then leaned in close. “But I must thank you, Chloe.” The girl looked puzzled. “You’ve reminded me of something that I’d forgotten. I was away for so long, you know, that I never considered the possibility of infamy. And where I’m going, being recognized would be an impediment to my goals. Would you like to know a secret?”

Eyes wide, Chloe nodded.

“There are no such things as vampires, but as with many creatures of folklore, the legend has a basis in fact. The stories originated from a group of Eastern European magic users who crafted a means of extending life.” Helen brought her lips close to the younger woman’s ear, squeezed her wrist tight, and whispered an arcane word.

The squeal that burst from Chloe’s lips was high and animal-like, but it cut off just as quickly as it had come. Her body shook slightly, and with each shake, she became less of what she once was. Well-tanned skin turned paper thin, and the thick braid of her hair grew wispy and faint. Rounded curves sank in, and when Helen let go, the skeleton inside Chloe’s clothing collapsed in on itself and fell back into one of the seated revelers. Screams rose in the room, but she ignored them.

Helen stood, staggering just a bit. The proportions of her body felt off, her center of gravity higher. The sensation lasted for only a moment, and as she recovered her equilibrium, she reveled in the rush of energy pulsing through her limbs. She spread her fingers wide and marveled at the taught, unlined skin on the back of her hands. Her clothing felt all wrong now; tight in some areas while loose in others, but that was no matter. She had no means of looking at herself, but she knew the outcome of the spell. Her face was no longer entirely her own—instead, it contained a blend of Chloe’s features and her familiar face. Someone new, older than Chloe and younger than Helen, and as of yet on no wanted posters.

Giselle and Kelsey merely looked shocked; Roxanne’s face shifted from surprise to something closer to hunger. Helen smiled to herself as she recognized the redhead’s expression. Another hook for your loyalty, my dear. All in due time.

She stroked the tightened flesh of her neck and murmured, “Ready to go, ladies?”

CHAPTER 2

Paxton

Joplin, Missouri—Monday morning

From the sound of it, my back made a pretty serious dent in the trunk of the salesman’s car. I didn’t stop and reflect on it, though. I was too impressed with the fact that he’d picked me up with one hand.

Then there was the fact that the fingers wrapped around my neck felt somehow wrong. I clawed at them, trying to ease the compression on my windpipe, and the digits seemed almost to stretch in my grip. Something pinched the back of my neck as his thumb and index finger met.

Now, I’m no meathead, but my neck is a reasonable size. No way this guy should have been able to pull off a 360-degree strangle move on me. I’d seen the stubby little sausages attached to his hand while he’d read the newspaper.

Of course, a sausage-fingered salesman shouldn’t have been able to resist a push, either. Say that five times fast.

Red crushed in around my vision as he bore in, and I decided it was time to fight dirty. I stopped trying to peel the fingers off of my throat and swung a wild punch at the salesman’s head with my right hand. He made an amused-sounding chuckle and hunched his shoulder to intercept my fist. Where I should have struck bone, I hit something squishier. I’d have cringed if I wasn’t so focused on other things.

On the bright side, the few spells I’ve picked up from Mother’s grimoire are cast in a non-verbal fashion. The action is more akin to muscle memory, which is handy when your throat is being crushed by some dude with tentacle fingers.

I made a blade with my left hand, jabbed it forward, and let fly with my telekinesis spell. In a dream world, I’d have been able to toss my attacker across the parking lot with a wave of my hand. In this case, though, the spell is limited to my own, actual strength. Which is great when you want to fetch a drink from the fridge, but not so much in a real fight.

But there’s force, and then there’s force. One of the interesting things about having Cassie around was getting a second set of eyes on certain preconceptions I’d taken on things.

She hadn’t been in the basement when I’d used the TK spell to help launch a hot water heater like a bottle rocket, but I’d explained the concept, and grabbed her a drink or two while I did so. At which time she’d pointed something out that made me want to slap my forehead in wonder.

A knife blade works because the edge of the blade focuses the applied force onto a relatively narrow plane, which increases the effect of said force. Now obviously, a metal knife is limited in terms of just how thin it can go. A razor blade is sharp, but it’s also fragile.

The planes of force on either side of my outstretched palm met at an edge that was, in essence, as thin as I could imagine. So long as my will held, there was no chance that this blade would break.

I punched up with my left hand, shoving my fingers up into the salesman’s elbow. There was the slightest hint of resistance, a high-pitched inhuman squeal, and a viscous black ichor sprayed my chest and the trunk of the car.

The salesman staggered back with half an arm. The grip around my throat slackened. I tore the hand away and discarded it as I hopped to the ground. “An elegant weapon,” I intoned. “For a more civilized age.”

Salesman screamed again and lunged back at me. He was still freaking fast, but my strike must have taken some of the gumption out of him because I ducked under his slap. I continued forward into a roll and came up into a crouch behind him.

Tires squealed on the pavement as Cassie came around the corner. The fight had only seemed like an eternity. I glanced at her as she slammed on the Thor’s brakes and brought it to a halt a dozen yards from the salesman’s sedan.

“Shotgun!” I yelled, turning back to face my attacker. He lunged at me again. I side-stepped this time and went invisible. The spell effect isn’t perfect—there’s a bit of shimmer in the air around me when I use it—but if I stay still, it’s hard to pick out.

As I winked out of sight, the salesman crouched down lower to the ground. The black ooze from his stump had congealed into something solid, and that something was starting to push out. If he was growing the arm back, it was sure to be a messed up one. It looked more like a tentacle than anything else.

That wasn’t the only part of him that was shifting, somehow. His face had flattened, and the thinning hair on top of his head had fallen out. Instead of eyes, he had empty spans of mushroom-white flesh. All that remained of his nose were a pair of vertical slits, and his mouth had drawn into a circle. Inside the circle, a quartet of serrated triangular teeth continuously cycled open and closed. I opened my mouth to crack a joke about a walking garbage disposal, but discretion stilled my tongue.

I took another step to the side, and he cocked his now-earless head. I don’t know how he was seeing or hearing without any external sensory organs, but I wasn’t going to complain. It was pretty obvious that he outmatched me hand-to-hand.

Cassie opened the door to the RV. She stepped out, bearing a Mossberg Shockwave—and revealed the glitch in my plan.

The salesman gave a pizza-cutter grin and pivoted to face Cassie. With jerky, ground-covering lopes—were his legs stretching out, too?—he headed toward her.

I dropped the cloak and whipped a hand out. An imaginary cord of force looped around his ankles and took me for a skidding ride across the parking lot until I arrested his momentum and sent him into a face plant in the gravel. Sprinting forward myself, I jumped on his back and slammed both knees into him. If he was breathing, I’d hopefully just knocked the air out of his lungs, but I didn’t stop there.

I force-bladed him between the shoulder blades, and more of that black ooze sprayed out as his suit jacket and flesh parted. I glanced up to Cassie and held out my other hand for the Shockwave. She headed toward me, but before she could hand it off, the tentacle arm slid around my waist and started to squeeze.

I looked back down and resisted the urge to barf. I don’t know if the salesman had rotated his head 180 degrees or if he’d just pushed his face through the back of his head, but those blank eye sockets were firmly fixed on me. His good arm wrenched backward and grabbed me by one shoulder. I still had him held down, but he was more than strong enough to pull me closer. The teeth, if anything, began to cycle even faster.

One of them shattered as Cassie jabbed the muzzle of the shotgun into his face. The other three ground against the metal cylinders of the barrel and magazine tube, but that quit as soon as she pulled the trigger and discharged a shell of #1 buck into the salesman’s head. The leprous white flesh of his head collapsed a bit, and the tentacle around my waist relaxed its grip, but the body underneath me still squirmed with inhuman life.

“Oh, to hell with this.” I shoved my blade through his neck and into the asphalt below. Wisps of smoke curled up from the superheated tar, but as soon as the head and body were twain, the body below shuddered and fell still.

Heart pounding, I took a couple of deep breaths and looked Cassie in the eye. “You all right?”

“Am I all right? Holy shit, Pax!”

“Encyclopedia salesman,” I said, standing on unsteady feet. “Wouldn’t take no for an answer. I—”

The cop cars weren’t running their sirens, but they had their lights going, and as they squealed around the truck stop and boxed us in, a no-nonsense voice shut down any more witty commentary on my part.

“Weapon on the ground! Hands in the air!”

Agent Valentine

Milwaukee, Wisconsin—Sunday night

Towel wrapped around his waist, Special Agent Matthew Valentine ran his fingers over the tapestry of scars adorning his skin. Most had faded with time and would have been overlooked by any tenured military doctor with experience in such things. There were still plenty of fresher ones to study. Here was the puckered depression of a bullet wound, decorated with the scalpel-slice where the doctors had gone in to pin his collarbone back together. The narrow slashes of any number of knives and bladed weapons had left thin, almost delicate marks on his frame, but they paled in comparison to the quartet of parallel lines that started on the right side of his abdomen, hooked up toward his heart, and stopped at the bottom of his sternum. The thick, ropy scars bore testimony to where doctors had pieced together the shredded flesh.

He’d suffered the wounds a long time ago—so long, in fact, that he could hardly remember the pain. Valentine had heard it said that there was something in the human mind’s reaction to pain that prevented it from retaining those memories. He wasn’t sure how accurate that was. He remembered the events before and after his near-disembowelment just fine.

As far as forgetting the pain, not a day went by that he didn’t recall the agony of his oldest scar. This wound lay on the inside of his left forearm—a sunken pucker, like the gunshot, but as big around as a soda can. A second triangle-shaped scar lay on top of the depression, and the skin there had a burn-mark sheen.

“Time heals all wounds,” he murmured. He picked up the tumbler of bourbon on the desk and toasted his reflection. Ice clinked in the empty glass as he set it down. Another saying, and an accurate one, Valentine supposed. His oldest scars, with the exception of the mark on his arm, had faded from his skin if not his mind. The oldest remained, long-healed but fresh in its own way. A reminder, perhaps, or a promise.

Shaking his head at his melancholy, Valentine threw the towel in the direction of the bathroom floor and pulled on a pair of gym shorts. He refilled the shot glass and sat down on the bed. As hotel mattresses went, it wasn’t horrible, but he held no illusions about sleep. He considered the remote control for a moment, but the only thing more barren than the desert where he’d received the scar on his arm was late night television in the twenty-first century. He settled back against the pillows and took a considerate sip of bourbon as he stared into the empty black eye of the flat screen TV.

For nearly a week, he and his partner had been chasing down fruitless leads. Oh, the effort hadn’t been entirely in vain, but in terms of capturing their quarry, they were spinning their wheels. They wouldn’t have even had names or numbers for most of the group if not for a lucky break involving the fingerprints of a dead body.

Well, three bodies, all dead, with a viscous green-black sludge for blood. The local coroner’s office had been more than happy to turn those corpses over to the Federal task force led by Valentine and his partner. The fact that the bodies were identical down to the fingerprints and dental records just sent the weird factor through the stratosphere.

“Witches,” he said under his breath with a grimace. Valentine tossed the rest of his drink back with a sneer and set the empty glass on the bedside table. There wasn’t much he hadn’t encountered in his time, and the unit’s run-ins with the clone-familiars were particularly memorable.

A rogue element had taken them down before Valentine and his partner had arrived on the scene, and for some unknown reason, the director had restricted them to clean-up duty only. The fact that Helen Locke—the root source of this particular flock of witches—should have been sanctioned years ago still rankled.

Valentine held no illusions as to his place in the world. He was a spear-carrier; a useful and deadly instrument. But that didn’t mean that he was stupid enough to leave potential threats alive. He’d fought the decision as much as he dared, but the prior director had vetoed his request.

Wonder if I could track him down and give him an ‘I told you so.’ Pleasant daydreams tumbled through his mind, but he shook them off with a smile. The new administration had cleaned house, sweeping out the old, touchy-feely boss man. The new director held promise—even if he did have some idiosyncrasies of his own.

The three sets of cloned fingerprints had led them to Trace Jensen of Milwaukee. College students didn’t normally have rap sheets or fingerprints in CODIS, but they’d caught a lucky break. Jensen had been caught up in a noise complaint and gotten probation for underage consumption. Valentine wasn’t sure how an under-aged frat boy had become monster fodder for a witch’s spell, but he and Agent Eliot had spent most of their time tracking down Jensen’s acquaintances and trying to figure out who’d gone missing.

The discovery that the frat boy’s girlfriend, Melanie Gennaro, was nowhere to be found had clicked another piece of the puzzle into place. Valparaiso PD’s welfare check of the Gennaro family home turned up signs of a struggle. After some jurisdictional finagling, dental records from her parents and younger brother matched three skeletons found in the burnt remnants of Helen Locke’s family home.

Valentine didn’t know the exact timeline of events, and he didn’t like that lack of knowledge. If he was certain of anything, it was that Locke’s wayward son Paxton—the rogue element—was involved. He’d made a request to shake him down for information, but the new director had rejected the request. For now, Paxton Locke was untouchable.

That didn’t mean that Valentine hadn’t bucked the rules. Posing as a doctor, he’d made a visit to Locke in his hospital room. He’d told himself that it was merely to size the young man up, to take his measure, but the visit had left him with more questions than answers. He had a good gut instinct about people when it came to things that went bump in the night, and he didn’t think Locke was playing for the other team, but…

Valentine sighed and considered the slowly melting ice in the glass. The thought of another drink was a tempting one, but he knew that if he didn’t pull the plug soon he was going to have one whale of a headache in the morning. He and Eliot planned on conducting more interviews of Gennaro and Jensen’s circle of friends, and those always went smoother when he wasn’t nursing a hangover.

Before he could make a move one way or another, a quick series of knocks on his hotel room door snapped him out of his reverie. Valentine slid off the bed without a look and pulled the door open. The quick but measured cadence of the rapping told him all he needed to know. “What’s up?”

His partner, Nick Eliot, had perpetually-tired eyes and mussed hair that was well-longer than Federal law enforcement employee regulations. Those eyes danced with a manic energy, now, and Valentine raised an eyebrow.

“Confirmed sighting,” his partner said. “We need to move.”

Valentine remained in the doorway. “Where?”

Eliot fidgeted in place for a moment before speaking. “University of Iowa.”

He cursed. “How in the hell did she get past the cordon?”

His partner spread his hands and offered him little more than a shrug. “Fine,” Valentine said with a growl. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

He stepped away from the door and realized that Eliot hadn’t moved. “You in a hurry, hoss?”

“It’s bad.”

He caught the tone in his partner’s voice and turned. The look on Eliot’s face said it all. “Five minutes,” Valentine amended.

CHAPTER 3

Paxton

Joplin, Missouri—Monday afternoon

I’d never been a resident of a jail cell before. All in all, I wasn’t impressed. The floor paint was a light green color halfway between puke and lime. The bed and the stainless-steel toilet were the only decorations in the cell, and heavy bolts secured both to the white cinder block walls.

I sat on the thin mattress and looked through the bars across the hall. They hadn’t put Cassie and me in the same cell, but at least we were neighbors.

Maybe they figured we’d talk. They hadn’t liked the answers I’d given them in the interrogation room. Doubtful—there are only four cells in the place, after all. The deputies who’d conducted the interrogation had made comments about moving us elsewhere at some point. Once they figured out what to make of us and our story, I guess.

Cassie sat up on her own cot and forced a smile. “This is not what I’d call heroic derring-do.”

I scratched my head and shrugged. “Welcome to the exciting world of Paxton Locke. Sheer moments of terror followed by hours of law enforcement shouting.”

The smile got a little more natural. “What’d you tell them?”

“The truth. Dude was trying to kill me, said something about a body in his trunk, we fought him off.”

“That’s true—from a certain point of view.”

I mock-groaned. “Now who’s dropping the movie quotes? You’ve been holding out on me, you undercover nerd, you.”

“I’m shocked that you’re shocked. I’m pretty sure I saw you and your dad in line for the midnight showing of Phantom Menace when I went with my parents.”

I gave her a faint smile. “I guess I never thought about it. We didn’t exactly run with the same crowd.” Cassie and I grew up in the same small town, and our fathers had been co-workers and friends. but up until a week ago the extent of our relationship had been passing each other in the hall at school and the occasional barbecue. Mike Hatcher taught shop at the local high school, and he’d been the closest thing to an uncle I’d had, growing up. Which might have made Cassie a pseudo-cousin and our current ‘it’s complicated’ relationship even odder, but she hadn’t been around much during those times. “You and your mom, you didn’t think much of my mom, did you?”

She cocked her head to one side. “That’s a bit out of the blue, but I can see where it came from. Yeah, pretty much. The few times she did show up, mom bit her tongue. She wanted dad to have his friend.”

And now her dad didn’t have either. Mother had killed my father over a decade ago, and Cassie’s mom had died from cancer when we were still in elementary school.

Guilt surged through me. To add insult to injury, I’d shanghaied his daughter into a life of crime and left Mike by himself in an empty home. It was a pretty good bet this was Cassie’s first time in a jail cell, or I’d have heard about it. That was the great thing about small towns—everyone was up in your business.

“You didn’t call him, did you?”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Are you nuts? He’d insist on driving down here and bailing me out to protect me from your evil influence.”

That made me laugh. With the exception of magic, the only real talent I had was taking a beating. Though, I guess I had to admit that the magic helped there, as well. “No worries. I left Kent a message. Knock on wood, he’ll be able to straighten things out.”

Kent Sikora was a homicide detective for Phoenix PD, now. Back when dad died, he’d been assigned to the investigation in Wisconsin, and ended up taking me under his wing. On top of being a surrogate father, he was ‘read-in’ on the real story of what went down the night my dad died, and what Mother and I could do.

Before the magus-eater deterred us, we’d been heading west to consult with Kent on a case that involved my sort of weirdness. I hated calling him, but I didn’t have anyone else in the world that officialdom would listen to. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten me out of a tight spot with the local yokels, though like every other time, I hoped it was the last.

“You could, you know. Tell them to let us go.” Cassie’s voice was low and cautious.

I squirmed a bit, uncomfortable with the thought. We’ve never talked about it, but there are promises I’ve made to myself about the use of my abilities. For the most part, I’ve kept those promises, even when it might have provided me with an easier road. I tell myself that shortcuts are the best way to get where Mother did, using people for her own purposes, but sometimes I wonder how true that is.

Sometimes, I think about taking those shortcuts, and I know that if I started I might not be able to stop. You’re not a villain if you don’t cross the line, but I don’t think you can consider yourself a hero when you’re only staying on the right path because you fear the consequences. Me? I’m just a coward trying to do the right thing.

“I could,” I agreed. “But that doesn’t fix things, not really. Eventually, they’d find out, and we’d be wanted as escapees, which would just make things worse. And what about the poor guard I’d have to whammy to do it? You think they’d let him or keep their job?” I shrugged. “It’ll work out. Just going to take a little time, I guess.” My stomach growled and reminded me that I’d failed to finish breakfast. “Hopefully they feed us at some point.” I eyed the thin mattress and settled into it. Springs creaked. “Until then, I guess we wait.”

“Worst date ever.”

I smiled at the featureless white ceiling and replied, “Give it time.”

Deputy Director Newquist—Monday afternoon

Washington, DC

The main offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sat near the corner of New York and Florida Streets in the nation’s capital. From above, the concrete structure seemed a whimsical coliseum of curves, arcs, and glittering glass surrounded by tasteful landscaping. At this time of the day, the departing employees cared little for the beauty of the architecture. They rushed out of the personnel gates or parking garages intent on hitting the highway or public transit of their choice, all in an effort to beat the traffic to wherever they called home.

The workday was over for many of the occupants of the Ariel Rios Federal Building, but not all.

In any modern bureaucracy, prestige is displayed in terms of office size and location. In general terms, the higher you were in the building, the more important—and worthy of respect—you were. Someone working in the basement of the building would thus be of a much lower caste, as things went, and worthy of disdain.

The ATF agents and employees who had to deal with the group in the basement office had many terms for them, but they held more superstition and fear than derision. Regardless of what their fellows called them, the employees in the basement office referred to themselves with the name emblazoned on the frosted glass of the door leading into their domain.

Division M.

The administrative assistant’s desk sat right inside the door and served as a de facto gatekeeper for the half-dozen offices spaced along both sides of the hallway beyond. Subtle lighting and tasteful earth tones gave the office a warm feeling, and it was possible to spend enough time in these offices to forget about being underground.

The front desk and most of those beyond sat empty now, though light still shone from the rear left office. Inside, a balding but powerfully-built man bent over a stack of paperwork. The old-fashioned fountain pen he delicately clutched in his left hand made intermittent scratching sounds as he crossed out words or made notes in the margins of the document he studied.

The phone on his desk chirped, shattering the cool stillness of the moment.

Pen hanging in mid-air, the man behind the desk peered over the tops of his reading glasses and noted the series of numbers on the caller ID. All sevens.

Cute, Deputy Director Russell Newquist thought, with the slightest roll of his eyes. He set his pen down and picked up on the second ring. “Yes?”

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Russell.” There was an amused air to the tone of the voice on the other end.

“How can I help you, Michael?” Newquist kept his own voice patient, though his knuckles had turned white on the receiver when he received confirmation of his suspicion as to the identity of the caller.

“I need you to make a call and have young Paxton and a companion released. Newton County Sheriff’s Department, in Missouri.”

“You’re kidding me. That’s twice in one week.” There was no response on the other end of the line. Newquist rubbed his forehead in frustration. “This would be a lot easier if I could just give him a badge, you know.”

“All in good time. Trust, Russell.”

“I do, Michael, I do. I just wish I could understand why we have to beat around the bush like this. Valentine is already suspicious of the kid. Why not let me bring him in? Morgan can help him along, develop his talent. M-Div could use him. We’re running low on personnel.”

He waited a few moments for a response before he realized that he was speaking to a dead line. With a sigh, Newquist returned the receiver to its cradle. “Typical.”

Report abandoned for the moment, he flipped open his laptop and searched through a database. When he found the number he wanted, he picked up the phone once more and dialed. Missouri was only an hour’s difference from DC, but it was still getting on toward the end of the day there. A few annoyed button presses finally got him past the electronic menu and to a live person.

“Newton County Sheriff, how can I help you this evening?” The ‘I’ sounded more like ‘ah’, and he smiled slightly.

“This is Deputy Director Newquist of the BATFE, DC office. I need to speak with Sheriff Jennings right away, please.”

CHAPTER 4

Valentine

Iowa City, Iowa—Monday morning

He resisted the urge to retch and focused on breathing through his mouth. It didn’t help. The stench of burnt flesh surrounded the collapsed building.

“Balefyr again,” he muttered under his breath. No need for the local yokels to overhear.

A few feet away, Eliot consulted with the head of the fire department. Their conversation was more than loud enough for him to follow as he surveyed the smoldering ruins of the frat house and stoked the embers of his own rage.

“Any survivors from inside?” Eliot said.

“Just one, and the EMTs don’t think he’ll make it.”

“He have anything to say?”

The fire chief didn’t answer for a moment, and Valentine glanced over. The man’s soot-streaked face had gone pale, and he looked to either side, wary of being overheard. “Nothing that made any sense.”

“Please,” Eliot said, and Valentine was glad the other man was around. This was the sort of thing he had neither the temperament or patience for.

“He said ‘vampire’, maybe,” the other man admitted. “It was hard to tell. Most of his face—” He shuddered.

“Okay,” Eliot said. “Thank you for your time, Chief.”

The firefighter started to walk away, then hesitated. “They tell you about the two guys on the porch?”

Valentine raised his head and turned in his direction. “What two guys?” His question came at the same time as Eliot’s.

“Two guys?”

The firefighter looked back and forth between the two of them, as though unsure who to answer to. Finally, he faced Valentine and said, “Couple of the frat guys were acting as doormen. That was another weird thing. Neither one of them would move from the porch, we had to pull them away. They both had severe smoke inhalation. They’re in the hospital, too.” The man shuddered. “We had to restrain them, they kept trying to get out of the ambulance and head back to the porch.”

“Get those directions,” Valentine said to Eliot . He turned away from the conversation, stalking forward. Unconcerned for the smell now, he stepped up onto the porch and looked inside of the burnt-out building. With the fire extinguished, crime scene technicians were stepping carefully in and out of the grid pattern they’d established with lengths of string. Cameras clicked, documenting atrocity.

The investigators had emptied several sections of the grid, but much of it was intact. Limbs covered in blackened flesh reached up, as though pleading for mercy that had never come.

Valentine resisted the urge to spit into the ashes.

His partner moved up behind him. He remained silent for a moment, then said, “You missed the best part.” Valentine didn’t respond. Eliot continued. “The shack down the road, there was a security guard last night. He tried to stop the fire engines from coming in. The first one pushed through, took down the barricade. After that, he really tried to stop them. The second fire truck went right over him, but not before he emptied his revolver into its front grill.”

“Geas. Same for the frat boys from the porch, I reckon.”

“Yeah.”

Valentine made a face and turned away from the crime scene. Yet again, they’d been too late, and these people—these children—had suffered for it. “We’re not going to get anything out of the survivors on our own. Call the boss. Get George and Morgan on the way. It’s time to hit this with both barrels.”

Paxton

Joplin, Missouri—Monday evening

Somehow, I managed to fall asleep despite the gnawing in my stomach. Magic takes a lot out of you, and I’d been running on fumes for a while now. If I’d listened to the doctors, I’d still be cooling my heels in a hospital room. I’d never given much consideration to their demands. I’ve never been the type to want to stay in one place for very long, especially after dad died, and with magic, I could do more for myself than any modern medicine.

Shapeless terrors and uneasy feelings filled my dreams. When the rattle of keys in the door to my cell roused me from uncertain rest, a sour taste filled my mouth and my skin was clammy with sweat.

I leaned on one elbow and blinked until I could make out the figure standing in the opened door of my cell. Like the men who’d brought me and Cassie in, he wore a khaki shirt and green slacks. We made eye contact, and I got the sense that the expression on his face was the sum of equal measures of annoyance and curiosity.

“Paxton Locke,” he announced. “Given the fact you don’t have any ID on you, I figured it for an alias.” He shook his head. “When I sat down to dinner with my wife and kids and the phone rang, I was more than a little put out. Now, I made certain before I left for the day to ask my secretary to hold all calls. You can imagine my surprise when it was her on the line.” He fell silent, and a frown wrinkled his forehead. Looking past, I could make out Cassie in her cell. She sat on the edge of the bunk, head cocked to the side. I wished I could give her a shrug, but I got the sense that it was best not to push things too far with this guy.

His continued silence indicated he awaited a response. “I apologize,” I said. “I didn’t call you, obviously, sir.”

His eyes narrowed. “Sheriff will do. And no, it wasn’t you. Who the hell are you, Paxton Locke? I’d have thought this whole thing an elaborate prank if I hadn’t called Washington on a public line and been transferred to the same guy that called me. Who the hell are you, kid? If you’re a Fed, where’s your ID?”

I kept my face blank. Washington? Feds? Hell, if anything, I thought he was pissed about Kent calling him. My buddy Sikora must have broken out the big guns on this one. Were we in more trouble than we realized?

It had been hard enough to convince Kent, back in the day. Since then I’d adopted a more circumspect approach when it came to local law enforcement. “Look, you really don’t want to know. It’s a long story. But trust me on this, we’re the good guys.”

“Be that as it may, this is not only highly irregular, but I just got a call from the coroner. The headless corpse that you put into the morgue dissolved into a couple gallons of slime and started leaking out of the locker. So what are we supposed to do now, secret agent man? Is this some sort of hazardous materials situation?”

I didn’t know what the heck the cannibal salesman had been so I had no way of answering that question with any sort of specificity. But I also had the sense that admitting my ignorance would be a mistake. If anything, the sheriff seemed more pissed off about the mess in the morgue than he did about having to cut us loose. I didn’t want to jinx that.

“Look, the guy that called you? Call him back, explain the situation.” I was digging deep here, and I hoped the obvious stuff I was shoveling didn’t smell too bad. “They’ll send someone out to take care of it. Your people should be fine. Just don’t, you know, mess around with it, too much.”

My answer felt lame, half-hearted. The push would have smoothed things over, but I’d long ago made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t abuse the power. Staying in jail for a little bit was a small price to pay for adhering to my own system of ethics. Mother was an object example of the road that faced me if I started looking at people as chess pieces rather than individuals.

It was a total Hail Mary of an attempt, but it must have worked, because the tension went out of the sheriff’s shoulders all at once, and he nodded. “Okay. Okay. What is this, some sort of ISIS thing?” He caught my look and added, “Of course you can’t say. I understand.”

“Right,” I agreed. “Need to know, and all that.”

He stepped aside and let me exit the cell, then unlocked Cassie’s. “I apologize for the inconvenience, ma’am.”

“You were just doing your job,” Cassie said, trying and failing to keep a befuddled look off her face. Thankfully, he was so preoccupied with ushering us down the hall toward the front of the jail that he didn’t notice.

The process of release was surreal. I don’t know what the sheriff had been told on the phone, or what he’d told the rest of his staff, but all of them were apologetic and helpful. In a matter of minutes, the deputies returned our things and ushered us outside, where the Thor waited at the curb.

I waited until we were inside, behind the tinted glass, to yank open my shoulder bag and check on the grimoire. I’d felt its weight when I’d thrown the strap around my neck, but I didn’t want to get down the road and learn the entire thing had been a charade. I shouldn’t have worried—the book was safe.

“What was that?” Cassie announced in the stillness of the RV. “Are you sure you didn’t lay a whammy on them?”

“No. No way. I was asleep, I couldn’t have.” Right? I shook the thought off. They hadn’t acted as though they’d been pushed. The demeanor had been more one of fear. “Kent must have pulled some strings. That’s the only thing I can think of. I don’t know who he pulled strings with, but I imagine it will be one heck of a story.”

Cassie shrugged and started the RV. I’d been taking the wheel for my fair share of driving time, but it seemed ill-advised to jump behind the wheel in the parking lot of a police station when they knew I wasn’t carrying proper identification. “Westward ho, then, I guess.” She turned and winked. “Maybe your new badge will be waiting for you, secret agent man.”

Groaning and trying not to laugh, I settled in as she pulled out of the parking lot. I drove here and there without concern for being pulled over—it wasn’t like the motor home was going to set off any speed traps—but I felt rested enough that I wanted to take a quick look through the grimoire.

The pebbled leather surface of the binding felt warm in my hands as I slid it out of my satchel. It hadn’t been like that, back when I’d first discovered it a decade ago, but the feeling had been a noticeable change ever since I’d used magic to restore it from a pile of ashes. It wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling, really, but it raised the hair on the back of my neck nonetheless. I handled the book of magic with far more care than I did a loaded firearm, though, because the potential it offered was many times more destructive.

Cassie glanced over. “Research?”

“Yeah. Curious to see what the hell that traveling salesman thing, was. I’m not used to messing with anything corporeal.”

She grinned. “Sounds like you’re nostalgic for ghosts.”

I snorted and started paging through the book. The pages between the covers changed every time I opened them, and the book itself seemed to react to what I was looking for, whether I spoke it or not. In a way it was kind of like a psychic Siri, though it seemed to actually understand English, unlike the phone app.

The runic chicken scratches on the pages rippled and blurred into a stylized but readable English font. I frowned to myself as I read. I’d thought that I wanted information on what the creature was that I’d faced. The last time I’d used the book for this, it had helpfully displayed the spell the ill-fated Melanie had used to create the trio of familiars that had put me in the hospital. I don’t know where she’d gotten the spell, considering the grimoire had been unavailable to her, but the preface to the process had warned about the finite nature of the human mind. When Melanie had split her boyfriend into three entities, she’d left each one with the brainpower of a literal moron. Despite that, the familiars had been cunning and plenty strong. Cassie and I had defeated them only by the narrowest of margins.

I’d expected to see some sort of entry describing the nature of the salesman, but what the grimoire displayed was a new spell.

I’d been careful about considering new additions to my mystical arsenal since I’d regained the book. The glimpses of terrors I’d gotten when I’d wondered what mother had been doing with the book still featured in my nightmares, even though I hadn’t made it through the first paragraph before slamming the cover.

This, though, was rather benign. And as I considered the implications, I realized that it would have been something very nice to have against the salesman as well as Melanie and her familiars.

I leaned closer and set about adding to my repertoire.

CHAPTER 5

Valentine

Offut Air Force Base, Nebraska—Tuesday morning

After the aircraft taxied into the protective confines of the hanger on out edges of the base, the C-130’s ramp lowered to the tarmac with a clang.

A black, boxy panel van eased out of the cargo compartment after the loadmasters released it from a web of harnesses. It pulled to a stop outside of the hangar, not far where Valentine and Eliot stood waiting.

The driver, an older man with an unlined face but incongruously bald as an egg, lowered the driver’s window. He leaned out and stuck an unlit cigar between his teeth. “If it isn’t Sourpuss and Sourpuss. How goes it, boys?”

Valentine couldn’t help but grin. “Hey, Georgie. Nice wheels.”

Eliot’s expression was dourer. “You seem excited to be getting out and about, George.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Been cooped up in the science lab too long.” He cracked his knuckles. “Looking forward to the chance to bust some heads.”

“Now, now, gentleman,” a voice in a clipped British accent interjected. “I was under the impression that this was an intelligence-gathering expedition. Why else would you want little old me to come along?”

The woman who strode down the ramp after the van was slender and petite. She wore a tailored black suit and sensible low-heeled shoes. The very air she exuded made it evident that she was the senior ranking person in the group. Her voice was old, but even with the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and a few minute strands of white in the rich, brownish-red of her shoulder-length hair, she could have passed for any age between thirty and fifty.

George shook his head. “You know they don’t let me out of my cage without adult supervision, Morgan.”

The female agent joined the group and smiled, then eyed Valentine’s cowboy boots with obvious distaste. “I see that some things never change. You can take the cowboy out of the country, but you can’t change his spots.”

“You’re mixing metaphors, ma’am.” Valentine smiled. “Good to see you, Morgan. It’s been too long.”

“And you as well, my dear.” She patted him on the cheek, then turned to his partner and gave him a friendly hug. “Eliot.”

Even with the warmth of that greeting, Valentine’s partner was still stoic. But the tone of his voice was pleasant enough. “Morgan. Glad you could make it.”

She drew back and studied him, her head cocked a bit. “Are we on edge?”

“Long night,” Eliot admitted. “You know how bad Valentine drives. I didn’t sleep a wink,”

Valentine said nothing in his own defense, but he looked at George and pointedly rolled his eyes. The bald man grinned.

“Be that as it may,” Morgan said. “If anything is—amiss, shall we say—I need to know, right away.”

“It’s under control,” Eliot replied.

“He’s fine,” Valentine said. He winked at Eliot. “He’s just antsy because we haven’t caught up with the coven.”

The senior agent studied Eliot for a long moment, then glanced at Valentine. “Fair enough. Do you need to fetch a vehicle?”

He shrugged. “We called in a favor and got a helicopter flight over. So we’re all together in the Mystery Machine if you’ve got the room.”

“This thing’s a hell of a lot better equipped than some green hippie van,” George growled.

“Scooby snacks?” Eliot said, with just a fraction of a smile. The other man glared.

Morgan rubbed her forehead. “Gentlemen. I’m hardly in the mood for this nonsense again.”

Valentine grinned. “Gosh, Morgan, it was so much fun the last time.”

“It hasn’t been long enough.”

“It was years ago,” Eliot pointed out.

She turned and stuck a finger under the dour agent’s nose. The corner of her mouth trembled, threatening to break into a smile. “Your partner is bad enough. Don’t you start with me, too.”

George’s voice stomped the round of chuckles flat. “Cut the love fest and get into the van, people. We got miles to go.”

Helen

Las Vegas, Nevada—Tuesday morning

The bellhop threw open the doors to the suite and announced, “Your rooms, ladies and gentlemen.”

Her trio of companions made impressed noises as they stepped into the rooms. It was by far the fanciest hotel room Helen had ever stepped into, but even though she now looked much closer in age to the others, she knew that she had to conduct herself in such a way that they wouldn’t forget that she was their superior. Overt demonstrations were great and all, but in her experience, power was most effective when used subtly. In that, the rhetorical knife-fighting of academia and the tension of prison had been more alike than not.

The hostages from the frat party walked mechanically into the suite, bearing the troupe’s minimal luggage. Lack of resources was a problem they needed rectify, but all in good time, she judged. She turned, brushed her fingers across the bellhop’s waiting hand and murmured, “You’ve never received a better tip.”

His eyes brightened. “Thank you! If you ladies need anything at all, call down to the front desk and ask for me. I’m Vinnie.” He discreetly tucked the empty hand into his pocket and pulled the door shut behind him.

Getting the suite of rooms had been as simple as asking for them. The hardest part had been getting to a manager of sufficient level to comp it for them. He—and the computer systems that ran the place after he made his data entries—believed them to be a group of high rollers. The subterfuge wouldn’t last forever, but that was fine. Once they got all their ducks in a row, they’d be moving on.

There was someone in San Francisco she needed to kill.

She stood and took in the luxury of the suite. The rooms were more richly appointed than anything she’d seen in over a decade, and she clenched a fist at the time and resources lost to her son’s meddling.

There’s still time, she reminded herself. There’s just not as much cushion as there used to be.

She called out. “The spells you managed to gather. I’d like to see them, please.”

Kelsey stuck her head out of the bedroom she was exploring with the others and headed toward the small pile of bags the frat boys had left on the floor. She retrieved a tattered backpack and held it out with a smile.

Helen unzipped the bag and dug through it. Other than clothes, all it held was a rubberized plastic folder. She pulled it out and let annoyance flash across her face.

“You’ve been keeping mystical relics in a Trapper Keeper?”

The girl gave her sheepish smile. “Yeah, but it’s Twilight Sparkle—it’s awesome, Helen.” Her own face fell as she realized that her mentor was anything but pleased. “They’re okay, right? It won’t hurt them, will it?”

Avoiding the urge to mutter under her breath, Helen pulled the Velcro catch open and paged through the contents of the folder. Compared to the wealth of knowledge she’d once collected, it was depressing to see how little her coven had managed to retrieve. Fragments for the most part, but most of what she’d collected over the years had been bits and pieces. The intact grimoire and the clay prison holding the Edimmu had both been incredible strokes of luck that had considerably expanded her knowledge.

The Sumerian spirit was lost to her, but she’d get her book back—regardless of the consequences to her son. Given the anger her acolytes held over the death of their friend at Paxton’s hand, she guessed those repercussions would be grave indeed.

She glanced around the suite. Kelsey stood nearby while Roxanne and Giselle fluttered through the various rooms, taking it all in. With no orders to guide them, the trio of frat boys remained as still and silent as the room’s sleek furniture.

“Ladies,” she said, forcing an authoritative tone into her words. Her voice was still her own, though it had the tendency to creep into a youthful timbre when she wasn’t paying attention. “Please have a seat, we need to have a discussion.”

The girls gathered as asked, expectant looks on their faces. Since the events at the frat house, all three had become more respectful. They’d known what she could do before. Her letters had guided them to the cached material now stored in Kelsey’s binder, after all. They’d learned to wield balefyr and one of their own had mastered the familiar spell, but when she’d drained the coed’s life in the frat house the group had crossed a boundary line. The difference in experience was still there, but her restored youth helped her fit into the group in a way that she hadn’t realized had been missing before.

In a way, she liked the feeling of belonging even as she told herself to make use of it.

“Here’s the plan. We stay here long enough to gather supplies. While we’re working on that, you ladies can forge familiars out of your boys.”

The girls looked at one another, and Roxanne asked, “How are we going to pay for supplies? You told us not to use credit cards.”

Or cell phones, Helen added mentally. One of the girls had sent a text message to a friend, of all things, on the road away from Iowa City. She’d put a stop to that, and she didn’t think any damage had been done, but the trio didn’t seem to be catching on to the entire concept of being fugitives. It was still a game to them, she suspected. For whatever reason, even though they’d left a trail of dead bodies in their wake since breaking her out of prison, her proteges were behaving as though this was some wild, extended holiday. Call it Girls Gone Wild—Witches on Fall Break.

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, she held up the Trapper Keeper. “First official lesson. This is just a taste. If you think what you found on these pages was impressive, my grimoire will knock your socks off.” She hesitated, then added, “But this is serious business. As serious as it gets.”

“Why aren’t those pages so great?” Giselle asked, cocking her head to one side.

“These are fragments, pieces of a greater whole. So old that even the name of the book itself has been lost. And while there’s power on these pages, it pales in comparison to that of a complete book. Think of it this way.” She held her thumb and forefinger apart. “The grimoire is perhaps this thick. Five hundred pages, you’d think? But you’d be wrong. In all the years I held it, I read through over a thousand pages and only brushed the surface of its contents.”

“How is that—” Kelsey said, closing her mouth in mid-sentence.

Helen smiled. “Possible? The book was created with magic, sweetie. There are layers upon layers on each page.”

“But we need to get it back from your son,” Giselle observed. “If he still has it.”

“I’m certain he does, but just in case, our next stop will confirm its location, one way or another.” She raised a finger to cut off questions. “All in good time. Second lesson. Where does the power come from?”

Silence and shrugs.

I missed teaching. And I didn’t even realize how much. “The Chinese call it chi, which is good enough for our purposes, I suppose. Call it your life force, your spirit, if you will. But it’s not static. It can be used, consumed.” She ran her hands down the altered curves of her hips and raised an eyebrow. “Transferred. Which of you cast the balefyr spell, at the prison?”

Giselle raised her hand slightly, and Helen smiled and nodded at her.

“I guessed as much. You were sick for a few days after.”

“You’re right,” the younger girl admitted. “I felt like crap.”

“Rule two is, fittingly, two-fold. You’ve already found that it’s not the words themselves that create the effect, but the focus of your mind. I speak at times, but one person’s ‘abracadabra’ may not work for anyone else. On the flip side, consider magic like a fire. Once you have the spark going, you have to continue to feed it fuel to stoke the flames higher. If you overdraw your own power, you’ll make yourself sick, or worse. Solution? There are other channels. You’ve learned some spells from this.” She waved the Trapper Keeper. “That’s not half as critical as learning how to siphon. If you can do that, well—” She held her hand palm up, suddenly cradling a ball of liquid fire. She angled her fingers down to roll it onto her knuckles, letting the living flame dance as she flipped them in a complicated rhythm. “There’s nothing you won’t be able to do, ladies.” Helen snapped her fingers, banishing the flame. “And I need you to step up. Because I can’t do this alone.”

The three girls were silent for a moment. Roxanne finally drew upon her courage and asked, “Do what, exactly? You haven’t really filled us in on what your goal is.”

“All in good time, dear. But my goal is simple enough.” She let a warm smile spread across her face. “We’re going to save the world.”

CHAPTER 6

Paxton

McLean, Texas—Tuesday morning

We drove far enough to put Missouri and Oklahoma behind our backs, then stopped for the night. The nice thing about an RV is never having to hunt for a hotel. The cheap ones—the rooms, I mean—are lousy with ghosts. It creeped me out how often people died in rented rooms. A motor home might be an unusual choice of vehicle for youngsters like us, but in my experience, it’s essential to a good night’s sleep. For some strange reason, ghosts tend to get pissed off when you sleep in their presence. Maybe they’re doubling-down on the cold shoulder their lonely existence is.

I must have gotten the nightmares out of my system in the jail cell because once I managed to pass out on the fold-out bed in the RV’s dining area, my sleep was deep and undisturbed.

Now, I know what most people might think. A good-looking young couple, working and living together, sharing terrifying experiences? They’re going to fall into bed with each other on their off hours, right?

Not this guy. Maybe if this was a TV show on the CW, but it ain’t. My car’s not nearly cool enough.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing makes you want to cherish life more than being almost strangled to death by a traveling salesman tentacle monster. That’s still not my style. I’m no priest, but I’ve got my code.

Call me old-fashioned. Cassie and I had been friends when we were younger, but nothing more than that. Ten years is a long time. For the moment, I was most interested in getting to know the person she’d become since high school and keeping the promise I’d made to her dad to keep her safe.

Of course, the vision I got when I cracked open an eye in response to the tapping on the frame of my bed made me want to kick the paladin part of my personality in the shins.

Hands on her hips, Cassie cocked an eyebrow. “Up and at ‘em, Gandalf.”

Yoga pants. Why did it have to be yoga pants?

I scrubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands and groaned. “I am not growing a beard.”

“Hey, your hair’s the right color,” Cassie pointed out. “Could be a great Halloween costume.”

Despite myself, I laughed. My hair has been bone-white ever since the hellish night that Mother killed my dad. For a while, I colored it to a more natural brown, but that was a lot more work than I wanted to invest in maintenance of my personal appearance. So I left it white and kept it buzzed with a beard trimmer. Saves on dye and barbers.

Checking my watch, I pulled the blanket over my head and gave a mock groan. “It’s not even eight. You can’t seriously be ready to hit the road.”

She tapped the bed again with her foot. I flipped the corner of the blanket down and gave her a dirty look. Cassie grinned. “Nope. Today is day one of the ‘get Paxton into shape’ boot camp.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m the picture of health.”

“Obviously,” she said. “Which is why you keep getting tossed around like a hacky sack.”

Sitting up, I shrugged. “In my defense, most of the guys kicking my ass aren’t exactly human-normal in terms of strength.”

“Which is why you need every edge you can get. Come on. It’s been too long since I stretched my legs, and there’s a nice walking path around the rest area. We can go for a run before it gets too busy.”

She had a point. If I wasn’t burning excess calories with magic, my eating habits and general lack of activity—intermittent running for my life excluded—would have made for a bad combination. I hemmed and hawed a bit as I pulled on a ratty T-shirt and some sneakers, but I followed her out the door. For the barest of moments, I considered hauling the grimoire along, but I pushed the paranoia down. I’d locked the door, and it wasn’t like the rest area was all that big. I’d be able to keep an eye on the motor home as we exercised.

Feeling awkward, I imitated Cassie’s effortless stretches and tried not to wince. Nothing in particular hurt, but my entire body ached just enough to be distracting. Between the smorgasbord of torture Melanie and her crew had put me through, and the exertion of healing Cassie, I’d pushed myself beyond the ragged edge. My hands were shaking a bit as she took the lead, but I forced myself to follow, and not only that, keep up.

The latter wasn’t the hard part. Cassie was tall, a few inches under six feet, but I was taller and had longer legs. I settled into a comfortable pace and my perception of the aches faded away as I focused on breathing and putting one foot in front of the other.

By the fourth or fifth lap, my breath was a little ragged and a stitch ran up my side. I don’t know if Cassie sensed me lagging, or if she wanted to motivate me, but she increased her pace. She began to pull away.

Annoyed, I lowered my head and tried to push past the pain. The stitch in my side was nothing, I told myself. Less than a week ago I’d had my leg stomped on until I suffered a compound fracture. This was nothing in comparison.

And then it happened.

For me, magic isn’t something that requires any incantation or external focus like you see in the movies. I don’t know if that’s normal. Mother, for example, seemed to be of the chanting type the few times I’d seen her cast. I just go with it. Some stuff seems to work better with an external focus or wave of my hand—the push is a primary example of this—but it’s not an absolute requirement. For the most part, the spells I use come about more like muscle memory, but in a very focused way. I described a spell to Cassie once as standing on my head, crossing my eyes, rolling my tongue, and thinking about the flavor of blue.

But that’s just the initial mastery. Once I’ve cast a spell, I can recreate it by envisioning a mystical control console. It’s as though I can encapsulate the massive initial focus required into a simple, mental command.

The feeling that fell over me was something similar. All at once, my physical annoyances fell away. They were still there, in the back of my head, but they were outside of my attention, so they were of no particular concern. The sense of my magic was there, as well, as though I’d focused myself on the mystical control panel but decided to put it away.

A smile spread across my face, and I lowered my head, pushing harder. I caught up with Cassie and drew even with her. She glanced at me, gave me a nod, then turned back to focus on the path ahead.

We didn’t set any speed records, but we kept up a steady pace, and by the time Cassie stepped off the walking trail, I was surprised to find that my shirt was drenched with sweat. As I snapped out of focus, I was even more flabbergasted to see that the sun was significantly higher in the sky. How long did we run?

Gulping air, Cassie cocked her head. “I may have underestimated you, Snowball. Not bad.”

I shook my head. “I cheated. Or something.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“I kind of zoned out, I guess. The same way that I concentrate when I’m casting, but I didn’t actually do anything, I just ran.”

Cassie laughed. “If you’re going to use wizard-juice to fuel working out, you’re not going to get any benefit out of it.”

I put a hand on my chest and considered the thumping of my heart even as my legs started to tremble. “No, I’m feeling it,” I said. I frowned. “I’m going to have to be careful with this. If I push too hard…oof.” I met Cassie’s eyes and forced a grin on my face. “At least I’ve got you to carry me if I overdo things again.”

She frowned and look worried. “We need to spread the load a bit. Or you at least need to teach me the healing magic, so you don’t drain yourself dry again.”

I bobbed my head in agreement. “Roger that. I tried something last night after you fell asleep.” I steeled my focus and brought up the imaginary control panel in my head. For a while, it only had five buttons. Yesterday’s study had added a sixth.

“What did you try?”

“Hit me,” I said to Cassie, and her brow wrinkled in confusion.

“What?”

“I want to try something.” I grinned, and added, “C’mon, free shot.”

She rolled her eyes, but she hauled back and swung. She didn’t put everything she had into it, but it was enough to sting.

Her fist reached my bicep, curled in, then passed through my arm and into my chest before she staggered off balance and pulled back. And didn’t that feel weird? Not painful, really, but like something was probing around inside of me.

She shook her hand and grimaced. “That felt nasty. What the hell?”

“Phase spell. I should be able to walk through walls, shake off a punch, and avoid strangling by traveling cannibals.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Can I call you Kitty Pryde?”

I winced. “Please don’t.”

“So, it works, then,” Cassie said.

I’d burned the grimoire to ashes, years ago, worried about some of the things I’d seen its pages, but Mother’s escape from prison had made me reconsider the logic of that. The same spell that repaired compound fractures had turned a sack of ashes into a worn, leather book.

I’d mouthed doubt that the magic had been fully restored by my efforts to Cassie, but I had to admit to myself that I’d known deep down that it was going to work. Maybe it was possible to permanently destroy something so powerful, but I didn’t think a diesel-fueled fire had the oomph. For better or worse, the book was back, and I had to keep it out of the hands of anyone that would use it for fell purposes.

“Yeah,” I said, finally. “It works. Feel up to studying when we stop for the night?”

She gave me a thumbs-up. “It’s a date.”

I tried to play it cool, but I’m pretty sure the dopey grin on my face was anything but.

Valentine

Mercy Medical Center, Iowa City, Iowa—Tuesday afternoon

The city cops standing a post in front of the hospital room gave the approaching crew a curious look. Valentine let the faintest shadow of a smile crack the corner of his face. He supposed that he and Eliot seemed ordinary enough, and the clothing similarity between the pair of them and Morgan screamed ‘Feds.’

George, leading the way, was the obvious reason for their confusion. His ATF windbreaker strained over his broad shoulders and muscular arms, and the electric whir of his wheelchair’s tires served as ongoing punctuation to the click of Valentine’s cowboy boots on the floor.

We may not look like much, but that’s kind of the idea, officer. Valentine kept his face blank as they stopped. Morgan took lead and displayed her badge. Her tone was firm; in no mood for jurisdictional nonsense.

“Take a coffee break, gentlemen. We need to inspect the survivors.”

The younger cop puffed his chest as if to protest, but the other put a hand on his shoulder to forestall any response. “You understand that they’re in no condition to talk.”

Morgan’s tone didn’t waver. “I chose my words for a reason, Officer.”

He studied her face for a long moment, then nodded his assent. “Right. Let’s go, Andy.”

The younger cop looked back over his shoulder as his partner led him away. His face turned red with barely restrained anger. Valentine considered tipping him a mock salute but decided against it.

Turning soft in your old age, hoss. He smirked to himself.

“George, you’ve got the door,” Morgan pronounced. She stepped into the hospital room. As Eliot and Valentine followed, George wheeled his chair around and assumed the city cops’ abandoned post. Anyone who thinks ol’ Georgie is a pushover is in for a rude awakening. He grinned, but the two men in the room’s hospital beds wiped the mirth from his expression.

He’d seen victims in worse condition. But not many, and not recently.

The burns weren’t serious enough to need debridement, but their burns were so extensive that the frat boys looked more like mummies in traction than hospital patients. The room was cool and quiet, the silence broken only by the metronomic beep of the heart rate monitors. Heavy IV bags of painkillers hung over the young men, but even a drug-induced sleep wasn’t enough to still the intermittent jerks and cries of painful nightmares.

“Lord be with them,” Eliot murmured.

Morgan didn’t spend much time in assessment. She moved across the room to the left bed and muttered half-heard, arcane words under her breath as she neared the first college student. The sounds of the room became murky, as though they were under water. Valentine and Eliot took up positions on either side of the door, waiting.

“Four women entered,” Morgan murmured. Eyes closed, she gently stroked the frat boy’s temples. He relaxed, sinking into the hospital bed, and the rhythmic pulse of the heart monitor slowed. If her initial foray into his consciousness had brought him pain, the continuing presence must have been a soothing one, because the tension on the unconscious man’s features eased into placidity. “Four women left. They brought three of his friends with them.” She frowned slightly and cocked her head to one said. “The fourth woman—” Morgan cursed.

Eliot and Valentine were familiar enough with Morgan’s intelligence-gathering process to hold back any reaction until she’d extracted herself. It became more difficult, though, in times like this where something concerned her and she left them hanging.

Morgan withdrew from the burn victim and turned to face them. “We’ve got problems.”

Eliot coughed a laugh and Valentine shrugged. “What else is new, darlin’?”

Morgan rolled her eyes at the appellation and ticked off the points on her fingers. “They pulled three hostages out with them. We already knew Locke gave her groupies a familiar spell, so we’ll have that to deal with.”

Valentine shrugged. It was a shitty way to go, yeah. If he had to decide between being burned alive or being torn into pieces and turned into a magical lapdog, he wasn’t sure which way he preferred. But dead was dead. Familiars just meant more targets to service.

Tough targets, to be sure. But that was what bullets were for.

“There’s another issue. Locke used a Bathory spell, so our APB is out of date,” Morgan added. “And that means she, and possibly her coven, can change appearance at will.”

“Bathory?” Eliot echoed.

She sighed. “Don’t you guys read your e-mail?”

“What’s an e-mail?” Valentine joked. Her face darkened in anger, and he raised a hand to placate her. “Kidding. But I must have missed that particular memo.”

“Elizabeth Bathory was a Hungarian countess. History records her as perhaps the most prolific female serial killer ever, with over six hundred victims. Folklore after her conviction and death spread the legend that she bathed in the blood of young peasant girls to extend her life.” She gave Valentine a significant glance. “In a sense, it’s similar to the Dracula legend that sprung up around Vlad Tepes in the same region a century earlier. Eternal youth, blood sacrifice, vampirism.”

Valentine rolled his eyes and made a ‘go on’ motion. “And the truth?”

“Local authorities convicted the countess and four accomplices of murder, torture, and the like. The Church archived various related documents and records. Much of it is, of course, lost to the passage of time. But, the memo I mentioned noted among some of the various historical artifacts that Helen Locke managed to acquire while at the University of Chicago were ‘various historical records from the Habsburg region of Hungary.’” She shrugged. “These, at least, were in one of the storage sites that we cleared out after her incarceration. Who knows what we didn’t find.”

Eliot barked a short laugh. “Oh, marvelous. I’m starting to come around to Val’s point of view. We should have put a bullet in the back of her head years ago.”

“What’s it do?” Valentine asked, sighing.

“Bathory and her coven were, yes, trying to extend human life. And at the same time, their own youth. The research is incomplete but based on the historical description and what this young man saw, the spell seems to allow the caster to drain the youth from a victim. It makes her younger, but it also gives her some of the attributes of the victim. The Helen Locke who walked into the frat house was a slender woman in her late forties. She walked out a stacked blonde in her late twenties. Some similarity in the face, but not enough that the APB would work.”

“Without the fire, I imagine we’d have seen the effect on the victim,” Valentine mused.

“Right. It’s not something we’ve tested, obviously. Based on the spell’s structure, the donor is consumed in the process.” She made a face. “I’ve put in a request to destroy it, but obviously if Locke already mastered it, the genie’s out of the bottle.”

“Maybe not,” Valentine replied. “Is it teachable?” For those with the ability, simple spells could be taught without the use of source documents. Based on the power of the Bathory spell, it didn’t sound like it would qualify. Archiving it in the first place would have been an arduous process requiring inscription magic. Copying onto regular paper was generally bad for the destination material in a ‘burst into flames’ sort of way. Valentine had been present in the research department back in the day when a newly-hired employee of the Division had made the mistake of attempting to photocopy a simple telekinesis spell. Morgan and the rest of Division M’s thaumaturges had been able to grow Kevin’s fingers back, but the Xerox machine had been a total loss.

“No,” Morgan said. “It’s complicated enough we don’t have to worry about that.”

“So, what now?” Valentine said.

Morgan shrugged. “I’ll sit down with a sketch artist. With some reasonable pictures of Helen’s coven, we head back to Wisconsin and see if any of Melanie Gennaro’s friends can give us names. We get names, we can start tracking cell phones and stop chasing shadows.”

Eliot slapped Valentine on the shoulder. “Real police work, you’ll love it.” He gave Morgan a wink. “We just have to keep you from shooting anyone.”

CHAPTER 7

Helen

Las Vegas, Nevada—Tuesday evening

Helen wrinkled her nose at the smell in the suite.

Arms laden with shopping bags, she slid sideways into the room and bumped the door shut with one hip to keep the smell from wafting into the corridor.

She’d let the girls cast the familiar spells on their own, though she’d conducted a lesson in siphoning chi from external sources before she’d let them do it. The spell was draining for the caster, and fatal for the target. If the frat boys hadn’t been pushed to silence, their screams would have brought the house down on them. The smell, though. The smell was almost as bad.

“Open a window,” she snapped. “If this seeps out under the door, housekeeping will be sticking a head in here, do not disturb sign or not.”

The main sitting room of the suite seemed far larger than when they’d arrived, and for good reason. They’d pushed the couches and side tables back against the wall, opening up the central area. In that open space, the trio of tan, egg-shaped objects sat, pulsing. Every now and then, the surface of one of the eggs would ripple, as though from some internal pressure.

Helen smiled with pride at the cocoons. In a few hours, they’d open and a trio of twins would emerge. The creatures would be identical in appearance to their donors—on the surface—and utterly loyal to the casters who’d forged them from flesh and arcane power. She didn’t know why the process created such a stench, but it would pass after the familiars emerged.

She arranged the shopping bags on the furniture. She’d only been to Vegas a few times, but she’d chosen Planet Hollywood Casino because of the attached shopping mall.

“Clothes for our growing boys,” she said. She’d had a hell of a time finding clothes that fit her altered figure. The ones that did were snugger and far more revealing than her preferred style, but that was the best sort of disguise, wasn’t it?

Baring cleavage and skin had turned out to have other benefits. She pulled a newly-purchased purse out of her shopping bag. Opening the purse, she produced a roll of cash large enough to choke the proverbial horse.

Kelsey’s eyes bugged out. “Where did you get that? Gambling?”

Helen snorted. “Even if I pushed a blackjack dealer to keep losing to me, there are enough cameras in this place that security would pick up on it.” She smiled and started handing out wads of bills. “But there aren’t any cameras in the rooms.” Helen winked. “Watch long enough, you see a high roller getting ready to cash out. A few words in his ear and he’s all mine.”

Giselle giggled. “You screwed a guy for his cash? You slut.”

She rolled her eyes. “Hardly. Oh, I played the game. But as soon as we were up in the room I asked him to hand it all over, then told him he lost at the tables. Poor guy’s working his way through the mini bar as we speak.”

Roxanne laughed, then adopted a thoughtful look as something occurred to her. “You can change memories, just like that? How effective is it?”

Helen shrugged. “They’ll believe it’s as real as anything memory in their head, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary.” Roxanne still stared off into space, but she snapped out of it as Helen continued to unload items from the shopping bags. “Clothes, toiletries, more bags if you need them, ladies. There are a few electronics stores in the mall. Split up and get yourselves prepaid cell phones. You need to ditch your old phones.”

“Ugh, seriously?” Kelsey whined.

“Yes, absolutely,” Helen replied, putting a harsh pitch to her voice. “It’s only a matter of time before they’ll use them to track the three of you, and the rest of us, down. We’re not ready for that fight, not yet.”

“What, cops?” Giselle rolled her eyes. “So you tell them to put their guns down or we fire them up. We handled the prison guards, no sweat.”

She remained silent for a moment, then murmured, “I’m not talking about cops. I’m talking about Division M. They’ll go through the three of you and your familiars without breaking a sweat. Who did you think cleaned out my archives?” She grimaced. “You think I didn’t have wards to secure them from prying eyes?”

The girls glanced at each other, confused. She supposed it was a bit like being told the sky was really blue.

“How big a problem are we talking?” Kelsey demanded.

“It depends,” Helen said with a shrug. “We could run into a Glenda, or a standard-issue G-Man. There are rumors out there that they’ve got other sorts of magical creatures working for them, but that could be an urban legend. Either way, we need to stay one step ahead of them until we can get the book back. It would surprise me if any of them know how powerful it really is.” She waved the cash. “So, go. Shop.”

They were hesitant, but the prospect of unbridled consumerist consumption was too much to resist. The three took their shares and headed for the door.

Roxanne held back. Helen thought she might know what was coming, though she adopted a look of cool surprise on her face when the girl cleared her throat with one hand on the door handle.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to ask—we’ve gone through all the pages we recovered, and there’s no spell that does what you did to yourself. Can you—I don’t know, teach me?”

Helen favored the younger girl with a warm smile. “Now? No. But once we retrieve my grimoire—yes.” The lie came easily to her lips. The spell, so far as she knew, wasn’t in the grimoire. But the girl didn’t need to know that. She hesitated, then said, “I can’t imagine you want to be younger.”

“No, but I...” Roxanne flushed with embarrassment. “Please don’t make me say it.”

She patted the girl’s cheek. At once, a memory of doing something similar to Paxton when he was younger came to mind, but she forced herself to tamp it down. She had a mission to complete, and extraneous emotion would be more of a disservice than anything.

“All right. When the time comes, we’ll need to find someone close to your age or a little bit younger. It’s an average, I suppose you could say.” Helen indicated herself. “I’m not nearly as stacked as that young lady at the party. In your case, you’ll want something more like what I used to look like, I imagine. But yes, what you want can be done.” She paused. “I just need you to promise me that you’re willing to do what it takes. Some of it might be—distasteful. But it’s for the greater good.”

Her acolyte’s eyes glittered with an avarice that dimmed just a bit as she realized her own naked greed. “I’ll be ready,” she promised. “When the time comes, I won’t hold back.” Roxanne beamed. “I want to help you.”

Paxton

Albuquerque, New Mexico—Tuesday evening

Cassie let the spine of the grimoire hit the surface of the dinette table. The meaty thump seemed far louder than a book of its size should have been able to produce. I couldn’t say that I was surprised. At certain times it felt like an anchor in my shoulder bag, while at others it seemed to weigh next to nothing at all. Right now, I was sore enough from our morning workout that I was just happy to sit down. The dull ache in my legs eased a bit, though it was still there in the back of my mind.

I’d almost killed myself using healing magic on Cassie, and I was reluctant to push myself too much until I recovered a bit more. But if this worked, she’d be able to help that along a bit.

So far, no such luck.

“Unbelievable,” she said. “And you’re sure this is the healing spell?”

I rotated the book and glanced at the stylized writing and drawings on the pages. “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t get it, either.” I frowned and shook my head. “What do you see?”

She laid her index finger on blank space and recited, “Essence of lupo mannaro. Grind freshly-gathered wolf’s claw in a granite mortar. Mix the paste with ethanol at a ten-to-one ratio. Cure in sunlight in a sealed glass jar for twenty-eight days. The resulting mixture should be the consistency of thin mud. Keep away from open flames.”

I rubbed my face. “This is insane. Hang on.” Pulling the grimoire closer, I closed the cover and thought about the time when I’d learned the TK spell. When I opened the book to a random page, there it was. “Try this.”

She studied the book for a moment, then read, “When properly prepared, ashwagandha root can temporarily boost strength and stamina, but care should be taken not to…” She trailed off and gave me a quizzical look. “It’s a gardening book?”

“It is for you,” I said, resisting the urge to laugh as I pulled it closer and checked the page. For me, it was the TK spell. In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that a book that defied all logic should be so illogical. I gave it an annoyed look, then raised my eyes to meet Cassie’s.

“Okay, Velma, you want to see if the third time’s the charm?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Wrong hair color, no glasses…” She winked and added, “Much cuter.”

“Serious? Velma grew up and married Hawkeye. She’s a babe.” Cassie gave me a one-eyed squint of confusion, and I hurried past the moment. “Beside the point. Okay. The book responds to thought. Focus on what you want to learn, then open the page and see what you’ve got.”

Cassie shrugged and closed her eyes for a moment. She reached out blindly, opened the book, then leaned forward. She didn’t recoil in terror, which was a good sign. I’d once made the mistake of wondering what Mother had intended to use the book for, and even a momentary glimpse had chilled me to the bone.

For a moment I worried that it wouldn’t work for Cassie. For all I knew, I was some weird freak and magic wasn’t something anyone could learn.

“Huh,” she said. “Weird.” And then—it happened.

I hadn’t seen my own reaction when I’d first studied the book, for obvious reasons, and being honest it was creepy to watch from this side. Cassie’s face went blank, and for half a minute or more she didn’t so much as blink as she stared at the pages laid open before her.

At once, as though returning to herself, she shook her head and took a deep breath. She noticed my look but didn’t say anything.

A few moments later, I couldn’t take the silence, and I said, “Well?”

“You said it’s like a control panel in your head, right?”

“Basically, yeah. That was the easiest way I could visualize it.”

She grinned. “You are such a nerd. It’s like a yoga pose, almost, except I’m not moving.”

“Well, at least you don’t have to wave your hands and shout made-up words,” I pointed out.

“There is that. So, aren’t you curious?” She raised an eyebrow, and her smile turned mischievous.

“I’m going to take a guess that it’s neither healing nor telekinesis, is it?” To the extent that a magical book made sense, the fact that Cassie’s perception of it was entirely different from my own made sense in a stupid sort of way. I thought of a computer control panel because that was the way my mind worked. She saw yoga because that was how Cassie clicked. Of course, now that I thought about it, it was odd that I saw the same things that mother did. There must be more to it than mindset. Genetics, maybe, or innate talent. We had a book, but it wasn’t like it was an instruction manual.

That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. The instruction manual for the last stereo I bought was poorly-translated from badly-worded Japanese. It was a wonder I got the thing hooked up. Shaking off my woolgathering, I added, “Well?”

“I can neither fetch you a beer, nor heal a scratch, but I can…” She frowned. “I’m not sure how to phrase it. It’s not a lie detector, and it’s not reading minds.” Cassie snapped her fingers. “Do you remember Counselor Troi?”

I tried not to laugh. “From Next Generation? You’re starting to lose jock points here, Cass. Next time you call me a nerd I’m throwing that right back at you.”

“Shut up. I used to watch reruns with my dad. And Geordi was hot.”

“All right, truce. So, it’s empathy, then?” I tried to keep the doubt of my voice. Being able to detect emotions didn’t strike me as useful. It was pretty much the world’s worst superpower save for a very few specific situations.

“Kind of,” Cassie temporized. She looked down at the opened pages and shook her head. “This thing has a lot of ten-dollar words in it. It’s pretentious.” She drew back from the book, then laughed. “And a smart ass.”

“Takes one to know one,” I said. I craned my head, trying to see what the grimoire was showing her, but it was illegible, from this angle. Was that a feature or a bug? Handy, either way.

“It dumbed it down for me. It’s an objective truth spell.”

“I doodled my way through English Lit. What does that mean?”

She closed the book and thought about it for a second. “Okay, so say someone is blackout drunk, and runs someone over them and kills them. The cops arrest them and hook them up to a lie detector. ‘Did you kill this person?’ The drunk driver says no, and from their perspective, they’re telling the truth. They don’t remember it happening, so in their subjective reality, it didn’t happen. They’re not lying, technically.”

“Okay.”

“So, the objective reality is, yes, they did kill someone. This would show me the truth of what happened, I guess.”

I leaned back in my seat and raised my eyebrows. “Wow. Wow. You know, it’s a good thing my mom never passed this one on, because it would have made things difficult down in the basement.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when Melanie pushed me to tell her where the grimoire was, I told her where I’d pushed myself to believe it was. I believed I was telling the truth, and she had no reason to doubt otherwise.” I shuddered. There was still a bit of a disconnect in my head, even after the spell effect had ended. I could still see myself doing something that was an aspect of my imagination, and it felt as real as any of my true memories. I vowed to take that as a warning to avoid that usage in the future. Too many fake memories chasing real ones, and it wouldn’t take long before someone could lose track of reality.

“If we’re going to help solve a murder, sounds like this will come in handy.”

She was right. It would have been great to have her able to TK or heal, on the off chance that I was otherwise unable to, but yeah, knowing whether or not someone was lying to us would simplify things.

“Wait,” I said, excited. “What’s the limit? I mean, try this. Ask me who’s killing all the people in Phoenix!”

She hesitated for a second, then said. “Who’s the killer that Kent is looking for?”

“The anchor on the Channel 5 news,” I said after a moment, going for the most nonsensical thing I could think of.

Cassie frowned. “I know that’s not true, but I don’t get anything other than that. I think it’s limited to something directly associated with you.”

“I guess I’ve already used up my deus ex machina quota for the month.”

At once, she favored me with a mischievous smile. “Well, answer me this, Mr. Locke. Is our affiliation purely professional, or is there more to it?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” I stammered. If the sudden clumsiness of my tongue wasn’t answer enough, she must have gotten plenty more from the spell, because she blushed and pressed her lips together to hold back her smile.

Well, shit.

CHAPTER 8

Valentine

University of Wisconsin, Madison—Wednesday afternoon

“Yeah, that’s Kelsey,” the coed agreed. She handed back the picture to Valentine. “Good drawing.” She rolled her eyes.

He gave Eliot a glance and commented, “Not a fan, I take it?”

The coed’s expression was dubious. “Well…”

Valentine suppressed a smile and raised a hand to soothe her nerves. “Background purposes only. She’s fallen in with a bad crowd. We’re trying to track them down before they do anything they’ll regret.”

The girl stared at Val for a long moment before speaking. “I roomed with her freshman year. She’s a teeny little thing, so you assume that she’s harmless, and maybe that’s true. She’s not the type to get wasted and start pulling hair, but she’s vicious.”

“How so?”

“She’s a—needler, I guess you could say? My grandpa died right before Christmas break. The new semester starts, and every so often at random, she’ll make a comment about what she did with her grandparents over the holiday, that sort of thing. There were two other girls in our dorm room. They both moved out before spring break. I don’t know what she did to them, but it couldn’t have been good.” The coed cocked her head to one side and said, “Just the look in her eyes, sometimes, you know? Like, if you told me she used to fry ants with a magnifying glass, I’d buy it.”

He reappraised the coed. “You didn’t move out?”

“Hell with that bitch,” the girl shrugged. “I went to an IB school, I’m used to passive aggressive garbage.”

“Good for you.” Val passed over a business card. “You think of anything else, give me a call. And I know she doesn’t intimidate you, but if you see her around, get the hell out of Dodge, all right?”

She tucked the card into her purse and nodded. “Will do.”

Eliot waited until she was out of earshot before speaking. “That’s three-for-three, then. The ant-fryer, the bullied one, and the evil queen.”

“Kids really fry ants, like she’s talking about?”

“Beats me. Never had any, myself.”

Val grunted.

“How do these sorts find each other, you think?” Eliot mused. “Seems like it’s the same story every time.” Both Melanie Gennaro and Trace Jensen had attended Wisconsin. It had been a leap to assume the rest of Locke’s groupies had, as well, but it was one that had paid off.

“Maybe sociopaths can smell each other,” Val guessed. “Let’s go.”

Government credentials were a Godsend when it came to parking on a college campus. George had flashed his ID and waved off any number of ticket-issuing campus police. When he saw the two heading back to the vehicle, he fired up the cargo van’s engine and toggled a switch that opened the sliding door on the passenger side.

The interior of the vehicle was better equipped on the inside than the plain black exterior might have suggested. A workbench ran the entire length of the driver’s side, supporting a few portable computer workstations and other, more exotic equipment.

The passenger side was more open, but the outfitters had installed several comfortable bucket seats there, with plenty of leg room and folding worktops that tucked into a slot on the side of each chair when not in use. Val settled into the seat closet to the slider and rotated to face Morgan. She sat at one of the driver’s side stations, computer logged into the Department of Justice intranet.

He passed over the third and final drawing. Her magic-assisted recall and work with a police sketch artist back in Iowa City had resulted in nigh-perfect portraits. It had taken them a while to find students who recognized the pictures, but once they did it was smooth sailing. “Kelsey Dietz,” he said. He consulted the notebook he kept tucked inside his suit coat and spelled the last name.

While Val and Eliot canvased the student body, Morgan had acquired a blanket FISA warrant. With each name the two agents brought in, she was able to expand the scope of her search wider and wider. Searches through college records and social media accounts had garnered cell phone numbers, which had led to the telecom search. She’d struck out with the first two names, but she dug into the third set of searches with the same gusto, and in this case, the third time was the charm. She crowed in victory. “Got something! One of the little idiots used her cell phone. The last ping was in Newton, Iowa,” Morgan announced. “She sent a text message!” She leaned in, tapping away to bring the message up.

“They’re headed west,” Valentine mused. It was an unnecessary observation, but he’d worked with Eliot long enough that the other man understood, and played off of, his personal tics.

“I-80,” Eliot said. “Whole lot of nothing till you get to Cheyenne. Nebraska’s a shit drive in the daytime.”

“Whole lot of flat,” Val agreed. “That was ‘07, right? The wendigo.”

“Yeah. Other than that, it’s not exactly a hotbed. So where are they going?”

Morgan cut in. “Vegas. Last text, ‘hey girl headed to Vegas. Don’t have too much fun in class.’”

Val leaned in and looked over her shoulder. “How can you read that? It’s all gibberish. There are not six R’s in ‘girl.’”

The other agent shook her head and smiled. “You’re such a Luddite, Valentine.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere. Any places of concern left in Vegas?”

Morgan considered for a moment, then shook her head. “Surprisingly, no. Black magic doesn’t appeal to the mom and pop crowd, and that’s the target audience these days.”

Eliot snorted. “I’m guessing mom and pop don’t spend much time at the Bunny Ranch.”

“That’s just you,” George called out from the front.

Morgan waited until the laughter died down. “Gentleman,” she sighed. “Focus, please. George, travel time to Las Vegas.”

He considered the GPS mounted on the van’s console, then replied, “Over a day, and that’s driving nonstop. 1,700 miles plus.”

“This is time sensitive,” Val pointed out. “For all we know, Vegas could be a pit stop. We need to get in the air as soon as possible. Can we get another ride from the Air Force?”

Morgan made a face. “I’ll have to give the Director a call. This is a top priority, but even so, our budget does not runneth over.”

“You can always point out that Val wanted to sanction her years ago. A couple of bullets would have been a lot cheaper.” Eliot grinned.

Morgan pinched the bridge of her nose, annoyed. “I’m guessing that wouldn’t be helpful.”

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing we have you here to be the voice of diplomacy,” Val said.

Paxton

Flagstaff, Arizona—Wednesday afternoon

Heading south on I-17 was, as always, a surreal experience.

Atop the plateau of the Coconino National Forest, we enjoyed the sight of tall pines and the distant promise of the mountains on the way to the Painted Desert. If this had been a pleasure trip, we could have turned north along US 180, past Humphreys Peak, and headed toward the Grand Canyon.

I’ve seen magic and monsters, but there’s nothing in this world that has made me more aware of the ephemeral insignificance of life than the Grand Canyon. The realization that my own existence has been the blink of an eye compared to the work of tens of thousands of years was at once jarring and humbling.

Though the journey had been an enjoyable one, something told me that we had limited time. The closer we came to our destination, the greater my sense of urgency. And so we pressed on. The RV performed well at high altitudes, and even though the long descent after we crested the Mogollon Rim was nerve-racking, the slow increase in the outdoor temperature was a welcome one.

We’d overnighted in Winslow, and when we rose to run this morning the thermometer had scraped forty degrees Fahrenheit. Now, outside of Prescott, the gauge read a much balmier sixty. Our eventual destination promised yet another jump, and I grinned as I broke the silence. “I hope you packed some shorts.”

She turned from her study of the red rock vista outside the windows. “Why’s that?”

“I checked the extended forecast the other day. It’s going to be in the eighties for the next week or so.”

“Good Lord, I might melt.” As far as I knew, Cassie had never left Wisconsin for an extended period of time. Even when she’d taken college classes, she’d stayed at home and commuted to the nearest campus to save money. In a very real sense, joining up on my mission was the least sensible thing she’d ever done in her life.

I grinned. “Well, I guess I need to do some shopping anyway.” Pretty much everything I owned, save for the battered Kawasaki motorcycle riding on the RV’s rear rack, had burned up in the fire Mother had set at my childhood home when she’d learned that I’d escaped from Melanie’s clutches. A couple of hours away, a replacement driver’s license, ATM card, and other vestiges of modern life waited for me at my current mailing address, the home of my friend Kent Sikora.

If it had been up to him, I would have been out west last week. The detour I’d taken back to my childhood home at the urging of a desperate and terrified ghost had thrown a wrench in the works, but on the bright side, I was no longer working alone. And Cassie’s newfound talent might be the edge we needed—despite the fact that her first use of it had been highly embarrassing.

When I finally decided to use my talents to make a living and help others, I’d almost exclusively worked alone. Oh, I leaned on Kent’s expertise from time to time, and my best friend Carlos acted as a gatekeeper to prevent the crazies from wasting my time.

While it was nice in terms of loneliness to add another soul aboard the crazy train of my life, there was just as much responsibility that came with it. Cassie’s dad had a vague idea about what had gone down with my mom and dad back in the day, and he had a general sense that I wasn’t the average layabout. He’d trusted me with his only daughter, but he’d made me swear to him, right there in my hospital room, that I’d keep her safe.

Fighting the salesman, I hadn’t thought about the potential danger being around me presented to Cassie. For most of the past few years, pissed-off poltergeists were the most exciting thing I’d dealt with. Carlos’ careful screening had failed once, and I’d ended up visiting the very haunted house of a serial killer. If anyone deserved a haunting, it had been Ray Brannigan. I’d sent the ghosts on their merry way—but only after I ran the booby-trapped obstacle course of his home and subdued him.

In the past week, I’d dealt with worse things than ghosts—all more dangerous than anything I’d seen in the decade since Mother had gone to prison. Sumerian shadow demons, witches, cloned familiars, and whatever in God’s name that guy at the truck stop had been.

“I’ve seen too much weird crap over the years to believe in coincidence,” I said, breaking the comfortable silence. I glanced over and met Cassie’s eyes.

“I can see why you could reach that conclusion,” she said. “But how’d you get there?”

“Just thinking, you know. I got used to ghosts, maybe even bored with them. And bam, just like that, weird stuff starts coming out of the woodwork.”

“What do you think it means?”

“Beats me. Maybe I should ask the book.” I was only half-joking, but I was also more than a little bit afraid of what it might reveal to me. “I don’t watch the news much, but I hear people talking. Seems like every day there’s some new depravity, some new horror, and they only pop up until the next incident pushes them into the memory hole.”

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” Cassie intoned. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

“Yeats, right?”

“I thought you doodled your way through English Lit?”

“I paid attention some of the time. That stupid poem about the fish scarred me for life, though.”

“So, what, you think this is the end of the world?”

I shifted in the driver’s seat, uncomfortable with the direction I’d steered the conversation. “Maybe. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Fire and brimstone.” I sighed. “I should have listened more to Father Rosado.”

“Who’s that?”

“Priest at the parish where Esteban De La Rosa and his family attend. I stayed with them for a while, after mom’s case.”

“So that’s where you ran off to.”

“Sunny San Diego. Spent eighteen months soaking up the rays and trying to lead a normal life.” I shrugged. “The investigation into Mother hit Esteban and Kent pretty hard. They both moved about as far away as it gets. Kent stuck around a little bit longer, so I went to San Diego first, though I bounced back and forth between there and Phoenix.”

“Since you started doing your thing, banishing ghosts—have you gotten more or less busy?”

I had to think about it for a bit. My initial sense was to think that yeah, things had been getting worse. All things being equal, the death rate was pretty consistent, so in theory, the number of ghosts should be the same.

It doesn’t work that way, of course. A ghost is, for lack of a better term, a psychic Xerox of a dead person, the residual energy of a thinking, sapient being. The soul, the actual essence of what they were, that moves on elsewhere.

I have the last part on pretty good authority, from the grimoire and other, less flaky sources.

Most deaths aren’t traumatic or painful enough to leave that impression. And it doesn’t always happen. I’ve seen some pretty heinous killings that never resulted in a revenant. Maybe that speaks to something about the person who passed, I’m not sure.

But a consistent rate of death and an increasing rate of ghost work for me left only one logical explanation. Traumatic deaths were increasing. That could be fodder for the TV news, but I’d seen the evidence of it myself over the years, hadn’t I?

“More,” I murmured. “And that’s not a good sign.”

CHAPTER 9

Helen

San Francisco, California—Wednesday evening

The hatching of the familiars brought their numbers to ten. In Vegas, a subtle push had been more than enough for a slick-haired car salesman to exchange the minivan they’d driven from Wisconsin for a more spacious full-sized Chevrolet model. They had room to spare now, which was to the good since they’d added more baggage than Helen might have liked. No matter. Surrounded by fellow practitioners and blood-loyal attack dogs, she felt safer than she had in years.

Who would have thought that strength in numbers would be such a comforting concept? Ever since her initial discoveries in the arcane realm, her sole focus had been on developing her own power so that she’d never be obligated to another for her own preservation. Her relationship with the Edimmu had been an equal partnership. Even as the ancient Sumerian shadow spirit had expanded her horizons, she’d worked to break the creature free from the prison holding it at bay.

She’d never say it to the girls, but she missed the spirit far more than she missed Melanie, the fourth member of the coven. In some regard, that was due to the fact that she’d never met the dead witch in real life. The destruction of the Edimmu at the hands of her fool of a son had eliminated an irreplaceable font of priceless knowledge.

The death of one person was nothing in comparison.

Helen took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the road ahead. The streets of San Francisco were narrow enough at the best of times, never mind riding in this beast of a vehicle. The familiars had driven most of the way from Las Vegas, but she’d taken over as they entered the city proper. It was far simpler to reacquaint herself with the streets behind the wheel than to shout out directions.

Behind her, the girls murmured as they looked out on the sights of Haight Street. A burger joint, with brightly painted murals in incandescent colors passed by on one side. Roxanne leaned forward between the front seats.

“I don’t get it. Why would a magic store be here?”

Helen smirked, though there was no antipathy to the expression of her emotion. Ever since she’d absorbed the life force of the coed, she found that she related more easily to the younger women. Their prattle made her less impatient and more desirous to talk. In a sense, she found herself as more of an older sister, or what she thought that might be like, had she had any siblings.

“It’s camouflage,” she explained. “Put it in some shadowy, one-way street, or in some back alley, it sticks out like a sore thumb.” She waved a hand. “There’s a Buffalo Exchange, there’s a pizza place. Who the hell expects someone to be selling black magic in a place like this? It’s the perfect disguise.” She pointed left, at the artistic pair of high-heeled legs jutting from the window of the Piedmont Boutique and laughed. After a moment, the girls joined in.

The sidewalks bustled, but as the van moved further away from the restaurants and cafes, the foot traffic died down. Past a bookstore that proudly, if illogically, claimed itself to be anarchist, she pulled the van over and glanced in the rearview mirror. The sidewalk and the street behind them were empty.

“It’s two doors back,” she said. “But look ahead, half a block down on the left.”

“The black car?”

“That’s the one.” Helen turned the engine off, leaving the keys in the ignition. “I’ve been thinking about how Division M swept up so many of my hiding places. I’m starting to think my friend is bent.” She turned around in the seat. “One companion each. The rest stay in the vehicle. Be good boys and keep an eye on the van. We’re going shopping.”

Agent Beckwith

San Francisco, California—Wednesday evening

Division M had worse postings than San Francisco, but not many. The worst part about being on the director’s shit list, and the cherry on top, was that you got the worst details of bad postings.

Which was how Special Agent JD Beckwith had ended up here, behind the wheel of an ancient Crown Victoria with a rookie partner who was still scrubbing the boot camp out of his ears.

Craig Reed had been an Airborne Ranger for five years. According to his file he’d seen some action, so if it came to a fight JD at least knew that the kid had his back, but damn if he wasn’t the most taciturn jerk he’d ever worked with.

And I’ve been on stakeouts with Agent Valentine, for God’s sake! The senior agent wasn’t the greatest conversationalist in the world, but at least he did a bit to help pass the time. With Reed, you got nothing. Beckwith was reduced to guzzling coffee like there was no tomorrow, which meant more frequent piss breaks and incipient heartburn.

And all for a low-profile investigation that consisted of little more than taking pictures. Walter Braun had flipped years ago to save his own ass from a hole in Gitmo, and now he sold ineffective trinkets to those who didn’t know any better and fingered his high-end customers for later bag-and-tag by the strike teams. Reed and Beckwith were just here to make sure the concealed cameras on the light poles around the antique shop did their thing. The fun part of the job was left to agents who hadn’t come this-close to blowing a years-long investigation.

Beckwith settled down into the driver’s seat and tried not to think about it. All things considered, he was lucky he hadn’t gotten fired. He’d always had a bit of a smart mouth, and telling off the West Coast assistant director hadn’t been one of his smarter moves. Even if he had been right, his lack of discretion was a career-killer.

He took a sip of coffee and straightened in his seat as a full-sized van pulled over a few doors down from the antique store. He nudged Reed as the driver stepped out.

“Hey, check out the legs on that chick.” Legs, ass, hell, the driver of the van had it all. She stepped around the front of the van and conferred with another young woman near the passenger side for a moment before heading down the sidewalk toward Braun’s place.

Beckwith flipped up the lid on the laptop mounted on the console, checking the view from the surveillance cameras. In the passenger seat, Reed leaned over and stared, then pulled back and began flipping through his phone.

“Hotties in sight and you’re playing Candy Crush? Sometimes I wonder about you, Reed…”

“Shut up,” the other man said. His tone was mild, but there was an undercurrent of steel in it. Beckwith recoiled slightly, opened his mouth to rebuke the junior agent, then caught the look in his eyes as Reed flipped his phone around.

“There are new fliers up on the BOLO board. Those four are on it, sir.”

Beckwith’s jaw dropped as he looked at the artist’s rendering of the four suspects. Holy shit, Helen Locke! He reached under his coat and double-checked that his holstered sidearm was still there.

“Grab the M-4 out of the trunk. We’re taking them down. It’s Helen Locke and her crew.” Reed hesitated, and Beckwith barked, “What?”

“We’re going to need backup, right?”

“I’ll call for backup, but this time of night, who knows how long it will the response team to roll out. We can’t risk losing them, but especially her. This is number-one on the most-wanted list, kid.”

Reed stared, and Beckwith got the sense that the other man was leery of his sudden gung-ho attitude. Well, so what? This was a chance to kill two birds with one stone. They could take down a dangerous coven and resuscitate his career at the same time. Reed glanced back at the antique shop and sighed. “All right. Call now.”

Helen

San Francisco, California—Wednesday evening

The bells mounted over the door tinkled as she pushed it open and led the girls and familiars inside. The shop was narrow but deep. The closely-packed aisles overflowed with goods of all descriptions and shelves overflowing with books lined the walls. The rich smell of old paper mixed with the vague scent of cinnamon and other spices to form a potent and comforting aroma. Despite her focus on the task at hand, Helen couldn’t help but smile.

It felt like home.

The man behind the counter was older, in his late fifties or early sixties. He wore his hair in a bushy, swept-back style. If possible, his beard was even fluffier, which gave his head the unfortunate silhouette of a squished-figure-8. He peered over the top of his half-rimmed glasses and frowned at the crew picking their way through the aisle toward him.

“Don’t touch anything, please. Can I help you find something?” The disdain in his voice was obvious. He’d obviously presumed that this crowd was much too young to take interest in antiquities.

Helen smiled. If Walter didn’t recognize her, the spell had worked even better than she’d hoped. “As much money as I’ve spent in your back room over the years, I’d think that you’d have the good grace for a welcome, Mr. Braun.”

His frown deepened. After a moment of study, his eyes went wide. “Helen?”

It had to be the voice, she decided. The blending of her and Chloe’s facial features had made her look more like her own daughter than herself, but her voice hadn’t changed all that much. It wasn’t a big deal, in the end, but interesting to note nonetheless. “Surprised to see me, Walter?”

“I, well, I saw that you’d broken out of prison, but I never expected you to…” His stammering fell silent as he reconsidered the crew spread out behind her and did the mental arithmetic. She couldn’t read his thoughts, but Walter Braun had a terrible poker face. The minute when the ‘oh shit’ ran through his mind was plain to see.

Helen stepped forward and lifted his chin with a finger, forcing him to make eye contact. “Now, I know it’s been a while, dear Walter, but surely you’ve hung onto that last item you were to acquire for me. You haven’t sold it to another buyer, in the meantime?”

He composed himself somewhat, and murmured, “You know me, Helen. I’d never double-dip on a sale. I’ve got your tracking spell in the back. Let me go get it, so you can be on your way.”

“See, there’s one other problem, Walter. After I entered prison, Division M rolled up most of my caches. Almost everything I had socked away for a rainy day, up and vanished. How is that, do you think?”

Walter licked his lips. “I don’t know, Helen.”

“Now, some of them were hiding in plain sight. Storage units in my name, that sort of thing. I expected that they’d check those out. But I had others, and very few people knew about them or what they contained.” She gripped his jaw, preventing him from turning away. “You’re on that short list, Walter. So when I pull up and spot two men in an unmarked car, that screams cop to me.” She smiled. “Start talking, or the boys will start breaking things. Once they run out of antiques they’ll start on your arms and legs.”

The shopkeeper winced. “Please,” he whined. “I’ll talk. Just don’t…” She squeezed harder, cutting him off. “Okay,” he said. “Yes. A few weeks after you got arrested, I came home and found a couple of Division M people in my house.”

“You gave me up.”

“It wasn’t you, Helen. I gave everyone up. Ever since they’ve been up in my business like white on rice. The low-level buyers, the people buying shield charms, shit like that, they give them a free pass. But anyone who’s into major league, big time magic, they put a tail on them until they can build a case. If it’s bad enough, they don’t even bother—they rendition their ass. Rumor has it there’s some sort of black site prison out there for arcane types. It’s supposed to make Gitmo look like summer camp.” Walter must not have liked what he saw on her face. He spewed words at her as fast as he could compose them. “You’ve got to understand, shit went downhill fast. This hard-charger took over the West Coast office after you went away. You’ve heard the rumors about the deals the Division has made, same as I have. Well, I’m here to tell you, one of these agents they sent to break into my house, the guy wasn’t human.” He shuddered. “I’d rather turn narc than see any of those three ever again. Especially that sleepy-eyed freak.”

Helen cocked her head to the side, curious. “Is that who’s outside now?”

“I don’t know. They rotate people so often, I can’t keep them straight. I try to ignore them.”

“Names.”

“What?”

“The ones who came to your house.”

“Eliot was the monster. Some southern hick, Valentine. And their boss, Newquist. But he’s not around here anymore, I heard one of the agents talking about him being promoted.”

“I don’t care about that,” she said in a mild tone. “I need to know who to torture to get my things back, Walter.” She narrowed her eyes. “Speaking of which—where’s the spell you acquired for me? Did you give that up to the Feds, too?”

“No, no. They didn’t find that hiding spot. Here, I’ll go get it…”

“No,” Helen interjected. “Roxanne, there’s a safe in the back. Take two of the boys and push it to the side. Then…”

The bells over the door tinkled.

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Wednesday evening

We made it to Kent’s house right before sunset.

I’d been there before, but not since I decided to forgo hotel rooms. Even with the familiarity, we had to consult the mapping app on Cassie’s cell phone a few times. Thankfully there were more than enough cul-de-sacs in Kent’s subdivision to turn the RV around as needed.

Kent and his wife, Barb, had settled down a bit north of the city’s core. A few years before they moved in, the entire area had been empty desert, but out west towns tend to spread out rather than up. In terms of sheer area, Phoenix was almost twice the size of New York City, but it had only a fifth of the population.

Despite that, our drive in turned a bit nerve-wracking the further south—and closer to the city—we came. It had only been three or four years since I’d last visited, but the traffic seemed to have swelled exponentially in that time. Developments had sprouted up off of exits that I vaguely remembered as having been empty or the sites for lone, overpriced gas stations.

Once I found my bearings, and with them, Kent’s street, I pulled into the graveled motor home parking spot to the right of his garage. He’d been waiting for us on his front porch. With his feet up on the decorative Spanish-style block wall and a Corona in one hand, he took an exaggerated look at his watch and gave me a thumbs-up.

I shared a grin with Cassie. When we emerged at the front of the RV, Kent was waiting with his arms wide. He clasped me in a hug tight enough to make me wince from the pressure on my still-aching ribs. Noticing my reaction, he eased up a bit. “You look like hell, kid. You never call, you never write…” He winked at Cassie. “At least you brought your secretary along.”

The big disadvantage to using Kent’s house as my address of record was that my replacement driver’s license, bank cards, and cell phone got shipped halfway across the country after I lost them in Wisconsin. We’d bought a prepaid junker to keep from running Cassie’s data plan into the ground, but I’d still kept most of my communication short, sweet, and via text message. Kent had a day job, and even though I was coming to help out, he didn’t have the spare time to babysit every stray thought that ran through my head.

Kent slapped me on the shoulder and shook his head. “Well, don’t stand there. Grab the bags. C’mon, Cassie, I’ll give you the dime tour.” Rolling my eyes, I winked at her and retreated to the RV to grab our things. The Sikoras had a pair of guest bedrooms their kids and grandkids used for holiday accommodations. The rooms were on the same side of the hall with a Jack and Jill bathroom between. I put Cassie’s stuff in one bedroom and my own in the other without putting too much thought about it, then spent the next few moments agonizing over the knowing look she’d given me the other day.

Maybe I was lying to myself, but I didn’t know how I felt about…things. Our fathers had been friends when we were in high school, but Cassie and I had never run with the same crowd. When dad, Mr. Hatcher, and I caught Brewer games in the summer, Cassie was usually with her friends, or at some camp or another. We were cordial outside of school, but we were never what you would call friends.

I suppose surviving an extreme situation together did a lot for your appreciation for a person. Teenage me had found Cassie attractive. Knowing that she was a calm bad-ass in a tight spot upped the ante to an unfamiliar and uncomfortable level.

One of the things I’d realized early on after I gained the push was that it made taking advantage of people easy, even seductive. It was simple enough to keep from using it during day-to-day interactions. Unsure how my willpower would be in romantic situations, I’d never let myself get close enough to a woman that I might lose control. With the push, they’d be completely willing, but I knew that I’d still know what I’d done, if it came to that.

Living such a monastic lifestyle sucked, to put it simply. It’d been over a decade since I’d been on so much as a date, and I’d grown so used to keeping my carnal desires tamped down that I was now torn on what to do.

So I gritted my teeth, splashed some water on my face, and went out into the main room of the house. The sliding door leading to the backyard admitted the appealing aroma of grilled burgers. I focused on the smell and tried not to think about other things as I joined the rest of the crew.

Kent and his wife, though of the same age, couldn’t have been any more different in appearance. He was short and broad, with a bushy beard of white hair that didn’t distract from the fact that he was cue-ball bald.

Jean Sikora was an inch or two taller than her husband. She had a slim and graceful build and perfect, perpetually-coiffed hair in a style that made her look a decade younger. I’d once said to Kent that she’d have been perfectly cast as a ballet instructor in one of those Oscar-bait movies I never seemed to catch.

The thought had brought a twinkle to his eyes, and with a grin, he’d said, “Beauty and the beast.”

Jean said something in a low voice, and Cassie laughed along with her. I hadn’t heard the joke, but I smiled at their joy, nonetheless. This was a happy place; always had been, and I felt the weight of the last week lift off my shoulders, despite our heady reason for coming here.

Kent led us in grace, and we tucked in. Despite our tardiness, the meal was divine. I found myself apologizing to Jean for making them wait, but she waved a hand at me.

“Oh, nonsense. I had a late lunch and the old man rolled in a bit before you two. Don’t let him fool you. He’s been burning the candle at both ends, trying to wrap this thing up.” She peered at me over the tops of her reading glasses and added, “I’m going to tidy up the kitchen a bit. You three take all the time you need, but no shop talk once you’re in the house.”

“I’ll help,” Cassie offered, but Jean shook her head.

“From what I understand, you’re a member of this team as well, dear. I’ll be fine puttering around in the kitchen on my own.” She fixed Kent with a serious look. “But don’t take too long. You’ve not been getting enough sleep as it is.”

“Yes, dear,” Kent replied. I resisted the urge to crack a smile. He may have been the physical brute of the relationship, but when it came to making sure that he took care of himself, Mrs. Sikora ruled the roost.

He produced a battered pipe and tapped a measure of tobacco into it. “First things first. We going to talk about your get out of jail free card?”

My smile felt awkward enough that I knew it was a weak attempt. “I know it wasn’t you this time, so I’m not sure what there is to talk about.”

He grunted, amused, then said, “Your paranoia may be rubbin’ off on me, but your mystery guardian angel gives me the heebie-jeebies, son.” Kent lit his pipe with a wooden match and took a few thoughtful puffs. As recently as five years ago, he’d quit smoking entirely.

This is worse than he’s said, I reasoned, and I felt immediately guilty at my delay. If I’d left when he first called, maybe we would have had things nailed by now. Maybe—I forced myself to cut off that line of thinking. If I’d forgotten about Bobby Gennaro and my old house, Cassie would be dead and Mother would have the grimoire. One way or another, sometimes things happened for a reason, and amazing results can come from the worst situations. I thought about a brilliant light shining down from an otherwise-black midnight sky and shivered despite the warmth of the desert air. “How bad is it?”

He wrinkled his forehead, considering the change of subject. “Twelve, so far.”

Cassie whispered a curse.

I resisted the urge to let my jaw drop. “That many? Shouldn’t there be more of a hubbub in the press?”

“One of several reasons why I reached out to you. Don’t get me wrong, holding things back from the press is a tried and true method of weeding out the nonsense from the nuggets of truth when it comes to tip lines, confessions, that sort of thing.” He trailed off and glanced around. Jean was visible, so he wasn’t worried about her overhearing. I gave Cassie a look and received a raised eyebrow in response. If Kent noticed, he didn’t let on. Satisfied that the growing night around of us was bereft of spying eyes and ears, he took a puff off his pipe and continued. “The first few bodies, I could understand. We were only able to identify half of them definitively, but they all had criminal records for vagrancy, trespassing, that sort of thing.”

“Homeless,” I guessed.

“Exactly. One interesting thing, though. Other than being dead, they all looked pretty good. Clean shaven, hair trimmed. No way of telling if they were still on the sauce or not, because…” Kent gave Cassie a wary look.

“I’m not some wilting flower, Mr. Sikora,” she said tartly. “I can handle it.”

“Call me Kent, girlie. And that ain’t it. I’ve been doing this for a long time, so safe to say I’ve seen some shit. And this still has me shaking.” He paused, waiting for her response. She crossed her arms and leaned back in the chair. He gave me a look, and I grinned. “Kids,” he grumbled. “Fine. The autopsies and toxicology have been limited because the victims didn’t have much to test. They were opened up below the ribcage and, well, cleaned out. Lungs, intestines, liver, the whole shebang. Just a big hollow place where their insides used to be.”

Cassie grimaced, and I was right there with her. The burgers in my stomach might have made a run for it, had I not seen something all too similar to weigh Kent’s words by.

“Melanie, one of my mom’s witch groupies. She took her family to my house and butchered them in the living room. Some sort of ritual. But I’m guessing you figured something similar since you called me.”

Kent toasted me with his pipe. “Nailed it, son. That’s not the worst of it, though. The homeless population, for obvious reasons, don’t generally like to talk to the police. But a few of the beat cops, they’ve got good reputations . They leaned on that, and that got us a timeline. Our second victim was missed, and the last time anyone saw him was two weeks before we found the body.”

Kent had called me a week ago. His voice had been casual, but had I missed some undercurrent on the line? “What happened?”

“Home invasion last week. Mother and father executed. Their five-year old twins were missing, boys.” He paged through one of the folders and pulled out a glossy photograph. Two identical brothers, one with a gap-toothed grin, wrestled on a beige carpet. “Evan and Ethan; the latter is the one with the missing tooth. Normally, we wouldn’t have made the leap, but they had a security camera over their front door. The crew drove a black van matching the description of the vehicle at least two of the first series of the victims were seen getting into.”

“That’s a thin lead.” The statement sounded like a protest in my ears because I knew, deep down, that it wasn’t, at all.

“Yup.”

I met Kent’s eyes. “We’ve got a week.”

CHAPTER 10

Agent Beckwith

San Francisco, California—Wednesday evening

“Thirty minutes?” Beckwith repeated, aghast. “That’s the best you can do? Where’s the damn helicopter, Argosy?”

“Down for maintenance. You’re sure it was Locke?” The tinkle of glass and flatware in the background—along with the supervisory agent’s annoyed tone—told Beckwith all he needed to know. His reputation was crap, and the man was out to dinner. He was lucky Argosy had even answered the phone.

He glanced sideways at Reed. The younger agent had the M-4 assault rifle from the trunk between his knees, barrel up. “Hundred percent certainty.”

“Fine. We’re scrambling the tac team now. Hold tight, we’ll be there as soon as we can. Don’t try and take them alone, Beckwith. She’s bad news, and her crew can’t be much better.”

The other agent hung up and Beckwith barely resisted the urge to pitch his cell phone out the window. “They ain’t going to spend thirty minutes in there,” he muttered under his breath. “They’re going to get what they came for and then they’ll be in the wind.” He could imagine the jokes already, even if the surveillance cameras got a good enough picture of Locke and her crew. And either way, their snitch was probably walking the thin line between life and death.

“What do you want to do?” Reed said. His voice was quiet, but Beckwith could tell that the other man was ready to follow his lead. He stared at the storefront, wishing he could see what was going on inside.

Screw the snitch. “Argosy was right about one thing, that crew is bound to be bad news. We hold tight here. If it comes down to it, do you think you can put enough bullets in the engine block to stop that van?”

“I can’t guarantee it with this poodle shooter. I can go for the tires, maybe. Worst case scenario, we use the car. Not like it’s going to mess up the paint, right?”

The shabby appearance of the Division M vehicles was a running joke. The budget was so tight that they cut corners wherever they could. Most of the ragtag fleet consisted of hand-me-downs or auctioned off vehicles from other, more financially robust agencies. That look was a calculated one, though. The headquarters tech teams worked their magic—technological, not actual, so far as Beckwith knew—and got each vehicle in perfect working order. The Crown Vic the two men checked out of the motor pool before heading over had patches of rust and faded paint, but the engine purred like a kitten and had much more horsepower than stock. If they needed to turn it into a guided missile, it would do the job.

“Okay,” Beckwith began. Movement on the street drew his attention, and he cursed as a man in a black overcoat slipped in the door to the antique store. His conscience didn’t ping much leaving Walter Braun to his fate—the guy was literal human garbage—but no way was he cold enough to leave a civilian to the ill graces of a coven of witches. He glanced at Reed. The younger man had seen it as well, and he gave a half-hearted shrug.

“So much for waiting for backup, I guess?”

Beckwith grabbed his phone, tapped out a quick text message to Argosy, and slid his Glock out of its holster. “Let’s do this, kid.”

Helen

San Francisco, California—Wednesday evening

The new arrival was tall and broad-shouldered. Dressed all in black, he wore a long topcoat and carried a shiny black walking stick. A glistening, polished obsidian ball topped its length and nearly disappeared into the span of his broad hand. His head was clean-shaved, though he affected a closely-trimmed beard of steel gray hair.

Walter, Helen and her crew, and the new arrival studied each other in silence before she took the initiative to speak. “We’re having a private meeting, sir. You’ll have to come some other time.”

The new arrival cocked his head to one side and smiled. “We seem to be at a bit of an impasse, then, love,” the tall man said. Despite the subdued class of his outfit, his accent was pure Cockney. “I’ve come too bloody far to leave empty-handed, and you don’t seem predisposed to letting me conduct my business this very night.”

“Maybe you should leave, then,” Kelsey hissed. She cupped a handful of roiling liquid fire in one hand. Helen gritted her teeth at the display in front of a mundane, then checked the reaction. If her display of power intimidated the Brit, he didn’t show it. She looked at the newcomer with fresh eyes and resisted the urge to wince.

“Put that away,” Helen said, keeping her tone mild. “We’re just talking here.” She licked suddenly dry lips. “Isn’t that so, Mr. Knight?”

He raised an eyebrow, then winked. “I don’t suppose I should be surprised to be recognized in a fine establishment such as this. Though I must confess that I can’t imagine why dear Walter looks so terrified of you lot.”

She smiled in genuine amusement, though it was undercut with more than a little fear. “Well, there are seven of us, Aleister. My name is Helen Locke. I’m traveling incognito, at the moment.”

Knight gave her a significant head-to-toe glance. “I’ve heard of you,” he said dismissively. “Incognito’s the word, I suppose.” He winked again. “Lucked into some of Lizzie Bathory’s old notebooks, eh?”

“Perhaps.”

“Care to compare notes?”

She batted her eyelashes. “Why, Mr. Knight, we’ve just met. You don’t expect a girl to spill all her secrets on the first date, do you?”

He shook his head and smirked. “Next time, perhaps.” Knight’s tone grew more serious. “Word is, you’re not set up as well as you once were.”

“Oh, but we’re getting along so well. Your reputation has only brushed the surface of your foresight, good sir. Surely you didn’t come all this way to thump your chest and piss on the bushes.”

He bared ferocious white teeth. “I can take seven. I’ve faced longer odds.”

Her blood went cold, and she willed herself to keep her face composed. “I believe it. But there’s no need for that. And surely you don’t want to create an incident when you can simply claim what you came for and be on your way. Our business need not interfere with yours.”

Knight turned his head and stared at Walter. “That right, is it?”

“They’re not here for anything of yours, Aleister. This is bad timing, that’s all.”

“More than you know,” Helen confirmed. “From your nonchalance, I’m guessing dear Walter hasn’t told you about the federal agents in the vehicle outside.”

“That so? You about to sell me out, Walter?”

“No, no—nothing like that, Aleister. Please believe me.”

“Perhaps as a show of good faith, you can claim what you came for and leave via the rear entrance, Mr. Knight.” Helen turned and favored Walter with a smile. “And I’m sure Walter will be more than happy to give you a significant discount.”

Despite the overwhelming odds facing him, the shop keep’s eyes boggled. “Are you out of your mind, woman? Do you have any idea what the thing cost?”

“Shut up,” Helen pushed. “Don’t speak until I release you.”

Walter’s lips slammed together, and he brushed at them with trembling fingers.

Aleister Knight chuckled in approval. “Well, well. I see the rumors have understated things a bit.”

“You have no idea, my dear.” She indicated the door to the rear half of the shop. “Shall we?” He nodded, and she signaled the girls to stay where they were. “Move it, Walter. You and you, come along, as well.” The two familiars flanked the trembling shopkeeper and shoved him into the back room. Antique furniture, much of it in various states of repair and restoration occupied workbenches throughout the back of the building. The area was no larger than the front of the shop, but it was much less cluttered and didn’t feel quite as claustrophobic.

Helen indicated a hulking steel safe that lined the wall next to an old roll-top desk. “Move it aside, boys.”

The familiars took hold of the steel block and heaved. The contents clunked and rattled as it pivoted, then fell to the floor with a floorboard-shaking crash.

Walter moaned behind clenched lips, but Helen ignored it. She glanced at Knight and indicated the bare drywall where the safe had once stood. “Our friend here is a middling talent, but he does have a nifty little spell to patch holes in his wall. Tear open, hide, repair, repeat as needed.” She chuckled. “He also has the tendency to talk too much when he’s drinking.”

She indicated the appropriate area, and the familiars punched into the wallboard, tearing back chunks of paper and gypsum. Their efforts revealed a small shelf, set about waist height between two of the vertical studs. A handful of butcher-paper wrapped rectangles—about the size of books—leaned against the stud on the left, while a long cardboard cylinder leaned to the right.

“The tube, I assume.”

Knight dipped his head in a restrained bow. “I’ll be sure to spread the word that you are one not to underestimate, love.” One of the familiars handed him the cardboard tube. As he tucked it under his arm, something inside vibrated, on the razor’s edge of the audible range.

Knight grasped her hand delicately in one of his own and brought it to his lips. “The experience has been enchanting, shall we say, my lady. If you ever find yourself on the other side of the pond, look me up.”

She smirked. “Perhaps I will,” she said. “Your exit is that way, Mr. Knight.”

He hustled through the rear of the building and pushed the exit door open. It hissed shut behind him, then settled back into place with a much louder clicking noise.

Helen turned to the hole in the wall and pulled the paper-wrapped parcels out one at a time. There were five in total, and she handed them off to one of the waiting familiars. Need to get the girls to name them or something. “I have to say, Walter, I’m actually a little bit impressed. I figured you’d have sold this stuff out from under your buyers to save your own skin.” She glanced over, realized her error, and added, “You may speak now.”

His lips parted, and he took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m bent, not stupid. You have any idea what those savages do to magic they deem to be too dangerous? They destroy it. These spells are living, breathing history. In some archive, or reduced to a pile of ashes, they’re nothing.”

The sudden rhythmic pounding that made its way through the walls of the store froze Helen until she realized that it was. Gunfire. In a rage, she rounded on Braun. “Where’s the alarm, Walter? You sell us out?”

He raised a placating hand and shouted. “No! Of course not! I…”

She didn’t bother to wait for his explanation. She flicked her hands in a quarter-circle at the wrist. Spectral force caught Walter, lifting him off his feet. He tumbled twice before slamming face-first into the fallen safe. Blood splattered across the black paint, and he choked for air through a mouth suddenly filled with shards of bone and splintered teeth.

He’d live, but not for long. Either way, she had more important things to concern herself with.

“Come along, boys. Someone just started a war.”

Agent Beckwith

San Francisco, California—Wednesday evening

It was all going swimmingly until the back door of the full-size van opened and disgorged a pair of identical twins.

Beckwith’s entire focus had been on the front of the antique shop, but to his credit, he pivoted in the street and trained his sidearm on the two new arrivals. A car honked at the gathering. The driver must have recognized the weapons on display after the fact because he shifted into reverse and peeled out.

“Federal agent,” Beckwith barked. “On the ground, now!”

Neither of the two reacted, other than to spread apart as they stalked closer. Out of site, the van’s side door slid open, and he heard a pair of heavy boots land on the sidewalk.

The odds were starting to look worse with every passing second. The twins rushing him had halved the distance. “On the ground!” he repeated, but neither seemed inclined to obey. He twisted slightly at the hips and fired twice. Blood bloomed on the right twin’s chest. He had a split-second to recognize that the wound didn’t so much as slow him down before the attacker reached him and snatched his shooting hand. He tried to fire again, but pain surged up his arm. Beckwith cried out, then a titanic blow to his chest drove the wind from him and lifted him off his feet.

He landed on the opposite sidewalk, and the impact sent still waves of agony cascading up his injured arm. He tried to lift it, to fire again, but it wouldn’t obey his mental commands. Beckwith looked down, and just as soon wished that he hadn’t. The attacker had shattered his radius and ulna at the wrist, and his hand flopped, empty and useless.

He looked back to the road and saw his sidearm laying on the yellow line. It might as well have been a mile away for all the opportunity he’d have to get to it.

The attackers bent low to the ground, and he realized all at once that their motions were like nothing human. They were feral, intent. The blood dripping from the wounded one had turned from crimson to a deep, putrid shade of black. Familiars. Ah, hell.

They eased toward him in an almost playful fashion. And why not? As far as they were concerned, there was no way for him to get out of this mess.

Even federal agents had to think twice about hauling military-grade hardware around in a major metropolitan area. For that reason, Beckwith had ordered Reed to stay back at the Crown Vic. Rolling on his side, he pushed himself to his feet with his good arm and shouted, “Light ‘em up, Ranger!”

As posh and touristy as Haight Street was, a couple of gunshots were not completely outside the realm of possibility. Methodical, aimed bursts from an assault rifle were not quite so easy to ignore. If there was any shouting or screaming from the busier areas to the west, he couldn’t hear it over Reed’s shooting.

Cradling his arm to his chest, he sprinted toward the Crown Vic. The M-4 rattled, then fell silent. Reed popped a fresh magazine in and resumed firing in the space of a few footsteps. Glittering brass already littered the ground at his feet.

Beckwith stole a glance to his right. Reed stitched a row of black-seeping wounds up one familiar’s torso. It staggered forward, then collapsed. Before it hit the ground, Beckwith saw enough bullet holes in its torso to make him wonder if Reed had enough ammunition.

The younger agent looked his way, then shouted, “Move your ass!”

He took Reed at his word. He snapped his head forward and redoubled his efforts. Every step jostled his broken arm and sent waves of agony up to his shoulder, but that was far more palatable than having two of those things get their hands on him.

The blast of fire hit the Crown Vic when he was still twenty feet away. The intense white flames lapped up and over the driver’s side of the vehicle in a fashion that seemed more liquid than was natural. Reed recoiled from his position on the hood, and the fire surged toward him. The front tires exploded with sudden bangs, and his shriek joined the cacophony as blazing tendrils split, then wrapped around his body. Without time for another cry, the heat intensified and the stench of burnt pork washed over Beckwith as the figure of his young partner collapsed into a pile of ash.

Beckwith recoiled, turning to face the road and planting his back against the wall of the nearest building. He had a snub-nose .357 in an ankle holster, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to draw it and fire with his off hand. Reloading was out of the question.

The first familiar put a boot on the edge of the sidewalk, but both of them froze, cut off by a high-pitched shriek. “Stop!”

He glanced over in time to see the stacked blonde cuff one of the other women on the side of the head. She leaned in and muttered something in her ear. The second woman shot daggers in Beckwith’s direction, but she nodded and stepped back.

“Secure him, boys.” The blonde took a prim step up onto the sidewalk as each familiar grabbed an arm. He grimaced at the renewed agony and wished he’d run a bit faster. He suspected that burning alive with Reed would have been a more desirable fate than what he was about to suffer.

“Ease up on his arm. That’s no way to conduct a conversation.” The familiar shifted its grip upward, and she nodded in satisfaction. “There, that’s better. What’s your name?”

He gave a moment’s consideration to refusing to answer, but what was the point? She’d just compel him to speak. “JD Beckwith.”

“A pleasure. You can call me Helen.” She paused as though waiting for a reaction, then narrowed her eyes. “You don’t seem surprised by my name. Division M, I presume?”

“Yes.” He said it through gritted teeth, but the admission was an easy one, to his chagrin.

“How long has your team had my picture?” He shrugged and said nothing. With a sigh, she continued. “I’m going to give you a moment. If you don’t answer the boys will have a contest to see who can tear an arm off first.”

“Not long. A couple of hours, maybe.”

She smiled. “Now, isn’t that better? Would you happen to know the whereabouts of my son, Agent Beckwith?”

He blinked in surprise. “I—no, I don’t.”

“Pity. Who might know, do you think? Newquist, perhaps?”

He winced at her mention of the boss’s name, then wondered if she knew anything or if she was fishing. Either way, he’d given up the store with his reaction. Reed would have done better here.

“I see.” Helen patted his jacket pockets and retrieved his cell phone. “Code?”

A heretofore unknown well of strength rose up inside him, and he clenched his teeth. The rest of his life most likely numbered mere minutes, but he could damn sure not go out like a coward.

She glanced up, gauged his expression, and sighed. “Code,” she said, but this time, there was more weight behind the word. The volume was no different, but it was suddenly the only thing Beckwith could hear, and when he opened his mouth to obey, a wave of happiness overwhelmed the terror and agony gripping his body. “5-8-7-0-4-6.”

“Excellent.” Helen flicked through screens, stopped, and smiled. “Perfect. Now, Agent Beckwith, this is going to be a bit uncomfortable, but it will all be over soon.” She raised the phone. The flash illuminated, dazzling his eyes. When it didn’t turn off, he realized that she’d activated the video function. Before he could ponder much on that, a spike of cold something pierced his brain. He stiffened, the agony building to a crescendo. When his lips began moving, the voice that issued from his throat was his own, but the words did not belong to him. He struggled to scream, to change the message, but everything was cold, and there was nothing he could do.

The flash went out. The frigid sensation departed with it and left him with a dull aching sensation in his head. He sagged, physically exhausted. It took a herculean effort to raise his eyes, but when he did, he saw Helen Locke tapping away on his phone. It beeped, and she smirked in silent satisfaction. “There. Thank you for your assistance, Agent Beckwith.” She looked over her shoulder. “Kelsey?”

The chastised girl replied, “Yes?”

“Burn him.”

CHAPTER 11

Helen

San Francisco, California—Wednesday night

The van had taken a couple of rounds in the exchange with Division M, and nothing screamed ‘look at me’ to a cop more than a vehicle with bullet holes. A few pieces of duct tape made a good enough patch to keep gawking do-gooders from calling the police.

A veritable storm of flashing lights was visible in the rearview mirror until Helen turned north and headed toward the financial district. The conference she’d attended while still working for the university was paying off in full. The streets weren’t entirely unfamiliar to her. With the aid of the navigation screen in the dashboard, she’d gotten them well away from Walter’s shop in short order.

Despite the lateness of the hour, she found an open parking garage and pulled the van down to the lowest level. The potential that Division M could come down on them at any moment hovered over them like the Sword of Damocles, and though she felt confident that they could more than handle themselves against anything the government could bring to bear, any fight would be an untenable delay in her timetable.

“Keep an eye out,” she muttered to Kelsey, in the passenger seat. “There isn’t a lot to choose from down here. We may have to split up into two vehicles.”

Giselle called out from the rear of the van. “What about Bo and Ed?”

She turned in the seat, frowning in confusion, then realized. The ill-fated Division M agents had injured two of the familiars, and apparently, the girls had given them names. “They’ll heal faster than you or I would. Patch the big holes as best you can and give them some beef jerky.” She glanced at Kelsey. “You named them?”

“A thru F,” the little witch said with a grin. “Al, Bo, Cal, Deke, Ed, and Frank.”

“Whatever,” Helen muttered. It was easier than calling them ‘hey, you,’ at least. Maybe we can get some name tags. “Here come a couple of people,” she observed. The man and woman stepped out of the glass-enclosed elevator foyer and leaned into each other as they moved across the parking garage. They moved out of her line of sight. Kelsey craned her head to one side.

“Little sports car,” she reported.

“Pass, then,” Helen said. “Keep an eye out.” She pulled one of Walter’s packages out of the canvas bag she’d stashed them in and worked her way inside. Braun had left no identifying marks on the plain brown butcher paper, which was strange enough. Maybe the shopkeeper had memorized what each package was by size.

The papers inside were brown with age, bundled together with fraying lengths of crisscrossed twine. She glanced at the writing on the top page, twisting the package a bit to catch the light better. Weather, she noted. Her initial interest waned a bit with disappointment that it wasn’t what she was looking for. Useful, and worth further study at some point, but not what she needed.

She hit pay dirt with the second package. The long-forgotten scribe had recorded the spell on a single, overlarge panel of animal skin—still supple despite obvious age. After removing the paper, she unfolded it in her lap and crooned in delight.

Kelsey leaned over. “What is it?”

“Eyes on the elevator,” Helen said, but there was no anger in her tone. “It’s a location spell, dear. It’s limited, of course—most magic is, in one way or another—but it will suffice for our needs. With this, I can find anything I’ve held in the past.”

“Your grimoire,” Kelsey said.

“Or my son. Either will suffice. Quiet, for a moment, please.” She didn’t want to turn on the dome light, but she didn’t think she’d need to. The tanned leather was pale enough, and the ink dark enough, that there was more than enough contrast for her to make out the text.

In one of the many talks she’d had with the Edimmu before her son had locked away both her body and her power, the being had explained to her that the learning of magic differed from person to person. Some saw a spell on a holistic level and could reproduce it at will, while others required a mnemonic or similar memory device in order to reproduce the effects. The latter, she’d reasoned, was most likely the inspiration for the folklore around verbal spell casting. She, unfortunately, fell into that category. Thankfully, most spells could be cast with but a few words, and not the sentences and paragraphs inscribed on the leather in her lap.

With a shiver, she came back to herself, vaguely aware of the newfound mystical fire burning in the pit of her stomach. Kelsey said something she couldn’t make out, and she turned to look at the girl. “What?”

“There,” the girl repeated. “Lady loading some stuff into a Honda Pilot. Should we send out one of the boys?”

“No,” Helen shook her head. “We need to keep this quiet. I’ll go.”

She hopped out of the van and tried to walk casually toward the vehicle Kelsey had indicated. In the end, it was moot. The woman had a cellphone pinched between her ear and her shoulder, and she was more concerned with loading a series of shopping bags into the rear of the SUV than paying attention to her surroundings. Helen got within earshot, then stood and waited for the woman to finish her phone call.

The conversation was over for a few moments before Helen’s prey had an available hand to pluck it away. With both sets of shopping bags in the rear of the SUV, she dropped the phone into her purse, turned, and flinched. “Oh! I didn’t see you there. Are you all right?”

Helen smiled. “Perfect. I need you to pull your car over there, next to the van.”

“Excuse me?”

Push. “Now.”

“Yes, of course.”

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Thursday morning

He’d moved to the desert, but Kent kept his four-wheel drive Suburban.

“Don’t have the snow to deal with, obviously,” he observed as he turned right onto a street that already bustled with traffic at seven in the morning. This far out of the city core, I had little chance to navigate without street signs. Every building was some variation of tan or gray stucco, and few if any were more than three stories in height. “But we’ve picked up more than a few cases on the edge of the city limits where it’s come in handy.”

I leaned forward between the front seats. Since it was Cassie’s first time, I’d offered her shotgun for better sightseeing. “You working solo on this case, or what?”

“My partner and I are lead detectives. There’s a task force, but that’s just a fancy word for few forensic techs and any patrol cops we want to Shanghai.” He gave me a look in the mirror. “I didn’t mention this last night, but the day after I called you, I got a call from the chief of detectives. He wanted to make sure that I wasn’t using any city resources to pay for—quote, unquote—outside consultants.”

“Convenient.”

“Ain’t it, now? Now, I called you on my personal cell phone, so thinking they’ve got it tapped is a bit more into the X-Files than I’m ready to go, but my partner was pretty close. I didn’t think he was close enough to eavesdrop, but maybe he was.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Cassie said. “Being lackadaisical is one thing, but that’s coming close to throwing up a roadblock.”

“Right,” Kent agreed. “And being one of the ‘new guys’ in the department, even after a few years, means I don’t have a lot of people that I know I can trust absolutely.”

“Good thing we’ve got Cassie the human lie detector, then,” I said with a grin.

“How’s that?”

I summarized the story, leaving out my own failure to pass the first test of Cassie’s spell. She turned and grinned at me as I concluded.

Kent made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. “Hell, let’s try it.”

Cassie thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Okay.”

He waited for a beat, then said, “My partner, Tully Roberts, told someone about the phone call I made to Paxton.”

Jumping a bit in her seat, she said in a far-off voice, “No, he didn’t hear you. It’s strange. The picture in my head is fuzzy, almost. It wasn’t like that when we tried it before, but I get the same sense.” She shook her head, and said, in a normal tone of voice “Sorry.”

Kent shrugged. “Hey, just means we have to do things the hard way. We’re here.” He turned off the main road and almost immediately turned left into a small parking lot. To our west, cars buzzed by on the surface road, bearing their occupants to work, school, or other parts unknown, but an island of tranquility in the center of the urban jungle lay before us.

As we piled out of the Suburban, the low-level roar of even more cars hit my ears. A half-block east, the noise of the interstate was evident in spite of the tall sound barriers lined up on either side of the highway.

Off the parking lot, a sign planted in immaculate landscaping boasted ‘Desert Storm Park.’ Beyond the sign, the park plunged into a bowl scooped out of the desert landscape. The lush grass carpeting the depression would have seemed out of place if I hadn’t been familiar with the area. The first time I visited Kent and Jean, the sheer amount of green space shocked me. It didn’t jive with the concept of ‘desert’ that I’d always kept in my head. Much of that was due to widespread irrigation, of course, but there was still plenty of life here despite the temperate environs.

A paved path circled the park, dipping in and out of the bowl. Concrete benches scalloped one side of the curve, and I imagined it would make a fun venue for an outdoor concert on a cool evening.

Kent led us down the left side of the path and stopped maybe a hundred feet from the parking lot. He indicated a spot of otherwise unassuming grass on one side of the path. “The first body was right here, about three months ago.” He waved a hand. “There are apartment buildings over there, and over there. Guy out walking his dog found it and called it in.”

I knelt near the spot he’d indicated and ran my fingers through the grass. After all that time, any physical evidence would be long gone—carried away by the elements or cleaned up by forensics, but Kent hadn’t brought me here to look for hairs or DNA samples.

“Anybody there?” I murmured, but the volume of my voice wasn’t the critical part. The underlying command in my voice was like a bullhorn to the spirit world. I’d garnered the ability to speak to ghosts from the grimoire, driven by desperate grief for one last conversation with my father. I hadn’t gotten it, but I’d gotten things far worse or far better depending on your perspective. The ability to speak with and banish ghosts provided me a better living than I had any right to expect given my only above-average intellect and lack of any particular skills. On the other hand, it also made me an almost literal magnet to them, which is an even bigger pain in the ass than it sounds like.

I waited a few moments, but nothing happened. Now that I was paying attention, the park itself felt empty. Oh, there were people there. A young couple was playing Frisbee at the bottom of the bowl, and an older guy in a baseball cap walked a fluffy little dog on the opposite rim. It was the opposite of a ghost-town.

Standing up, I shook my head. “Nada.”

Kent grunted. “That normal? I mean, this wasn’t the place where he died, but that doesn’t matter, right?”

“No. If the body’s stashed away in a trunk or something, then yeah, it’s more likely than not that the ghost will stick around, but they aren’t strictly locked into one place.” I thought about the salesman’s nameless victim and wondered if he’d dissipated after I killed the creature that murdered him. The line of thought was moot, so I shook it off. “Otherwise, hospitals would be even more depressing than they already are.” I’ve sometimes wondered if that attachment to the body was the reason behind the old custom of building fences around graveyards. It doesn’t matter, of course—they can well, ghost, through pretty much anything solid.

“Worth going to the morgue?”

“Nah. The kill and dump site are the most likely places to have any sort of connection.” I thought about a body missing most of its innards, scooped out like the bowl of this park, and tried not to shudder. “It’s even possible there wasn’t a ghost. I doubt it, but it can happen.”

“Next one?”

“You’re driving,” I pointed out.

CHAPTER 12

Valentine

Washington, DC—Thursday afternoon

The night before, the team had spent a grand total of twenty minutes on the ground in Las Vegas—long enough for the Air Force to refuel the C-130 and swap out the crew for a rested one. The order to return had come in somewhere over Utah. His searing frustration had faded somewhat, but he was ready to stoke the flames higher if he didn’t like the explanation they were about to get.

Wearing the same clothing he’d been in for the past thirty-six hours, Valentine strode into the conference room, jerked a seat out, and collapsed into it. He considered planting his cowboy boots on the polished mahogany of the table but decided that would be pushing things a bit too far. He settled for a disapproving scowl.

If his boss noticed the look or cared about his slovenly appearance, he didn’t let on. Newquist nodded in his direction. “Matthew. Coffee’s on the credenza if you’re so inclined.”

“I’ll pass,” Valentine growled. He paused, then softened his tone. “But thank you.”

Morgan opened the conference room door and surveyed the interior as though preparing to enter a battlefield. When her eyes landed on Valentine in the chair, she relaxed and pulled the door open. George wheeled inside and parked at an open spot on the table. “Sir,” he acknowledged.

“Agent Patrick.” Morgan settled into a seat between George and Valentine. “Agent Laffer.”

“So that’s how it is today, Rusty?” Morgan’s eyes twinkled. “We’re being formal, is that it?”

The director gave her a look, and the smile on her face wilted. “Not the time, Morgan.” He cleared his throat, then glanced at his watch. “I’m sure you’re all eager to hear why you’re here and not in Vegas, but we’ll give Eliot a few minutes before we begin—ah.”

The aforementioned agent pulled the conference door open, spotted the pot of coffee, and headed for it. Valentine glanced at his partner and noted that he looked rougher around the edges than was usual. Salt-and-pepper stubble mottled his cheeks, and dark circles under his eyes put an exclamation point on Eliot’s aura of exhaustion.

Valentine raised an eyebrow. “Get any sleep, partner?”

Coffee in hand, the other man settled into a chair and offered a noncommittal grunt.

Director Newquist waited a moment, then picked up a remote on the conference table. He powered up a large flat screen television built into the wall. “Last night, two of our field agents on an unrelated stakeout encountered Helen Locke and her associates.” He pressed a button on his notebook and the blank screen displayed an overhead image of a city street. The quality was good enough that Valentine instantly recognized Locke, even at a side profile.

“Where was this?” George interjected.

“San Francisco,” Newquist said. “Haight-Ashbury district.” He glanced at Val and Eliot. “We had a source running black market magic out of an antique store.”

“Shit!” Val cursed. “Walter. Little weasel was holding out on us.”

“That would seem to be the case, yes. Unfortunately, he’s unavailable for comment. Someone or something smashed him face-first into a safe. He’s dead, and there’s a hole in one of his walls. Best guess is he was stashing away contraband under our nose.” The director shifted in his seat. “But be that as it may, of more concern is this. We lost both agents, and Helen Locke sent me a video message immediately after.” He pushed another key, and the face of a terrified older man standing in front of a brick wall appeared on the screen.

He looked vaguely familiar to Valentine, though he couldn’t place him at first.

“This is Agent JD Beckwith,” Newquist said, and Val nodded to himself. Now he remembered. Solid guy. He’d said or done something that garnered the attention of one of the regional directors and gotten shuffled out west, away from DC. Par for the course for the last administration—promote yes men and flunkies, and shit-can anyone with two brain cells to rub together. He shook himself out of his reverie, realizing he’d missed some of the discussion.

“…not sure why Locke didn’t narrate the video herself. If she was going for spooky, she accomplished it.”

“She’s showing off,” Morgan observed. “She’s demonstrating that she can do more than we realized. Either that or she picked up new tricks in prison.”

“The former, then,” Newquist said. “We screened all her mail.”

“Not well enough,” Valentine grumbled.

The director glanced at him but let the complaint slide. “What can you tell me about how she might have accomplished this, Agent Laffer?”

“Lots of terms for a lot of similar spells. It differs from a geas in that the caster, to some extent, inserts their own consciousness into the victim, overriding their control. I use the term ‘victim’ for a reason. The long-term aftereffects aren’t pretty. We’re talking brain damage.”

“Small comfort.”

“How’d they go?” Val said.

“Balefyr. We had to use dental records.” He let the other four agents murmur in consideration for a moment, then hit play on the video.

Hearing Beckwith speak sparked a few more memories for Val, and sure enough, the sound of the voice was right, but the cadence and tone were entirely different. He’d been reduced to little more than a living ventriloquist’s dummy for a mystical puppet master. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to listen.

“Director Russell Newquist. We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting. Congratulations on your promotion. Your man here says it’s a recent one. I’ll not waste time with an introduction. If you don’t know who I am, they wouldn’t have asked you to do the job.

“You’re about to lose two men in the worst way possible. Don’t force the issue by coming after me. That will end only in heartbreak and sorrow for your people. Say what you will about my methods and my goals—I have no desire to rack up a body count. My companions and I have an offer for you. Leave us be, and we’ll allow Division M to survive. If you declare war on us, we will burn it down around you, and you will die screaming.

“I don’t have the time to explain my goals to you but know this—I’m looking only for my son and my grimoire. Once I have them, I can complete my mission. After that, who knows? It might even make things easier for you. Toodles.”

The video cut off, thankfully. Val had seen the effects of balefyr more than a few times, and he had no desire to repeat the experience. He turned to the director.

“What’s she talking about, Russ? What grimoire?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Newquist shrugged. “I wasn’t involved with the case ten years ago. Did Division M search the Locke house for contraband?”

Morgan spoke up. “I helped coordinate, so yes. But it was late in the game. Maybe a month after Helen killed her husband.”

Valentine tried not to grit his teeth. “That’s a lot of time for shit to get up and walk away, boss. But the fact that she seems to think that the son has it says that it didn’t walk away.” He tapped his fingers on his chin. “Gosh, if only we’d been able to bring the kid in for questioning. Hard when he’s roaming the country, but—oh, that’s right. He was in the fucking hospital last week and you told me he was off limits.”

Newquist straightened in his chair and jabbed a finger at Valentine. “I grant you an extraordinary measure of latitude based on your history and abilities, Agent Valentine, but you will stow that attitude, or I’ll pull your badge so fast your head will spin.”

“Never going to happen,” Val spat. “And my attitude would be a hell of a lot better if you’d stop keeping everything so damn close to the vest, sir. What makes this kid so special? Why is he untouchable?”

The director wilted, just a bit. He worked his jaw for a moment, clearly torn. Finally, he sighed. “I’ve got my orders, Val. It’s above your pay grade.”

Val rolled his eyes. “Who, Sleepy? He’s a Southern boy, he and I can hash it out.”

Newquist rubbed his temples in frustration. “Valentine, so help me God, if you harass the Attorney General I will have you thrown in jail. No, damn it, not him. Hell, if anything, you know him better than I do.” He lifted his left arm and tapped fingers on the inside of his forearm, then looked significantly at Val’s own arm.

The long-healed scar on his arm tickled, just a bit, and for a moment he almost convinced himself that the feeling was coincidental. He winced, remembering an overwhelming flash of light and the sickly-sweet stench of his own burnt flesh. “You’re joking.”

“Look at my face and think about those words.”

Valentine stared at the deputy director, searching for any hint of dishonesty. He saw exhaustion in Newquist’s eyes, but nothing else. The man was telling him the truth. “Why didn’t he call me?”

“You of all people should know how little he seems to enjoy small talk. He usually talks to me long enough to create problems, then he’s gone.”

Val tried to hold back a laugh. “Yeah, that’s about right.” He thought for a moment. “I talked to the kid in the hospital, last week.” Valentine waited for the explosion, but none was forthcoming. “So obviously talking to him doesn’t violate your orders.”

“It would seem not,” Newquist agreed.

“Along those same lines, keeping an eye on Paxton should be fine.”

George cleared his throat. “I hate to interject, but I’m feeling a little bit lost here. Whose orders are we talking about?”

Eliot chuckled. “Remember Heidelberg?”

George frowned and rapped knuckles on the armrest of his wheelchair. “Do you really think I forgot?”

The other agent winced. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“If he shows up or sticks his nose in something, you can bet that the situation is a bit worse than the norm,” Val added. “So obviously, higher powers than the US government have a vested interest in one Paxton Locke.” He turned to Director Newquist. “I have a proposal, sir.”

His boss raised an eyebrow at the sudden respectful tone but waved for Valentine to proceed.

“Full court press to track the kid down. Once we know his current whereabouts, we shadow him. Look, don’t touch. He won’t even know we’re there. But if his mom or any other nasty characters show up, he’ll have some ready-made backup.” He found himself rubbing at the scar on his forearm without thinking about it, then added, “And if he shows up, I can give him a piece of my mind.”

Newquist drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “You’re basically talking about using Paxton as bait in hopes that his mother shows up.”

Valentine shrugged. “I’m working within the confines of what you’ve given me. And since he’s not trying to hide from us, he’ll probably be a hell of a lot easier to find. If you’d rather we black-bag him for interrogation, I’m down for that, too.”

“No. You’re right. Approved. Agent Laffer, can you take the lead on tracking Locke down?”

“I can do that, sir. We know where he was last week, do we have any other data points?”

“He was in Missouri as of Monday. Anything more than that, I can’t say.”

“It’s a start,” Morgan said. “I’m on it.”

Newquist favored Val with a crooked smile. “Cheer up, Agent Valentine. If the mother shows up, you might get your wish on that bullet to the head.”

“Looking forward to it, sir.”

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Thursday morning

Kent drove south, further into the heart of the city. The strip malls and sparkling car dealerships faded into worn-looking stucco houses. Block walls or sagging chain-link fences surrounded most of them. dying weeds or stone and rock filled the few visible yards. I supposed that raking gravel was an easier chore than tending to a grass lawn, especially when the temperatures soared above triple digits.

That wasn’t a concern, today. The skies were clear and the temperature gauge in the dashboard of Kent’s truck signaled a perfect seventy-two degrees. It was easy to see why he’d wanted to relocate. Wisconsin winters suck in comparison. If staying in one place for too long didn’t make me feel antsy, I could definitely sign up for winters like this.

“This one is a little less picturesque,” he said as he pulled the Suburban into a convenience store parking lot. “This is the closest place.”

Kent led me and Cassie to the sidewalk. The edge of the gas station property transitioned to unpaved dirt, most of it fenced off from the rest of the road. An opening in the fence provided access, and as we stepped through I got a better look at what lay beyond.

The lane of unpaved dirt was, in truth, one bank of a massive trench running perpendicular to the street. A sluggish stream ran along the bottom of the trench, and I tried to imagine how much water it would take to fill it.

“There are canals all over the valley,” Kent explained. “Can’t get green in the desert without water. Some of them handle outflow from the Salt River. Others, like this one, are flood canals. It doesn’t rain here, much, but when it does, look out. Some of the flooding is nuts.” He pointed further down the lane. “Body was there.”

Most of the properties backing up to the canal shared a common block wall, blocking direct access to the banks. Short of coming in from the street, this was very much an isolated route.

It also cut off the possibility of prying eyes, which made it a much more cunning place to dump a body than in a public park. Had the killer realized their mistake, and changed up locations?

Cassie turned a slow circle, studying the canal. The fence continued across the bridge overpass—heaven forbid a forlorn soul take a suicidal swan dive. The brown murk of the water hardly looked appealing. “What about cameras? Don’t gas stations usually have surveillance in their parking lot?”

Kent tapped a finger on his temple in salute. “Sharp, kid. They do, yes. Unfortunately, we can’t tell when the killer dumped the body. We’ve got a window based on witness statements, but that gives us hundreds of potential vehicles. Since the camera focuses primarily on the parking lot, we’re only getting one southbound lane. Who knows if they pulled over from the left lane, or even came from the opposite direction. We’ve got people running down plates, but it’s pro forma, mostly. No black vans.”

I took a few steps along the bank, further away from the street. “Another homeless person?”

“Yeah. Good looking guy, cleaned up. Whoever is doing this is one sadistic bastard. Getting these people clean, then—” He sighed. “No offense, kid, but I thought what happened to your dad was bad.”

“None taken,” I said. I knelt down and traced my fingers through the dirt. It was light—airy, almost. More like a heavy dust than dirt. The impressions of dozens if not hundreds of tennis shoes covered the bank. Narrow lines here and there boasted the presence of bicycles. It made sense. A fenced-in lane, secure from the hustle and bustle of traffic. A natural place for runners and cyclists to gravitate to. Relatively safe save for the streets they’d have to cross every so often. Given the small sample size of Phoenix drivers I’d seen in the last few days, relative in that sense was an understatement. Speed limits were just a suggestion, and aggression seemed the way to go.

Both of which told me something, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. “What’s your window? Late to early, right?”

“Sometime after midnight and before dawn, yeah. A jogger found the body about six.”

“Come,” I said. As before, nothing happened, and unlike the park, the canal was truly deserted. The runners and cyclists had moved on, bound for work or whatever else they occupied their day with.

Two crime scenes in a row stretched coincidence a bit far for my taste. Cassie moved to my side and waited a moment before murmuring, “Nothing?”

“Zilch,” I said with a shake of my head.

“What happens if they die in their sleep? Or are drunk or high? Do they have to be conscious to get a ghost?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Pretty much every ghost I’d ever dealt with had gone out the hard way but I wasn’t ready to say that was the end-all of the condition. Most of what I now accepted as the truth came more as a result of hard-earned experience than so-called scholarly learning. In the beginning, I’d scoured through dozens of books in search for snippets. I’d quickly learned that the signal to noise ratio in my adopted calling rested on a knife’s edge. Given Mother’s background and what she’d accomplished, she’d figured out how to filter the nuggets of gold out of the morass, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to pick her brain even if I could trust her answers.

I brushed the dirt from my fingers. Before I could speak, Kent cursed under his breath. Cassie and I turned to find him peering at the screen of his phone. He looked up at us.

“Something’s up. Captain’s called a task force meeting in an hour. We’re going to have to cut this short.”

I considered for a moment, then said, “You’ve got a list of addresses, right?”

He gave me a squint-eyed look, and I could tell he didn’t like where he thought I was going. “Yes.”

“Drop us off at the airport. We’ll rent a car and keep searching.” I patted my back pocket. My stack of mail at Kent’s house had yielded about sixteen pounds of fireplace tinder and my replacement license and cards. For official purposes, Paxton Locke existed once again.

Kent made a face. “Some of these scenes aren’t in the greatest of neighborhoods, Pax. And unless you’ve spent a lot more time practicing than I know about, you can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a pistol.” Arizona, last bastion of the Wild West, allowed non-permitted open carry of handguns. I wasn’t sure about the law regarding shotguns, but I assumed it was frowned upon.

“I don’t own a pistol,” I pointed out, then wished that I’d had the good sense to keep my mouth shut. “C’mon. We’ll be fine. Anybody gives us grief, I’ll push them to do a song-and-dance number. West Side Story.”

He gave me another look. Kent knew my self-imposed rules about pushing people around. His eyes flicked over to Cassie. “Miss Hatcher, I expect you to keep him out of trouble.”

Suppressing a grin, Cassie gave him a mock salute. “Of course.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re obviously unfamiliar with the rules regarding wizards, and not meddling in their affairs.”

Cassie grabbed my hand. “Let’s go rent a car, Gandalf.”

They

Phoenix, Arizona—Thursday morning

He’d had a name once, but that was unimportant, now. He was a part of something greater. Sense of self had transitioned to something more. I became They, and that was good.

Not being among the fastest or strongest of They, he was still of use. His eyes were sharper than most, and They had put him to watch. Most of those who were not They appeared to him as mere abstract, people who did not belong who avoided him as though those were not They sensed some subtle difference.

Some of those who did not belong were of concern to They, though, and appeared in sharp relief to his eyes. The bald, pot-bellied man who stepped out of the truck and walked in front of him was one such, and the thrill of pleasure that ran through him as They realized what he’d seen was so intense that he found himself squinting at the sheer joy of it.

At once, that pleasure ceased, and the shock that coursed through They rocked him backward on his heels. There was another with the one to be watched, and as he looked at him the other jumped into sharp focus. He was young where the other was old, slender where the other was beefy, and the closely-cropped hair on his head was an incongruous bone-white.

They did not speak in words, as such, but at once, all knew that this one to be watched was more than that. He was a threat. And although the watcher was a poor combatant at best, he found himself squeezing his hands in a desire to defend the collective.

At once the urge eased. They needed to be careful. They needed to watch and wait. An opportunity would come, and the threat would be dealt with.

CHAPTER 13

Helen

Burlingame, California—Thursday morning

If there was a positive to splitting up across two vehicles, it was that it made it easier to screen away prying eyes.

A few hours before dawn, they’d pulled off the southbound Interstate and caught a few hours of fitful sleep. It was a risk, but Helen judged it an acceptable one. The familiars were intelligent enough to keep an eye out and didn’t require sleep. If the police cruised the rest area and ran plates, neither of the two vehicles the coven had acquired would show as stolen.

Giselle and Roxanne had pushed to kill the vehicle donors, but Helen had pointed out that it was more likely than not that police would discover the abandoned van, and if there were dead bodies in the same area, it would be a short jump of logic to conclude that they’d stolen the victims’ vehicles as replacements.

In the end, Helen demonstrated a more graceful solution. She’d pushed the shopping woman and the businessman who’d come after to forget their car theft encounters, then convinced each of them that they were madly infatuated with one another. Based on the way the two had been slobbering all over each other when she’d departed, she imagined they were still holed up in a hotel room. When the compulsion wore off and they realized their vehicles were missing, Helen and her followers would have long-abandoned them. Division M might be able to make the connection between the impromptu affair and her appearance in San Francisco, but it was a bigger jump than it might have been had they left dead bodies behind.

Screened between the SUV and the businessman’s sedan, she considered the rest of the parking lot for a moment. Maybe we need an RV. It would be ironic, given the vehicle her son had parked at their home, but she could see the appeal of it. It would be more comfortable than the van had been for sure.

Satisfied that the area was devoid of prying eyes for the moment, Helen knelt back down. She’d placed a map of the United States in the center of the parking spot between their two vehicles, weighing the corners down with rocks. Murmuring words under her breath, she called up the spell she’d recovered from Walter’s shop. At the culmination of the casting, she pressed the tip of a pocketknife to the pad of her index finger. Squeezing, she drew forth a pearl of blood, then held her finger a few feet over the map.

The girls watched with rapt attention to either side. Al through Frank, arranged in trios, stood at the front and rear of the space between the vehicles, doing their best to slouch comfortably while keeping an eye out for dog walkers or other possible witnesses.

She felt a slight pulling sensation on her finger, and the drop of blood came away. Rather than falling, it hovered over the center of the map for a few moments, before taking a curve down and to the left. The blood plopped down into the center of Arizona.

“Phoenix,” she announced, thoughtfully. “Close enough, at least. Let’s pack up and get a move on.”

Giselle crossed her arms and tilted her head. “Can’t you use a smaller map, narrow it down a little bit?”

Helen resisted the urge to smile. Her logic might have swayed Roxanne back in San Francisco, but the other girl was still bucking her leadership. To be expected. The type of person attracted to the mystical arts was also the sort of person that didn’t generally play well with others. The fact that the three got along amongst themselves as well as they did was more due to the fact of their prior relationship. As time went by, concurrent desires for power would create fractures, without a firm hand of leadership.

Time to exercise the hand. “You’re more than welcome to try and learn the spell for yourself, dear. But I won’t be donating any of my blood to the cause.”

The younger girl leaned back a bit as though surprised by the offer. “Why wouldn’t my blood work?”

Helen crossed her arms and adopted a professorial tone. “The spell requires something that’s linked in some way to the subject. A picture would do, or a piece of the material, if you were searching for a non-living object. Unlike me, you aren’t related to Paxton. If we were looking for a member of your family, it would work.” She smiled. “Then there are the caveats. The accuracy falls off as a function of distance. If we were closer , I would have gotten a reading within a few miles . Then there’s the fact that the spell can only be directed toward a given subject once every six hours.”

“Why?” Kelsey’s face held a look of honest curiosity. “Does it take too much chi?”

“It would if I’d used my own,” Helen agreed. “In some sense, magic runs contrary to the natural order. Nearly half of the text on the spell description provides a list of qualifiers and gotchas. The six-hour limit is the main one. But no matter. In six hours, we’ll be that much closer, and we can reorient, and carry on. At this rate, we’ll have the grimoire in a day or two.”

Roxanne kept her face still, but Helen had seen the look of raw hunger in her eyes more than once. The girl’s desire to transform her own body was the carrot Helen could use to keep her in line.

“I still want the spell,” Giselle said. Helen’s eyes flicked to her face.

And what carrot can I use for you, my dear? She could always push the problem child, but that would turn the girl into the literal equivalent of a remote-controlled car. She didn’t want a robot—she wanted thinking, reasoning allies. If they had to go up against Division M agents that weren’t as incompetent as the ones in San Francisco had been, they were in for trouble.

“Of course,” Helen said. “I don’t recommend trying it until you master siphoning, though. The power requirements are impressive.” Giselle nodded, mollified. Helen continued. “Now, if there’s nothing else—let’s hit the road and grab some breakfast. We’ve got miles to go, ladies.”

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Thursday afternoon

By the time we got the keys to our rental car and headed out of the airport proper, it was rounding past noon. Not knowing where our research might take us, I’d opted for the four-wheel drive upgrade. Kent had made noises about paying me to consult when he’d first sought my help, but it sounded like any sort of official fee was not liable to happen at this point.

Which was okay. One of the oddities of my calling was that for those who really needed my help, I did so free of charge. My best friend Carlos ran the online ads that brought in most of my clientele. He did the heavy lifting of filtering out the nuts from the needy. Even so, a good fifty percent of the time my house calls were false alarms. Paradoxically, those same false alarms, more often than not consisted of people with more money than sense. I had no qualms about keeping their money.

If you’re calling someone on the Internet to get rid of a ghost, you’re either deadly serious, or a sucker. And we all know the apocryphal quote attributed to PT Barnum on that particular topic. The eccentricity of my ghost hypochondriacs kept me in business and allowed me to do pro bono work for the folks with real problems.

As such, in terms of resources we were in fine shape, even doing this for free. My assets were a bit depleted from having to replace the RV and most of my belongings, but I wasn’t in dire need of having to find a job anytime soon. Which made the decision to step up to a Ford Explorer a no-brainer. And after the nerve-wracking commute this morning, I don’t know how I would have felt in the middle of Phoenix traffic low to the ground in a sedan.

The third victim had been dumped in an alley a mile off one of the shadier I-17 exits. Kent had warned me before handing his list of addresses over that this wasn’t a place to let our guard down. “It’s a lot of run-down homes and industrial buildings. Plenty of gang and drug activity.”

Now, as we came closer to the blinking dot on the Explorer’s navigation system, I questioned my own bravado. When we’d picked up the rental car Cassie had asked if I wanted to backtrack to Kent’s house, but I’d shrugged off the suggestion.

As we passed weed-choked empty lots and abandoned buildings, I questioned the wisdom of that decision. I took a peek at my passenger. “I’m wondering if you shouldn’t stay in the car.”

Cassie pressed her lips together, and I realized she was resisting the urge to grin. “Not a chance, hotshot. Keep your eyes open. It can’t be that bad in the middle of the day.”

“Hope so,” I agreed. I turned past a high school. The high, heavy-duty fencing around it put the exclamation point on Kent’s warning about the neighborhood. ‘Home of the Mustangs’, the sign read. If there were any mustangs on campus, no way they were jumping that fence. Probably saved the kids money on fast food lunches, too.

The GPS announced that we’d reached our destination, and sure enough, it was as Kent described. The alley ran alongside a long cinder block building. A parking lot, presumably for the building, sat on the opposite side. A low wall constructed from the same block as the building traced around the alley side of the parking lot. A gap in that barrier lined up with a boarded-up doorway. People had worked here once, at who knew what, but all that remained now was the husk of what had been, like dry bones in the desert.

A chill ran up my spine, and I shook my head with a snort. Good grief, Pax. You’re going to spook yourself before you even find a ghost.

Pulling the Explorer into a spot close to the door opening, I gave Cassie a confident node and opened the door.

“Eyes in the back of your head, kid,” she joked, but there was an undercurrent of worry in her voice.

Was I spooking myself, or was there something about this spot? I turned in place, letting myself feel the slight breeze on my skin and other, less tangible things. I didn’t have a word for it, but something seemed off, here. It was too still—as though the building was a living creature, a rabbit frozen in fear by the appearance of a wolf.

“Let’s try something,” I said before the idea had fully-formed. “Flip the switch, or whatever. On your spell.”

“Yoga pose,” she reminded me but nodded.

I waved a hand and pushed. “Hey. Anybody there?” Even waiting for a few moments longer than I had at the park and canal, I didn’t feel a response. We were three-for-three, and I didn’t like it. “There’s nothing here,” I muttered.

At my side, Cassie flinched.

“What?”

She raised a shaking hand and indicated the boarded-up door “There. In there.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know what it is, but I know that there’s something or someone in there. I thought the spell was supposed to be more accurate than that? The book made it sound like…” She began to shiver.

“I don’t know. Maybe—maybe there’s some sort of conflict with our magic or something. That can happen.” That odd aspect of wizarding was something I hadn’t entirely figured out, myself. The same spell that gave me the ability to speak and attract ghosts cooperated with the push, so to speak, to allow me to banish them. Other spells weren’t as compatible. I couldn’t push while invisible, for example. I didn’t know why it didn’t work. It sure freaked out the guy I tried it on, though.

“Well. What’s the move?”

I stared at the door and debated for a moment. “Let’s check it out. We’ll be all right.”

Cassie made a face. “Fine. But we’re heading back to Kent’s house after this.”

“No argument here,” I agreed. Tugging experimentally on the sheet of plywood over the door, I discovered that the bottom left corner was loose. There was just enough room to squeeze between it and the door frame to gain access to the interior.

“Well, that’s convenient.” Cassie’s tone was sarcastic, but her voice shook a bit.

“Isn’t it, though.” I crouched and tried to see inside. Dust and scraps of paper streaked the portion of the bare concrete floor that I was able to make out. The coverage wasn’t uniform enough to discern footprints, but there were enough suspicious smudges to make me wonder if we weren’t about to intrude into some squatter’s den. “Hold the plywood back.”

“What, no ladies first?”

“Executive decision, partner. Unless you mastered the TK spell when I wasn’t looking.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Note to self—no more going out unarmed.”

“Noted,” I agreed. Laying on my side, I was able to squeeze-crawl my way through the largest part of the opening. Inside, I brushed dust and dirt from my jeans and pushed a bit more on the plywood. It cracked and groaned a bit. The nails in the upper half of the open side came out a bit, but it was enough that Cassie was able to come through on the crouch.

We hesitated for a moment at the door. The boarded-over windows cast a gloom over the interior of the building, but a few dust-covered skylights let in enough light to cast the place in a mixture of shadow and twilight.

“Bring your flashlight, Scully?” I pulled my new cell phone out and turned on the flashlight function. When Cassie added hers to the mix, we had plenty of light.

The building was far from empty. Pallets lay on the floor in singles and in uneven stacks. Scattered cardboard boxes here and there proved to hold paper as I shone a light on them. That and the hulking metallic machines bolted to the concrete across the room identified the former business as some sort of print shop.

“Seems like a lot of expensive stuff to leave behind,” Cassie whispered. Without conscious decision, we both stepped forward, deeper into the building. The light cast by our phones revealed shelving units, abandoned desks, a rectangular folding table. With a hiss, Cassie grabbed my arm with one hand. “There.”

I followed her pointing finger. There was a pile of rags under the folding table. As my eyes picked through the shadows, I realized that the pile of rags was a person. Without thinking, I cleaned my free hand into a fist and called up a force blade. Cassie must have sensed the move because she murmured under her breath.

“No, no.” She breathed a low sigh that seemed almost content. “We’re safe. She’s no danger to us.”

Cassie stepped forward, pulling away a bit, and crouched down beside the table. The pile of rags shifted, and a pair of glittering eyes revealed themselves. The owner’s face came forward, into the light, and revealed itself to be a smooth-faced woman. Her hair was matted, and dirt streaked her face, but I would have been shocked if she was a day older than thirty. The other woman’s voice shook. “Safe?”

“You’re safe, Angie. That’s your name, right? I see it, now.” Cassie’s voice was joyous, awestruck. The woman—Angie—must have sensed that something in her voice, because the tension went out of her all at once.

“Pretty witch. I dreamed about you.” She looked past Cassie, and as she saw me her eyes widened in dismay. “Wizard wizard, white wizard. They watch you, wizard. Want you to die, wizard.” She pulled back from Cassie and me, as though preparing to bolt.

“Who?” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Who wants me to die?”

“They. They who watch. They who sacrifice. They want me to come home, but I don’t listen. No, no, I don’t obey. They had eyes on Angie, yes, but I put them out.” She raised a bundled-up arm, then pulled back shirtsleeves to reveal a wrist with bones as delicate as those of any bird.

I could tell, because a patch of flesh the approximate size and shape of a credit card had been scoured away, somehow, baring muscle, tendon, and bone. The stench of rotting flesh trickled into my nose, and I clamped my lips shut in a bid to keep my breakfast down.

Cassie choked. “Oh God, honey, that’s infected. Let us help you. We can take you to a hospital, they can take care of—”

“No! They are everywhere!”

“Please,” I said. It was probably a mistake, but I moved closer to Cassie and stretched out my hand. “If that gets much worse, you’re liable to die, Angie.”

I jerked in surprise as her hand slapped mine away. My reaction was not from the pain of the blow but from the sudden, blistering wind against my face. As shocking as the gale was, it wasn’t nearly as surprising as the blinding light. Squinting, I covered my eyes with one hand and peered out until my eyes could adjust to the brightness.

Blinking away stars, I lowered my hand. My vision had recovered to some extent, but I still had to wonder if something hadn’t shaken loose upstairs because the vista before me smacked of impossibility.

The crumbled blocks around me were obviously the former walls of the print shop building. The concrete under my feet was run-through with cracks and crumbled in some spots. The rusted bits of debris littering the surface seemed to be the remnants of the roof trusses. It was, I realized, as though I’d been thrust decades into the future.

My long-sleeved shirt was far too heavy for the shifted climate. Despite the breeze, sweat was already dripping down my back. I turned a slow circle, trying to find the bag lady, but she was nowhere to be found. Halfway around, though, I found something even more impossible.

To the north, an imposing stone structure stretched into the sky. Roughly pyramidal in form with a flattened, truncated top, it seemed more akin to a child’s stagger-stepped block construction than the smooth-sided pyramids of the Middle East. Squinting, I realized that the black specks moving across its surface and up the broad staircase at its direct center were people. My sense of scale was off more than I’d realized. Given the size of those people-specks, the pyramid was miles away and hundreds of feet in height—easily enough to dwarf the tallest office buildings in Phoenix’s downtown.

The wind shifted a bit, and a sickly-sweet stench came along for the ride. I grimaced. The miasma seemed composed of blood, rot, burning meat, and other, fouler things. Though I couldn’t make it out at any level of detail, somehow I knew that the pyramid was the source it all. Stupefied in terror, I backed away. Some unseen bit of debris tangled my feet up, and I toppled backward—

Into the cool, dim air that I’d just left. Panting, heart pounding, the sudden ache in my back where I’d fallen came almost as an afterthought. Something surged inside of me, and I twisted to the side just in time, spewing a torrent of coffee and breakfast burrito onto the dusty floor.

“Shit, Pax!” Cassie barked, backing away from the puddle of my vomit.

“Where’d she go?” I wiped my mouth with the back of one shaking hand. “Did she come back, too?”

“Back from where? You just stood there, shaking. She went out the door.”

Shaking, I stared at Cassie, seeing the truth in her eyes. If I’d never left, from her perspective, what did that mean? I thought back to the dreamscape the Edimmu had crafted in my own mind during our confrontation and wondered if this hadn’t been something similar. Even so, my sense of this was different. That nightmare realm had been forged out of my own memories, for the most part. This felt more like a warning. But from who? Angie? Someone—or something—else?

Without thinking, I wiped my face, then shuddered as I realized there was yet one more difference from what I’d experienced before. I showed my palm to Cassie and swallowed past a dry throat. “I’m drenched with sweat.”

CHAPTER 14

Valentine

Leesburg, Virginia—Friday morning

Office space and prying eyes were at a premium in the main building, so the majority of Division M’s field agents and support staff occupied a nondescript warehouse well outside of the Beltway. Years ago, it had been even more anonymous, well away from the main road and surrounded by woods. The population boom and general increase in housing demand had whittled that away over the years, though the government had managed to keep enough of the original land to screen the parking lot from civilian eyes. There weren’t as many deer in the woods as there had been in the old days, but there were a lot more surveillance devices—technological as well as mystical. The wildlife got a pass; anything on two legs that came through the woods was in for a bad time.

Be better if we were out west. Val took a sip of his coffee and studied the view outside of his office window. Could fence things off, at least. The harsh reality of being even a gray government agency, however, made that difficult. The Senators and Representatives liked to be able to make the occasional visit, to see what the budget dollars were paying for. Or to terrify themselves with the occupants of the Menagerie. He smirked to himself. The joke was on them, there. The really bad stuff was in the Pit, under Guantanamo Bay.

Metal clanked out in the warehouse, and Val turned with a sigh. George and some of the tech crew were working out their mission load, if—when, Val told himself—they tracked down Locke. This time around, the balding agent had insisted they bring all the toys.

Not that I mind. Peace through superior firepower is one of the finer hallmarks of this century. Val drained his cup of coffee and returned to his desk. He had nothing against modern technology, but he still did some of his best thinking on paper. He’d spread a map of the United States across the blotter and marked Locke’s most recent whereabouts on it with a marker.

Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, last week. Then Joplin, Missouri. The initial foray of their digital search had borne some fruit. A license plate scanner on the Will Rogers Turnpike had captured them heading west the day after Joplin, but that was the last sighting.

And there was a whole lot of west, out there. He ran his finger along the various routes. There were only so many places he could go. One of the detectives investigating the murder of Locke’s father had taken over official guardianship while he was still a minor. That address in Phoenix was where Locke’s mail went.

That seemed simplistic to Valentine, though. Most of the money that flowed into the kid’s surprisingly healthy bank account originated from a private detective agency in San Diego. Tax records identified one of the partners in that venture as the other detective involved in the original Locke case.

Which was interesting, wasn’t it? Had the kid used his powers to put both police officers under his spell? Or had the two men legitimately taken the boy underneath their wing? Against orders, Valentine had taken the measure of the kid in the hospital last week. At the time, he’d thought the kid was on the right side—something Newquist had also implied. But he’d made mistakes before, trusting the judgment of others over his own gut. There were three places he was most likely to head to. San Diego or Phoenix didn’t necessarily equal innocence, but they were a better sign than the alternative. Going with his gut, he guessed the two were en route for San Diego—which was far too close to San Francisco for comfort.

“If you’re meeting up with your mom, kid, I’ll put you down like a dog,” Valentine whispered. He flattened one of the creases in the map.

“What’s up, Doc?” Eliot rapped on the door and stuck his head in the office.

Valentine grimaced at the nickname and studied his partner. The dark circles under his eyes had faded a bit. “Get some sleep?”

“Hell, yes. I actually feel almost human. You?”

“Enough,” Val said.

Eliot laughed. “Liar. You hear the latest?”

He raised an eyebrow and waited. Eliot waved a piece of paper. “Kid used his credit card to rent a car at Sky Harbor International, in Phoenix. Best bet, he’s crashing at Sikora’s place. Boss is working on getting us a plane to Luke Air Force Base.”

Well, shit. Missed that one. “Interesting. We have any prospects for observation?”

“Morgan’s running checks with realtors in the area, there’s a house on the market that should be nigh-on perfect. We can park the moving van there and observe. We need to figure out what to use for alternate transportation, though. We can draw a car from the local office, but if we come and go too much, we’ll draw attention. It’s a small neighborhood.”

“So, do we play it close to the vest, or flash badges and hope no one opens their mouths?” Val frowned in thought, but another clang of metal from out in the warehouse drew his attention away from the conversation. “What in the Sam Hill are they doing out there?”

“You haven’t seen it? Latest thing out of R&D. Hans and Kevin are giggling like school girls, and George isn’t far behind. I’ll put it this way. If we get in a scrape, we won’t need to worry about calling for backup.”

Valentine joined his partner at the door and watched as the engineering team loaded a massive crate into the back of the modified moving van they’d be using on this mission. It had almost twice as much room as the vehicle George had picked them up in, and the logos on the side made for perfect urban camouflage if they had to park it for an extended period of time in a neighborhood. He considered the markings on the crate and grinned in satisfaction. “Witches won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Friday morning

A good night’s sleep washed away most of the aftereffects of the vision, hallucination, or whatever the hell it was. When I shuffled out into the kitchen, Sikora was already there, filling an insulated Thermos from the coffee pot.

“Everything all right?”

He frowned as he looked up. “I think so, but we’ve got another all-hands meeting. Supposedly the mayor wants a personal update on our status.” He topped the coffee off with cream and sugar and screwed the top on. “How about you? You were out like a light by the time I got home, and Cassie wasn’t talking.”

I held out a mug for Kent to fill from the pot. “Third crime scene was a little intense.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Get something, finally?”

“Nothing helpful. No ghosts, but Cassie and I checked out the building next to the dump site. Some old print shop, I guess. We found a—witness, I guess you’d call her? But she bolted before we could get much out of her.”

“Anything I can use?”

I made air quotes with my fingers. “’They’ are watching me. And when I touched her I saw some intensely spooky shit. I’m torn on whether it was a premonition or some sort of mystical contact high off what was wrong with her. Either way, we’re not going back out unless we’re geared up.” I stirred some sugar into my coffee. “How does the task force lean on the number of killers?”

“That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“That’s an interesting way to answer,” I pointed out.

“It depends. From a forensic standpoint, the crime scenes haven’t panned out—there’s no hard and fast evidence. The conventional wisdom is, crimes like this, most of the time it’s a lone nut. This kind of crazy is hard for a couple of co-conspirators to swallow.”

“Most of the time. What are the exceptions?”

“The Manson Family. The Ripper Crew. Aum Shinrikyo.”

“’Ripper Crew?’ You’re making that up.”

Kent shook his head and hid a smile. “Before your time, kid. But it basically comes down to true believers being ready, willing, and able to kill for their cause. Hell, Pax, you’re old enough to remember 9/11. Same thing. The official profile in this case, though—one or two, max.”

“The big ‘They’ seemed a lot more ominous than one or two.”

“I was afraid you might say that. Load for bear, will you?” He squinted. “You been practicing with a pistol?”

I shrugged. “Not much. I still suck. Cassie’s a regular Annie Oakley, though. We go anywhere where I can’t bring a shotgun, she’s got us covered.”

“Knowing Mike Hatcher, I’m not surprised,” Kent said with a grunt. He gnawed on his lower lip for a moment. “If the next location is a dry well, I’m thinking we need to change our approach. Though I’m hard-pressed to say what that should be.”

I shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “Four and five are pretty close together. We’ll at least bang those out, today. If we come up empty there, what are the chances of you getting us into the last crime scene?”

Kent thought about it for a moment. “Forensics has released the scene, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.” His eyes widened as realization dawned. “You think the parents might be able to tell you something.”

“I wish I’d thought of it sooner, especially after yesterday. If there’s something keeping the ghosts of the victims from presenting, maybe that won’t be in effect for—” I trailed off, searching for the words. “Collateral damage.” It felt far too clinical for what it signified, but it also helped me try to forget the fact that there were a couple of scared kids on a countdown timer, somewhere, and that I’d burned up precious time with a single-minded focus on going from point A to point B.

“I’ll do my best to get out at a reasonable hour, tonight. We can plan on meeting up at the last crime scene unless you come up with something else between now and then.” He glanced at his watch. “And I need to get going.”

“Good luck,” I said.

“You two stay safe,” Kent muttered. “Don’t do anything crazy.”

I toasted him with my coffee cup. “In the past week, I’ve fought a cannibal Stretch Armstrong, a shadow demon, and a sorority witch. What’s this crazy you speak of?”

He made as if to leave, but hesitated. “Piece of advice, kid?”

“Always.”

“Sometimes, it’s easy to get hung up on the horror and the death. That’ll wear on you. I know. Way I keep myself straight, I try to keep the living first and foremost in my mind.” Kent shrugged. “Focus on the boys. Maybe I’m talking out of school, here, but this is a little different than anything you’ve ever dealt with. I’m not talking monsters and magic, I’m talking about people. If you can pull this off, you won’t have to pick up the pieces this time.”

“Fairy tale ending, huh?”

“What can I say? I’m a big softie at heart. Remind me later, I’ll show you what I’ve got on Evan and Ethan. We do this for the living. Hell, maybe there’s something in there that will help you find them.”

“Thanks for the advice, Dr. Phil.”

“Smart ass.”

I grinned at the table as he headed out the door. I’d missed this; the easy comfort of a close friend. Kent got my stupid jokes and kept me on toes, but more importantly, he never let me get too full of myself. I sometimes wondered just how I’d have turned out without having him around after my dad died. Oh, my dad had been a great example, but an orphaned teenager with sudden-onset wizard syndrome was a fertile field for the corrupting possibility of power. Having an example to follow, someone who didn’t take any sullen lip, but hugged like hell a few moments later, had helped me stay on the path I’d started on.

It was impossible to say if I’d have grown up to the be the same man I was now, given a normal life. Life’s funny like that. The bad things that happen are the ones that seem to define us most. The Chinese have a maxim that says that the hottest fire forges the strongest steel. Far be it for me to pat myself on the back, but I’d say the kickoff to the last decade of my life counted.

The trick, of course, was that the tests didn’t get any easier. A year ago, tangling with a serial killer in a house full of ghosts had been the low point. Now, an enemy that obvious seemed like a nice change of pace.

Moving to the cabinets, I pulled down a bowl and browsed through the Sikora’s cereal supplies.

Breakfast, after all, was the most important meal of the day. Even more so when wizarding.

CHAPTER 15

Helen

Quartzite, Arizona—Friday morning

Once they found it, the RV worked out nicely.

The exchange, alas, did not work out so well for the elderly owners. It had been dark enough, and the gas station parking lot empty enough, that Helen judged it was safe to let the boys off the chain. Once they handled the senior citizens, the coven drove their now-trio of vehicles to an empty parking lot and consolidated supplies. They were back on the road in under thirty minutes, the California vehicles tucked behind a strip mall.

At Helen’s orders, Bo and Ed hauled the broken remains of the RV’s original passengers out into the desert and buried them in shallow graves. The vultures would point the authorities to them at some point, but by then other scavengers should have made identification next to impossible. Secure in that thought, they’d traveled a few hours closer to Phoenix before making a stop at another rest area.

Helen supposed that she was driving her followers to take unnecessary risks, but she was so close to regaining the grimoire that she could almost taste it. With the book, she’d be nigh-invincible. Without it, the only things she had to fear were her son and the feckless bureaucrats of Division M. Every other practitioner she’d ever met had lived in terror of what the agency could do. After what they’d faced in San Francisco, she was far from impressed.

Sure, they were able to intimidate mousy little Walter. The man had zero talent. Of course he couldn’t stand up for himself. She took a sip of hot tea they’d brewed using the RV’s electric stove and opened a road atlas to a map of Maricopa County, Arizona. She didn’t have to check the time; the vague itch in her bones when she considered the tracking spell told her that it had become available to her once more. Time to narrow things down.

Her second casting went much as the first—murmured words, the rush of mystical power, and the hovering drop of blood. The girls stood around the dinette table in a semi-circle, anticipating the location and the next step in their quest.

Helen’s first inkling that something was wrong was the extended period of time that the drop of blood hung over the map. As she watched, it began to oscillate back and forth, as though it was uncertain of what she’d told it to search for.

“Did he leave?” Kelsey whispered, as though reluctant to break the expectant hush that had fallen over the entire group.

“No,” Helen muttered. “It would point out the way if he had. This is something—”

The drop of blood froze, then fell toward the map. Right before it would have dropped on the paper, the single drop exploded into a dozen or more finer droplets and shot out toward the edges of the paper. At a certain, equidistant point from the rough center of the county, the drops touched paper and spread. Narrow lines of red described arcs until a perfect circle formed on the map.

All at once, Helen sagged in exhaustion. She hadn’t drawn on her own power for this spell, but she felt as though it had taken something out of her nonetheless. She looked up and scanned the faces of the girls. Their expressions ranged from shock to fear. That was a gamut she could appreciate, herself. Tea slopped out of her cup and onto the table as she raised it to her lips. The spill also soaked the map, but that was the furthest concern from her mind at the moment.

“What’s going on?” Roxanne demanded. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Giselle rolled her eyes. “She fucked the spell up. Obviously.”

Helen pressed the ball of her hand to her forehead. “Shut up,” she hissed. “I’m trying to think here.” She shuddered with her first deep breath; by the third, she’d calmed herself somewhat, though her heart still pounded in her chest. Finally, she spoke. “We’re in claimed territory.”

“What? What does that even mean?” Giselle folded her arms across her chest.

In a stronger voice, Helen barked, “Shut your mouth and listen, you stupid bitch!”

The other girl rocked back, eyes wide at the verbal assault. Eyes narrowing, she opened her mouth to retort. Kelsey grabbed her by the shoulder. “Enough. Listen.” She turned to Helen. “We’re listening. Please explain.”

“There are certain beings in the magical world. Corporeal, not like the Edimmu. They’re rare, not so common as they were in days gone by. Those that still live are often the eldest of their kind. Wendigo, kappa, werewolves—”

“Vampires?” Roxanne sounded almost hopeful, and Helen tried not groan.

“Nothing like what you’re thinking of. As best I can tell, once Stoker published his book they went extinct shortly thereafter. That subspecies, anyway. There’s a Chinese type that—look this is all beside the point. To make it simple, they’re the lions, and mankind is the stupid herd grazing on the grasslands.” She stared at the circle on the map. This is what I’m trying to stop, damn it. But I’m not ready yet!

Kelsey’s jaw dropped. “So, this circle, it’s like where a dog marks its territory?”

“Yes,” Helen agreed. “Only much, much worse. We can travel through the territory, but our magic probably won’t be reliable, and you’ll feel funny when you’re inside. In a normal situation that wouldn’t be a big deal. I’ve never felt one anywhere close to this big, though. The biggest was a mile. Whatever it is that’s claimed Phoenix, it’s a monster of monsters.”

“So, what do we do?”

Helen stared at the map. “We set up camp, and we wait. I think I understand why my son’s here, now. This is no coincidence. And either he’ll stop it, or it will stop him. Either way, the map will tell us. And once it does, we’ll know where to find the book.”

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Friday morning

I’d thought the print shop was in a bad neighborhood. The site of the fourth body dump made it look like a playground.

As Interstate 17 passed north-south through Phoenix, it dipped below ground level. Noise barriers on either side made a convenient place for graffiti, and in this neighborhood, the narrow no man’s land between the edge of the frontage road and the high walls collected mounds and heaps of trash. The lighter stuff had probably been carried there by the wind, but as I turned the Explorer to the south and cruised to our destination I saw enough discarded tires to outfit a tractor-trailer rig.

The houses on the opposite side of the street weren’t much better. At least every other one seemed to be boarded up. The best visual indicator as to which ones were occupied seemed to be whether or not there was a walking path through the cluttered junk and debris in each yard. A few people smoking on porches turned to watch as we passed by, and a scruffy, half-starved mutt stared down the Explorer from its position in the middle of the road as though daring us to run him down. At the last moment, the mangy cur dashed aside, and I shook my head at the thing’s audacity.

On the bright side, we were packing more than enough firepower this time out. I’d tucked the Shockwave under the driver’s seat, and Cassie toted a Kimber Ultra Carry .45 in her purse. If that didn’t prove to be enough, I had my trusty pistol-grip Mossberg in the footwell between the front seats and the rear bench. We’d picked up another Mossberg during our post-inferno shopping spree, and it rested behind Cassie’s seat. Per her preference, it was a semiautomatic, full-length version identical to the one she’d used while deer hunting with her dad. My partner was no wilting lily.

“This is it,” she announced, and I glanced at the map screen. Sure enough, it was, and I pulled over to the right side of the road. It wasn’t an official parking spot, but it had the advantage of being well-positioned in case we had to make a quick break for it. I checked the mirrors and looked ahead. For now, the neighborhood seemed clear. Even the dog seemed to have disappeared.

I glanced at Kent’s notes and murmured, “Let’s make it fast.” I didn’t hold much hope that we’d have any more success this time around. The killers had left this body in front of one of the abandoned houses. Paradoxically, the yard was one of the cleaner ones on the block. I guess the police had bagged and tagged some of the debris in search of evidence.

“No argument here,” Cassie said. She looped the shoulder strap of her purse around her neck. With the compartment where she’d tucked the pistol left open, she’d be able to draw and aim in short order.

Gravel crunched under my feet as I stepped up and out of the road. The path to the center of the yard was clear, and I kept my eyes on the front of the house as I stepped forward. Graffiti-coated panels of plywood secured the front door and all but one window, where shattered glass twinkled in a broken-toothed grin behind iron bars.

“Anyone home?” I murmured with my arms out and palms down. For the barest of moments, I thought that I felt something, but the feeling faded, and left me standing clueless in the middle of trash-strewn desert landscaping.

“Pax.”

“Nothing. Just like the—”

“Look.”

I turned and followed Cassie’s eyes. A group of people walked toward us from the way we’d come, leaving a pair of running cars parked nose-to-nose across the street. They strolled casually in our direction, as though blocking an urban street in the middle of the day was no big thing.

Turning, I checked the other way. “Shit.”

A primer-patched truck filled most of the road, and a big man in worn jeans and a plaid button-down slammed the driver’s door and headed this way. A Hispanic woman in a floral print dress joined him.

Cassie pulled the Kimber but kept the barrel pointed down at the ground. “Time to move, Pax.”

I led the way, and we hustled across the road to the Explorer. “Think we can cut through one of the other yards? This thing should be high enough off the ground that we don’t get hung up.”

“I don’t think we’re going to get a chance for that.” Cassie’s face was pale, and she nodded at the abandoned house behind us. I looked back—still more people had emerged from between the buildings on the other side of the street, and they moved toward us with the same implacable air of impending doom as the rest.

The strangest thing, other than the fact that there seemed no rhyme or reason to their various appearances, was the fact that they advanced without a sound. If the sight of Cassie’s pistol intimidated them at all, it was impossible to tell from the uniformly blank expressions they all wore. “This is going to be an interesting story,” I muttered. I pulled the rear driver’s side rear door open and retrieved the Mossberg. With the side-saddle rig of spare shells, it offered significantly more firepower than the Shockwave.

And it looked like we were going to need it.

I flipped the safety off but didn’t rack the slide. Leaving the chamber empty was for people who had more time to reload than I usually got.

Cassie raised her Kimber. “Have I ever told you I hate zombie movies?”

“Right there with you,” I said, sweeping the barrel slowly across the advancing mass. The impromptu block party consisted of well over two dozen people, more than could have easily fit in the three vehicles. The ones from the yard must have parked on the opposite block, which raised all sorts of interesting questions about how long they’d been following us.

Ten feet away from the Explorer, with the vehicle—and us—confined in a half-circle, they stopped. And then, with a beehive buzz of synchronicity, the entire group of people spoke as one.

“PAXTON LOCKE. LEAVE YOUR WEAPONS AND YOUR COMPANION. YOU WILL COME WITH US.”

“Yeah, not going to happen,” I said. Settling on the biggest guy from the truck, I fixed the Mossberg’s front sight on target. “I’m already in enough fantasy leagues.”

“YOU WILL COME WITH US, OR WE WILL KILL YOUR COMPANION.”

“They’re telling the truth,” Cassie said.

“You’re using the spell now?”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“PAXTON LOCKE. LEAVE YOUR WEAPONS. YOU WILL—”

I shifted the barrel and squeezed the trigger, discharging a round harmlessly into the sky. None of the drones, or whatever the hell they were, so much as flinched. If there was anyone left in the neighborhood who wasn’t under the influence, maybe they’d call the cops. I doubted we could expect any sort of rapid response time, though.

I racked the pump and trained the barrel back onto the chest of flannel shirt guy. “They’re dead, Cassie. Right?”

She was silent for a moment, then replied. “Shit. No, they’re still alive.”

I don’t know if it was my body language or the look on my face that clued them in on my reluctance to pull the trigger, but the crowd surged silently forward. A wave of human flesh bowled me over. Somewhere along the way, I lost the Mossberg, and Cassie’s scream cut off as I slammed to the ground.

Rough hands rolled me onto my stomach and pulled my hands behind my back. With a click of plastic on plastic, one of the attackers secured a pair of zip ties around my wrist. Fighting the weight on my back, I raised my head and saw that Cassie was getting the same treatment. So much for leaving my companion alone. Our eyes met, and I saw the reflection of my own fear and terror in her own expression.

My shoulders screamed as the horde lifted me to my feet. I strained my ears, hoping beyond hope for sirens, for shouts from concerned citizens, but there was nothing. We were completely and irrevocably on our own.

I’ve spent most of the years since my dad died feeling guilty. That little nagging voice in the back of my head constantly whispered that I should have acted sooner. It’s faded, over time, but he’d been piping up a lot more lately since Mother’s coven broke her out of prison. Now the little voice liked to point that I could have stopped her, permanently, and any harm she does while running free is on me.

Logically I know that I’m not accountable for anyone’s actions but my own. And the one thing that I’ve always been able to lean on is the knowledge that I’ve never killed anyone. Melanie’s familiars, in any real sense, were already dead, and while I may have contributed to the phenomenon that put her down, it seemed a bit arrogant to make a claim on the seemingly divine action that destroyed the Edimmu and turned Melanie into a no-kidding pillar of salt.

I didn’t see any lights in the sky, now. No friendly crowd of ghosts had gathered to help us out of this predicament, and there was no sign of any mortal authorities. If I only had to worry about my own skin, I might have played along for a bit until I saw a better opportunity to escape, but I couldn’t risk Cassie’s safety. Call it what you will. Even though I was unwilling to put the feeling into words just yet, the thought of her coming to harm stoked an intense, white-hot rage inside of me. The fact that anything that did happen would be my fault just stoked the flames higher. I’d lived with such strict self-control for so long that the sudden emotion was both terrifying and intoxicating.

The crowd buzzed, and my heels dragged across the road as they began to move us. “DO NOT STRUGGLE AND NEITHER OF YOU WILL BE HARMED. TLALOC SUMMONS YOU.”

“There’s just one problem here,” I announced. Maybe the drones couldn’t get the subtle nuance of humor or sarcasm, but that had never stopped me before. We kept moving, but a few blank faces turned to look at me. “You have seriously pissed me off.”

I phased through the flex cuffs and the hands clutching my upper arms. Bodies crashed into space I’d formerly occupied, but I whirled away and through the crowd. If a fist going through me had felt odd, an entire body was nauseating, but I pushed the discomfort aside and kept moving until I got out into the open.

When I phased back in, my hands were shaking a bit from fatigue, but it wasn’t too bad. “Let her go!” I barked. The portion of the crowd holding Cassie didn’t move, but the rest surged toward me. Damn it.

Force blades snapped into existence around my clenched fists. Fueled by desperation, fear, and anger, lines of blue light traced the wedge-shaped implementation of my will. I jerked my arms out from my chest, leaving loops of afterimage contrail in front of me. If my display impressed the horde, they didn’t show it, and the leading edge lunged forward, intending to tackle me to the ground once more.

There was no grace in the fight. I flailed and twisted. If not for the mystical weaponry, the effectiveness of my attacks would have been laughable.

I slapped at the first hand to reach for me, and fingers tumbled away like clothespins. When I’d slashed at the salesman, he’d bled. The horde was different—where I struck, their flesh flashed and blackened, filling my nostrils with the smell of scorched meat.

A trio of drones tackled me painfully to the road, knocking the wind from my chest. I flinched a bit as my hands slammed against my own torso, but the force blades didn’t cut me.

That’s handy.

I don’t have much of a bench press, so pushing hundreds of pounds off my body would normally be impossible. Heat flashed against my chest, but the drones suffered in ominous silence as I punched my arms up and out of the bodies holding me down. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about what I was pushing through, or the fact that the guts spilling out on the pavement belonged to living people.

All at once, I was free. I lurched to my feet, and gobs and chunks of flesh fell away from my body as I did. The remains of the group I’d cut through flared with sudden heat and a corona of flame flashed up around me. It passed as quickly as it had risen, and a pile of denuded bone clattered to the pavement in drifts of fine cinders.

I brushed ash from the sleeve of my shirt and faced the crowd. “Who’s next?”

Something I could best describe as a ripple went through them. They kept staring at me, but I got the sense they’d be staring at each other uncertainly if not for the overriding intelligence pulling their strings.

“THIS IS NOT OVER, PAXTON LOCKE. YOU INTRUDE ON THAT WHICH IS NONE OF YOUR CONCERN.”

“Not even a ‘get out of town by sunset?’ You’re in the wild, wild west, pal. Get with the lingo.”

The crowd began to evaporate like water, heading for backyards and impromptu roadblocks. For a moment I was afraid they were going to haul Cassie along with them, but the group holding her released her and backed away, watching me all the while. On the plus side, I’d shown myself as someone not to be underestimated. On the downside, if there was a next time, the drones would try something different.

I moved to her side. “Hold still.” I pinched the cable ties between my thumb and forefinger and applied the smallest bit of force. The tension released, and she brought her arms around to the front and rubbed at her wrists.

At once, she turned and there was a new sort of tension as she pressed herself against me in a desperate hug. I froze, unsure how to react, but I snapped out of it and wrapped my arms around her. We stood there, holding on for dear life as our attackers fled. Somehow, despite the roadblock, the street remained empty even after the tumult. Anyone who drove up probably backed up in a hurry. I let go of Cassie reluctantly and mumbled, “We need to get our stuff.”

The Mossberg had ended up on the side of the road. I tried to ignore the carnage I’d wrought, but I forced myself to turn and look after I retrieved it.

The wind had cleared much of the ash, but piles of bone littered the street. Based on the number of skulls, magical fire had consumed any members of the horde I’d slashed. Helpful, but still strange. A conflict, perhaps, between my own magic and whatever spell our anonymous puppet master had used to turn a crowd of individuals into mindless drones. I frowned at the remains, reflecting on the fact that I’d just become a killer. Sure, there were extenuating circumstances, but I’d kick-started tragedy for a dozen or more families.

My knees wobbled. A bit was from the fatigue of my magical display, but just as much came from the emotional impact of what I’d done. Remember this feeling, I told myself. This is why you can never lose control.

And now, I heard the sirens. Typical. Cassie tugged at my arm with one hand and slid her Kimber back into her purse with another. “We need to go, Pax.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

CHAPTER 16

Valentine

Luke Air Force Base—Friday afternoon

Val squinted in the sudden sunlight and fished his sunglasses out of the breast pocket of his jacket. They’d chased the sun across the country, moving with a speed that was a truly impressive display coming from a government organization. The plane they’d taken to Vegas and back had no longer been available. In the end, it was a moot point because the counterfeit moving truck turned out to be too tall to fit. They’d upgraded to a larger C-17, which was fine by him. It wasn’t as comfortable as flying commercial, but it had been a step up over their last flight. He’d gotten enough fitful rest that he hoped the jet lag wouldn’t hit too hard.

“Accounting’s going to shit when they get the invoice on this one.” Val grinned at Eliot as the other man joined him on the tarmac and squinted at the sun. “We may have to shake a can to raise funds for the Christmas party.”

“I usually bring my own beer anyway,” Eliot said.

“Snob.”

“I know what I like. There’s the liaison.”

The agent leaning against the Crown Vic shielded his eyes from the sun, saw that they were looking, then beckoned them over. The cargo aircraft had taxied into a hangar after landing, and their local contact had parked on the side of the building closest to the attached office.

Val conducted a silent assessment of their counterpart as they came closer. The guy looks like he should be in high school. The young agent was of medium-height, clean-shaven with his hair cut to strict regulation length. Wonder what he thinks of us? Eliot’s hair was more than a bit longer and sloppier than was acceptable, and his own goatee was a big no-no. It had been years since any supervisory agents had gathered the testicular fortitude to bring it up with either of the partners.

The young guy stuck out a hand. “Agent Jared Anjewierden, gentlemen. Welcome to Phoenix.”

“Valentine.” He jerked a thumb to the side, then shook the kid’s hand. “Eliot.”

To his credit, the young guy’s eyes only widened a fraction. “Keys,” he stammered, handing them over.

Valentine accepted them, then considered the parking lot. “Do you need a ride, Anje—Agent?”

“Anjewierden, sir. And yeah, that would be great. My partner got called away. Apparently, someone scattered a dozen skeletons across a street in South Phoenix.”

Val glanced at Eliot and raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. Any eyewitnesses?”

“It’s a pretty shady neighborhood, so doubtful. Is it related to why you’re here?”

“Need to know,” Eliot interjected before Val could speculate. “Sorry. But we might take a look if we’re dropping you off there.”

“We’re keeping this close-held for now,” Val said, frowning at his partner. “How’s activity been? Anything pop out?”

Anjewierden laughed nervously, looking back and forth between the two partners. “Actually, no. It’s been weird. Damn quiet for the last few months. We claimed a peuchen corpse from the Border Patrol a few weeks back, but other than that, zilch.”

“Peuchen?” Eliot frowned.

“Flying vampire snake,” Val said. “Nasty little suckers.”

“That’s the critter,” the younger agent confirmed. Behind them, George pulled the moving van out of the hangar. The Air Force C-17 had more than enough lift capacity to bear its weight; the main issue had been finding something with a tall enough cargo bay. Even then, it was a close fit.

Val turned and waved to get George’s attention. He debated whether to mangle the other agent’s name again and decided against it. “Hop in, kid. You’re our pathfinder.”

Under Anjewierden’s direction, Val got the Crown Vic off of the tarmac and onto the base proper, followed closely by George and Morgan in the moving van. Eliot had silently taken the passenger seat, relegating the younger agent to the back seat. Rather than be put off by the slight, the kid stuck his head in the rear window and gawked at the moving van. “That’s Agent Laffer and Agent Patrick, right?”

Val glanced at Eliot and tried not to laugh. His partner rolled his eyes and said, “Agent Anjewierden, how long have you been around?”

“Why does everyone ask me that? Three years. I was in the Air Force for four years, before that. I’m 27.”

Val raised an eyebrow, impressed. The guy only looked and acted like a high-school kid. Eliot was a harder nut to crack, though.

“How’d you transfer over?” Division M didn’t actively recruit on a widespread basis, but they did show up and make offers to private citizens and government employees alike who’d had experience with the arcane. Well. These days, anyway. Things had evolved in the years since he and Eliot came aboard.

“I was an SP at Schriever AFB. Some of the satellite uplink equipment kept getting damaged. Turned out to be gremlins. Division M made me an offer during the debrief.”

Val clamped his lips shut and tried not to snicker. Eliot had much more success, though his tone was dry as the desert. “Ah. Must have been, ah, interesting.” Actual gremlins didn’t look or act nearly so frightening as the ones from the series of movies. They were four-armed, cat-faced bipeds that tended toward chubbiness. They could be a pest around electronics but were generally benign.

“I clocked out of rounds after the first wave—after that, I had to use a fire ax. The whole swarm was over two hundred.” Anjewierden shook his head sadly. “The Division M biologist said they aren’t aggressive like that, most times, but we’d done a ROHS-switchover on a lot of circuit boards and they had a bad allergic reaction to the lead-free solder.”

Eliot gave a minute shrug as Val raised an eyebrow at him. “Not bad, kid,” he said into the rearview mirror.

“Thank you, sir. That means a lot, coming from you. If I may, though—” Val gave him a nod in the mirror. “—I know you said I didn’t need to know, but if things are so quiet here, why are you heavy hitters here in force?”

Eliot remained silent, and Val took the lead. “It’s a recon mission, primarily. We’ve got a target of interest. The lack of activity is an interesting data point, though.”

“How so?”

“Cryptids and mystical-types are like your apex predators in nature. When there’s a disruption in the food chain, there are noticeable effects. I did some work with some Border Patrol guys on a chupacabra nest a few years back. They got smart. The critters, I mean. Started stalking the crossings the coyotes were using. It became obvious something was up when arrests in that zone bottomed-out while increasing in other areas. The prey headed elsewhere. What you call quiet gives me the heebie-jeebies, and I got to ask myself—what’s driving all the prey away?” The younger agent grimaced. “Got a job for you, kid. Start running the numbers. I need to know when things started to die down, and if there’s any sort of geographical connotation to it. Think you can handle that?”

“Yeah. I can come up with something, I think.”

“Good. Unless I miss my guess, our showing up might stir the pot.”

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Friday afternoon

The need to wait for Kent ended up working out for us. Cassie and I spent much of the intervening time looking over our shoulders and driving in roundabout patterns. If we were being followed, neither of us could tell. Finally, after seeing more of Phoenix’s surface streets than was liable to be healthy, we called it good.

I gave a moment’s consideration to heading back to Kent’s house to get the grimoire. When we’d unpacked our things the other night, I’d decided the best place for it was inside of one of Kent’s gun safes. It occurred to me there might be some sort of spell in the book to block prying eyes from tracking us, but that was a catch-22. If we were being followed I sure as hell didn’t want to lead them back to Kent and Jean’s house.

We settled for the next best thing—we hit a shopping mall.

The scuffle had torn my button-down in a couple of places and streaked it with ash. I bought a baggy Arizona Cardinals hoodie to go over my T-shirt and a black knit cap to cover up my hair. Up close, I didn’t look all that different, but it made me harder to identify from a distance. Cassie’s clothes were in better shape, but she ended up with a different jacket and a baseball cap, herself. I wasn’t confident that it would be enough, but it was better than nothing until I could figure out an alternative. As for the Explorer, it was more than anonymous enough to blend into Valley traffic.

We did the fifth crime-scene on the move. I didn’t even bother to roll the windows down as we coasted by the dump site, a three-walled dumpster paddock behind a strip mall. There was nothing there, but I’d been almost certain that was going to be the result. Whatever, or whoever, this Tlaloc was, he or she wasn’t leaving any ghosts behind. That reminded me a bit too much of the Edimmu, but I forced myself to put that on the mental back burner.

Reasonably certain of our own safety, we settled down for a late lunch with former President Clinton.

Kent introduced me to Poncho’s the first time I visited him, and I made it a point to stop in at least once every time I came to town. The place was a Valley institution, with salsa to die for. By now, the mural boasting of Bill’s visit back in the day didn’t faze me, but Cassie kept sneaking incredulous looks at it.

“That’s—that’s something, all right. Did he really wear an American flag tie when he ate here?”

“Artistic license,” I shrugged. I was more concerned with shoveling down calories. My display of power had probably been a bit more than I should have attempted, so soon after almost draining myself dry. But at least recharging was fun.

Cassie took a sip of iced tea and shook her head slightly. “What’s our next play?”

I’d already come to a general idea, but I figured one aspect of having a not-sidekick was running things by my partner before committing to a course of action. “Stay on the move, wait Kent out. Soon as we can, hit the last scene.” I took a drink of tea to give myself a moment to consider my next words. “But no matter what happens there, I think we need to talk about getting some backup. No offense.”

She blinked, then frowned. “Not sure why that’s supposed to offend me. What kind of backup are we talking about?”

I grinned, but the waiter brought our food before I could reply. He dropped off Cassie’s taco salad and my arroz con carne, double steak, and departed with a promise of drink and chip refills. I found an intact chip and piled steak, rice, and molten cheese on it. “I ever talk to you about the De La Rosa brothers?”

“That’s the guy Kent worked with, on your dad’s case, right?”

“Esteban, right. He retired to San Diego. I lived with him and his family for a few years, out there. They have a detective agency.” I paused, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “That’s, uh, kind of where I got the idea to do the whole paranormal detective thing, actually. I’m listed on their books as one of their independent contractors.”

“Ah, so that’s the source of your bank account.” Her eyes twinkled and she leaned in closer. “And here I worried you were hustling pool in random honky-tonks.”

“I suck at pool,” I said, gravely, then smiled. “Anyway, you’ve got Esteban and his brother, Javier. They’re the heads of the agency. Karen’s the accountant—she’s Javi’s daughter. Her husband, Carlos, he’s an ex-cop, and he works with them, too. He tried to teach me golf. Then you’ve got Scope, Karen’s brother.”

“I didn’t take Spanish in high school, but—Scope?”

“Well, he’s an Esteban, too, but that’d get confusing, right? He’s the photography expert. They do skip-traces, disability fraud checks, divorces. It’s a ton of camera work, so—Scope.”

“Sounds thrilling. Kidding—but how are they suited to back us up?”

This was the touchy part. I glanced around. We’d come in after most of the lunch crowd, but you never knew when a waiter or waitress would pop up and overhear. “Here’s the thing. Javi and Scope are both ex-military. And yeah, most of what they do is pretty straightforward in a legal sense, but they also get into some more gray areas. San Diego is a pretty safe place, but it’s also close to the border. The cartels, for the most part, keep their business to people that exist in that world, but things spill over. And a good way for an up-and-comer to turn a quick buck is kidnapping.”

Cassie raised an eyebrow. “So, the De La Rosas do what, exactly?”

“They’re the guys you call when you don’t have time to wait for the FBI. They’re effective and brutal enough that the cartels have learned to steer clear of them. San Diego’s a big Navy town, and the firm has always got freelance work for guys with the right skills. They’ve got a few former SEALs on the payroll as consultants, and not the arf-arf, bouncing ball kind.” I shrugged. “So, yeah. If I call for help, we’ll get it. I want to make sure that you don’t take it as a slight against you.” I shook my head. “Hell, if anything, it’s a judgment on me. No way I’m equipped to handle what we just dealt with. I don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t backed down.”

Cassie reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “Hey. I get it, okay? That was some next-level, Invasion of the Body Snatchers-type stuff, right?” She squeezed, and I squeezed back. The human contact felt good and right. It had been a long time. “I’ve got to stop listening to you, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“You said this was only a ghost job, that it’d be fast and easy.” She made a buzzing noise. “Wrong answer.”

“Blew that one, didn’t I?”

CHAPTER 17

Helen

Salome, Arizona—Friday night

In a secluded space toward the rear of the KOA Campground off US 60, class was in session.

Helen had given the order to head there shortly after she’d cast the second location spell. Remaining in the rest area was out of the question. The Highway Patrol was bound to come through and run plates at some point—especially if their stolen RV numbered among the vehicles remaining overnight. The motor home was comfortable, but Helen still had a very real sense of the impending doom hanging over their head. If and when anyone discovered the bodies of the former owners, or a concerned friend or relative reported them missing, the license plates on the big motor home would become a flashing beacon to any and all law enforcement that happened to run across them. Stealing a different set of plates was a possibility, but she also knew that if she didn’t keep her crew occupied she was bound to have a revolt on her hands.

Thankfully, returning to her former role of teacher made it much easier to ignore her frustration with the situation. She’d hoped to have the grimoire in her hands by now, but the girls, thankfully, had broken her out far in advance of what she needed. The delay wouldn’t interrupt the schedule of her plan. Some aspects were time-critical, but those also required certain preliminary magics. Without exception, she needed the grimoire to implement them.

The girls sat around the motor home’s small dinette table, faces set with grim intent. The familiars might well have been furniture, for all the attention they paid to the goings on in their midst. They’d been set to watch, and so they did.

“You’ve been working on tapping external chi,” Helen said, to nods all around. She avoided the more detailed description the grimoire had used when she herself had found the means to tap. Her coven had crossed the line of typical morality, showing themselves willing to kill for power. Despite that, she thought they’d react poorly to the revelation that the least frightening term the grimoire used for external chi was ‘shadow source.’

She reconsidered the half-dozen mystical watch dogs scattered around the interior. Then again, perhaps not.

“One of the most useful capabilities is the ability to tie certain spell effects to a physical object. This, probably, is the origin of the thought of mystical runes. The truth, though, is much simpler.” She held up a simple wooden bracelet, one of a dozen similar souvenirs they’d bought at a roadside tourist trap before arriving at the campground. “You focus not on the particular object, but on the sort of change that you bring to it. A scratch, a mark of some sort.” With a knife in hand, she focused on the shadow source as she scratched the curved interior of the bracelet with a random curlicue. “You can’t see the effect of the binding on the physical object, but when you do it properly, you’ll feel it.” She bounced the bracelet in her hand. It didn’t seem to weigh more, but it felt more substantial, more real, to her, all the same. If she held it still in her palm, there was a faint vibration to it that hadn’t been there before. “Then, once you bind it to the tap, you can make real use of it.” She nodded toward the opened binder of spells. “The shield spell is a difficult one because the energy required for defense is equal to the energy exerted against it. Did any of you study it?”

Kelsey and Roxanne nodded. The smaller girl murmured, “There were so many warnings I was afraid to try to cast it.”

“It’s one of the more advanced spells you managed to save,” Helen agreed. “That said, it’s most useful when you bind it to a tap.” She took up the knife again. “Clipeus.” A faint curl of smoke trailed up from the tip of the blade as she scratched the second sigil into the inner curve. The bound spell snapped into place, vibrating in her hand. The familiars shifted, looking around the interior, as though seeking out the source of some noise only they could hear. Helen smiled. She handed the bracelet to Kelsey. “Try it on.”

The younger girl slipped it onto her wrist and made a noise of interest in the back of her throat. “You’re right, I can feel it.” She shook her wrist, and the light around her arm seemed to shimmer and bend ever-so-slightly, in an area around four feet in diameter centered on the bracelet.

“Wood’s not the most durable material, but it’ll do. I used to own a very special ceramic relic that was thousands of years old, and it was none the worse for wear. Melanie’s father had it. That little planter brought us all together, in a way.”

Giselle reached out and stroked Kelsey’s bracelet. “What about metal? What if we wanted a magic sword or something?”

Roxanne laughed. “Hell, yeah!” All three girls exchanged high-fives.

Helen resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Metals are more difficult. They’re far more durable than other materials, so the potential for power is far greater. But yes, if you have something metal and the tools to inscribe it, you can imbue effects.” There were more than a few historical examples, particularly in wartime, but that was a line of conversation she wanted to steer them away from, for now. They had to learn how to walk before they could run. “The main issue is that metals tend to be harder to work with, so you either need experience with chiseling or filing. Even then, sometimes you need some sort of already-magical blade to inscribe it.”

“Did you have anything like that, before?”

“I used to.” Helen smiled, though it didn’t touch her eyes. “But we’ll get it all back, sooner or later, ladies.”

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Friday night

Getting Kent up to speed took a bit longer than I’d planned. Having to explain that we’d been responsible for the street full of bones that had Phoenix PD hopping most of the afternoon had been an interesting experience. On the bright side, he considered our explanation of events, then shrugged. “Don’t see what else you could have done, short of running away before they blocked the exits.” His blithe forgiveness for so much death might have been off-putting if Kent hadn’t been all-too-familiar with my Mother’s dossier of crimes. It didn’t completely assuage my guilt, but it helped, a little.

Rather than take two vehicles we took a roundabout path, dropping Kent’s SUV off at his house and piling into the rental. Cassie gave up the shotgun for Kent. He directed me with the familiar ease of a local and saved me the hassle of listening to the GPS.

“You haven’t asked me, you know.”

I took a quick glance over. “Asked you about what?”

“The boys. Evan and Ethan.”

Working my jaw back and forth, I kept my eyes on the road and tried to tell myself that was entirely about safe night driving. Sure, it is. “I didn’t forget about them.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Kent’s voice went softer, but the blows still struck. “You empathize with them?”

“Of course, I do. How could I not?” What had happened to me at sixteen had been bad enough. Just thinking about what the twin boys had to be going through left me shaking. Maybe not thinking about it was taking the easy way out. Had my dogged insistence on preceding from oldest to newest been borne out of a desire to cover all the bases, or to put off the most horrifying scene of them all? “Where are you going with this?” I forced a laugh, but it sounded shrill in my ears. “You think I need a shrink?”

He shifted in the passenger seat, then sighed. “I don’t want this to crush you if it doesn’t come out right, son.”

I swallowed. “If they don’t make it, you mean.”

“Right.”

“That’s the last thing you should worry about, Pops.”

He sounded surprised. “Oh?”

“I lost my temper this afternoon. Something happens to those kids, I’m liable to lose my mind. And I don’t know what I might do, then.”

Cassie leaned forward between the seats. “It’s not going to happen, Pax.” She squeezed my shoulder. “You’ll get this done.”

I grinned at Kent. “See? I’m getting a more positive outlook already.”

He shook his head and crooked a finger at a house. “That’s the one.”

Glancing at it out of the corner of my eye, I nodded but kept on driving. There was a convenience store at the end of the block. I parked the Explorer and twisted to face my companions. “I’ll go in on foot. Keeps the prying eyes away.”

Kent looked like he wanted to protest for a minute, but he finally nodded his assent.

“Back in a flash,” I promised, and started walking back to the empty home. The temperature had dropped to a surprising extent after the sun went down, and I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans and wished I’d thought to bring a jacket.

It was a well-lit street, most of the homes set well back from the road. It didn’t look like the sort of place where horrible things happened, but if I’d learned anything in the last ten years, it was that evil most often struck where you least expected it, and safety often proved to be an easily-shattered illusion.

Checking behind myself to make sure the street was clear, I went invisible. Safe from prying eyes, I cut through the front yard and stepped around the side of the house Kent had indicated. A padlock secured the gravity lock of the side gate. I checked that the no one stood in the windows of the house next door, dropped the invisibility spell, and phased through the gate.

Various sized of pebbled stone, as was typical for the area, covered the front yard. The backyard was lush with grass save for the area surrounding an in-ground pool and a patio with a barbecue grill. I crossed my fingers that there weren’t any motion detector lights in the backyard and moved through the grass to the patio and the sliding doors leading into the house.

Phasing through the glass felt different than other materials, which I suppose made sense in a strange sort of way. As I stepped into the house and took in the unfamiliar atmosphere of someone else’s home, deja vu hit me. This was the second time in a week I’d intruded into the emptiness of a family’s grief, only this time, I hadn’t even bothered to learn the last name of the owners of the home I was trespassing.

I know the names of the boys, I told myself. That was most important. That and doing everything I could to find them before Tlaloc and its minions subjected them to unimaginable terrors and tortures.

When I’d called the De La Rosas and asked them for any help they could provide, I’d also taken a few moments to speak to Karen. She had, so far as I knew, little or no talent for magic, but she styled herself a bruja blanca, a white witch. What she lacked in true power, she made up for in research-fu. Last week she’d been able to translate crucial clues that had helped me defeat Melanie and the Edimmu. I hoped her efforts would pay off for me this time as well.

Enough dithering. I took a deep breath to steady myself and reached out. “Is there—”

The feeling hit me before I could even finish the sentence. Waves of grief and anguish thundered through the house. Having opened myself to them, the sheer mass of emotions drove me to my knees. If the lack of activity at the prior crime scenes had given me concerns that my abilities were beginning to fail me, it was a dead issue, because this was the most intense reaction I’d ever felt.

The sound of weeping came to me from deeper in the house.

I pushed myself to unsteady feet and tried to follow the sound. “Hello?”

Go away.

“I’m here to help. I—”

LEAVE.

The rebuke struck me in the chest with a palpable impact, and I winced. I’ve taken flying knick-knacks to the head a time or two, but this was something different. I had a hunch that, if I wasn’t careful, the occupants of the house could do me real harm.

“I need to talk to you about Evan and Ethan, first. Then I’ll leave.”

A forlorn wail, then: They’re dead. Dead and gone.

“No. They’re alive. Someone took your boys. I’m trying to save them.”

The house fell silent, still, and then the woman stepped out of the wall. If not for that, I could have convinced myself that she was right there in front of me. She was as solid an apparition as I’d ever seen. My boys?

Evan? Ethan?

I turned and saw a man behind me. It was no surprise that the horrors that happened here would result in two ghosts, and it also helped explain the level of sheer emotion that permeated the place.

“The men that came here, can you tell me anything about them? The police said they came in a van. Did you see any writing on the sides?”

Men in black. Dead eyes. So much blood.

Ethan? Where are you?

“Help me help them. What did you see?” Unwilling tears spilled down my cheeks, and I had to fight to speak past the rising lump in my throat. It’s obvious to say that ghosts didn’t tend to be all there, but these were further gone than most. Driven mad by the circumstances of their death, cursed to eternally walk the halls of their home, calling out for what they had lost but could not find.

The mother stepped closer to me and trailed ethereal fingers through the tears on my face. Something in the cast of her face changed, and she whispered.

The door.

“Show me,” I said. “Please.”

She turned and moved toward the front of the house. I followed close behind, chased by the trembling voice of the father. Evan?

The mother led me to the front door, then stopped. After a beat, I realized that she wanted me to open it. I didn’t hesitate—if anyone saw the open door, I could always cloak myself and get out of Dodge. It would suck, leaving the spirits to their agony, but I could always come back later.

I pulled the door open. The interior of the house remained dark, but the glow of the streetlights illuminated enough of the front porch for me to make out a faded stain on the concrete.

The ghost blurred to the floor, and I realized with a start that she was imitating the position she’d died in. Reaching out with one arm, she pointed toward the empty driveway. Upward Path. Upward Path.

I frowned. Was this another demonstration of their insanity? If that was even a term that applied to something that wasn’t really human, anymore. “I don’t understand—”

The van. Upward Path.

The last vestige of Ethan and Evan’s mother was pushing past the shattered remnants of her memory to give me a clue on a silver platter. I resisted the urge to slap myself on the forehead. “Okay. I’ve got you.” I pulled my new phone out and tapped in a quick search.

There it was—Upward Path Recovery Center. I clicked on the link and scrolled through the main page of the site. The pictures made the place look like some sort of upscale resort, with golf courses, tennis courts, and lots of smiling, photogenic people in khakis and polo shirts.

And, right in the background of the web site’s main page, sat a row of identical black vans. No logo decorated their sides, but right above the license plate on each was a stylized ‘U P’ logo.

I stared at the picture, unable to believe my eyes. The emotional storm of the house had subsided, but my own emotions threatened to overcome me.

It was here all along, waiting for me to come ask.

I clenched my fist and resisted the urge to punch a hole in the wall. “I’ve still got time,” I muttered under my breath.

From behind, an ethereal voice. Evan? Ethan?

Information conveyed, the mother stood before me once more. No matter how many times I did this, it still made me feel shitty, like a junior sadist frying ants with a magnifying glass. But even if they were the faintest imitations of life, they deserved the truth. They deserved peace.

I pushed. “You don’t have to worry about your boys.” Her face turned confused, but I could tell I had both ghosts entranced as I began to convey the horrible truth of their existence to them. “What you think you are, that’s not real. You’re a residue of pain, the shadow of a memory. What you were is in a better place. You don’t have to hold on. You don’t have to hurt, anymore.”

The father went first, and a rush of wind flowed in through the open door as he left. I could sense that the mother still rejected the truth, hanging on the threshold of dissipation.

“I’ll save the boys,” I promised, hoping beyond hope that it wasn’t a lie. “It’s going to be okay.”

More wind, and all at once, I stood alone in an empty house. Something like a deep sigh went through the place, as though the energy of pain and terror that once had filled it had created some vast internal pressure which now eased.

I turned to face the open door, no longer caring if anyone saw me. There was work to do.

CHAPTER 18

Valentine

Phoenix, Arizona—Friday evening

“We caught a lucky break, here. Empty lot on one side, house for sale on the other. This place has been a short-term vacation rental for the last few years, so the neighbors across the way are used to new folk coming and going.” Morgan led Val and Eliot through the foyer into the front room. The trio stopped in front of the sliding glass doors leading to the patio and backyard.

Val reached out to pull the curtains to one side and allowed a smile to spread across his face. Past the back fence, the land dipped down into a shallow ravine dotted with intermittent cholla and ironwood. The view was a straight shot into the Sikoras’ backyard. Despite the low block fence surrounding the opposite property, their perspective gave them a prime view of the backyard and the rear of the house. “Beautiful,” he murmured. “I won’t ask how much it’s costing us.”

“The director has, surprisingly, been pretty relaxed about any budgetary issues.”

“What do you make of that?” Val let the drape fall back and turned to face the other agent. “Seems out of character.”

“Something’s up,” Eliot muttered. “This whole town makes me itch.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow at Val, but he just shrugged. “The agent they sent to bring us the car had some interesting information.” He gave a short summary of the lack of activity in the area and concluded, “So, yeah, I can see why you’re itchy, Eliot.”

The other agent fidgeted in place, then shrugged. “Be back. I’m going to start hauling in equipment.”

Morgan waited until he was out of earshot before turning back to Val. “Are you keeping a close watch on him?”

“You’re joking, right?” Val scoffed. “What else have I been doing over the years?”

“I’m just saying. He looks a little more tight-wound than usual, Matthew. The last thing we need is for him to lose it in the middle of a case.”

He stared at her for a moment, then grinned. “We’re all monsters, darling. Some of us just handle the load a little better than others.”

“I can count on you and George not go through this subdivision like a buzzsaw, too. You and I both know that there are—levels, shall we say.”

Val patted his hip. “It won’t be a problem.”

“I know he’s been a friend for a long time—”

“Not an issue,” Val growled, and her eyes widened, just a bit.

“Understood.”

“Moving on—Agent Anjewierden’s numbers, or lack thereof?”

“I’ll need to see the data, but that’s not a good sign. There are some spells I can try, to see if we’re dealing with something that’s gone unnoticed. But it’s all packed up.”

“Let’s get to it, then.”

With the U-Haul backed up to the garage, they could move equipment in and out of the house without much chance for being noticed. And while the big truck had a cozy command center, setting up on a couple of folding tables in the living room was far more appealing.

Val promptly lost their security deposit by screwing camera mounts into the drywall of several of the south-facing windows. He took a few moments to neatly collate the bundle of cabling, then duct-taped it to the carpet so none of them stumbled over it.

Eliot double-stepped down the stairs. “Parabolics are in place. If they pop their heads outside, we should have no issues keeping an ear on what’s going on.”

“Where do you want the table, George?” Val asked, as the other agent wheeled his chair into the room. The front porch had too many stairs for him to navigate, but the step up from the garage into the kitchen was short enough that a set of folding ramps from the U-Haul worked just fine.

“Few feet back from the sliding glass doors, we don’t anyone to spot it and wonder what’s up.” Val unfolded the table and retrieved the bundles of cables as the other agent started laying out the computer equipment he’d hauled in on his lap.

“I’m starving, anyone else?” Eliot wondered aloud. There was a breakfast nook between the kitchen and dining room. Armed with a pair of binoculars, he scanned the target house. “I’ve got a good angle on the side where the RV is parked, we should set up one of the cameras in here.”

“I call pizza,” George announced. “Any takeout menus in the kitchen?”

“It’s always pizza with you,” Val grinned. “Sicilian?” The other agent frowned, then scratched his noise with his middle finger. “Thin crust, it is.” He headed back out to the truck for another load of gear.

Most of the equipment they needed was stored in heavy-duty plastic Pelican cases. Other items weren’t nearly as portable. Considering the neighborhood, Val figured it was safe to leave the heavily-laden weapons rack on one wall loaded up, for the time being. The rune-inscribed holding units on the opposite wall weren’t removable, and the furniture in the house was a lot more comfortable than the chairs in the mobile command center. With a satisfied nod, he hefted the last two cases and stepped out of the truck.

While on the surface the vehicle was physically identical to the company’s standard equipment, the sensitive contents made for certain requirements when it came to security. Rather than the typical gravity handle on the roll-up door, the Division M truck came equipped with an automatic locking solenoid that was engaged and disengaged by an unobtrusive numeric keypad. Val hauled the door down, waited for the heavy click of the lock, then hauled the Pelican cases inside the garage. Once in, he bumped the button to close the door with his elbow and stepped back into the house.

“This is all of it,” he announced. “Put any special requests down on the pad and I’ll hit a grocery store later. I want to keep any traveling down to a minimum, we don’t want to spook any of the neighbors.”

“Yes, dad,” George intoned. Morgan tinkled laughter; Eliot just shook his head. “Can you check the feed on camera three? I’m not getting a signal.”

Val suppressed a grin of his own and traced the cable. Hopefully we can wrap this up before we all go stir crazy. Come soon, Helen. You and I have a date with destiny.

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Friday night

Kent, as it turned out, had heard of Upward Path.

“Unreal, kid. They’ve got ads on the TV every time I change the channel. ‘If you don’t get help at Upward Path, please get help somewhere.’ They’ve got a big-ass rehab facility out on Estrella Drive.”

“Where’s that?”

“Out toward Laveen. Nice and isolated.” He thought about it for a second. “Shit. Come to think of it, the Mayor’s smarmy little Chief of Staff is on their board of directors.”

“That’s a handy way to keep an eye on the case,” Cassie pointed out. I frowned as the shadow of a thought flitted around in the back of my head but focused on driving.

“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s been trying to steer avenues of investigation or anything like that.”

The idea coalesced, and I asked, “But which came first? Was he on the mayor’s staff before he was with Upward Path or after?”

“Why does it matter?” Kent said.

“Well, I thought we could check out the facility, but is it a case where he weaseled his way into the mayor’s office, or into Upward Path? We know for a fact they used one of the vans on the home invasion, but it’s just a guess that they used one for the other body dumps.”

“If we look into him, we’ll need to keep it quiet. I don’t want it coming back to bite us.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “I called the De La Rosas earlier today. Karen is doing some digging for me on the mystical side of things, and Carlos thought he and a few of the other guys could head this way soon.”

Kent squirmed in his seat. “I can pretty much guarantee you there’s not going to be a consulting fee. Not that I don’t appreciate the help, mind you, but—”

I laughed. “I love when you get nervous, Pops. I got this one.”

“Hell, kid, I know Esteban and his crew don’t come cheap. I can’t ask you to do something like that.”

“I owe you, old man. This doesn’t even begin to cover it. Forget it.”

“You don’t owe me a thing, son. Don’t think like that. That was the milk of human kindness.”

“Exactly,” I said. I turned into Kent’s subdivision and glanced over at him. “Who knows how I’d have turned out without you guys to help keep me on the straight and narrow.”

Kent scoffed. “You were damn near a finished product, boy. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“You can protest all you want, but I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Cassie leaned into the conversation. “Trust me, Mr. Sikora. I’ve seen his bank account, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

He chuckled. “That’s a pretty serious step, Pax. You sure about this young lady?”

I was thankful for the darkness as I blushed and met Cassie’s eyes in the mirror. “About as sure as it gets.”

Kent laughed again. I shook my head as I pulled into the driveway. As we piled out of the Explorer, another car pulled in right behind us. On edge, I stiffened, but Kent put his arm on my shoulder. “It’s all right. That’s Tully. Don’t know why he didn’t call.” He muttered something under his breath, then said, “Head on inside.”

Tully just sat there, engine running, headlights shining on Kent as Cassie and I stepped into the house. Jean looked up from a magazine she was reading. I shot her a look and murmured to Cassie, “I’m going out there. Lock the doors.”

As she threw the deadbolt, I headed to the other side of the house. Right before the bedrooms, I slid through the interior door to the garage. The inside was dim enough that I had to pick my way through, but the window on the opposite wall was my ultimate destination and gave me something to navigate toward.

I phased through the garage wall. Solid once more, I picked my way through the gravel at the side of Kent’s house, trying not to make too much noise. The RV was in a prime position to use it for cover. I crept around the rear, then cut into the driveway while invisible. Tully had gotten out of the car, though he’d left the engine running. He stood in front of the driver’s side headlight, strangely far away from Kent. I approached in time to hear him finish speaking.

“The Chief wants you in his office first thing tomorrow morning.”

“On a Saturday?” Kent sounded incredulous, and it didn’t sound like he was putting any act on it. “What the hell’s this about, Tully?”

“You had instructions. Don’t bring any third parties into the investigation.” This was my first time hearing the man, but something seemed off about his tone. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “You should bring your consultant with you tomorrow so we can clear the air.”

How the hell does he know about me? On impulse, I dropped the cloak. As I appeared behind Tully, Kent jumped slightly. His partner turned and gave me a calm look. That was almost as off-putting as his stilted manner of speaking. “My ears are burning, so I guess you’re talking about me.” I stepped forward and stuck out a hand. “Paxton Locke.”

He looked down his nose at the gesture as though my hand was a piece of dog crap on his shoe, then locked eyes with me. At that moment, I knew for sure and understand what my gut had been trying to tell me. There were no overt signs, but somehow, I had the sense that something at once more and less than Detective Tully Roberts regarded me. Vast and cool and unsympathetic, as the saying went. “Enchanted,” the Tully-thing said.

I pulled my hand back. “I’m sure. You’re here late. Busy night?”

“Clean-up duty,” it said, cocking its head to one side. “You?”

“Clean-up duty, huh?” I resisted the urge to clench my fists. “Must have been one hell of a mess. Why the rush?”

It smiled with one corner of its mouth. It was a disconcerting expression; a funhouse mirror image of a lunatic’s smirk. “Best not to spook the populace.” He uttered the last word with the same flat effect one might use for ‘shoe’ or, more fittingly, ‘cattle.’

“Difficult job, I’d guess.”

“It would surprise you how easy it is to convince those with no desire to see to look the other way.” Its eyes narrowed. “You should try it on for size, instead of poking your nose where it does not belong.”

“Not my style.”

Tully’s fingers twitched, and I considered the obvious bulge of the holstered sidearm under its jacket. It saw me looking, and the smile broadened. A bit too much, I’d say. The corners of his mouth were well back of the molars. “Concerned?”

“Nope.” A gun would be too easy and too obvious. The fact that Tlaloc, or one of its drones, had come forward in such a blatant manner was telling in and of itself. Or, I was completely off-base and the thing was off its rocker. I resisted the urge to call up a force blade.

“You should be, Paxton Locke.”

I shrugged and favored the Tully-thing with a winning smile. “All these things that go bump in the night, they keep telling me how scared I’m supposed to be. Then they go down like chumps.” I made a point of looking Tully over from head to toe. “Buddy, you’re about the tenth worst thing I’ve seen this week.”

It turned and looked over its shoulder. “Nine o’clock, Sikora. Bring your charming friend. We’ll talk about the future.”

And with that, the thing in the detective suit stepped to one side and marched past to the waiting vehicle. I waited until it slammed the driver’s door and pulled away before I let my hands start to shake.

“What the hell was that all about?” Kent whispered.

“It got your partner. And apparently, it wants to talk.” I stared after the car and resisted the urge to laugh. “The joke’s on you, asshole. I know where you live.” I think.

He rubbed his forehead and grimaced. “Hell, Pax. The mayor’s chief of staff and now the chief of police. If the rot goes that high, what are we going to do?”

I slapped Kent on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” I said with good cheer that was only a little put-on. “Help is on the way.”

CHAPTER 19

Cassie

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday morning

She sat on top of the covers with crossed legs and stared at the bathroom door.

Things went sideways for a while after Paxton and Kent came back into the house, but things had settled down, now. Sikora had taken a sleeping position in a living room chair, pistol close at hand. Paxton had brought the shotguns in from the rental car, but despite worries of an attack, the house remained still. The only sound was the periodic rush of the furnace, staving off the chill of the desert night.

The clock had long turned over midnight, but she still couldn’t sleep. Cassie had exchanged a few text messages with her dad, reassuring him that she was alive, safe, and not yet ready to come home. Mike Hatcher was only marginally aware of the craziness of Paxton-world, but he’d supported her decision to go along, nonetheless.

A few years ago, her dad would have been less supportive, and understandably so. Less than six months after arriving at Ball State, she’d headed home. She’d spent more time partying than going to class. Forget about homework. Worse than returning home with her tail between her legs was the baggage she brought back. Between parties, alcohol-fueled encounters, and walks of shame, she’d found that she had more than a bit of a taste for alcohol.

That discovery had been as shocking as it had been embarrassing. She’d spent most of her high school career rolling her eyes at the burnouts and booze-hounds in her suburban high school. Out of her comfort zone and in an unfamiliar place, she’d started drinking to fit in and ease her social anxiety. Playing to the expectations of the crowd was easier than being herself, but before she knew it she’d lost her scholarships.

It could have been anything other than booze. It wasn’t that she had any sort of genetic propensity to alcoholism—her dad was pretty much a teetotaler save for the occasional beer—but rather the fact that when she did something, she was all in, whether it be volleyball at Tremper High, the drinking, AA, or the long-term plan she’d been working to finish college. “Cassie Focus” had endeared her to a lot of coaches and teachers and annoyed the hell out of friends. And it was something she couldn’t switch off, though she’d learned to redirect her energies into more positive efforts.

And then, last week, she’d stumbled into something amazing. And as terrifying and surreal as the experience had been, she had to admit that she’d felt things that she hadn’t in a good long while—hope, excitement, and a realization that there were far more layers to the world around her than she’d ever thought possible.

She flipped her sobriety token around in one hand, rubbing on the fading ‘1’ with her thumb. Time for a new one, soon. Her sponsor hadn’t been happy when Cassie had told her that she was going out of town indefinitely, but even if Anna had been less understanding than her own dad, she’d at least recognized that once she got her mind set on something, Cassie was intent on doing it.

It was an aspect of herself that she’d only partly understood, before, but once she’d mastered the truth spell her perspective had changed. It wasn’t so much that she’d used the spell on herself, but the actual knowledge of it pulled the veil back on certain truths she’d kept hidden from herself. Recognizing her own tendency toward obsessive habits didn’t help her avoid it, but she could choose what to obsess about.

Magic? Adventure? Being a big damn hero? Oh, hell, yeah.

There was always a but, though, wasn’t there? Because as much as she’d insisted to Paxton that she wanted to work together as equal partners, there was more than a little something there. A fluttery, nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach that didn’t seem to want to go away. She supposed that she’d come pretty close to dying or being severely injured today, but all she could think about was the hug they’d shared, and how much more that moment could have been if she hadn’t been afraid. It was funny—she had an advantage that no other woman had ever had. She knew with absolute certainty that the guy she was crushing on had similar feelings.

In two steps, she’d be at the bathroom door. Two more steps to the door leading into Pax’s room. After that—well. She didn’t need a truth spell to know how that would go.

Cassie lowered her head and smiled ruefully. ‘Sidekick, hell,’ you had to say. You idiot.

She stared at the comforter on the bed, then glanced at the time on her phone. If she didn’t get at least a little sleep, she was going to be a zombie when the time came to get up. Pax had mentioned trying something before they headed to the police station. The fact that he wasn’t hesitating to take her along told her that he was still taking the sidekick remark to heart, and that made the whole situation even better. Sleep now. Be ready for tomorrow. You’ll get a chance later.

Maybe she was telling herself what she needed to, but she had the sense that she was right.

And despite the difficulty she’d had falling asleep earlier , this time she was out almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday morning

Jean drove. Neither Kent or I felt comfortable with the idea of leaving her alone at the house. We had no idea if Tlaloc would try anything, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Thankfully, being a cop’s wife over the span of several decades meant that she was not only familiar with handguns, she had one of her very own. There were, I thought with a shake of my head, more guns than people in the Sikoras’ Suburban.

“I’ll keep circling the block,” Jean said as she pulled up to the Central City precinct. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but a gray block building with a bright blue metal roof wasn’t it. The place looked more like a YMCA than a police station.

Tully waited outside the main entrance doors. As he saw us pull up, he raised his hand in a mocking, arrogant wave.

“Text every couple of minutes,” Jane said. Kent nodded, then leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek.

“Talk to you soon,” he said. The fact his voice was gruffer than usual had to be a trick of my ears. No way the old man was getting sentimental on me. I glanced at Cassie and gave her a wink. She smiled with one corner of her mouth—she’d caught it, as well.

We stepped out of the truck and headed toward the entrance. For a moment I thought Tully might block the doors, but he pulled one open and waved us onward with a luxurious wave.

The interior of the station wasn’t empty, but it was close. A couple of uniformed officers gave curious looks to our strange trio as we followed the possessed police detective back through rows of low-walled cubicles.

Our final destination was a glass-walled office. The legend ‘CAPTAIN SPIKER’ was painted on the glass door. Again, Tully held it open for us. Turning my back on him made my skin crawl, but I moved through the opening as fast as I could and hoped for the best.

The man sitting behind the desk was a broad-shouldered white guy with a silver buzz-cut. He looked more like a retired gym teacher than a cop. He stared at us with intense eyes, then indicated a pair of chairs lined up with exacting precision in front of him. I snagged a spare from its place against the wall and added it for Cassie, a bit off-kilter from the others. His expression didn’t change a bit. I must be losing my touch.

As Kent and Cassie picked seats, I let my eyes roam around the office. A slick-haired, legal eagle type in a tailored suit sat in a chair against the back wall. He was too busy tapping away on his cell phone to notice or acknowledge our presence.

Kent took the left chair and Cassie the center. I hesitated for a moment, waiting for Tully to stay by the door, but he sidled around and leaned on one corner of the Captain’s desk. I sat, and the Captain spoke.

“I’m Captain Spiker.” He indicated the guy in the suit. “This is Donald Thibodeau, the mayor’s Chief of Staff. Thank you for coming.”

Didn’t have much choice, I didn’t say. Kent and I had hashed out a bargain on the way over—he had the lead until things got weird, then it was my show.

I half-hoped this would stay straight, but I wouldn’t have laid money on it. There was an odd vibe in the air. These guys were so relaxed they might have been playing a game. And maybe they were. I could cut my way out of the place, but unless I missed my guess, the station had more surveillance cameras than you could shake a stick at. Then there were the—probably—human cops out front. If I started something in here, it would turn the police station into a shooting gallery, fast.

I stiffened. Is that what this is? Do they want an excuse to arrest me, to take me off of the board? I tried not to laugh and wondered how my guardian angel would react if that happened. I heard my name and started paying attention.

“…Locke, there’s a lot of interesting stuff about you on the Internet.”

“That Nancy Grace special was a total joke,” I said. “She never even asked for a quote.”

The Captain didn’t crack a smile. He waited, and once he was certain that I’d finished smarting off, he continued. “While you may style yourself as some sort of paranormal consultant, we have neither the time nor budget to engage your services.” His eyes flickered over to Kent. “Regardless of what the detective has told you.”

I tried to keep the confusion off of my face. Was the verbal jousting for Cassie’s benefit? I reached out and took hold of her hand, squeezing it gently. “What’s with the game? We all know everyone in here is a drone. You’re a bunch of meat puppets. Drop the act.”

I felt Cassie tense a bit at my signal, then she relaxed. “No, that’s not right,” she murmured, then raised her free hand. “He’s not.” She pointed at the baby-faced chief of staff.

Thibodeau raised his eyes from his phone and grinned. “Guilty as charged, blondie. Tlaloc’s busy with other things, at the moment. These guys are more like guided missiles, I guess you’d say.” If Tully or Joe took offense to the description, neither showed it.

“What’s that make you?” I asked. “The lawyer?”

“Watch your mouth, kid. I’m a diplomat. I’m here to negotiate the peace.”

Kent shifted in his chair. I could tell he didn’t like it, but it looked like the weird shit meter had pegged to the max. “Some diplomat,” I scoffed. “Working with a crew that kills homeless people and kidnaps little kids.”

“There are many types of diplomacy. Some take a little more force than others.” He shrugged. “People don’t play along, sometimes they need an object example to make them toe the line. Going at them directly isn’t always the best tactic, but you show them what could happen—well, that fixes things up, right as rain. The Wilson mother and father were unlucky in their choice of friends.” He grinned. “Someone stepped back in line, and from the looks of things, the kids are going to be way more filling than some bums off the street.”

I still didn’t know what Tlaloc was, exactly, but that made sense. Most of the paranormal things I’d dealt with other than ghosts fed on the energy of human emotion, for lack of a better term. The Edimmu had been a ghost-eater. I shifted in my chair and tried to keep my face still. Circumstantial evidence that Tlaloc was something similar kept on piling up.

“You’re going to have a hard time feeding your master when I rescue those kids and shove a shotgun down your throat,” I muttered.

Thibodeau frowned. “I don’t have to justify myself to you, wizard. We’re making a better city, here, with better people. Crime, drugs, all the things that come with them? Gone. The people that step into line reap the benefits. Those who don’t, serve Tlaloc. Sure, there are some growing pains along the way, but that’s life. Eventually, everybody wins.”

“Except for the guys that got their guts scooped out. Except for Evan and Ethan, or their mom and dad.”

He spread his hands. “The big dog’s gotta eat.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“Let’s cut the dick-beating, shall we? Your little shit show on the other side of the town was a big pain in my ass. I’ve got the Feds sniffing around now, and I’m not quite ready for that. If it’s a one-time thing, no sweat. We can write it off to a cartel making an example of someone. But if that sort of thing keeps happening, well. That’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax. Here’s the deal. Detective Sikora, you turn in your badge, you get your pension. Full benefits, no quibbles about it being early. Move away, if you want. Or stay. I don’t give a shit. We really are going to build a world-class city here.” He turned to me. “You and your little squeeze there need to hit the road. You’re trespassing on claimed territory, wizard. And you do not want to mess with Tlaloc when he gets in a mood.”

I resisted the urge to flip off the smarmy jackass. “You’d be surprised, asshole. I’ve burned a shadow demon or two in my day.” One, to be precise, and that was more a struck of luck than anything—but when you’re dealing with a bully, it’s always best to come off strong rather than weak.

“Demon? Try god, kid.”

“Well, like the Captain said, there’s only one God, Donnie.”

A flash of confusion went across his face, and he glanced at Captain Spiker. “He said what, when now?”

I thought about resisting the urge to facepalm but decided to roll with it. “Donnie, how are we even having this conversation if you can’t pick up on classical references?”

“Whatever. Final offer. Take it or leave it.”

Cassie put her hand on top of mine. We’d rehearsed this, and it didn’t feel genuine to me, but I hoped that Thibodeau didn’t have the empathy to recognize the deception. “Pax,” she said. “We’re outnumbered, here. Maybe even outclassed.”

I tried to look angry, then glanced at Donnie. Sure enough, he was eating it up with a spoon. The grin on his face made me want to punch him a few dozen times.

Kent stood with a convulsive movement and jerked his badge off his belt. “Let’s go, guys.” He slammed the badge on Spiker’s desk. “I hated the weather, anyway.”

I kept a wary eye on Tully and Spiker as I stood, but they seemed content to let us be. And why not? So far as they could tell, we were running away with our tails between our legs. Even knowing that it was a ruse, backing down like this still pissed me off, and I imagined the hot flush in my cheeks helped sell the act.

Donnie followed me out the door. “How’d you say it, the other day? ‘Get out of town by sunset?’ Yeah. Time to get with the lingo, wizard.” He flicked his fingers at me. “Off you go.”

It was childish and stupid, and a myriad of other things, but hell. I wasn’t going to let this smug prick think he was making me sweat. I looked over Donnie’s head and estimated the distance to the closest sprinkler nozzle. I twitched a couple of fingers ever-so-slightly and exercised a bit of will. About what you’d need to fetch a drink from the fridge. The bottom of the head popped off, and murky water spewed forth.

The sudden spray poured down around Donnie, cracking his perfect hairdo and soaking his tailored suit. Stunned, he jerked his head back and forth between me and the broken sprinkler as though unsure what to do.

“Wow,” I said, adopting an expression of innocence. “If you’re building a better city, looks like you need to work on the infrastructure first, big man.”

Without bothering to wait for his response, I turned on one heel and walked out.

CHAPTER 20

Valentine

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday morning

He paced the floor until Paxton and his crew returned. He’d made his way across the ravine after midnight and affixed magnetic GPS trackers to the RV and both vehicles. Knowing where they were off to should have eased his concern, but it hadn’t. When the house across the way had emptied, he’d made an executive decision to double-down on the tracking.

Ten minutes after that, Eliot pulled back into their own driveway. Val waited until he had the door shut behind him before asking, “Well?”

His partner shook his head, a confused look on his face. “It was the weirdest thing. Locke, the girl, and Sikora all got out at a police precinct. The detective’s wife drove around in circles. I followed her around, once, but I figured she’d spot me if I kept at it. I waited by the station and kept an eye out. They left after only a few minutes and headed straight back.”

Val frowned, then shrugged. “We’re here to wait for Helen and her crew to show up. Whatever business he’s gotten himself up to doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

“You want to reach out to the locals?”

“Nah, Anjewierden and the other guys out of the field office are already on the bone thing. I’d rather keep a low profile.”

“I almost feel like we need another car.” Eliot walked into the kitchen and poured himself a coffee. “I don’t want them to spot the tail.”

Val shrugged. “We don’t go out unless Paxton leaves. The others, who cares. And with the tracker, we should be able to stay far enough away to avoid notice.”

“True.”

“Hey!” George called from his workstation. “You guys need to check this out.”

He had a spreadsheet with charts opened up on his laptop screen. “That kid agent sent over the reports you asked for.”

Val leaned in. “Footnotes? We’d better watch out, we’re probably going to be working for him in ten years. ” The charts detailed all the Division M call-outs for the local field office, with incident numbers. The minutiae weren’t nearly as interesting as the striking graphical representations.

George tapped one of the charts. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Three months ago, they went from an average of five incidents a week to basically zero.” Anjewierden had labeled the few spikes above the zero line with asterisks. Below the chart, the indicator read that all such marked incidents had occurred well outside of the city limits and referred to a secondary worksheet.

“Says there he’s got maps?”

“Yup.” George clicked over. Starting a year back, red marks dotted the map of the state. The random pattern continued as George scrolled down through the months, until a massive hole opened up in August, centered around Phoenix.

Eliot nudged Val. “You ever see anything like this?”

Val shook his head and opened his mouth to reply, but Morgan’s response cut him off.

“I have.”

He turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “I’m all ears.”

“Chicago.” She held eye contact, then looked meaningfully at Eliot.

Val glanced at his partner, then back at her. “You’re sure?”

“It wasn’t so pretty and detailed, but we had a push-pin map on the wall in the Springfield office back in the day that looked just like it.”

Eliot crossed his arms. “What are you saying, exactly?”

“It’s a sign of a mystical apex predator. The lower-tier cryptids get antsy and tend to head for greener pastures. You’ve been feeling on-edge, right?”

“Yes, but—” Eliot hesitated. “It wouldn’t be another mannaro, would it? The few times we’ve run into others, it’s been a different feeling than this. This is less annoying, more like something is watching me.”

“Probably not, then,” Morgan said. “It’s something else. More ethereal than cryptid, possibly, since young Mr. Locke seems to be some sort of self-taught expert on ghosts. What do we do?”

“Nothing,” Val declared. “We wait for our witches to show up. We observe, no more, no less.”

“We should be doing something,” George muttered. “They don’t seem to be up to much across the way.”

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday afternoon

Backup arrived right after noon.

Carlos and the rest piled into the Sikoras’ living room, and all at once, the house overflowed. I hadn’t known who to expect when my friend had promised help, but I was not disappointed. Carlos, Javier, and Scope were there, along with someone unexpected but welcome, nonetheless.

“This is Father Rosado,” I said to Cassie by way of introduction. “He tries to keep me from guilt-tripping myself into depression.”

He was a good six inches shorter than she was, but he pulled himself up to his full height and vigorously shook her hand. “Call me Joe. I’m glad to see someone has finally made an honest man of young Paxton.” He winked at me. “He’s much too hard on himself.”

The arrival of my friends was a much-needed morale boost; the entire atmosphere in the house changed. I filled them in as fast as I could. Carlos and Javier left, in search of information and supplies they hadn’t brought along—though the back of the De La Rosa brothers’ van was heavily-laden with duffel bags and exotic equipment.

I hadn’t said the words, but Carlos had taken the subtext in my plea for help to its logical conclusion. The De La Rosas had geared up and were ready to go to war.

After what we’d been through the last few days, I was all for it.

While they were gone, I made my own searches, and by the time we reconvened, we had what I hoped was everything we needed. One of the first lessons I learned hanging around Esteban and the rest of his family was that the Internet is a private investigator’s best friend. Social media, web forums, image sharing sites—they all add up to a voluntary disclosure of formerly private moments. Creeping around with a camera was still done, but it was old school. For all his bluster and self-importance, it was a simple matter of persistent digging to determine that Donald Thibodeau had been a founding member of Upward Path’s board of directors before joining the mayor’s office. The public relations photos of Donnie standing there with a shovel on the day the project broke ground were quite good—and displayed for all to see on his social media accounts.

High-quality satellite maps were another boon. Given the relative isolation of the campus, any sort of recon on the ground was tricky. Courtesy of a local office supply store, we printed out a large-format color printout of the campus and immediate surrounding area. With the corners held down with cans of soda and bottles of beer, we stood around the Sikoras’ dining room table and sketched out our plan of attack. Smaller prints of pictures Carlos and Javier had taken on a quick drive past the building littered the edges of the map.

The facility was huge, but most of it was open space. A nine-hole golf course occupied the back half of the acreage. The brilliant green of the grass stood out in stark contrast to the surrounding desert. At the front, basketball and tennis courts commingled between dormitories, office buildings, and a massive, Olympic-sized swimming pool.

There weren’t any labels on the satellite map, of course. The marketing materials and PDF brochure on the website had filled in most of the blanks for us, and we’d labeled each building with a Sharpie.

Scope fingered the map. “Standard infiltration is going to be tricky.”

I followed his fingers with my eyes along the main road to the guard shack at the public highway that ran along the front of the property. “Why’s that?”

“Fences all around, even on the golf course perimeter. The only way in or out is the guard shack.” He tapped one of the smaller pictures. “Ten-foot military link, razor wire on top. Even if you were able to climb it and avoid getting cut to hell, I’d bet these boxes every so often are some sort of motion detector.” He shook his head. “If they spent that much money on passive security, who knows what sort of reaction force they have. That’s not the sort of thing you advertise.”

“The bigger question,” Carlos said, “is where would they hide a couple of kids? They’d have to keep them away from the dorms, right? There have to be some normies in the facility. They couldn’t have turned them all, could they?”

I thought about the crowd that had nearly taken me and Cassie and tried not to shudder. “Maybe, maybe not. But I tend to think you’re right. Any sort of ritual, they’re going to want to keep it away from prying eyes, as well as somewhere quiet.” I scanned the map. The gymnasium was the one building situated away from all the rest. The shape seemed a bit off to me for some reason—it was a giant square rather than the rectangle I associated with ‘gym.’ I flipped through the drive-by pictures until I found one that caught a chunk of it. The building was a three-story affair, with each upper story a little smaller than the one below. The effect, I realized, was a rough pyramid shape, and I thought back to the vision I’d had at the crime scene. Could the design be a coincidence? My gut told me no. All at once, I felt a little better about the investigative path we’d taken. If I’d made the most recent crime scene my first priority, we might not have encountered Angie, and this truncated pyramid wouldn’t speak to me as it did now. I thought back to what the vision of my dad had told me when I’d been fighting the Edimmu inside my own head.

All things have a purpose. All things serve, in the end.

I tapped the map. “Here. It’s got to be here.”

“That’s pretty definite, bro,” Carlos said with a grin.

“We need an up-close look,” I admitted. “But something tells me it’s the place.”

“So how do we get in? Visit, pretend we’re a potential patient, and try to look around without attracting attention?” Javier shook his head. “If these nuts are brazen enough to attack you in broad daylight on a city street, what will they do in their own place?”

“Carlos is a gambling addict,” Scope said with a shrug. “Let’s check him in.”

“Wanna bet?” Carlos snapped back. “Oh, wait.”

“I’ll go,” Cassie volunteered.

“Absolutely not.” I regretted the phrasing as soon as it left my mouth, but it didn’t change the sentiment. Her eyes shot daggers at me.

“Why? Cause I’m a girrrrl? Cut the shit.”

“No. Because if more than a few of them know what we look like, they may all know what we look like. And if they try to take you, you can’t cut your way out like I can.” I shrugged. “It’s a no-brainer, honestly. It’s got to be me.”

Cassie opened her mouth, but Father Rosado put a hand on her arm. “Let him finish before you tear his head off.” She flushed, then nodded.

I tapped the map. “If this is where they’re sacrificing, there might be ghosts around to help guide me. If not, I can still check the building. I can walk through any locked doors, and I can go invisible on the way in and out of the campus. They’ll never know I was there.” I hope. “If you could find the spells in the grimoire, I’d love to have you tag along, but last we checked it’s still being a pain in the ass.”

“Fine,” Cassie said. I had a hunch that it wasn’t, completely, but she seemed willing to drop it for the moment.

Javier cleared his throat, scanned the table to determine whether he had everyone’s attention, and said, “Okay. Assume that your recon is successful. Next steps?”

“If I find the kids, I pull them out with me. It’ll suck spreading the invisibility spell out to cover them, but I’ll manage.”

“Pack some candy bars,” Cassie suggested. The ghost of a smile on her face told me I was on the way back into her good graces. I hoped my responding grin didn’t look as goofy as it felt.

“Yeah, probably so. Worst case scenario, I come out and then we roll in. It depends on how many, uh, well.” I tossed terminology around in my head and finally went with it. “How many cultists there are.”

Javier scratched his chin. “Bearing in mind I’m still amazed I’m saying this, but—can you make our vehicle invisible?” Carlos and Father Rosado had spread the word during the trip over, and even with a priest vouching for me I’d had to provide a quick demonstration. Once I phased my hand through the kitchen table and floated a beer out of the fridge, Javier and Scope bought in.

“Oof. Maybe?”

“Is that the best idea?” Kent asked. “There have to be some cops that aren’t part of this group. You go in and start shooting up a rehab clinic with automatic weapons, someone is going to have something to say about it.”

“You going to arrest me, Chromedome?” Javier grinned.

Kent gave him a look. “I’m just saying. We need to be clear on where we go with this, where our boundaries are. Say we rescue the boys. What then? Do we hide them away for the rest of their lives? Anyone who brings them to a police station is going to be the prime suspect in the murder of the parents, no matter what the kids say.” He shot me a glance. “Especially if they start talking about wizards and monsters.”

“No,” I said. “If—when—we rescue them, they deserve a normal life.”

“Which is an honorable sentiment, son, but how do we accomplish that? Have you got your guardian angel on speed dial?”

“No.”

“Exactly. And while you seem to have a get out of jail free card, that may not necessarily apply to the guys, here.”

He was right, of course. If anything, a battle at Upward Path was liable to be an order of magnitude worse than the confrontation we’d had with the drones on the street. I couldn’t doom any of my friends to accusations from the court system. Judges and juries didn’t tend to be friendly to the magic and monster defense. That had been a good thing when Mother was on trial. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, I didn’t like the fit.

I glanced at the De La Rosa crew. “You guys go in incognito. On foot, maybe, so your vehicle doesn’t get caught up in the whole mess—”

“We’ve got some local contacts,” Scope mused. “We can pay cash for an untraceable junker. It may not be in the best mechanical condition, but it doesn’t need to last forever. We dump and burn it after we make our exit.”

“Fair enough. Meanwhile, I stay behind to greet the first responders.” There was a chorus of muttering from around the table, but I raised a hand for quiet. “I hate doing it, but I can just push them to forget my face. I can create a memory of some super-secret human trafficking task force. ‘Paper trail? It was too sensitive, your Honor.’”

“What about security cameras?” Javier mused.

I made a face. Another good point. I doubted there’d be many in and around the gymnasium if it was their actual abattoir, but there was probably some sort of closed-circuit surveillance system around the rest of the campus. Showing up on video footage would be a good way to wreck our lives down the road. “Can we cut the power?”

“What do you think this is, SEAL Team Six?” Scope waited for a beat, then winked. “Hell, yeah, we can cut the power.” He tapped a spot on the map a quarter-mile down the road from the main gate. “No neighbors. It’s isolated enough, I bet this electrical substation is their only source of power.” He flipped through the drive-by pictures. “No poles, which means buried lines. No sweat. A little bit of C4 on the transformer, out go the lights.”

I fingered the map and nodded in satisfaction. “All right, then. What’s next?”

CHAPTER 21

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

Nightfall.

As the sun slipped below the horizon, streaks of red and orange painted the sky.

We couldn’t know if Donnie had anyone watching the house, so we played up the subterfuge as best we could. Cassie and I hauled our stuff out to the RV. Scope had taken the rental Explorer back to the airport, where he’d met with his local contact and picked up their incognito transportation. He waited for us a few miles from Upward Path. We planned to stash the RV and the De La Rosa’s van behind a gas station, switch over to the burner vehicle, then make our move.

The fact that Father Rosado was staying behind seemed to ease the tension Cassie felt at being off the team. If it was still there, I couldn’t detect it—which, of course, didn’t mean my hunch was accurate. Sometimes, I’ve got the intuition of a tree stump. Particularly concerning women. That naivety elicited endless amusement in Carlos’ wife, Karen, who was always trying to set me up with one of her girlfriends.

Although I guess it could be the same ones. I grinned as I perched on the edge of Kent’s sofa and unfolded the papers Carlos had handed me in the midst of chaotic preparations.

Like always, Karen had come through. There was a Post-It stuck to the inner third of the folded letter—a phone number, and in flowery writing, ‘She’s cute!’ Pulling it off, I rolled it up into a ball as I scanned through the fruits of her research.

Either someone is putting on airs or you’re into some bad stuff, Pax.

Right before the Aztec Empire collapsed, the Emperor’s son elevated their god of War to the top of the pantheon. It might not have been so bad if they’d stuck to the war, but they also began to ritually sacrifice defeated soldiers to Huitzilopochtli, the war god.

Sacrifices were taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and strapped to stone altars. The high priests would cut their chests open with crude knives of volcanic glass and tear out their beating hearts for all to see.

I know what you’re thinking, but it gets worse. After that, the bodies of the sacrifices were butchered, their organs used to prepare special meals for the high-born. Their skulls were boiled and put on display.

The capital of the empire, though, had two temples, and the second was dedicated to Tlaloc. Unlike Huitzilopochtli, he was the god of rain and lightning. When it came to sacrifices, Tlaloc held very particular tastes.

He preferred children.

Keep my family safe, Pax. I hope this thing is a poser, but if it’s not—don’t hold back. It is an abomination.

I lowered the letter and told myself my shaking hands were just a figment of my imagination. Closing my eyes, I took a series of deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself. At first, it didn’t work, but I felt a strange sort of disconnect to the situation. In a way, it was not unlike the sense I’d had before the final confrontation with the Edimmu. No way would I lay money on my odds of survival, but either way, I was giving it my all.

I stood, folded Karen’s letter, and headed to my room. I needed to get my shotgun.

More likely than not, the De La Rosas had some high-tech piece of equipment of extreme lethality, but I wasn’t kidding myself. I was most comfortable with my Mossberg. When you’re fumbling in the dark, it’s best to be holding a weapon you know by touch. Maybe one day I’d upgrade, but this wasn’t the right time for it.

I shoved the shotgun into a bag and turned to head out the door. I jumped a little as I saw that Cassie had followed me into the room, closing the door behind her. Suppressing my wince, I forced myself to say, “Hey.” We didn’t have time for an argument, but then again, my big mouth merited it. I set the duffel on the dresser and tried to stand casually.

“Hey.” She held up a Snickers bar. “Peace offering?”

I took it and gave her a quizzical look. “I’d have buried the hatchet without the bribe.”

“I know how you get if you push the magic too far. Call it emergency wizard fuel.”

“Maybe I should start hauling around a canteen of sports drink, too,” I laughed. “Never know when you’ll need an energy boost. I’m—”

Before the ‘sorry’ could get out of my mouth, she stepped up against and wrapped her arms tight around my chest.

In the movies, this would have been one heck of a scene. As the music rose, the camera would do a slow turn around the couple as they made out. Doves would fly, courtesy of John Woo.

What actually happened was this—after a split second of shock, I realized what was happening and lowered my head to cue the cinematics. Unfortunately for both of us, Cassie was, at the same time, coming up on tip-toe and raising her own head.

My nose slammed into her forehead, and for a moment I saw white. Purely out of instinct, I stumbled backward. My knees ran into the bed, and I pulled Cassie down with me as I fell onto the mattress. At the same time, she reared back, pulling her head out of the way. This, thankfully, meant that my now-aching nose didn’t take another shot, but as I blinked away the sudden tears and cleared my vision, I realized that the not-entirely-uncomfortable weight on top of me was the amazing girl I’d head-butted in the middle of our first kiss.

We stared at one another for what felt like an eternity before we both started laughing at the absurdity of it all.

“I—” she started, but I reached up and pulled her closer—much slower, this time around—and when we kissed this time, there was no trauma on either side.

A sharp rap on the bedroom door pulled us away from each other as Carlos bellowed, “Five minutes!”

Cassie’s cheeks flushed red, and I was pretty sure I looked about the same, with a throbbing nose to boot. She covered her mouth with one hand, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

“I have never claimed to be smooth,” I managed. “Truth told, I’m out of practice.” Huge understatement, considering your last date was the Homecoming Dance, sophomore year.

“Baby steps,” Cassie managed. “We should have done this sooner.”

“Well, there was the whole partner thing…”

She punched me in the arm. “Oh, this doesn’t change that. It just means you’ve got to balance a relationship with a coworker.”

“I hope no one turns us into HR.”

She kissed me again, and it was luxurious and energizing all at once. I wanted to lock the door and forget about the mission.

Except—that feeling didn’t last long.

Sometimes it sucked to have a conscience. I pulled back. “I’ve got to go.”

“I know.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Be safe, all right?”

“Well, with that kind of encouragement, how can I not?”

She slid off of me—slower and perhaps a little more seductively than was absolutely necessary. I raised an eyebrow, but Cassie just grinned as I got out of the bed. “What?” Her face was the picture of innocence.

“Oh, you know.” I rubbed my nose and tried not to laugh. Of all the stupid… I realized I was still holding the candy bar, and I slid it into one of the side pockets of my cargo pants. I struck a heroic pose. “I’ll be back.”

She made as if to throw a pillow at me. “Get out of here. There’s wizarding work to do.”

I opened the door, turned and gave her an elaborate bow. “I bid thee farewell, dear maiden.”

“Nerd.”

I felt like my grin was about to split my face as I double-timed it down the hallway. In the living room, Carlos hefted one last bag over his shoulder, then turned to greet me. He opened his mouth to say something, closed it, gave me a once-over, then finally said, “Dude, is your nose bleeding?”

Valentine

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

The day faded into night and made it all the more difficult to see what was going on at the Sikora house. There’d been a constant level of activity throughout the day, but Valentine had ordered everyone to stay put. While several of the new visitors had come and gone multiple times, Locke had never left. The mother wanted the boy; if he didn’t move, there was no need to go anywhere.

Along the same lines, they tried to limit excursions out of the house, surviving on the cache of frozen food and other supplies they’d laid in. Much as ordering-in would have been more palatable, maintaining a low profile meant limiting that as much as possible. One of the neighbors had already delivered a pan of brownies to welcome them to the neighborhood. It had taken every bit of Val’s self-control to politely accept them while keeping the far-too-inquisitive lady from getting a look inside of the house. The chances that the Sikoras would know someone on the opposite side on a friendly basis were probably low, but the risk wasn’t worth taking. Better to be rude than inflame a potential local gossip.

“Check out camera four,” George called out. Val stepped over and leaned over the table. “Damn it, you’re getting crumbs on my stuff, boss.”

“Good brownie,” Val said. “You should try one. The RV?”

“Yeah, they’ve been loading stuff up for a bit now. No idea what, but it looks heavy.”

“Heavy bodes ill,” he replied. A familiar, white-haired figure emerged onto the screen, carrying a backpack and a shotgun. “Unless I miss my guess, they’re moving out.”

Eliot and Morgan joined the confab behind the table. Val’s partner leaned in and took a look at the screen. “What’s the move?”

“They’re packing up to go somewhere,” Val said. “Only question is, how long are they leaving.”

“We should have bugged the place,” Morgan said with a frown. Val raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t disagree. For whatever reason, the people in the house across the way hadn’t spent much time outside the past few days. Bugs would have given them a bit better insight, but Val had nixed the idea, at first, because technically Paxton Locke wasn’t their target. Bugging the house without a warrant might bring up uncomfortable questions later.

Not that Val wouldn’t tear the Constitution a bit, to stop the sort of end-of-the-world calamity he believed Helen Locke to be capable of. He just didn’t want to have to deal with any unnecessary bureaucratic speed bumps along the way. If not for prior inaction, they wouldn’t be in their current problem.

“Morgan, you’re with me,” Val declared. “You two stay here, we’ll head out ahead of them and fall in line further down the road.”

He took a few moments to grab his shoulder rig, cell phone, and keys. Throwing on a light jacket, he led Morgan out the door, half-hoping that no neighbors would be out enjoying the sunset. They were in luck, and the headed out of the subdivision. He pulled into the parking lot of the gas station a half-mile down the road. The digital indicator for the RV had yet to move on the screen of the tracker.

“Where do you think they’re headed?”

Val thought about it for a moment, trying to put the sense of his gut into a coherent explanation. “I don’t think they’re leaving out. The new arrivals, the gear they’re loading up, that’s backup. They’re headed somewhere local.” On the screen, the pulsing dot began to move. He tapped it with a finger. “Going after your apex predator unless I miss my guess.” He looked over at Morgan. “Any more ideas what it might be?”

“Divination has never been my strong suit.” She winked. “You know my skill set, Valentine.”

He couldn’t help himself—he grinned. “It’s been a long time since Hot Springs, darlin’.”

“Careful. HR will be up on your case about that sort of language.”

Val snorted and shook his head. “So many steps forward, and so many steps back. Sometimes I wonder about this era, Morgan.”

“It’s not all bad.”

“No. No, it’s not.” On the tracker, the RV started coming toward them. “Heading south, then.” He pulled down the sun visor and tucked his chin into his chest. The kid had been on all sorts of pain meds in the hospital. The odds he might recognize Val if he glanced this way as he drove by had to be miniscule, but thought it best to not tempt fate. He tried to limit his risk-taking only to absolutely dire circumstances.

The RV passed by, right at the speed limit. He waited until the tail lights were barely visible before he pulled out after, and he matched speeds. The big Ford handled like a boat, and the local traffic buzzed in and around him, annoyed at his refusal to throw caution to the wind and go twenty miles an hour over with the rest of the crowd.

As they continued south, the RV turned off onto a westbound road that looped them around the outskirts of the city. Eventually, they turned south again, but the signs of civilization fell away with every passing mile. The night-glow of Phoenix to the east lit up the sky, but before them and to the west the growing blackness was only intermittently pierced by any source of artificial illumination.

That lack became problematic as the RV turned into a dim strip mall. “Keep going, keep going,” Morgan hissed.

“It’s fine,” Val murmured. The big motor home disappeared behind the building just as he passed by, still trying to drive as though he didn’t have a care in the world. “Keep an eye out back.”

Morgan strained around as he looked for somewhere to pull off. A quarter mile down or so, there was a four-way stop with a self-serve car wash on the southwest corner. The bays were north-facing, so he whipped the Crown Vic around and tucked it into one of the slots before killing the engine and headlights. “There was another vehicle back there. Rusted-out van.”

“They’re switching vehicles,” Val murmured. “Curiouser and curiouser.” He sat up higher in the seat, willing them to turn south. If they didn’t come this way, he had the horses under the hood to catch up, but aggressive driving garnered a hell of a lot more attention than a careful tail.

A few minutes later, headlights nosed around the side of the strip mall and turned their way.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Val muttered. “We need to confirm it’s them, first.”

The van approached and passed through the intersection. If they noticed the Crown Vic tucked into the bay of the car wash, the driver and passenger gave no visible reaction. The driver was a balding Latino, but the man in the passenger seat had a shock of white hair that could only belong to one man.

Val turned around in his seat and watched the tail lights recede into the darkness, then cranked the engine and whipped the car around. “This is going to be trickier, without the GPS. Keep your eyes open.”

“Not my first rodeo,” Morgan retorted.

They didn’t drive for long. The area they passed through grew more and more remote, until Morgan said, “They’re stopping.” Val checked to make sure he didn’t have any traffic coming up behind him, and he pulled off onto the shoulder. Vegetation was sparse, and the ground was hard-packed, so he didn’t feel they’d have any issue pulling back out.

He thumbed their headlights off and squinted at the distant van until he grew tired of the strain. Val retrieved two sets of binoculars from the back seat, handed one to Morgan, and studied the road ahead.

The red taillights provided an eerie sort of background light as a dark figure jumped out the van’s side door and hustled to the side of the road. As Val followed his movement, he realized that there was a tall fence surrounding hulking shadows off to the side of the road.

“What is that, a power substation?” Morgan wondered out loud.

“Looks that way.”

The figure climbed the fence and hopped to the other side. On the ground, he turned on a flashlight. The cone of light helped illuminate the equipment a bit more.

The flashlight beam settled at the base of one large, boxy structure. Val listened between his teeth. “No way.”

“Are they going to—?”

“Looks like.” The figure who’d jumped out of the van earlier hopped the fence once more and climbed back in. The driver pulled away from the fenced-in substation, leaving it cloaked in shadow once more. “We’ll hold here,” Val decided. “It’s a good vantage point, anyway.”

“Their destination has to be close, you’d think.”

Val tapped controls on the tracker, scrolling the map further south and away from the indicator. “Big green smudge on the map ahead. Only thing around for a couple of miles.” He gave her a look. “All the stuff they loaded up combined with cutting the power—if that’s what they’re doing—sounds like a pretty hairy expedition.”

“No matter how many times I see it, their willingness to throw their lives away never fails to surprise me.” There was a strange tone to her voice that he couldn’t place at first.

Val hummed thoughtfully as he identified her wistful tone. “You sound almost jealous. You think they’ll let you retire?”

“We’ve still got free will,” Morgan shrugged. “You never know.”

He rubbed the scar on his forearm through his jacket, then shrugged. “I made my choice a long time ago.” He remembered the sensation of drowning in his own blood and the white flash that laid his soul bare even as it seared deep into his arm. “When Michael is done with me, I’ll have earned my peace.” Lord willing.

“‘And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.’ Think you’re pushing things to keep trying to die, then, Valentine?”

He gave her a toothy grin. “I’m so good, everyone only thinks I’m trying.”

She laughed. “And he’s humble, too.”

CHAPTER 22

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

The cool breeze coming out of the desert caressed my skin. I shivered just a bit and shoved my hands deeper into the pockets of my new windbreaker.

It was Kent’s idea, and I had to admit it was a good one, even if it was a bit baggy. The jacket was musty from storage in the back of his Suburban, but the bright yellow letters across the back that read PHOENIX PD should keep any first responders from shooting me before I had a chance to lay the push on them.

I adjusted the strap of the Mossberg where it lay on my shoulder and quickened my pace. There wasn’t much, if any traffic out this way, but I didn’t want to get caught unawares in the middle of the road by a pair of headlights.

The van Scope had picked up had lived a hard life hauling construction supplies. There was more primer than paint on the sides, and the whole thing rattled and rumbled as though it were on its last legs. Javier took the shotgun seat; Carlos and I sat on a pair of milk crates, surrounded by duffel bags of clinking equipment.

They’d driven a half-mile or so past the entrance to the Upward Path campus before killing the lights, pulling over and letting me climb out. I supposed the De La Rosas had a more stressful task than I did. While I could decide whether to face or run away from any threats, they had to wait and see what happened.

Another gust of wind covered me in gooseflesh. Then again, maybe staying back in the van was the better option.

Catching sight of the intermittent lights on the perimeter fence, I steeled myself. The invisibility spell wasn’t the most taxing ability I had, but it wasn’t something I could keep going forever, either. Cassie’s candy bar was liable to come in handy at some point.

I focused, and though I myself could see no difference, I faded out of view. Now I really had to pay attention to traffic.

Ideally, I’d phase through the perimeter fences and cut a straight shot across to the gymnasium. The lush grass covering most of the grounds made that problematic. In the desert, the best time to irrigate was at night, and every section of lawn we’d seen while driving past either glistened with dew or was currently being soaked by in-ground sprinklers. Walking through grass while invisible was bad enough when it wasn’t soaking wet. The way things stood now, I’d leave a path that would jump out to even the most casual observer.

This left the road as the only viable access point. Which was easy enough, but it was twice the distance of the direct route.

I relaxed a bit as I stepped off the main highway and onto the driveway leading into the center of the facility. The guard shack was bigger than I’d expected it to be, built in a modern style that used lots of metal and glass. Inside the well-lit interior, I could see a trio of uniformed men. One seemed stationed in front of a bank of video monitors while the others sat at desks facing the road. As I approached, I got a strong whiff of coffee from inside. Bright lights, company, and plenty of caffeine seemed to me to be a good recipe to keep your security staff from falling asleep in the middle of the night.

One, three, or three hundred—none of that would have made a difference as I side-stepped the parking arm and advanced toward the gymnasium. The slight scuffing of my sneakers on the blacktop was a roar in my own ears, but none of the guards so much as stirred as I walked right past them.

Halfway to the intersection, I crouched behind a decorative bench and dropped the cloak to take a breather. Pulling my cell phone out of my pocket, I tapped out a quick message to Carlos. Three guards, I’m in.

A few steps later, his reply popped up in silence. Watch your ass.

I secured my phone and tried not to laugh. If ever my friend had given me redundant advice, that was it. Still, rather than tempt fate, I looked over my shoulder. The silhouettes of the security guards were far enough away to be little more than a blur, and they didn’t seem to move with any sort of urgency. So far, I seemed to remain unnoticed.

The entrance drive came to an intersection. I took the left road and headed for the gymnasium.

It was full dark, but still relatively early in the evening. Despite that, the campus was devoid of any activity. Chilly or not, it was a nice night, all in all. I’d have expected more than a few people to be out walking the grounds, but I seemed to be the lone exception. A few lights were on in some of the dormitory buildings, but the deeper I moved onto the property, the emptier it felt. I’d have been lying to myself if I said the continuing emptiness didn’t creep me out. Were all the pictures of happy patients a ruse?

Shadow cloaked the gymnasium, and even though I still maintained the invisibility spell, I kept to them as I moved onto the sidewalk and headed toward the glass and steel entrance doors. The hours of operation boasted that the facility was open from 6 AM to 6 PM, which explained the lack of lights on the interior and the locked entry.

Experimentation had shown me that I couldn’t phase through a solid material while cloaked. Taking my time, I scanned the exterior of the gym for surveillance cameras. Once I satisfied myself that there were no prying electronic eyes, I turned visible once more, but only long enough to blur through the entrance and the second set of doors beyond. Inside, the sharp smell of chlorine mixed with the subtle stench of locker rooms.

Indoor pool? Missed that in the brochure. The founders, it seemed, had spared no expense in equipping the campus, even though the patient load didn’t seem heavy enough to call for it. Tile squeaked under my feet as I stepped forward. I winced and forced myself to take slower, more delicate stops. I doubted there’d be roving security in a gymnasium, but if my hunch that this was more than gym proved to be correct, there might very well be.

I moved past the empty front desk and the entrances to the locker rooms. Placards on the wall directed visitors right to the swimming pool and left to the basketball courts. Another legend listed the various amenities offered, from tanning beds and massage therapy to spin classes and free weights. Say what you would about their religious practices. The cultists had plenty of opportunity for bronzed skin and toned muscles.

In Angie’s vision, the streams of cultists in the future hell world had struggled endlessly to the top of the pyramid. It seemed only logical to start on the top floor.

I kept my steps light and close to the wall. There were enough windows in the place to let some light in, but for the most part, darkness reigned. In that shadow, passing rooms of gym equipment loomed with imaginary monsters, but I still hesitated to use a flashlight, lest someone spot it.

The circle of light from the sign above the stairwell door was a pool in the darkness, and I headed toward it with a growing sense of unease. I didn’t feel watched, exactly, but there was something off inside of the building. The air felt thick—moist and ponderous, in marked contrast to the crisp and cool air of the desert outside.

I hesitated at the stairwell door and debated on whether to open it or phase through. Get on with it. I dropped the cloak, phased through, then cloaked once again. The standby lights inside of the stairwell dazzled me after my trek through the darkened first floor, and I blinked spots away for a moment before beginning a steady climb up to the top of the building. My breath sounded like thunder in the narrow confines, and I paused frequently to listen for any other signs of movement. So far, the stairs remained as quiet as the main floor.

At the landing to the top floor, I hesitated with my hand on the doorknob. With no way to see what—or who—lay beyond, it seemed foolhardy to phase or step through, especially if there was a sign above the door as there’d been below.

Taking a few steps to the side, I went out of phase and pushed through the concrete wall. As soon as my eyes came out on the other side I stopped so that I could study the top floor. If going through something felt weird, staying there was like hanging on the knife’s edge of throwing up. With my ears still inside the wall, all I heard was a dull hum.

Determining that the third floor was as empty as the first, I stepped out of the wall and let myself go solid. Even then, I still had a turgid feeling in the pit of my stomach Note to self—hanging out in the walls is probably not a good thing.

Up here, things were more spread out. The most cluttered rooms boasted neat rows of exercise bikes. The others were almost completely empty save for the occasional pile of rolled-up exercise mat. It didn’t take me long to make a circuit of the entire space.

Back by the stairwell, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and sent a text to Carlos. 3 clear. Nada. Headed to 2.

The second floor was much the same. There were more free weights and exercise machines on this level. Though the additional equipment slowed my inspection, the result was much the same. The second floor was as empty as the third.

Back in the stairwell, I resisted the urge to kick the wall. I was so sure. What did I miss? My irritation made it more difficult to maintain my slow pace, but one shoe squeak on the stair was more than enough to remind me to take my time.

Pausing at the first-floor landing, I pulled my phone out one more time and debated on what to say. I could push the guards to talk, maybe, but I didn’t like that for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, I didn’t like to use my abilities on people. Yeah, I could make them forget what had happened, but I’d still know.

Of course, if they’re in the cult, as soon as you show your face, that might ring the alarm bells and let them know we didn’t take off. Kent, Cassie, and the rest of the gang back at the house had enough firepower to go to war with a street gang or two, but I didn’t think Donnie and Tlaloc would go as easy. If they sent anything against the house, it would be an overwhelming number, and no display of magical prowess would be enough to force them to back off.

“Shit,” I whispered. And then I saw it.

The stairwell door from the first floor opened on the left side, and the stairs ascended on the right. Unless you stepped aside to let the door shut, it was impossible to see the wall opposite the stairs.

Coming down the stairs was a different story, which is why I supposed the cultists had camouflaged the door to look like just another gray-painted concrete wall. They’d done a hell of a job, too—I couldn’t even make out the seams.

But I could see the drying outline of a footprint, bordered in grass clippings, cut in half at the base of the wall.

There was either a door there, or someone else was doing my walking-through-walls trick. I stepped up to the wall and pressed my ear to it. For a moment, I heard nothing, but as I kept my ear there, I got the vague sense of a chorus of voices, rising and falling in cadence. The sound was too muffled to make out the words, but it made the hair on the back of my neck bristle, nonetheless.

“Okay,” I muttered. I dropped the cloak, went out of phase—and lurched backward as the wall itself seemed to push back as I tried to move through it. “What the hell?”

I placed my hand on the hidden door. It didn’t feel abnormal in the least, but when I tried to phase my hand through, an uncomfortable buzzing sensation pulsed up my wrist.

With a frown, I tapped a message on my phone. Change of plans. Don’t cut the power—head for the guard station. See you there.

No longer caring for stealth, I yanked the door opened and sprinted toward the gymnasium entrance. If I cut across the grass, I thought I could make it to the guard shack at the same time as the De La Rosas.

And then we were going underground.

Valentine

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

The flash of light off in the distance told Val that Locke’s friends had started their van. “Here we go,” he said. “They’re headed back this way.”

Morgan gave him a frustrated growl in response. “I just got the tax records back for that place.”

He kept the binoculars up, tracking the van as it moved down the road. “And?”

“Upward Path Rehabilitation Center. Built back in ‘13. Treasury and DEA say they’re clean.”

“Pretty big place. What do they specialize in?”

“Little bit of everything, per their website. Rehab of the rich and famous. If you’ve got the cash, they’ve got the program for you. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, whatever.” She laughed. “Okay, I’ve heard of this place. This is where all the ambulatory Hollywood pricks come to make up for their poor behavior with young starlets so they can be the next comeback story.”

He resisted the urge to shake his head. “Whatever happened to owning up to your actions?”

“You’re joking, right?” Morgan put her phone away. “This is the modern equivalent of buying a plenary indulgence, my good man. ‘I didn’t mean to grope that girl, I have a problem.’”

Val grinned. “What was the name of that old boy in Hot Springs? Caleb, right?”

“He’d never have tried to cop a feel if I hadn’t had to track you to such a hotbed of vice and iniquity.”

“I’d never do such a thing, these days. And I didn’t even need rehab.” The van turned into the driveway and came to a stop in front of the guard shock. The battered, rust-streaked vehicle was incongruous compared to the gleaming and polished building. Two of the guards strolled out, and he imagined how the conversation might go. “Now what are we doing here, boys?”

“You want to move closer?”

“No, we’re good here. Any closer and we run the risk of someone spotting—” Before Val could finish his thought, the area around the guardhouse became a blur of activity, moving too fast for him to follow with the binoculars.

CHAPTER 23

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

“—Private facility, pendejo. Take the rust bucket on down the road.”

I made it across the grass in time to hear the guard finish ripping Carlos’ head off. I didn’t know if my friend saw me coming or not, but I didn’t want to take the chance. “Hey!”

One security guard was Anglo while the talker was a light-skinned Hispanic, but they could have been cut from the same cloth. They were both tall, well-groomed, and muscular. I suppose access to the weight room came with the benefits package.

They started to turn in my direction, but I pushed before they could make eye contact. “Freeze.” They froze, and I let out a sigh of relief.

“What the hell’s all this?”

I turned to the other voice. He was an older guy, balding, and still trim. Looking at him was a mistake. When he saw my face, his eyes widened, and he fumbled for the holstered pistol at his belt. Shit.

“Stop!” I pushed, but nothing happened. Bad sign. Carlos yelled something, but I was too focused on leaping forward. I grabbed the older guard’s gun with both hands. We grappled for a moment before I realized that he had me outclassed in terms of strength. The barrel of the pistol began to swing in toward me.

It was me or him—I made the choice so rapidly that I didn’t have the chance to feel guilty about it. Force blades snapped into existence at the end of my hands, and the guard’s gun hand went tumbling as they blazed through his flesh. He howled in agony, clutching at the blackening stump as the line of fire advanced up his arm. The sleeve of his polo shirt caught fire, and the screams mercifully ended when the fire consumed his chest.

I stood, surrounded by silence, and tried not to look at the smoldering pile of bones at my feet.

Behind the wheel of the van, Carlos crossed himself and murmured, “Madre de Dios. That’s a new trick, ese.”

Grimacing, I shrugged. Turning to the mesmerized guards, I commanded, “Into the guard shack.” Dutifully, they turned and strode inside. I followed at a bit of a distance, in case one or both were conning me. “Open the gate.”

The push, thankfully, is not literal—it relies more on my unspoken intent than the actual words I speak. That aspect of the spell has bitten me in the past, but all it meant, this time, was that the guard closest to the control opened it up while the other stared at me with placid eyes.

“How many people under the gym, tonight?”

The spell didn’t allow them to look surprised, and their answers came with near-simultaneity.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Under the gym?”

That settles that, I guess. If they were under the same influence as the rest of Donnie’s cultists, they’d have been able to resist the push. They were pure innocents in this, guilty only picking a bad employer. “I want you to lay down on the floor and go to sleep. It will be a restful, relaxing sleep, and when you wake up, you won’t remember anything that happened after the van got here.”

Heading out of the guard shack, I went around to the passenger side of the van and pulled open the sliding door. Climbing in, I looked Carlos right in the eye. “Head to the gym. We’re going inside.”

Scope raised a hand, then asked, “What about the lights? Am I still blowing the power?”

I shook my head. “It’s not on top of the gym. It’s down below, underground, I guess. No idea how deep, but I’ve got a feeling we’ll want some lights down there.”

Javier cursed, and Scope stared at me as Carlos put the van in gear. “Well, hell,” he said. “And here I thought I was going to get a chance to hang and cover you guys from long range.”

I didn’t feel the smile. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“S’all right. Close quarters battle is just as fun.” He glanced at my Mossberg. “You got a flashlight for that thing?”

“Skipped that feature. The side-saddle adds enough weight as it is.” The Mossberg held seven rounds in the tubular magazine, and the carrier on the side put another eight close at hand for quick reloads.

“We got you covered.” There was the slightest quaver in his voice as he opened one of the Pelican cases they’d hauled from San Diego and fished through it. “They’ll have lights of some sort, right?”

“Sure,” I agreed. “No reason why they wouldn’t.”

Carlos wasn’t messing around. He gunned the engine and hopped the curb. The van’s suspension complained the entire way, but once he had the rust bucket in place he killed it and pulled the keys from the ignition. He bounced them in his hand for a moment, then pulled open the center console and dropped them inside. “They’re waiting for whoever makes it back.” He tried to pitch his voice as though it was a joke, but I could tell that it wasn’t. Javier and Scope didn’t react but busied themselves in buckling on gear and double-checking the things they carried.

The confident air they’d held at Kent’s house had evaporated. The way the security guard went out has them spooked. I cleared my throat. “We got this, gentlemen. We’re on the side of the angels, here. And Carlos is too damn pretty to die.”

He flashed me a ghost of a smile in the rearview. “You got that right, bro.”

We gave up any pretense of stealth. The De La Rosas carried compact submachine guns with sound suppressors and flashlight attachments, and the beams of light waved wildly as we piled out of the van and jogged to the gym entrance. I considered the door for a moment, then ran a force blade between the jamb and frame. The heat of the mystical knife’s passage spot-welded the metal in a few places. A couple of hard tugs and the door came open straight away. I repeated the process on the second door, and we were inside.

The interior of the gym wasn’t nearly as scary lit by the lights of my three companions, but the atmosphere was still ponderous. I led my companions to the stairwell. The footprint was almost completely dry at this point, but the telltale traces of grass clippings still demonstrated that the wall was more than it seemed.

Javier pushed on it for a few moments before he backed away and shrugged. “If there’s a hidden catch, I’m not seeing it.”

“Maybe someone on the other side has to open it,” Scope mused.

I adjusted the strap of my Mossberg. “You have any more explosives?”

He scoffed. “What do I look like, C4 Depot? I didn’t like hauling the little amount around that I did have. Do you want me to run back to the substation and get it?” He eyed the wall. “It might be enough. Might not be, too.”

“No,” I decided. “I don’t think we have time for that.” Something inherent in the wall had proven resistant to phasing. It was time to find out if it could stand up to something better. “Step back.”

I wasn’t trying to show off, but a vague-but-visible blue corona formed around my hand as I unleashed a force blade. Scope and Javier took a step back. Carlos sighed.

“You need to keep me filled in on all the new tricks.”

“Thank Cassie for this one,” I said, and jammed the blade into the wall, near the ceiling. If there were seams, they weren’t visible. In the end, it didn’t matter because the blade sunk into the concrete with only a bit more resistance than I’d encountered using it on the cultists. Wondering how thick the door was, I brought the blade down to chest height, then twisted my hand and brought it to the left.

When the blade reached the center of the door, there was a solid thump that we could feel in our feet. The wall sagged away from me and trickles of dust rained down from the ceiling. Pausing to look up, I realized that the entire section of wall had moved.

That’s why there aren’t any seams, I realized. The entire wall was the door. Twisting my hand again, I brought my hand back up, then withdrew it. I’d carved a rough half-oval in the wall that looked a bit like an upside-down tombstone. I hoped that wasn’t prophetic.

“Help me push,” I said. The four of us clumped together and shoved at the small section. Concrete rubbed on concrete with a gritty sound, and the plug began to move. At first, I didn’t think it was going to stop, but when we’d pushed it in about a foot, it came loose and fell out of sight into darkness.

All at once, a brackish miasma slapped us in the face. The mixture of smells was almost indescribably disgusting—as soon as I thought I’d identified one portion of its makeup, something else made me shudder in disgust. Rotting meat, shit, and the iron stench of blood mixed with other, more primal things that told me I’d been right to fear the dark as I child.

The cut I’d made revealed the stub of a steel rod, centered in the massive slab of the wall. I looked up at the ceiling and saw a matching piece. “It swivels,” I said. “Of course.”

No matter how hard we pushed from either edge we couldn’t get the wall to swing open. When I ran a force knife along the edges, I heard subdued snapping sounds, and the door moved freely until it hit the concrete slug on the opposite side and pushed it through.

With the door open, it was brighter in the opposite room. The De La Rosas shined their flashlights inside, revealing an oddly-shaped chamber with an unfinished floor of coarse tan soil. I studied the irregular contours and guessed that it was a dead spot in the construction blueprints, a consequence of the fanciful interior and exterior design.

As Carlos’ flashlight beam found the hole in the floor, I wondered if that was a misguided assumption.

From where we stood, we could see the low angle of depression as the tunnel descended deeper underground. A rush of wind from below carried the reeking stench past us. I grimaced and wished I had something to plug my nose with. Throwing up all over yourself wasn’t a typical hero move.

Javier’s quiet voice made me turn. “What are these?”

He stood next to the opened door, fingering etchings on the rear side of the concrete. As I saw them, I understood why I’d been unable to phase through. Densely-scripted sigils covered every square inch of the concrete, to the extent that they overlapped in many places.

There’s no real written language of magic. Legends of runes and the like probably came about from past wizards who adopted them for their own spells. Myself, I keep things simple. When I want to bind a mystical effect to a physical surface, I use a simple X-shaped crisscross . The intent was what mattered. Whoever had decorated the back of this door either didn’t know that, or their intent had required an overkill of symbolism. Given how it had pushed back against me, I imagine it would feel like running into a brick wall to the typical ghost or—

I pulled away from my study of the door and inspected the walls of the chamber. They were difficult to make out with the multivariate shadows cast by the trio of flashlights, but when I saw the first sigil, the rest fairly well leaped into view. Like the door, dense script covered every square inch of the walls and ceiling. It represented a hell of a lot of work and more mojo than I wanted to think about. This is a prison. For what? Ghosts?

I shuddered at the thought of something akin to the Edimmu having a captive audience to dine on spirits at its leisure. Or the psychic trauma that might have on people—kids—stuck down here and forced to bear witness to it.

“Someone needs to stay up here and cover our exit route,” Scope muttered. “What happens if some more security guards come along and decide to cave the place in?”

“No way do we split up,” I interrupted. “That’s like the most basic rule of horror movies. We go together, or not at all.” I stared at each of them in turn. “I’m not leaving those kids down there.”

I didn’t have to stare them down long. We looked at each other, the De La Rosas nodded in solemn agreement, and we began our descent.

Helen

Salome, Arizona—Saturday night

Paper rustled.

It wasn’t the volume of the sound that stirred Helen from slumber. It was the variance in the routine of the night. In prison, there’d been any sort of real silence during the night. Before her arrest she’d been the sort to sleep with a night mask and ear plugs to keep things as silent as possible. That wasn’t possible on the cell block, forcing her to learn to sleep in something other than absolute silence. With the foldout beds, there was plenty of room for the coven to spread out—though the familiars didn’t sleep, really—but even so their confines were close enough that she’d grown accustomed to the night sounds of each of her companions. This was different. As she sat up to stare at the front of the motor home, a thrill of excitement ran through her. The tracking spell.

Throwing the covers aside, Helen rushed into the main living area, searching for where she’d left the bloodied map. This proved to be a relatively simple task, as it had fallen from its place atop the kitchen counter, with the rest of their mystical resources and landed on the floor.

The map lay with the red ring of blood facing up, and as Helen crouched beside it, the surface of the paper seemed to writhe. Something had happened to the territory. The claim holder had abandoned it or the area of effect had diminished enough for the tracking spell to fulfill its task.

The lines of blood flowed and gathered, leaving pristine paper behind, and centered on a small housing edition on the northwestern side of the Valley. She lifted the map by the edges and brought it close enough to read the name of the street where the blood had gathered.

Carpenter Drive. A smile spread across her face, and she called out, “Wake up! It’s time to move!”

CHAPTER 24

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

Not far from the upper surface of the ground, the hard-packed dirt of the tunnel shifted to bedrock. The route down was irregular, as though the way had been carved with hand tools, and occasionally narrow enough that we had to compress into a single-file line. All the while, the stench from below rushed past us. Javier stopped and retched, once, and we’d all gotten the dry heaves but by this point we’d grown used to the odor.

I hope it washes away.

The bouncing flashlights cast irregular shadows on the craggy walls, heightening our tension as we strained our eyes to look into every shadow. For a while, the only audible noise was the panting of our own breathing and the scuff of our feet on the irregular rock, but as we descended, vague echoes reached our ears. The fact that we could hear from below brought us all to a mutual silence, even though it was impossible to make out any sort of detail as to what the sound was.

It sounds like chanting.

Right at the moment when I thought that I could make out the words with a bit more clarity, it ended. The residue echoed around us, growing progressively more silent until the silence left us alone in the stinking dark.

As we continued to descend for what felt like hours—but was actually only around ten minutes—the darkness around us lightened to gray until we crept through the visual equivalent of predawn twilight. The passage curved up ahead, and the swell of illumination beyond told me that we were nearing our destination.

At once, the chorus of voices cried out again, and I flinched at the abrupt cacophony.

“Tlaloc! Tlaloc! Tlaloc!”

We froze, but we needn’t have bothered. The chanting bounced and echoed off the tunnel walls to deafening effect. I could have set a bomb off in the place and would go unnoticed.

Emboldened, I led the De La Rosas forward. Pausing at the curve, I peered around the edge. The chanting continued to buffet my ears. Ahead, lines of electric lights secured to the ceiling made the tunnel day-bright, but I saw nothing at the end other than a featureless rock wall some distance away.

I barely heard Javier’s hiss of alarm as I stepped the rest of the way around the curve. Moving forward, I went down on hands and knees without even thinking about it. My instincts served me well, and my jaw dropped as I took in the sight at the end of the passage.

The tunnel ahead expanded into a massive, open space, but the largest portion of it sat below us. My skin crawled at the lack of cover, but I slid forward just a bit further so that I could fully comprehend what lay before us.

The cavern was too regularly-shaped to be natural. I couldn’t fathom the amount of labor that must have gone into carving it out of the bedrock. At the same time, the ancient aura of the place told me it had to have been carved by hand. If there were any ghosts left down here in the deep, they’d have stories to tell.

The ancient builders had formed the chamber in the shape of an inverted pyramid. As I studied the stagger-stepped sides, I realized that the shape was the same as the ceremonial structure I’d seen in my vision. It even had the same long, broad staircase, hewn from the very rock and situated in front of the tunnel opening.

And, I realized with a sudden chill, the place looked not unlike the grassy amphitheater Kent had taken us to. Had the dump sites been some sort of elaborate joke, and not random at all? I couldn’t fathom how the others tied into this man-made cavern, but I was beginning to question every assumption I’d made about this entire case. If the cultists had all this space, why even discard the bodies? The stench coming out of the place was bad enough that a few rotting corpses wouldn’t make it worse.

You’re getting into a bad habit of walking into traps if that’s what this is.

Black-robed figures filled the lower tiers of the chamber, rocking back and forth as they chanted. They were too far away to quickly count, but they had to number in the hundreds.

Guess this is where all the clients ran off to.

The bottommost area remained largely free of any occupation. A red-stained stone slab centered toward the back wall was an obvious sacrificial altar. An incongruous metal lattice set into the floor in front of the altar confused me at first. A floor drain? All at once I made out two pairs of very small hands, clutching the metal from below. A blend of terror and relief rushed through me. They’re alive. Thank God, they’re alive.

A purple-robed figure strode across the stone pathway between the altar and cage, his hands lifted high in celebration. My lip curled as I recognized the figure’s shouting voice. Donnie.

“Hail Tlaloc! Brothers and sisters, who among you will offer themselves into his service tonight? Who will become as One, and ascend to something greater than themselves?”

The crowd roared in reply. “Tlaloc! Tlaloc!”

I turned my head around and nearly jumped out of my skin. Carlos had shadowed me all the way forward. He grinned, but there was a strained quality to it. Being outnumbered fifty plus to one will do that to a guy. “What’s the play, brother?”

I stared at him for a moment, then took a quick look at the scene below. Maybe we could hold the high ground and rain bullets on the crowd, but I didn’t like the look of that lattice if we needed it to stop a bullet. Something intended to keep kids locked out of the way didn’t need to be all that sturdy.

Like it or not, we were going to have to pull Ethan and Evan out without resorting to gunfire. Which meant someone was going to have to go down and do it the hard way.

That someone being me, of course.

I turned back to Carlos, Javier, and Scope. “Spread out up here. Don’t shoot unless you have to. The kids are down there.”

Javier looked like he wanted to fight me on it, but he nodded and said, “We’ll back your play, son.”

Pushing myself to my feet, I steeled my will and took to the staircase with a cocky, one-at-a-time strut. The crowd of cultists below was too fired up to notice. As soon as there was a lull in the chanting, I shouted, “Hey, Donnie! What are you doing wearing your tech college graduation gown, you pretentious douche bag?”

A sea of faces turned to gape at me. Donnie seemed just as shocked, but his face quickly went red with rage. “Get him!” he screamed, pointing unnecessarily. “Bring the wizard to the altar so we can sacrifice him to the glory of Tlaloc!”

Force blades snapped into life around my outstretched hands. I should have been out of my mind with terror, but the only thing I felt was a cold glee at the prospect of delivering long-deferred justice.

I leapt to the fight.

Eliot

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

The Division M agents had adopted the living room couch as their go-to piece of furniture. It was close enough to the surveillance table to keep an eye on things, and comfortable enough to relax without the temptation to sleep on it.

Plus, with Morgan out in the field, there was no one in the house to tell Eliot to get his shoes off the coffee table.

George muttered under his breath, and Eliot cracked an eye open. “What’s up?” The part of Locke’s group that hadn’t left had been holed up in the Sikora house ever since, with next to no activity outside.

“Another RV, cruising the neighborhood. It’s doing loops.”

Eliot sat up and leaned forward. “It is Arizona,” he pointed out. “This is the backup promised land for retired people that don’t settle down in Florida.

The other agent didn’t reply. Intent, he leaned in closer to the screens. “Wish we had more cameras.” He pulled back. “They’re stopping right in front of the Sikora house.”

Eliot headed over to the breakfast nook and took up his binoculars. Sure enough, the front half of another motor home was visible around the right rear corner of the house. As he watched, the side door came open. Figures burst forth, and something about their gait raised the hair on the back of his neck. “One, two—six,” he counted. Young women stepped down after the other figures, intent expressions on their face as they studied the neighborhood. “Shit, shit, shit.” He turned to George. “It’s them.”

The other agent’s expression was placid, but he could see the wheel’s turning. “Numbers are going to be tight, even with Beatrice. I’d feel a lot more confident if we had Morgan around to throw some combat magic at them.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “No offense.”

Eliot stared out the window. The half-dozen familiars had split up to surround the house. Any response they could make was time-sensitive, but not horribly so. Helen and her crew seemed to be dragging things out, to ensure they got what they came for, he supposed. He clenched his jaw, then nodded to himself.

He turned away from the window and pulled his holstered sidearm off of his belt. “Pull the truck around and get Beatrice ready. We’ve got the containment cages. Between the two of us, we should be able to shove any survivors inside. How does that change your tactical math?”

George’s face was pale. “How do I talk you out, if you get too deep?”

Eliot shrugged. “Val’s not around to do it, so I guess I’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t I?” He kicked his shoes off and started to unbutton his shirt. “But do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“If I do lose it, put a bullet in my head. It’s better than the alternative.”

Helen

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

Kelsey drove—Helen clutched the map in the passenger seat and tried not to bounce in excitement.

As they turned and headed southeast on Carpenter Drive, Helen felt a rhythmic pulse go through the ensorcelled map, tugging her toward the first house on the right. “There,” she said, pointing. “That’s the place. Park in front.”

She was up and out of her seat before Kelsey put the motor home in park. Helen focused her will and snapped to the familiars. “Surround the house. Don’t let anyone get out—but don’t kill them. We want everyone in there alive, for now.”

If the girls took offense at her assuming command of their servants, she didn’t give a damn. Her body shook with anticipation, exulting at taking the next step forward.

“What’s the plan?” Roxanne said. Helen suppressed a smile. The girl had remained well and truly hooked since their private conversation, and she imagined that Roxanne’s own excitement nearly equaled her own.

“Let’s line up in the front yard and let them get a good look at us,” Helen instructed. “Have your shield charms, ladies?” She waited, then said, “Excellent. The nice thing about having force available is, most of the time you just have to flaunt it. Once my son sees what he’s up against, I imagine we’ll be well on our way.”

Giselle scoffed. “You’re going to let him live? He killed our friend!”

She kept a placid look on her face as she regarded the other girl. “Sweetie, he took out your friend and three familiars by himself. If we push him too hard, who knows how many of us he can take?” She smiled. “Don’t worry. He’ll come after us. He has to play the hero, after all.”

The blond girl made a face but waved a hand in acceptance. “Fine.”

“Excellent,” Helen said. She led them into the front yard and cupped her hands around her mouth to aid her cry. “Paxton! All I want is my book!”

CHAPTER 25

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

My first attempt at crowd surfing didn’t go so well.

I bowled over the lead cultists, and the screams of rage transited into pain as force blades slashed through the black robes and flesh. Fire flared in most of them, but others screamed and clutched spurting wounds.

Junior members, I guess? A knot of black-robed figures went for a tackle, but I went out of phase and passed through them before they could subdue me. Hopping over to an empty section of stone, I went corporeal again and looked for an opening. The line of cultists had the stairs blocked off, and each stagger-stepped level was taller than my standing reach. Even with fire support from above, a sprained ankle would be bad news. Maybe if I jumped while I was out of phase?

The cluster on the stairs pulled themselves apart, kicking the wounded aside to clear the traffic jam. There weren’t as many bones littering the stone as I’d expected. More than a few of these people weren’t under the same spell that reacted to my own magic—bargain basement lunatics rather than enchanted members of a hive mind. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It was a lot easier to fight when the bad guys weren’t spraying you with blood.

So don’t fight.

I grimaced. This was going to feel weird as hell, but it was the least bloody way to go at it. And fastest, come to think of it.

With an inarticulate scream, I ran into the line of cultists. If my sudden assault intimidated them, they didn’t show it. They reached out to pull me down, to obey Donnie’s order.

It might have worked if I hadn’t phased out before I hit the leading edge of the crowd.

Holding the spell was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, especially with the nauseating sensation of multiple bodies rushing through my own ethereal one. I made it to the stairs, took a left, and sprinted down them faster than was safe.

And so what? If I fell down, it wasn’t like I’d break a leg or anything.

Quick spurts of gunfire sounded behind me, but I didn’t take the time to look. The De La Rosas were either fending off an upward assault or sowing chaos in the ranks of my pursuers. Either way worked for me.

A pair of bigger figures waited on the bottom level, which was lousy timing. I was starting to get the shakes. As soon as my feet hit bottom, I snapped back. Despite having the consistency of a ghost, I still had the full head of momentum I’d built up coming down the stairs. In a way, that didn’t seem fair, but I was hardly in a position to complain. If I’d tried to slow myself down I’d end up with my face in the stone, so I used it, sprinting right at the big guys.

In stereo, they announced, “Give up, now, wiz—” I ran between with them with outstretched arms and didn’t hear the rest. I bladed them both on the way through, then slowed down in time to turn and watch as twin heaps of ash and bone hit the ground.

Pumping my fist would have been a bit over the top, but I couldn’t resist an elated whoop. “Surrender, Donnie!” I shouted. “I’ve got all night—I’ll go Buffy the Vampire Slayer on all your buddies!”

I didn’t get a response, which figured. Little twerp ran for it. I glanced up the stairs to gauge how much time I had. Rows of tumbled bodies littered the steps, stopping short of the top. Things had gotten a little hot and heavy for Javier and the crew for a while, but the rest of the survivors seemed to have backed off collected toward the middle levels. They had two options—get shot or get ashed. Who knew what kind of perks came with membership, but they must not have been enough pour encourager les autres.

Of course, that meant that I had to shepherd the kids through them. Best not get too cocky.

“Hey, mister, you have anything to eat?”

I crouched and peered through the grating in the floor. The chamber below was shallow, no more than four feet deep, and maybe six by eight. Not a ton of room for anybody, much less a couple of young boys who’d usually spend most of their time bouncing off the wall.

The brother who’d spoken had hollow cheeks and wide eyes full of desperate hope, but when he spoke, he had all his teeth. “You must be Evan,” I said. I pulled the Snickers bar from my pocket. “How about we let you guys out, first? Then we’ll take you—out of here.” I had to cut myself off. These guys weren’t likely to be going to their real home anytime soon.

A simple metal locking bar held the cover shut, and I heaved as I stood, throwing it open on surprisingly quiet hinges. The crash and thunder of the door’s impact elicited murmurs from up above. I took another look up there. The cultists closest to me had gathered some form of confidence and were congregating in my direction.

Should have taken Carlos up on his offer to borrow something with a little more authority. The Mossberg on my shoulder was ideal for plowing the road, but it was also a lot slower to reload than the De La Rosa’s magazine-fed submachine guns.

My laugh held an undercurrent of panic. “Probably wouldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, anyway.”

“You okay, mister?”

“Yeah.” I reached down to help the brothers out of their cell, then handed the candy bar over. “Eat up, fellas.”

The wrapper disappeared between blinks, and Evan broke it in half and handed a section to his brother. Ethan had yet to speak, and he considered the candy for a moment before he started gnawing on it.

“All right there, Ethan?” I said. “I can’t promise sunshine, but I think we can get you guys some fresh air.”

The other twin ignored me, keeping his eyes on the floor. His brother looked back and forth between the two of us and frowned with an expression that should never have crossed the face of a child.

“He hasn’t said much since that night. How do you know our names, mister?”

Gunfire rattled from above. I resisted the urge to check the staircase and knelt in front of the boys. “I’m working with the police, Evan. My friend has been trying to find you, and he asked me to help him out.”

“The bad man called you a wizard.”

More gunfire. “That’s right.”

His unlined forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Where’s your beard? Gandalf has a beard. Why do you have white hair if you don’t have a beard?”

I laughed. “You know, Evan, I’ve never been much for beards. And Gandalf was super old, you know.” I stuck out a hand. “Call me Pax.”

He nodded as he shook it, face serious. “Okay. Can we go, Pax?”

“Let’s get out of here.” I turned back to the stairs. Most of the surviving cultists had trickled down to the level right above the bottom. As I completed my turn, Donnie stepped down onto my level and stared at me with rage in his eyes.

“This will not stand!” He shook a finger at me. “Everyone you know and love will pay for your insolence!”

I stepped forward to shield the twins and spread my arms wide. “You going to do something, or talk me to death?”

He opened his mouth to do just that, I guess, but a new voice interrupted him.

Enough.

A shadow flickered overhead, and my knees shook a little at the implication of the otherworldly voice. I looked up in time to see a viscous, shadowy mass ripple along the top of the cavern, intermittently blocking out the overhead lighting. The floor shook a little underfoot as the mass of shadow surged downward, collecting into a dimly-lit blob on the other side of the bottom tier.

“Behind the altar, boys,” I managed.

The cultists exulted. “Tlaloc! Tlaloc!”

The shadow thing coalesced into a rough animal form, its head a blend of hawk and wolf, while it crept forward on four legs that bent and pivoted with inhuman geometry. It was huge, and while it was hard to compare given that the Edimmu had never turned fully corporeal, I had a feeling that this entity was ten times the size.

I know you, Paxton Locke. Wizard. Ghost speaker. Paladin.

The last word came out as a sneer if such a thing was even possible for a voice that I heard more with my chest and head than I did my ears. This would have been a great time for a witty rejoinder. I came up dry and settled for, “Sup.”

The light will not help you, foolish boy. We are too deep, and our enemy is reluctant to tweak his own precious laws of reality. Die knowing that you have failed and never truly had a chance at victory.

With an inhuman cackle, it launched into the air, spiraling into a column of darkness and bringing on another round of cheers from the cultists.

Backing into the altar, I glanced over and tried to give Ethan and Evan a reassuring wink. The former didn’t make eye contact and the latter didn’t look very convinced.

I braced myself and clenched impotent fists. For one terrifying moment I reflected on the fact that I had nothing to stop the thing rushing around the sacrificial chamber. Unless the roof suddenly caved in, the heavens were not going to part and bathe the room in demon-burning light. The beast was right—we were on our own.

We were all going to die.

I knew it was probably for naught, but I took a deep breath to center myself. Spreading my arms wide for one last time, I forged a force blade around each fist. In the shadowed darkness, faint blue lines of foxfire traced the projected mental image of each dagger. On the ceiling, shadow gathered, and I sensed that Tlaloc was preparing to attack.

I’ve faced death more than once, and for whatever reason, I don’t bend to fear at those moments. I’ve seen plenty of ghosts who died screaming. Me? If I was going out, I was going out with some style.

The living shadow shot across the chamber. “Bring it!” I roared. “I cut my way through your door and your little lackeys! Come get some!” I pushed and bellowed in command. “You shall not pass!”

An inarticulate shriek filled the room. A massive blow knocked the force blades aside and took me in the chest. The wind of its passage rushed past my ears, bearing with it the musty stench of feathers and the miasma of rotting flesh. My back slammed into the altar, I crumpled to the floor, and at once, the shadow was gone.

I blinked at the ceiling a few times before I realized that I was still alive.

A few of the lights on the ceiling flickered and went out. The ones that were still working dimmed, then brightened as a rain of dust and debris trailed down from the roof of the cavern.

With a groan, I sat up and looked around. Tlaloc’s flight had knocked the cultists who’d clogged the stairs aside. Some struggled to their feet, but others clutched injuries and moaned piteously.

I blinked in surprise. It ran. It ran away.

The back of my hand came away bloody as I rubbed it across my mouth. “Note to self,” I wheezed. “Tolkien seems to spook shadow demons.”

“No,” Donnie moaned. “What have you done?” He’d been knocked aside, as well, but he staggered to his feet and hobbled in my direction. One of his arms flopped in a way it wasn’t designed to, but he didn’t seem to notice. He spread the fingers of his good hand wide and started to mutter under his breath. A circle of absolute darkness swelled in his palm.

I studied it for the barest of moments before I shrugged the strap of the Mossberg off my shoulder and triggered a round of buckshot into his legs. He hit the deck again with a scream, and whatever spell he’d been about to cast dissipated into nothing.

The altar made a handy grip to pull myself to my feet. I slung the Mossberg back over my shoulder. “Come on, guys. Fresh air time.”

The twins followed me toward the stairs, but I raised my hand to hold them as I drew closer to Donnie. I knelt down next to him and tried to put a note of sympathy in my voice.

“I bet that hurts. Here’s the deal. You cut these people loose from whatever glamour you’ve got them under and maybe a couple of them can carry you topside. We’ll get an ambulance on the way and we’ll get you all patched up to go to court. How’s that sound, chief?”

He sobbed wordlessly, then all at once, he rolled onto his side, striking at me with a long-bladed knife he’d plucked from somewhere in his robes. My hands were empty, but I reacted instinctively. The force blade snapped into life as I slapped at his knife blade. Mine beat his, severing the blade from the tang and—before I could pull my arm back to arrest the momentum—slashing him across the forearm.

His next cry was even more piteous, and I winced as the wound on his arm flared to life. I got to my feet. “Sorry, Donnie.” The spreading mystical fire consumed his chest and head, bringing him to abrupt silence. “Bye, Donnie.”

An echoing chorus of screams filled the cavern, and I winced and moved to shield the twins—but I shouldn’t have bothered. A good measure of the surviving cultists clutched their arms, and as I watched, black smoke trailed up from wherever they grabbed. I considered Angie’s wound and realized—when these people were brought into the cult, it involved some sort of mystical brand or mark. Without Donnie or Tlaloc around, they were free.

Of course, now we had to figure out how to get the survivors back to the surface…

Cassie

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

Realizing she’d read the same page in the magazine three times and still had no idea what she was reading, Cassie threw it on the side table and tried not to sigh. On the bright side, the waiting was a group activity—the Sikoras sat in their respective recliners, and Father Rosado had taken a position on the opposite end of the sofa from Cassie.

Jean Sikora glanced up from her pad of crossword puzzles and favored her with a smile. “I know how you feel, dear. I spent more than a few nights wondering if this old fart would be coming home to me.”

Kent grunted and shook his head. “Say what you will about the mean streets of Wisconsin, we never had to deal with human sacrifice.”

Despite her mood, Cassie grinned. She only had fuzzy memories of her mom, but she imagined that this would be what it would like to have both of her parents around. Her dad had done a good job raising her solo, even during the baffling histrionics and shenanigans of her early teenage years, but she’d often wondered what it would have been like to have a matched set. The families of her other friends had given her a bit of an inkling—Pax being the exception there, of course.

It was ironic, she decided, that her own childhood had been so happy with only one parent, while Paxton had been cursed with a mother who’d been like Joan Crawford on a bad day even before she’d broken bad.

Father Rosado straightened and peered out the sliding doors into the backyard. “Did anyone else see that?”

Kent looked out the doors, then back at the Father. “See what?”

“I thought I saw someone run through your backyard.” The priest frowned. “I suppose I could be seeing—”

The closed front door and living room draperies muffled the shout from outside, but Cassie thought she recognized the cadence of the voice. Is that Pax’s mom? A chill went down her spine. Good grief, is she like Voldemort, but showing up when you think about her? It was an irrational thought—Paxton talked about his mom, plenty, once he opened up, but the coincidence jarred her nonetheless.

Kent got up and moved to the front window. He pulled the shade open enough to peek through, then cursed. “Sorry, Father.” He turned and met Cassie’s eyes with his own. “We’ve got company. Take a look.”

She joined him at the window studied the area outside. Four young women stood in a line across the front yard. A different RV sat in front of the house with the side door hanging open. Despite the size of the front yard, it gave the impression that they were trapped, isolated inside of a perimeter from the rest of the neighborhood. She had to wonder if the choice of location hadn’t been purposeful.

Cassie inspected the women with a frown. She didn’t recognize three of the four, but the fourth kind of looked like Pax’s mom if she’d had a hell of a lot of plastic surgery. But even that didn’t make you look decades younger, it just gave you a stretched-face Barbie doll look. She shook her head, realizing her mistake. Magic could, though. They hadn’t seen any sort of youth spell in the grimoire, but then they hadn’t sought one out, had they? Something like that would have been more important to a woman like Helen, straddling the line between middle age and adulthood. I always figured you for vain, Mommy Dearest.

“I’m waiting,” the woman called out again, and that sealed it for Cassie. It had been a long time since she’d heard the voice in person, but it was Pax’s mom. She glanced at Kent.

“I guess she got some work done?”

Kent stared at her for a moment then shook his head. “They’re not going to wait around for him to come back. Jean, do you have your Ruger?”

“Do you really have to ask, dear?”

Kent turned back to Cassie and raised an eyebrow. She pointed at the couch. She’d tucked her purse under the side table. Bad place for it if they rushed the door right now, Cass.

“Get it, kiddo.”

She pulled the Kimber out of her purse and, after a moment of thought, tucked her spare magazine in the back pocket of her slacks. They’d used shotguns back in Wisconsin to take down the familiars. Would a pistol be enough? Well, like Dad always said, .45 ACP, for when you want to send the very best.

She rejoined Kent at the window. “You have anything bigger?”

“In the gun safe,” he confirmed. He favored the sliding doors into the backyard with a wary stare. “We picked a bad house to reenact the Alamo in, Jeanie. You covering the back?”

“I’ve got it,” Jean confirmed in a calm tone. Cassie couldn’t imagine how—her mouth had gone dry and she felt like her hands would start shaking if she let them.

Kent reached over to the front door and snaked the security chain into place. “Father,” he said. “How comfortable are you with guns?”

The priest favored the detective with a crooked smile. “I spent some time in the Army before I came to the church, Mr. Sikora. I’m accustomed.”

“Back bedroom closet. The safe combination is twelve, thirty-nine, nineteen. The ARs would probably be best. The ammo cans are labeled. Bring the one full of magazines.”

As the priest hurried to the back of the house, Cassie gave Kent a raised eyebrow. “All right, then.”

He shook his head, “You kids told me enough damn horror stories the last few days. I want the best I can get.” He looked sheepish. “Hell, I should have had it out and ready. I figured pistols would be enough.”

“Call 911?” She figured she knew the answer, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

“Depending on how deep Donnie’s got his claws into the department, would they even show up?” He sighed. “One way or another, this is going to be over before they can make it. I hope none of the neighbors stick their heads out.” There was another muffled shout from outside, and Kent turned back to the door. “Guess I better answer before they get too salty.”

He pulled the door open to the limit of the security chain, backstopping it with his heel. Kent brought his head close to the opening and shouted, “Nobody here by that name!”

Laughter tinkled in through the gap. “You’re hilarious, Detective. You think I don’t recognize you from the trial? Tell my son I want my book back, nothing else.”

Kent pulled back and gave Cassie a look. “That’s an interesting wrinkle.”

“We can’t do it,” she insisted. “In the wrong hands, that book’s like a nuclear weapon. Who knows what she’ll do with it? Paxton got a glimpse, once, and it still gives him nightmares. And who knows if she’d even leave us be if we did give it to her.”

Jean called out as Father Rosado returned, loaded down with two rifles and an olive-drab can. “There are some men in the backyard. And I’m with Cassie. No book.”

Kent replaced his service pistol in his waistband holster and accepted one of the rifles from Father Rosado. “What’s your take, Father?”

The priest responded with a raised eyebrow as he pulled back the charging handle on the second rifle to chamber a round.

Kent closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m surrounded by maniacs.” He took a deep breath. “But okay.” He turned back to the gap. “Sorry, Helen, but this isn’t a library!”

Valentine

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

Being far enough away to avoid notice had consequences of its own. There’d been no activity in the guard shack since Locke and his crew had taken the rattletrap van into the campus. Had they taken the guards with them? Were they lying dead inside, blank eyes staring at the well-lit ceiling? The questions compounded, and Val’s itch to get closer to investigate continued to grow.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel until Morgan made a point of clearing her throat. With a sigh, he folded his hands in his lap and kept staring at the guard shack. No way he killed them. Right?

The sudden buzz and ring of his phone made him jump, and he pulled it out and answered even as he noted Eliot’s number on the caller ID. “What’s up?”

His partner didn’t beat around the bush. “They’re here, Val. Helen and her crew—looks like three witches and six familiars. They’ve got the Sikora house surrounded.”

Val closed his eyes. “Damn it. Listen, we’ll head that way now. Hang tight—”

“No time for that, buddy. They’ll be long gone by the time you get back. George and I are going out to slow them down.”

Desperation shot through him. “Eliot, wait. We can scramble a response team from the Phoenix office.”

“Even on their best day, it’d be half an hour.” Eliot fell silent for a moment, then said, “I’m going red, Val. If I can’t pull myself out of it, it’s been a pleasure.”

“Eliot, wait.” He pulled the phone away from his ear. His partner had hung up. He hit the button to call back. “Shit. Come on, Eliot. Answer.” The line clicked over to voice mail, and he chucked the phone into the windshield with a snarl.

Morgan had overheard enough of the conversation. “Drive, damn it!”

“On it,” He twisted the key and gunned the engine. All pretense of stealth abandoned, tires squealed as he whipped the car around and headed back. “Call Anjewierden. We need a response team out there right now.” He took his eyes off the road and gave Morgan a somber look. “If they don’t make it there in time to help, at least they’ll be in position for the cleanup.”

CHAPTER 26

Eliot

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

The scree lining the bottom of the arroyo bit painfully at his feet, but Eliot didn’t notice. He’d stripped down to slacks and undershirt, and the brush of the wind on his exposed skin lit a delicious fire in his body that made him want to sing and dance for joy.

The curse was not without its benefits. Increased metabolism, slowed aging. Rapid healing and physical strength and speed far in excess of what one might expect from a sloppy-haired, wiry string-bean of a man.

Keeping it under control was exhausting at times, and he’d long become accustomed to the idea that if he lost it, his partner was there in large part to neutralize the problem. Somewhere along the course of years, Valentine had become his oldest and dearest friend. Dying didn’t bother Eliot so much. Forcing his friend to do the deed was a far different story.

So being outnumbered ten-to-one until Georgie took the field was a good thing. It meant that he didn’t have to hold back. There were no innocent parties here. Necromantic witchcraft was right up there with membership in al Qaeda or ISIS. Kill or capture, no questions asked, and here’s your medal, Agent. Decades of precedent backed him up, all the way back to the battle where the Allies had crushed the Sisterhood of Salem at Heidelberg during the Second World War.

Eliot bared his teeth in a savage grin. Good times.

He reached out with hands that had grown broad and thick with muscle during his sprint across the gap and took hold of the top of the fence surrounding the backyard. Even in the dim light, the pair of familiars stood out in sharp focus, as yet unaware of the threat bearing down on them. Their attention was directed inside of the house.

He vaulted over the fence with an exultant roar and landed lightly between the other two monsters.

Despite the red creeping in around the edges of his vision, he saw them just fine.

Helen

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

“…this isn’t a library!”

She clenched her fists and resisted the urge to scream in rage. The tracking spell must have fixated on Paxton’s location at the time she’d cast it. Her son wasn’t the sort to cower while others stood up for him. If he was here, he’d be smarting off at the door himself.

Helen took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. If he wasn’t here, that didn’t mean the grimoire wasn’t. She doubted that he’d haul the unwieldy thing around with him, but there was only one way to find out, wasn’t there?

“Giselle,” she spat. “Balefyr the door. We’ll see how much attitude they give me under the push.”

The girl stood and blinked at her, reluctant to move. “But you said they probably had guns.”

“That’s what the shield charms are for, you stupid cow!”

The girl cringed back, and for the first time, Helen got the sense that the other girl was actually intimidated by her. It was a step forward from the aloof, too-cool-for-this attitude she’d held the entire time, but if that was what it took to push her buttons, she’d use it. Giselle swallowed and gave her a tight, nervous nod.

And then all the windows in the Suburban parked in the driveway exploded.

She flinched away without looking, then stared.

Black and green ichor spilled down the paint from the newly-forged valley in the vehicle’s roof. Helen didn’t know which one of the familiars it was—seriously, they needed to invest in nametags—but it was down.

Roxanne screamed. “What the hell is that?”

Helen followed her pointed finger and winced. A second familiar traced a ballistic arc through the sky and finally slapped to the pavement with a liquid splashing noise that turned her stomach. She opened her mouth to order the girls to back off, but the clatter of breaking roof tiles drew her eyes back to the house.

Shadow cloaked the hulking figure crouching at the peak of the roof, but as it crept hand-over-hand in their direction, the illumination of the streetlights revealed it in full.

It looked like a man, for the most part—albeit muscular, broad-shouldered and wasp-waisted. Thick curls of hair traced the back of its broad hands and along its forearms and biceps. The face was brutish, ugly, the forehead ridge thick with bone over eyes that glowed with an eerie green light.

The Edimmu had only just begun her eldritch education before their separation, but she knew the nature of this beast. It was the forefather of a pair of legends, a cursed thing binding a predator spirit to a human being. The Italians who first encountered it called it mannaro lupo, the man-wolf, though this looked more like the eponymous Mr. Hyde—the Fredric March version, in particular—to her eyes. She didn’t know if anyone involved in the production had been read-in on the supernatural, but the resemblance was uncanny.

“What the fuck is that?” Kelsey blurted.

Helen opened her mouth to explain, then decided there was no time for a dissertation. She settled for, “It’s a werewolf! Kill it!”

Jade green eyes snapped over and focused on her. If anything, the thing’s menacing smile widened. It collected itself, then launched into the air with hands spread wide to seize her.

Oh, shit.

Roxanne, sweet Roxanne, saved her life.

The stream of balefyr that erupted from the girl’s palm was so white-hot it seared an afterimage of purple spots in Helen’s vision. The blast intercepted the beast in mid-jump, pushing it away from the yard and out toward the street. It slammed into the back corner of the RV and tumbled into the road. The thing lay still, a shattered ruin trailing streams of smoke as bits of it smoldered.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to will her trip-hammering heart into something resembling a normal rhythm. “Good job, Roxy. Marvelous.”

The girl dimpled, but Kelsey wheeled around and blurted, “Where the hell did they get a werewolf, Helen?”

“It’s Division M, sweetie. So we’ve got to hurry. You and Giselle burn the body to ash—they’re supposed to regenerate. Roxanne and I will see if the book is here.”

The two girls looked reluctant, and Helen snapped, “Take the rest of the familiars with you and get it done. Now!”

The girls hurried away, and she reached out and gripped Roxanne by the shoulder. “Shield out. Let’s be quick about it.”

The front door cracked open as she led her protege along the front walk. She met the detective’s eyes through the gap and smirked. He began to pull back to close the door, but she raised her voice and pushed. “Hold on. You’ve got to open up for me.”

There was a moment of hesitation before he closed the door. She heard the rattle of the security chain, and the rest of the occupants of the house started to scream as Detective Sikora threw the door wide open.

Eliot

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

The elation of the change was gone, replaced by a soul-searing agony so great that he wasn’t quite sure how he remained conscious.

Eliot struggled to prop himself up on one elbow before he realized that his arm was far too badly broken for him to do such a thing. He raised his head and strained to look down at himself. He clenched his jaw to hold in the scream that move prompted. Taking in the scorch marks on his torso and the sight of his own spilled guts, he realized that the faint stench of cooked meat was coming from him.

“Pull yourself together,” he muttered under his breath. If he could stay alive for the next hour or so, he’d be right as rain. The soft scrape of approaching footsteps told him that was unlikely.

Two figures loomed overhead—a tall blonde and a petite brunette. They’re kids, he marveled. A great wave of pity coursed through him, and he relaxed, letting his head rest on the pavement. “Finish it,” he said tiredly.

Renewed agony burst into life as the tall blonde brought the tip of her shoe down on his left forearm and ground the broken ends of his radius and ulna into the pavement. The brunette tittered with laughter.

“Watch his guts, Gis. They’re crawling back into his stomach. Unreal!”

The blonde—Gis?—cocked her head to one side, then knelt down beside him. She cupped a hand in front of his eyes, rolling a golf ball-sized blob of liquid fire around in her palm. “How’d it happen?”

“How did what happen?”

She slapped him across the cheek with her other hand. “You know what I mean.”

He thought he heard the roar of an engine in the distance. Come on, Georgie. “Chicago Outfit brought in a Sicilian heavy-hitter. Ran into him in a speakeasy. Tried to take him down and he laid some heavy mojo on me. And here we are.”

The little one narrowed her eyes. “Chicago Outfit? Speakeasy? How old are you, wolf-man?”

The engine grew louder. Eliot grinned. “Hundred and fifteen. Here comes the cavalry, kids.”

He craned his neck in time to see George take the U-Haul around the corner. Engineering must have souped the truck up something fierce because it almost went up on two wheels as he made the turn.

Eliot had expected the witches to scatter, but to his surprise, they stood their ground. The girls glanced at each other, seemed to share something unspoken, and snapped their hands out toward the truck. The sudden flare of fire and light forced him to close his eyes, but the screaming sound of metal drove him to open them and crane his head around.

The U-Haul lay on its driver’s side. The front end burned, trailing smoke into the air. He winced and tried to remember how full the gas tanks had been. Would direct flame even set them off? The pain of his shattered body had begun to fade, but his thinking was still murky.

“Time to quit screwing around,” the brunette said. “Burn him so we can get the hell out of here.”

They lowered their hands to point palms at his chest, but the scraping sound of metal on metal brought their attention back to the wreckage of the truck.

“Oh, now you done pissed him off, kids.” Eliot tried to keep the grin off of his face and failed. “Georgie Porgie, puddin’ pie. Smashed a witch and made her cry.”

The blonde’s brow wrinkled in confusion, but before she could say anything, the wreckage of the U-Haul lurched as weight shifted inside. The shiny aluminum of the truck’s roof distorted, bent, and finally ripped open as something olive-drab and massive pushed its way out.

The machine was humanoid, save for the fact that the glowing ‘eyes’ of its head were smashed down along the top of the barrel-shaped chest. Broad, cross-shaped feet slammed into the pavement as George piloted it out of the wreckage of the U-Haul. Light flared through the paint, outlining the tight tracing of Celtic runes that lined the extremities and torso of the massive suit of armor. Servomotors and titanium were easy enough to assemble. Powering such a creation for more than a few moments required something a bit more exotic.

Static crackled as amplifiers activated. “Hands in the air, Eastwick.” Solenoids clicked, and gun barrels deployed from hidden compartments in the big machine’s—Beatrice, George liked to call it—forearms.

The petite brunette started to raise her hands, but the blonde whipped a line of fire at Beatrice with a snarl of defiance. Six inches from the suit’s hull, the line halted. The runes in that area flared, and the fire fizzled out.

Gunfire thundered, and Eliot turned his head away in time to keep the resultant shower of viscera from going into his face. When he turned back, the blonde was gone, and the blood-soaked brunette still had her hands up, a look of shock on her face.

“Back away from the other Agent! Hands behind—” George’s amplified voice cut off with a grunt, and this time when Eliot turned to look, a quartet of familiars had Beatrice covered with a wave of corrupted flesh. They couldn’t beat their way in, but with a whine of straining servos, the big machine toppled to the ground.

Cassie

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

Kent pulled the door open, his entire body moving in fits and starts. She added her own voice to the chorus of denials, but none of it mattered. Sikora stepped aside, and Helen Locke swept inside of the house.

The Kimber clattered to the floor even as her finger kept squeezing an imaginary trigger. She hadn’t even heard the command to drop it, but her body had obeyed the push, nonetheless. She stole a glance around the living room and realized they’d all disarmed themselves at Helen’s words.

Cassie steeled herself to grab something else, but Paxton’s mom anticipated other sorts of resistance and commented, “Nobody move.”

On the bright side, the order didn’t seem to keep her from breathing, but the muscles of her arms and legs refused to obey. Helen regarded the room, and a sardonic smile broke across her face when she saw Cassie.

The witch stepped up and patted her on the cheek. “Cassandra Hatcher, imagine that. It’s been years, darling. I suppose my son recruited you on his misguided quest?”

Not moving didn’t apply to talking it seemed. “You could say that.”

Helen laughed and moved away. A younger woman, plump with red hair edged inside and looked around the room. When she saw that the occupants had disarmed, she relaxed.

“Meet Roxanne, folks.” Helen tapped her fingers on her chin and whirled to stare Kent in the eye. “Detective, where’s my book?”

Kent’s face twisted in fury even as he said, “In my gun safe.”

“Not quite so specific, please.”

“First bedroom on the left down the hall. The safe is in the closet.”

“Combination?”

“Twelve. Thirty-nine. Nineteen.”

Helen clapped her hands. “Excellent! Keep an eye on things, Roxanne, I’ll be right back.” She swept past the group. Outside, an amplified voice shouted, and amazingly loud gunfire rang out, but Cassie couldn’t even flinch. She stared daggers at the redheaded witch, but the girl didn’t even seem to notice. She—Roxanne—was too busy staring out the front door to notice.

We’ve had the book for all this time, and I spent it doing what? She closed her eyes. What magic you got to fight this, girl? Helen’s command to not move didn’t extend to gritting her teeth in irritation, either. She told the little voice in the back of her head where it could go sit and tried objective truth on for size. As far as last-ditch efforts went, it was a Hail Mary, but she had to do something.

“I can move,” she muttered under her breath. Roxanne looked back, then, but she must not have heard because she dismissed Cassie and went back to looking outside. From out in the street, there came a massive crash of metal. What the hell is going on, out there?

As Helen walked back into the room, bearing the grimoire, Cassie’s heart sank—not only from the fact that she’d gotten what she’d come for so easily, but that her own counter-move had been worthless. She was as frozen as she’d been beforehand.

“Let’s go, Roxanne,” Helen purred. She stroked the cover of the grimoire. “Everything we want is right in here.”

Cassie didn’t know why she spoke, but something moved her to. “That’s a lie.”

Helen frowned, but the other witch turned and looked at Cassie again with her head cocked to one side. “What do you mean?”

“The spell she promised you, it’s not in the grimoire. Division M has it. They took it when she was in jail.” Cassie took a quick glance at Helen and tried to hold back a hysterical laugh as truth poured into her like water. The other woman’s face was turning red with rage. Despite her own fear, she kept talking. The sense that she wasn’t in full control of her faculties was almost as terrifying as the fact that she was pissing off someone who could quite literally tell her to drop dead. “They’ve been trying to destroy it, actually. It’s called a Bathory spell. She’s been using you, Roxanne. All of you.”

“How do you know this?”

“Her son has been trying to teach me magic. The first spell I learned reveals objective truth. I tried to use it to break out of the push.”

The redhead turned on Helen, grabbing her by the blouse. “Is she telling the truth? Have you been lying to me?”

“Get your hands off of me.”

“Answer me!”

“Of course, I have. What do you think magic is, you idiot? It’s the exercise of power over others. You were a means to an end.”

Roxanne released her grip on Helen’s shirt, then with a scream tried to bring her hands up to her neck, fingers curled into claws. “Bitch!”

“No,” Helen said, mildly, but Cassie felt the undercurrent of the push running through the words, like a vibration deep below her feet. “Whatever you’re wanting to do to me, do it to yourself.”

The younger witch’s scream cut off as she wrapped her hands around her own throat and began to squeeze. If someone had asked Cassie if it were possible to strangle yourself earlier in the day, she’d have expressed her doubt. As she watched, the redheaded witch squeezed her own neck until she collapsed to the floor. Dead or unconscious, she couldn’t tell. Either way, Roxanne was out of the equation.

Helen came closer to Cassie and studied her in a new light. “What else did he teach you?”

“That’s it.” She tried to hold it back, but the push wouldn’t allow it. “We tried a few other times, but the grimoire isn’t exactly cooperative.”

Pax’s mother threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, it’s like anything else, dear. You need to know the right questions to ask.” She considered Cassie for a long moment, then nodded to herself. “There’s more to it than signing on to his crusade, isn’t there? You’re together.” Cassie felt heat rise in her cheeks, but there was no push behind the question, so she was able to remain silent. Not that it mattered—the answer was obvious. Helen favored her with a Cheshire cat smile. “You’re coming with me. No speaking to anyone other than me, and no screaming for help.”

“No!” Kent roared, and Helen jabbed a finger in his direction.

“I only need one witness to pass along a message to Paxton. Don’t make me eliminate the redundancies.” She paused, awaiting concurrence, then concluded. “Randolph Forest. The Ides of March. Tell my son if he ever wants to see his cute little blonde girlfriend again that he needs to be there.”

“He’ll be there,” Father Rosado said, quietly. “And every resource we can bring to bear will be right there with him.”

She laughed mockingly. “I’m counting on it. Come along, Cassie. The rest of you hold still for another five minutes.”

Cassie had time for one final, terrified look into the eyes of her friends before her feet betrayed her and carried her outside after the witch.

CHAPTER 27

Helen

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

She was halfway to the RV when one of the familiars hit it with such force that the shattered body punched through the rear window, rocking the entire vehicle back and forth on its suspension.

Helen stopped cold on the sidewalk, staring at the wrecked motor home. The impact had crumpled the back of the vehicle like a beer can, and though the familiar hadn’t punched through the front, she could imagine the destruction inside. “Right,” she said to herself. “Plan B.”

Out on the street, a metallic, humanoid figure stomped her way, leaving three other familiars squirming on the ground.

A voice boomed from the massive machine. “Hands in the air!”

“Now this,” Helen observed, “is an interesting application of technology and magic, Cassie. It’s a bit of a copy job—the Nazi Occult Science Division came up with something similar, back in the day. Smaller, but similar. I’m guessing that’s where our friendly government men in black came up with the idea but cheating on your homework is the wrong way to go about things.” She raised her hands and called out, “Fascinating machine, Agent. But you’ve got some issues with your rune inscription.” She twisted her hands and muttered under her breath. The lines of glowing symbols tracing the machine’s arms and legs flashed brighter, then, all at once, went out. The suit lifted one leg, hesitated, then toppled to the ground. A muffled voice shouted something from inside. Helen turned and shrugged at Cassie. “It’s tempting to go without backups. I imagine they saved quite a bit of weight by not using batteries.” She thumped her finger on the girl’s forehead. “But you’ve got to use your head! If you’re going to tap for primary power, make sure your off switch isn’t hanging out there for everyone to see.”

Cassie blinked at her for a minute, then asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

Helen smiled. “You remind me of the old days, what can I say?” She turned to the RV and frowned.

A voice from across the street called out. “What the hell is going on out here? Some of us have to work in the morning, Sikora, you jackass! This isn’t a campgr—”

The source of the voice stepped around the RV, took in the devastation beyond, and began to back away. “Hold on, now,” Helen pushed, and he froze. “You’re the Detective’s neighbor?”

“Yes,” he said, swallowing.

She looked into the side yard and took note of the sedan in the driveway. “Your car?”

“Yes.”

“Fetch me the keys. Now.”

His flickered back and forth between annoyed and terrified, but he scurried to obey. She continued down the front walk, then turned right and walked past the remains of the RV. She took a glance inside on the way past and decided that abandoning it was the best choice. The interior was smeared with green and black ooze. The Division M power suit had hurled the familiar with such force that it had basically disintegrated after punching through the back of the motor home.

“I never did like those nasty things,” she muttered under her breath. “But they are a bit more robust than the average person.”

Right on time, Kelsey ran up beside her, trailed by the remaining familiars. They were limping from their fight but had already begun to regenerate. The girl was splattered with blood and viscera but seemed otherwise uninjured.

Her voice verged on hysteria. “What’s the plan?” Then, realizing that Helen was not only not accompanied by Roxanne, but was moving past the vehicle they’d arrived in, she demanded, “Are you running away?”

Helen tried not to smile. “Leaving the battlefield after a victory is hardly running away, child.” She held up the grimoire. “I have what I came for. It’s time to move on.”

“Where’s Roxanne?” Her voice turned hysterical. “Do you even care that the Transformer or whatever the hell it is just turned Giselle into spaghetti sauce?”

“I never did like Giselle, much,” Helen said with a shrug. “But as the saying goes, you don’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

Kelsey stopped following, and Helen realized that she might have pushed too far. If the girl remembered that she could order the familiars to attack her before she was able to push back, she was in trouble. She stopped walking and turned around.

The roar of an approaching engine grew like a crescendo, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end as he looked down the road and took note of the speeding Crown Victoria. There were no flashing lights mounted on it, but the thing screamed undercover cop, which in this aspect could mean only one thing—the rest of Division M was here. Saved by the bell.

“Kelsey,” Helen said sweetly. The girl turned to her, eyes wide with fear. “You’re going to stay here and fight for me, sweetie. You and the boys keep whoever is in that car occupied so that I can get away.”

The girl’s jaw dropped, but even with the talents she’d developed, she was no match for Helen’s push. The expression on her face said something different, but she replied, robotically. “Yes.”

“Good luck,” Helen said. She raised her hand to pat the younger witch on the cheek, realized bits of Giselle were stuck to it, and drew back. “Come along, Cassie.”

Tires squealed on the pavement as she reached the driver’s door of the neighbor’s sedan. He bolted out of the front door in his rush to hand the keys over. She accepted them with a smile, and muttered, “Drop dead.”

The neighbor froze for a split-second, then began to jerk. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head and blood trailed down his face from his tear ducts and nostrils before he collapsed to the driveway.

“Get in, Cassie,” Helen said. “If you’re tempted to try anything, remember what I just did.”

The girl got into the passenger seat without a word, and Helen handed the grimoire over to her as she backed out of the driveway. Shots rang out, and she winced, but none hit her vehicle. The familiars or Kelsey, it seemed, had served their final purpose. As for her, it was time to hit the road.

“I hope you like classical music,” Helen said. She put the sedan in gear, turned on the radio, and drove off into the night.

Valentine

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

The first familiar wasn’t one of the smartest ones Val had ever dealt with. The thing rushed the car even before he had a chance to stop, so he jerked the wheel to one side and gunned the engine. The back tires broke free and slid, slamming the rear quarter panel into the beast and sending it flying into a random front yard.

“Hang tight, Morgan,” he said. “I need to get some mad out.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

He opened the driver’s door and stepped out. Doffing his suit coat, he remarked, “If I need to tap out, I’ll yell.”

Eliot and George lay crumpled in the road, but he didn’t have the time to check on them. The trio of approaching figures wouldn’t have normally looked like much—a couple of frat boy types, flanking a short young woman. The fact that the girl was covered in blood and cradled a ball of liquid fire in one palm was all the warning he needed that this crew was up to no good.

Most agents he knew carried only a single sidearm, often with a backup piece in an ankle holster. Val carried four—a Les Baer Premier 1911 under each arm and a pair of Colt Officer Models in a dual small-of-the-back rig. It took a lot of tailoring to keep him from clanking when he walked.

He drew his Premieres and strolled down the street as though he didn’t have a care in the world. “Beef’s not with you, Tinker Bell,” he said, scanning the neighborhood. All in all, not bad. Wrecked Suburban and an RV. Definitely fixable once Anjewierden and the rest of the local crew showed up. No neighbors seemed to be gawking, which was always made the cover story easier. “Where’s the boss bitch?”

The witch and her familiars stopped about thirty feet away. Behind them, a car backed into the street. Val narrowed his eyes at the blonde heads in the front seat.

“She’s running,” Tinker Bell said. “I’m supposed to slow you down. I’d really like to surrender, but I can’t do that.”

Val raised his hands and took aim at the receding silhouette of the figure in the driver’s seat. “Figured it was something like that. No worries—the spell effect will fade when she dies.”

The third familiar tackled him from the side right as he pulled the triggers, sending his shots into the sky. He rolled with the blow, letting the creature come over his hip and tumble to the ground even as he kept his feet. Rookie mistake, son. Got a little overeager. He raised his left gun and kept the trio in front covered while he emptied the mag in his right into the fallen figure. A solid hit from a car might not be enough to do the trick, but seven rounds of .45 ACP into the torso and head would. More work for the cleanup guys, spraying the green-and-black mess out of the street, but that was of little concern at the moment.

The little witch thrust her palm in his direction, and the ball of fire swelled into an eye-searing column of flame. The air crackled with eldritch energy, and he raised an impressed eyebrow. Locke had taught her charges well—a blast that powerful would leave most staggering in exhaustion. Tinker Bell looked none the worse for wear. But…

“You’ve got to do better than that, darlin’.” Val spun in the street and sidestepped, easily avoiding the stream of balefyr, though the passing heat made the skin of his cheeks tighten. He holstered the spent pistol and pulled a loaded one from behind his back along the way. Depending on how sporty things got, sometimes it was just plain faster to switch out for a loaded gun instead of taking the time to reload. He double-tapped each familiar in the chest. It wasn’t enough to take them out permanently, but it was enough to slow them down.

“I don’t want to!” The girl screamed, even as she whipped out her hand to send another stream of fire in his direction. This bit of magical energy had even more energy behind it—a bit of rage and terror, perhaps—and was about as fast as a bullet, if far more visible. and shouldn’t have been humanly possible to dodge.

Val ducked and aimed in one motion. The slightest edge of the balefyr kissed the top of his right shoulder, and pain shot through him, but he ignored it for now. Light bloomed behind him as something in the line of fire blazed to life, but the entirety of his focus was on the witch before him.

He pulled the trigger on his left pistol three times in the span of a single heartbeat. Tinker Bell jerked, clutching the abrupt wounds on her chest before crumpling to the street.

The familiars forgot about their own wounds and roared in defiance at the assault on their mistress. It might have been frightening if Val hadn’t fought worse things with a hangover. He advanced on the fallen witch, littering the ground behind him with shell casings as he emptied his pistols along the way.

Somehow, in some way, the little witch still lived as he stood over her. The last two familiars lay to either side, shattered ruins. He knelt beside her even as his hands replaced emptied magazines with the volition of well-honed muscle memory.

“How—what—” She coughed up blood, choking.

It didn’t feel like justice. It felt like stomping kittens. And, somehow worse, was his overwhelming lack of satisfaction. Locke had escaped, presumably with the grimoire she’d sought, which meant that Paxton was useless as bait going forward. Val swallowed all that bile and tried to put comfort in his tone. It cost him nothing, after all.

“Nothing personal, Tinker Bell. You just caught up with the wrong crowd.”

She was fading fast. “I—”

The light in her eyes went out. He hit the slide release to chamber a round and waited a moment to see if she was going to reanimate and start gnashing her teeth.

It had been that kind of week, after all.

Behind him, the car door slammed. True to her word, Morgan had let him take care of things. In all honesty, it had been a cakewalk of the first order. Almost wish Helen had stuck around, it might have been worth the effort. “Told you, Morgan. No issue.”

“Val, we’ve still got a problem!”

Following Morgan’s pointing finger, he turned and grimaced.

Blasted by the witch’s final, desperate spell, the Sikora house blazed.

CHAPTER 28

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

With the spell Donnie and Tlaloc had laid on them broken, the surviving cultists were reduced to silent catatonia or shrieking hysterics. I had sympathy for both sides, but the weeping and wailing got to me. I felt guilty about it, but I resorted to the push to get them to shut up, en masse. Once I got that settled, I ordered the hale and hearty to help the injured follow the De La Rosas out of the chamber while I hung back with the twins. I was leery that some might be pretending to be affected, but it seemed that any immunity to my own magic had gone out the door with Tlaloc.

By the time the stragglers cleared out enough for the boys and me to make our way up and out, we emerged into deliciously fresh air and a gymnasium surrounded by police vehicles. Before making the call, the De La Rosas had cleared out of the campus and collected their bomb from the electrical substation. We took a moment to debate on the wisdom of keeping the van but decided it was better to be safe than sorry. After they got all their gear out and torched the van out in the desert, they’d take the RV back to the Sikoras. I could make my own way. If needed I could always push one of the cops for a ride, after all. Call it the mystical equivalent of an Uber.

I tried not to think about the fact that I was relying on the ability more and more, and that I’d become far less reluctant to use it people that didn’t pose a direct threat. That sort of introspection could come later.

Evan and Ethan were pint-sized celebrities as I led them to a waiting ambulance. The paramedics doted over them, and the cops that weren’t involved in corralling the former cultists exulted over their rescue. It was a simple matter for me to slip aside, though Evan gave me a bit of a look as I stepped away from the growing crowd. I made a point to stay in his line of sight, and he relaxed, accepting the paramedic’s medical exam with a contented smile as I leaned against the side of the gym. My legs ached from the climb and ascent, and my back was sore from where I’d hit the altar, but after the beating I’d taken last week I had no complaints.

I didn’t know how many cops Donnie and Tlaloc had co-opted, but with their influence gone, Phoenix’s finest seemed a lot more interested in cleaning up the conspiracy. And, thankfully, they weren’t all that interested in a white-haired fellow standing off to the side in a filthy Phoenix PD windbreaker.

One cop separated himself from the crowd and joined me against the wall. In retrospect, I guess I should have expected the visit, but it was still jarring to see my dad in a SWAT uniform.

Last week he’d shown up in a vision of a movie theater. Stepping out into the real world like this seemed a much more profound step. I tried not to reflect too much on whether he was actually there or a hallucination. Life’s simpler when you’re not questioning your own sanity.

“A well-fought victory, Pax.”

It seemed rude to mouth off to my dad when I’d been graced with the privilege of speaking with him twice after he’d died, now, but something in his tone set me off. I thought about the heaps of ash and bone in the chamber below, and the cultists who were still too shell-shocked at their experience to do anything more than sit and rock back and forth. “This is a win? I hate to see what a loss looks like.”

Dad nodded toward the line of men and women as the cops led them, handcuffed, to the waiting vans. A literal fleet of ambulances had already taken away the more badly injured ones. “There is a Godly prison ministry in this city. The possibility that one or more of them might find redemption is so high as to be a certainty as you would understand it.”

“Great. So they get a pass for killing people and feeding them to some ancient Aztec god? For trying to kill little kids?” The thing that I let get away, the little voice in the back of my head not-so-helpfully chimed in.

“It may have called itself a god but it was nothing of the sort. In truth, it was not dissimilar to the beast the Lord struck down in Wisconsin.” Dad folded his arms across his chest. “A tribe long lost to time built the chambers below and trapped it inside when Tlaloc’s appetite threatened to consume the peoples of most of what you call North and South America. It was, in truth, as much a prisoner as those boys you rescued, but for thousands of years. When he discovered it, Donald Thibodeau entered into a pact to provide it long-denied sustenance in exchange for knowledge and power.” He smiled. “When you told Tlaloc that you’d broken the magical barrier keeping it confined, it fled.”

And here I thought it was my boss Gandalf impression. “So, the whole Aztec god thing was what, PR?” Something about Dad’s manner of speaking was off. I was starting to wonder if I was wrong to take him at face value. Right now, hallucination and visiting angel were running neck and neck.

“Even monsters understand the power in propaganda. Then and now.”

“So, what, however many people died terrified and screaming and I’m supposed to pump my fist in celebration that their killers find a way to forgive themselves? That’s a bunch of bullshit.”

“Take care with your tone, boy!” Dad’s face shifted, becoming something at once terrible and beautiful; a fearsome marble statute. Then, as though realizing his—its?— mistake, it returned to normal. Quieter now, he said, “All things serve the will of God.”

“You’re not my dad.”

His voice sounded almost embarrassed. “No, I am not. You can consider me a . . . messenger. The face you see—that’s something you gave me. Few can look upon my true form.”

“What, you lied to me?”

Faux Dad frowned. “I have told you no lies. Consider my words. I am incapable of false witness. The mask I wear is the lie you told yourself. If you wish to strip it away, I suppose that is within your ability.”

I winced at the implied threat. “No, I’m good. So why are you here?”

“To aid and comfort the afflicted.”

“Great. Give me some aid. Tell me where Tlaloc’s run off to and how to kill it.”

“That’s not your path, Paxton. The creature has fled to distant shores. Consider it a task for another day, and a duty that might not even be left to you—the future is murky in that regard.”

“The future.” I’d considered time travel when I pored through the grimoire after I first discovered it. As best I could tell, that sort of thing was a no-no even with magic. The universe gives you one chance to get things right, and if you drop the ball, them’s the breaks, kid.

Faux Dad smiled with a corner of his mouth. “Despite your gift of free will, you humans are remarkably predictable. Those of you who are not are truly a treasure to behold.” He nodded after a police van as it pulled away with a load of prisoners. “Even those such as them.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” I restrained myself from going any further. I felt like screaming, but that seemed somehow uncouth in the presence of whoever or whatever this was. “Those guys are evil, there’s no chance they’d ever change.” Is there?

“There is always the possibility of redemption. And we’re in the possibility business.”

I shook my head and tried not to laugh. “What about the boys? Are they going to be all right?”

“That’s up to them. But they’ve got a better chance than most.”

I stared at Evan. The paramedics had wrapped the twins in blankets, and he had one arm thrown up over Ethan’s shoulder. Even now, the other brother stared at the ground, completely isolated from the hubbub around them. “I could make them forget. Everything bad that happened to them, all the horrors they saw.” I snapped my fingers. “Like that, I could make them normal boys again.”

“You could.”

“But that wouldn’t really fix anything, would it? Their mom and dad would still be dead, and they’d still have the trauma of finding out about it.”

After a moment, Faux Dad said, “Sometimes, knowing when not to use power is the hardest thing of all.”

“I thought about making myself forget about what I saw when you—when my dad died, I mean.”

“Why didn’t you?”

I thought about it for a long time before I answered. My initial thought was to say so that I could remember why Mother was evil, but that wasn’t it, not really, though it came close. “Because it helps me remember how far I could go if I let myself. It reminds me of how dangerous this magic is, and how I can’t use it try and solve all my problems.”

“We are the sum of our experiences,” my companion agreed. “Both good and bad.”

My cell phone rang, and I answered it without thinking. It was probably rude of me, but hey, so is pretending to be someone you’re not. “Yeah.”

Carlos was out of breath. “Dude, are you headed back yet?”

“Not yet, what’s up?”

“Kent’s house is on fire. The whole neighborhood is filled with cops. We cruised on by, but we got a pretty good look.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said, hanging up on my friend. “Did you know about this?” I demanded.

Faux Dad’s smile was a little sad. The fact that I’d seen that expression before made my reaction that much worse. “All things serve—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. What does it serve, keeping me here? Isn’t that restricting my free will?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “There are times when certain outcomes are more desirable than others. Like, say, getting you released from jail so that you could reach Phoenix in time to meet the woman, Angie.”

I sat and blinked for a moment. “You got me and Cassie out of jail?” My heart jumped into my throat. Cassie!

“I got the ball rolling, yes.”

Standing up, I shoved my cell phone back into my pocket. “If she’s hurt, you wasted your time. How about you quit helping if you can’t explain yourself, huh?”

I stormed away, searching for a squad car that still had the keys in the ignition. On one hand, there were plenty to choose from.

On the other, something told me I was already too late.

Paxton

Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

Sikora’s house smoldered, and his Suburban was folded in half as though an angry giant had sucker punched it from above. I wanted to scream in frustration but doing so would bring unwanted attention. The baseball cap and jacket I wore were enough to lend me the camouflage of legitimacy for now, but they wouldn’t pass more than a cursory inspection. There was a wrecked U-Haul laying on its side in the middle of the road, and I parked the ‘borrowed’ police car there and tried to avoid the impulse to sprint as I moved through the cordon blocking off the neighborhood. I’d found the police department baseball cap in the front seat and exchanged it for my shotgun. Between the hat and Kent’s windbreaker, I thought I’d be fine so long as I acted as though I belonged.

I skirted the edges of the collection of manpower. There weren’t as many marked cars as I’d expected, which I suppose made sense. The majority of them were probably still back at Upward Path. Most of the vehicles were unmarked sedans or SUVs, which made me wonder if this hadn’t turned federal for some reason.

There weren’t any ambulances, and the sick feeling in my stomach got worse and worse as I strolled past clusters of police and suited men and women, pulling tidbits of conversation out of the air along the way.

“…towed the RV out of here first thing, the inside was a damn mess…”

“…figure out a cover story yet?”

“…going to have to go door-to-door with the neighbors, got a report from one that some woman ordered her husband to give her his car…”

My blood went cold. Of course. Mother had found us. I don’t know how she’d managed it, but it was the only thing that made sense. Donnie had been too surprised to see us to spring any sort of trap.

My knees buckled, and I forced myself to keep my feet and refrain from screaming out in frustration. After I’d whisked the book out from under Mother’s nose last week, I should have been better prepared.

A lone ambulance sat on the curb in front of Kent’s house, and I abandoned any charade of stealth and headed that way. Please, let them be okay.

I peeked inside and tried to hide my disappointment. The only occupant was a tired-looking man with a shaggy haircut. There was enough gauze and cotton wrapped around him that he could cosplay as a mummy. They must have had him on some good painkillers because he stared at the roof of the ambulance with glazed eyes and didn’t react as I moved across his line of sight.

The mild Southern accent brought me to a halt, and I cocked my head in confusion. Where have I heard that voice, before?

“I want the survivors sequestered until we can confine them to a secure medical facility. How long until we can move them?”

“Paramedics said it looked to mostly be smoke inhalation—I’d say no more than a day or two, Val.”

I stepped closer. I couldn’t see his face, but the first voice belonged to an average-sized man in a dark suit. He stood next to a redhead, wearing the female equivalent. As they spoke, they kept their eyes on the collapsed rubble of Kent’s house.

“I’ve got Anjewierden pulling the registration on the neighbor’s sedan. If I know Helen, she’ll swap plates, soon, so we need to get the BOLO out sooner rather than later. Two blonde women, traveling to parts unknown.” He rubbed the back of his head and sighed. “The only thing I can’t figure is whether the girl was in on it all along, or if Locke wants her for some other reason.”

“What did you say?” I blurted. I’d closed half the distance between myself and the mysterious pair before I realized my mistake. My mom has Cassie. The other possibility was so unbearable that I couldn’t bring myself to consider it.

The woman turned and regarded me with wide eyes. The man moved at a much more languid pace, but somehow, by the time he’d turned to face me, he had a massive pistol in one hand, pointed right at my head.

“Well, well. How about that. Nice to see you again, Mr. Locke.”

I blinked. That voice. Something made me look down, and I realized that he was wearing cowboy boots with his suit. Of course. “You were at the hospital. Doctor—” I fished through memories made murky by IV painkillers. “Valentine,” I remembered. “Doctor Valentine.”

He sketched a salute with the forefinger of his free hand. “Agent Valentine, actually. Nice of you to join us. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

I glanced at the gun again, decided if he wanted to talk he was bluffing, and said, “Some other time, maybe.” The De La Rosas were waiting at a convenience store down the road. I made a quick check. Despite the agent holding me at gunpoint, everyone in the immediate area seemed too consumed in their own activities to notice. That wouldn’t last forever. I opened my mouth to push the two agents to be quiet so I could walk out—and realized that Agent Valentine had moved, faster than I’d ever seen anything or anyone move in my life. A split second after I’d taken my eyes off him, I was down on the ground with his knee in the small of my back.

“Let me go!” I demanded. Valentine’s grip was like iron, and my plea had no effect. I hesitated for the barest of moments, then threw caution to the wind. “Let me go. I need to find my girlf—my Cassie.” The push was based more on desire than words so the stutter shouldn’t have affected it. But nothing happened. I twisted my neck around, trying to get a good look at him. “Let me go!” With a frown, the Fed leaned down close, his forehead wrinkled in annoyance. He brought his lips close to my ear, and I could smell mint chewing gum on his breath. “Who are you?” I managed. “What are you?”

His slow drawl was smooth as silk. “This is only the second time we’ve met, so I’m going to let your little parlor trick slide. You try it again; you and I are going to be cross. As for who I am? Some wiseacre thought he was funny and put Valentine on my badge, back in the day.” He pulled my arms behind my back. Handcuffs ratcheted shut around one wrist, then the other. “My mama named me John Henry Holliday. But you can call me Doc.”

Paxton Locke will return

In

Come, Seeling Night

ABOUT
DANIEL HUMPHREYS

Daniel Humphreys is the author of the Z-Day series of post-apocalyptic sci-fi thrillers and the Paxton Locke urban fantasy series. His first novel, “A Place Outside the Wild”, was a 2017 Dragon Award finalist for Best Apocalyptic novel. He lives in Indiana with his wife and family - not far from the Hoosier National Forest.

Find him online at

Blog - Daniel-Humphreys.net

Facebook - facebook.com/DanielHumphreysAuthor

Twitter - twitter.com/NerdKing52

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DANIEL HUMPHREYS

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Contents

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28

Landmarks

1. Cover

2. Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28