“I don’t understand.” Ronnie stared at me. “He’s Temple Finn.”
“I used to be,” I snarled. I ended the enchantment with a slash of my hand. “If any of you think you can do better, be my guest.”
Annette huffed and looked away. Jenny gave me an encouraging smile. I didn’t know which was more annoying.
I recast the spell, this time adding my own personal twist to the magic. As a child, I’d developed a see-in-the-dark charm so I could read in bed without a flashlight. I braided that charm into the spell. This should let me see Sage even if he was in pitch blackness.
The paired spells worked perfectly.
I handed the tissue back to Annette. “The next time you collect blood for me to track, make sure you know who or what the blood came from.”
Her jaw tightened. “I got that blood from Sage’s bedroom.”
“And he got it from a poor gray squirrel whose body is in a plastic grocery bag in a dumpster down the street from his house.” No wonder everything had been cloudy. I’d been looking through the eyes of a dead creature. My own eyes spasmed for a moment as I released my hold on the spells. The sunlight turned blinding. I squinted and waited for them to readjust. “You said Sage’s portal had blood on it?”
“That’s right,” said Annette.
I didn’t like the implications one bit. “The squirrel was a sacrifice. Sage was trying to summon something.”
“With LEGOs and a squirrel?” asked Ronnie.
“Maybe he was trying to summon something very small,” said Jenny.
“Or maybe he—or whatever else might be working through him—was trying to recreate something he saw when he took these.” I picked up the bag with the two pills. “I’ll be in my workshop figuring out what the hell they are.”
• • •
I spent most of the day studying the pills. When my eyes got too tired, I set the two pills on a silver plate and turned my attention back to my book. Specifically, to the work of Nabu-rihtu-usur. His writing was more than just a spellbook; it was a firsthand account of his attempted uprising against Ashur-etil-ilani, around 630 BC or so.
During his failed rebellion, in addition to a small army of scorpion-men, Nabu-rihtu-usur had conjured what wizards today would call a Class III Elemental Marsh Slug. I turned the page. The drawing of Nabu-rihtu-usur’s summoning spellwork was crude, but there was a clear triangular shape, just like Annette had described seeing in Sage’s room.
The individual symbols had a reality-defying element: parallel lines came together, and shapes dissolved into meaningless, disparate lines if you looked too closely.
Nabu-rihtu-usur wrote of nausea and nightmares following the conjuration. Many who witnessed the creature’s rampage were driven mad. He also mentioned sacrificing fattened bulls and a gazelle.
“That’s not right,” I muttered. Elemental marsh slugs were simple creatures with simple appetites. They didn’t care about living sacrifices. You could hook one with a simple pile of overripe fruit. And while they were ugly little worms, they certainly weren’t horrible enough to cause madness.
“You believe he conjured something else.”Margaret’s presence was a welcome surprise. We hadn’t had much time to talk since leaving the bed and breakfast.
Her words were faint. She couldn’t reach far beyond her van.
“Spying on me?” I asked, my words deliberately light and teasing.
“Just checking your progress. I can go, if you’d prefer. I didn’t mean to violate your privacy.”
“No need,” I said. “I always used to prefer working alone. But I’ve come to appreciate good company. Just don’t follow me into the bathroom or anything.”
“I’ve been haunting a teenaged boy for two years. I know all about the importance of boundaries.”
I couldn’t see her, but I felt her presence move closer. “I don’t know what Nabu-rihtu-usur conjured with this spell, but it was no marsh slug.”
“Do you think he did it deliberately? Or did he accidentally call up more than he expected?”
“He was an amateur. Arrogant, ignorant, and powerful. That combination leads to dangerous mistakes.”
I skimmed the rest of the spellbook but found nothing to help me positively identify Nabu-rihtu-usur’s creature. I did come across a different spell whose symbols were familiar, matching what I had seen etched onto the pills. “Strange.”
“What is it?”
