T. Laine called to me, “Keep measuring and film this on your cell. If I explode, see that my family never learns I was stupid enough to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Measure!” she demanded.
I set my cell on a tree limb and focused the video on the circle. I tapped the small button to film Lainie’s activities. Then I extended the psy-meter’s wand and hit record. “Go.”
T. Laine took a fistful of the blue dust and tossed it high. It went up and out and was caught by the breeze; it swirled and settled across... thehedge. Nothing happened. She tossed another. Then another. She finished by upending the baggie and shaking out the last of the blue dust. It didn’t spread out perfectly, but enough settled that I could make out the form of thehedge of thorns. It looked exactly as if someone had upended a massive, shallow, splotchy blue bowl.
T. Laine held out her arms and leaned down. Gingerly, she touched a patch of blue dust. I saw the magics as they wereenacted. From the circle’s point at the south, a line of blue raced around and back to the beginning as the circle was cut and chalked into the earth. The energies sparkled for a moment, then moved down the spoke closest, to the center. They sparkled again, growing in intensity, and shot out the spokes to meet the outer circle. The vision dimmed.
A red circle rose inside it, concentric, smaller than the blue one. It too dimmed. A small smearing of blue energies at the north point led to the center of the circles. Another smearing. And two more. They faded. And then the red circle sprang into place, followed by the blue one. They stayed in place, visible to human eyes in the daylight, stable and unwavering. I understood that it was an image of what had been, created by Lainie’s working. It made no sense to me at all, but T. Laine was grinning like a cat with a bowl of cream.
She called to me, “The circles were two spells in one. The inner one called the vampires and a black cat, and imprisoned them in the center. The outer one—”
A black light burst from the ground. T. Laine jumped back. Something long and smoky and dark moved from the earth. Two more, then two more. They were... fingers and a thumb. An amorphous blue-ish hand reached out of the pit. It was wearing a ruby ring. It made a fist and withdrew into the land. The red circle winked out. The blue one blazed up high, sparkling in the sunlight.
T. Laine raced away from the edge of the outer circle. Dropped flat to the ground. As if—“Get down!” she screamed at me.
I dropped, clutching the psy-meter to me. The blue circle glared so bright I had to look away. I duck-walked behind the tree. The blue energies exploded. Brilliant. Silent. They evaporated. I peeked out from behind the tree to see a ring and spokes of bluish powder. There had been only light, nothing kinetic.
T. Laine rose from her crouch. She was breathing hard. Panicked. Sweat ran down her spine and dampened dark half circles beneath her arms. She backed away. Stumbled. Caught her balance and turned to me. Raced close. I looked down at the psy-meter 2.0. It was bouncing all over the place, all the levels, jumping up and down.
“Son of a witch on a switch,” she cursed. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m pretty sure no one has ever seen that before and lived to tell it. Except Jason.”
Uncertain, I said, “That was a demon’s hand, wasn’t it?”
“Holy hell and back again, yes.” T. Laine opened a bottle of water and poured it over her head, splashing us both with the icy contents. She gasped and shivered once and opened a Coke, which she drank down, crushing the plastic bottle to force it down her throat fast. She burped. Burped again as the Coke’s carbon dioxide bubbled in her stomach.
I saved the reading, turned the meter and the cell off. Carefully, I asked, “Did you free the demon?”
“No! I’m adventurous, not stupid. The blue powder is part of a... let’s call itreviewworking. It lets me see recently executed spells. Once. It’s like a delayed reflection; it triggers nothing, the demon is still trapped. You get the video?”
“Whatever my cell managed to capture.” I walked to the edge of the circle and bent to look at the blue talc. A few grains had spilled to the side and I gathered them up, without touching the circle itself. The powder felt oily and coarse and rough all at once. I carried it back to the tree and put it in a paper evidence bag.
T. Laine said, “This spell drained the blood from every farm animal on the property and a human and, if we guessed right, the vampires that were sacrificed in the circle.” She caught her breath and stared out over the stockyard. “Demons suck dill pickles. Come on. PsyCSI is working up a paranormal scene in New York. They won’t get here until tomorrow. Let’s get out of here before we further contaminate the crime scene.”
•••
As she drove back to HQ, T. Laine talked as if her mouth had lost its brakes, the words pouring out nonstop. She needed to talk, the vocalization a result of what she had seen and the huge coffee she had downed on the way. And the Coke. I couldn’t forget the Coke. I was exhausted, thinking about the earth and communing with it, using a pinch of bluish powder. On the way I got a text from Sam.
Larry Aden’s first wife came to see my baby. She spottedMindy and was caterwauling about how Mindy was supposed to be hers. I feared it might attract the Jackson crowd so I took Mindy and the dog to your place.
My sister and her dog were alone at Soulwood. Alone.
I needed to get there, but we had to tell FireWind what we had discovered and write up our end-of-day reports. The new boss met us at the top of the stairs. I touched my cell open and handed it to him. A video was worth a thousand words.
I cleaned up in the locker room and followed the sound of their voices to the break room.
FireWind and T. Laine were studying a drawing on the table. Lainie said, “This is Tandy’s rendition of Rick being spelled by Loriann when she tattooed the tat magic. Tandy was finally able to get him to talk about it some.”
The drawing was pencil on lined paper, depicting a barn and a straw-covered floor. There was a black marble square in the middle of the open floor and an iron ring, and shackles. There was a crack and a small broken place in the stone. Something about the shape of the broken place drew my attention and it took a bit to figure out why. When I did, my brain began to put things together.
To the side of the huge black stone crouched a female figure, her hands busy. And upon the black square stone a naked man was stretched, arms and legs spread. Rick. The tattoos unfinished, dark smudges.
“Rick finally got around to describing the inking. It was... pretty horrible,” Tandy said.
“Okay,” I said, putting the page down. I didn’t want to see the event of my boss’s torture.Firsttorture. He’d been attacked and tortured by a werewolf pack too. And by Paka. Rick LaFleur had been beaten by life so badly it was hard to comprehend how he got out of bed in the mornings. “Did you see the hand in the video? Did you see the ring it wore?”
