The room swam with shadows cut with light from the streetlamps and guttering neon from defunct businesses nearby. At first I wasn’t sure what had roused me, and then the knock came again. I felt wrinkles from the cheap bedspread imprinted on my cheek, and a glimmer of reflection from the window told me my hair was smashed flat on one side. I answered the door anyway.
“Get your stuff,” Chance said, low. “We can’t stay here.”
“What’s wrong?”
His tone alarmed me. “Just come on. Now.”
Acting on a type of trust I’d thought shattered forever, I grabbed my backpack and stuffed the handmade pillow inside. As I slid my shoes on and headed for the door, the streetlight sputtered and winked out. Chills rolled along my skin as I watched bulbs flicker and die all along the street. We stepped onto the dark lot, which suddenly seemed to me a cemetery of cars, so much dead, heavy metal.
We left the Toyota parked, his hand on my arm as he hurried me along. I knew the clammy sensation of dread on my skin, and the last time I’d felt this way I nearly died. Though I wanted to ask for answers, I was too frightened to do more than scuttle behind him. The dark buildings seemed sinister, unfriendly eyes peering from broken windows.
“Chance.” I didn’t dig in my heels as I spoke, kept moving. “What’s going on?”
“Did you call the cop?” he asked instead of answering me. “After we arrived. Did you tell him where we were?”
Watching the slow roil of darkness over this particular street, I shook my head. “No. I accidentally took a nap.”
“Then he’s not our problem.” He sounded almost disappointed.
“But we do have one.” It suddenly felt about ten degrees colder outside and that was more than just the sun going down.
“Yeah,” he said grimly. He laced his fingers through mine, not a romantic gesture but as if in preparation for a blizzard where we’d need a nonvisual link to make it across the street. “No matter what happens inside, don’t let go of me, Corine.”
My mouth felt dry. I wished I had called Saldana. “I won’t. I promise.”
We stopped behind a warehouse, the reason he’d chosen this neighborhood in the first place. It was a hulking structure with blank windows, no signs of life. There should have been a night watchman on duty, but at the moment it felt as though we were the only two human beings left in the world. The wind kicked up, sending trash skittering across the dead-quiet street. Something besides cloud cover blotted out the stars, and the air felt heavy as lead when I brought it to my lungs.
Stooping for a moment, Chance finessed the padlock on the back door, another skill set I had never examined too closely. The door squealed like a piglet being slaughtered as we pushed past into cloying, copper-scented darkness. His hand felt reassuringly warm against mine; this place had me shivering before we’d gone two feet from the door. I’d never read a building before, but as what my mama called dead man’s hands ran down my spine, I knew bad things had happened here. Normal folks ignored that creeping chill, as if it sprang from an overactive imagination, but they probably had a latent gift if they felt the ghostly touch crawling on their skin.
His penlight clicked on, a tiny isle of light surrounded by the shadows that surged with purpose around us. Boxes and crates took on their own identities, sinister shapes crouched in wait. He ignored them and led us deeper into the labyrinth.
“Here,” he whispered as we spotted the crime scene tape. “They found her purse here.”
I knelt, running my free hand over the cement. It was too big for me to read, but I might get impressions. It sparked a little, the same blue shock I’d received from Jesse Saldana.
Blood. Pain. Death.
If I had anything in my stomach, I would have tossed it up. Something died here; there was no mistaking the necrotic tinge smeared over the floor like rancid butter. But I couldn’t quit. If Min had left the Buddha for Chance to find, knowing he’d bring it to me, then she might have left us another clue.
“I need something smaller, something I can hold.”
Closing my eyes, I ran my fingers over the floor. I imagined I could feel the tackiness of dried blood texturing the stained cement. I explored the corners of crates nearby and cracks where something interesting might sink. In one of those fissures I found a small round object with beveled edges. It singed my fingers just in picking it up; oh, yes, it held an active charge, secrets to share. I slid it into the narrow beam of Chance’s penlight.
“A button,” he said with sharp, wicked delight.
“I shouldn’t handle it here.” Though I couldn’t have explained my certainty, I knew it was beyond dangerous for us to linger.
“We need to get out of this part of Laredo entirely.” Chance pulled me to my feet in a neat motion that reminded me how strong he was, stronger than he looked for such a lean frame. “Try to lose them before—”
His words died in a nightmare of imploding glass as they found us.
It’s No Sacrifice
Needles skated along my spine, and then Chance threw himself against me, pinning me to a crate. His body curved as he sheltered me, curling his arms over my head. I felt a few stinging cuts blossom, though he took the worst of it. The place sounded as though Christmas ornaments shattered all around us, such a delicate tinkling sound for something that could slice us to shreds. Then it settled, as if the air inside the warehouse had equalized to the pressure outside.
And something came in.
Through broken windows, I heard the rush, like wind through dry leaves, before I smelled the sulfur. “It’s a sending,” I said through suddenly numb lips.
My mama told me about such spells, years ago. But she cautioned me as I sat with a grimoire balanced on my knee. “Only a wicked witch would do such a thing,” she’d told me, stirring a pot full of steeping herbs for some potion. “Our first tenet is ‘do no harm.’”
My whole body wanted to freeze, but Chance pulled me along as we made our way along the blunt crate edges. “Yeah. It’s going to get ugly, Corine. Can you handle it?”
For a brief, panicked moment, I thought of Señor Alvarez, my Dutch miniatures, and my quiet, comfortable life. Then I set my jaw. For Min I could. Damn right.
“I’m behind you. Let’s go.”
A sending could take many different forms, depending on the materials used in the summoning, though it always smells of sulfur. I wasn’t sure what we were dealing with yet, but some sendings are worse than others.
I read about them after Mama died. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t like my foster families would let me practice, but I snuck my books out from their hiding place beneath my mattress when nobody was watching. Ironically, nothing from the house but her grimoires survived the fire, as Mama had stored them in a fireproof safe.
Sometimes I stole out to the woods and tried my hand at it, but my heart wasn’t in it. Maybe too much sorrow weighed the spirit down, unbalancing the chakras or preventing me from tapping my potential. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t make magick like she did. I just had the one soul-sucking trick.
Chance and I had faced off against a few bad apples in our time, practitioners used to getting their own way and not caring how they went about it. We survived a particularly nasty cockroach sending in Reno. Hope to God it’s not insects.
It wasn’t.
When we broke away from the crates and headed toward the door, it zeroed in on us: a wailing presence made of violent wind, dust, and dry leaves that had blown in through the broken windows. Like a sand-storm, the sending stung my skin, determined to force its way into my nose and throat. I’d once seen the remains of someone who choked to death in one of these, and it wasn’t pretty.