“I didn’t know that.” Jeremiah’s voice broke her from her reverie. It was no time to be maudlin.
She walked over to the dryer and laid the book next to the detergent. She opened the door and pulled out a sock. The clothes were still wet. Whatever happened occurred before he even had time to start the machine. She tossed the sock back in and frowned at Jeremiah. “Unless he got a phone call telling him to go somewhere else, whatever we’re looking for is down here.”
He pressed the earpiece. “The two teams closest to the basement report there immediately.”
She moved past him and out of the room. There were four more doors in the short hallway. The first door on the left opened onto a rather dingy bathroom and she made a mental note to go upstairs if she needed to use the facilities. The other door in that direction bore a padlock and a large yellow sign proclaiming Danger. Probably the boiler room. She left it for now; she could always go back if she needed to.
Jeremiah leaned against the wall next to the laundry room waiting for the agents to emerge from the elevator. Just beyond him was a marked stair access. The remaining door stood at the end of the hall—Storage emblazoned on it in thick black letters. Trepidation dogged her steps as she approached the room.
The smell hit her when she was still a foot away. Cinder and ashes mixed with blood and death. An aroma she’d smelled too much of that morning. The elevator announced the arrival of the other agents with a ding as she drew her gun.
“Get some techs down here,” she said to no one in particular. She twisted the knob—locked. She looked over her shoulder at the other agents. “Go to the other end and check out those rooms.”
As soon as their backs were turned, she ran her fingers over the lock. There was no reason for everyone to know doors weren’t always unlocked like she stated in her reports. A glance back showed Jeremiah purposely looking away from her. He couldn’t comment on what he didn’t see.
She already knew she wasn’t going to like whatever awaited her in the room. She took a deep breath in through her mouth and swung the door open. The full impact of the odor was like an ogre punch to the gut. She snapped her head to the side as she gagged. Her eyes watered. She coughed as she holstered her weapon and covered her nose with the neck of her shirt. It didn’t help much. Her eyes flicked around the room taking in the whole scene, but avoiding the details for the moment.
Two bodies, a summoning circle, candles, blood...lots of blood. The shreds of a shirt to the side indicated where Nathaniel shifted into his half-form. Juliana fired up her gift and the room swam in the black of the summoning magic mixed with the orange-yellow of the spell caster. A witch.
“Gods damn it.” She spat the words.
“What?” Jeremiah asked as he moved up behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder to find him smearing vapor rub under his nostrils. He held it out to her and she snatched it gratefully from his hand. It didn’t completely obliterate the smell, but it helped. She jerked a thumb in the direction of the circle. “Would-be mages.”
His forehead creased. “Witches summoned a demon? Idiots.”
She nodded her agreement. More witches died trying to do magic beyond their ability than anything else. Humans with some magic ability were witches; they could be male or female. Mages, however, were Altered and their signatures leaned toward reds or pinks. Witches scanned orange and the weaker their magic, the more toward human-yellow the color.
She stepped into the room to get a better look at the circle. Drawn on the floor in thick, charcoal black strokes, it took up most of the room. Several symbols around the perimeter—four larger than the others—caught her eye. Icy fingers of fear crawled up her spine and dampened her palms. This was dark magic they played with, even for a summoning. She stepped into the center of the circle and spun, viewing the room as the demon would have when it answered the summons.
It was times like this that she wished she’d undergone formal training for her mage abilities. She’d picked up a trick or two along the way, but not enough to be of any real help. She had studied enough about magic, both for her job and just out of sheer curiosity, to know what she was looking at, however. She pointed on the symbol on the floor between her and Jeremiah. “Master.” She spun clockwise pointing to each of the larger symbols in turn. “Witness. Summoner. Sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice? How did they get someone to agree to that?”
She eyed the body near the symbol, the wash of color protecting her from the grisly details of his demise. “Most likely they didn’t tell him. The Master may not have told anyone.”
He scratched his head. “Wouldn’t the Summoner be in charge?”
Crouching to get a better look at one of the symbols, she shook her head. “Not necessarily. Have you looked at our vics? They’re young.”
“So?”
Standing, she brushed her hands off on her jeans. “This is old magic. Fae magic. They shouldn’t have known the spell, let alone attempted to perform it.”
She gestured to the symbol for Master again. “Masters don’t become hosts. They give the commands, they don’t take them. The Summoner would have called the demon, the Master would have told the demon the reason he had it summoned and the Sacrifice would have tied the demon to the Master. Either of them might have killed the Sacrifice depending on the nature of their agreement.”
“And why exactly do you suppose it was called?”
“Why are they ever called? Either someone was stupid enough to think the demon could grant a wish, or to think the demon would give him power, or smart and sadistic enough to know precisely what the demon would really do.” She shook her head. “They summon them to go on killing sprees, to kill wives, to murder bosses, who knows. We obviously aren’t going to get any answers out of the practitioners.”
With a sigh she ran a hand through her hair. “I would assume once the Sacrifice was killed, that’s when the other one ran. Nathaniel must have heard something, came to investigate and ended up demon-ridden for his efforts.”
“Wrong place, wrong time?” Jeremiah asked. “Yeah, that sounds about right for Nathaniel.” As much as she didn’t want to agree with him, she had to. Nathaniel had a knack for getting himself into trouble. Unfortunately he wasn’t as skilled at getting himself out of it.
The summoning circle was complete, whole, except for a foot-long gap where the Master’s symbol stood. She tapped next to the opening with her foot. “Whoever wanted this demon called up is the one that broke the circle. He never planned on the other witches living. Or it’s possible he’s not even a practitioner, that he hired them to do the work. We need to get James over here to look at this.”
James, Thomas’s brother-in-law, was also an inkmage and the leader of the Gathering. The Gathering was the mage equivalent of the vampire Council, only much larger and more structured. The mages made the mafia look like amateurs. It was also what they called themselves as a whole. Mages were much more into the whole solidarity and unity thing than the vampires were. Community was very important to the mages, but Juliana had never been able to decide if she wanted to be a part of it or not. Hence, the reason she was still untrained despite James’s many offers to teach her.
“Look at this,” a voice said from the side of the room, drawing her attention. One of the agents—human from the looks of his signature—pointed at something on the far side of the room. A book with dark pages, a large tome of some sort, lay open on top of a box. Its pages fluttered in the breezeless room. Just the sight of it enraptured her, enthralled her. Too late, she noticed it had the same effect on the agent. He reached a gloved hand forward.