I scrolled through the forensic reports of the other victims. My momentary elation began to fade. No herbs showed up in the other cases. The only odd thing about Pach, the second victim, besides the gaping hole in his chest, were a couple of fresh minor burn marks. No ash residue. There were no indications of anything like herbs or ashes on the third victim. It had been raining that night, and the body, like all the others, was naked. Some evidence had probably been lost. And men me fourth victim just had the sand.
I made a list of one to four on a piece of scrap paper and wrote the anomalies for each victim: ash, minor burns, nothing, and sand. The first two items obvious were connected by fire, but that left me with two more unrelated items. I looked back at Gamelyn, the third victim, and read through the file again slowly. Nothing. I stared at the crime scene photos.
I remembered that my senses were in overdrive that night. Because of the rain, everything had smelled more intensely. It was how I had caught Tansy's essence even over the stench of the dumpster. That night had been the last time it had rained in two weeks. Weather forecasters, the meteorologist kind, had remarked that every storm front in the last two weeks had skittered south toward Cape Cod without touching the Boston metro area. Strange for the region, especially this time of year. At number three on my list, I wrote the word "rain" next to the nothing.
Some people get goose-bumps when they realize something exciting. Me, I get a rush of adrenaline. As I looked at my list, I got one huge burst. It wasn't about the ash. Ash was just the residue when incense is burned. Incense is burned to invoke the power of Air. Another check of Ragnell's scene photo revealed a candle stub in plain sight. Dripping wax could burn skin. Candles are lit to invoke the power of Fire. Gamelyn was killed on a rainy night. That everything at the scene was wet would have obscured the fact if Water had been present in the ritual. And then there was the sand at the last scene. Earth. I knew now that only one more murder waited to occur in two days' time. A new moon on Midsummer's Eve would complete the lunar cycle of the ritual. While many people work with the four natural elements, a fifth element can be included, and I was sure it was about to be invoked: Spirit, which some call Essence.
Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Spirit. The five primal elements of Power. The five points of invocation of every ritual invoked with a pentagram. With his surprising room decorations, Corcan Sidhe was back in the picture.
In reviewing macDuin's files, I had come across numerous library searches for old grimoires. I had reprints of some of them in my study, but none made any connection for me. I spun in my chair and called Meryl. She answered on the first ring.
"Hi, Meryl. I'm in my apartment. I feel safe here because the Guild put in protection wards."
I listened to several moments of nonresponse while I hoped Meryl got me message.
"I'm busy now. I'll call you tomorrow." She hung up. I quickly turned off the ringer. Anxiously, I stared at the caller ID on the receiver. The display changed from idle mode to indicate someone was calling from a masked phone number. I put the receiver to my ear and hit the on button. A familiar sensation of static bristled out of the phone and surrounded my head.
"So you think your apartment's bugged?" she said.
"Just a precaution. I'm getting paranoid."
She sighed. "Hang on." I heard her drop her phone, papers rustling, the crash of something falling followed by cursing-the vulgar kind-then some typing, some tapping, a couple of beeping tones and, finally, an ear-piercing wave of static.
Meryl got back on the line. "Oh, okay. You're cool. As far as I can tell, your line's clean."
"I need you to do something for me."
She sighed so heavily, I thought I could feel a ripple in the envelope of static. I was starting to get used to the feeling. "You really don't know when to stop, do you?"
I grinned. "No. I get that a lot. I don't need anything that will jeopardize your position. MacDuin was researching books. Two in particular I know aren't available outside the Guildhouse. One is a collection of manuscript fragments of the writings of the druid Cathbad. The other is something called The Brown Book of Cenchos."
She laughed. "That's a joke, Connor. It's a book of nonsensical spells attributed to the Fomorians. They call it the Brown Book because it's supposedly bound with the tanned skin of a Tuatha de Danann king. Cenchos is the mythical bogeyman of the Sidhe. Legend has it that he twisted the de Dananns he captured and founded the Unseelie Court. He was defeated by being spell-bound into the sea with his followers."
"What makes the spells nonsensical?"
"They mix things up, use herbs and stones in ways that make no sense. Plus, they're written in what is supposedly Fomorian, which apparently sounds like a garbage disposal backing up."
"I still need to know if any of its spells have to do with blood, selenite, and pentagrams."
"You're assuming I can read Fomorian."
"I've never underestimated you, Meryl."
She snickered. I read the call numbers off to her. "I'll call your cell phone if I find anything."
"Wait, before you go, I wanted to ask you why macDuin's interview about the selenite theft isn't in the file."
"Oh, that's easy. He wasn't here. He was on leave."
"Meryl, he was here. He did these library searches the week of the theft, and if I'm reading these codes right, he entered several storerooms in the Guild basement, including the one where the stones were."
"Hold on." I could hear her typing for several moments, then the sound of a chair being pushed back. Several papers were shuffled around. "Nope. I was right. There are several references to preparing reports for when he came back. He was in Germany. He was gone about a month and mad as hell about the stones when he came back."
I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Meryl, listen to me carefully. I think macDuin may be involved in the murders. I'm finding several connections, and if he said he was in Germany, I think he's lying. I need that spell info, but don't let anyone know what you're doing. Don't leave a trail of any kind. And whatever you do, don't tell macDuin you found the stones."
"I'll give you this, Grey, you keep life interesting." The shield around my head evaporated as she disconnected.
MacDuin had firmly moved onto my suspect list. Whatever he was up to, he clearly was intimately involved. I cursed to myself for being an idiot. I should have realized weeks ago that I had a security breach in my own apartment. Someone from macDuin's office routinely recharged my protection wards. Any one of them could be a recording stone. Since I didn't have any ability to test whether any of the wards were actually recorders, I couldn't just toss them all. I did need the ones that were actually protecting the place.
In a few minutes, I had a knapsack packed with some clothes, a disc with the Guild files on it, and my cell phone charger. Standing in the middle of the living room, I tried to think of anything else that should be tossed. I had blabbed out loud to Stinkwort about the stolen files. I copied the case files onto another disc, then deleted them from my hard drive. I knew they were still on the drive like ghosts in the machine, but I didn't have time for a deeper scrub. At least it would slow someone down. The only other necessary item was my leather jacket — I never traveled without it. I grabbed the jacket and hit the street.
As I left the building, I found my disability check from the Guild in the mail. I didn't know whether to take it as a sign of irony or farce. In either case, I needed the cash. I stopped at the Nameless to cash it. There wasn't a bank or an ATM anywhere in the Weird, but the Nameless took even my personal checks. They wouldn't hesitate to take the Guild's. I grabbed a sandwich while I was there and headed out to Congress Street.