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.
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.
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.
That was one of the cases Chance and I took pro bono. When a woman came to us and said, eyes downcast, “Somebody’s killing people on my block, and the police don’t care,” I just couldn’t refuse. One of those rogue practitioners had turned the projects into his personal hunting ground, testing new spells without giving a shit who got in the way.
I tracked him. Found him. Chance left him chained to a guardrail on an overpass, wrapped up with a bow for the cops to find. Oddly, law enforcement didn’t appear thankful. They called us vigilantes.
We had been, among other things, once upon a time. But I was out of practice.
My hair whipped around my face as the called storm fought to push into my nose and mouth. I should’ve put it up, braided it or something—long hair was a weakness out in the field. I saw sparks from holding my breath, but inhaling would be worse.
The winds buffeted, and I fought to keep my feet, but the gale sent me sailing. As my hand tore from his, Chance shouted, “Corine!” though it was madness to speak.
I landed hard, slamming into first a crate and then the wall. Dazed, I lay while the wind howled around me, more dust rising in a malignant manifestation of the summoner’s will. The leaves scraping my skin felt as though they were made of salt and ground glass, so I covered my face with my hands.
How do you fight a force of nature? If I stayed low it’d burn itself out, if I didn’t choke to death first. No practitioner possessed the power to rage like this indefinitely.
His head down, Chance came to me, crawling. Once I would have given anything to see him like this, but it lacked poetry now. I registered a surge of joy that he’d come for me. His fingers wrapped around mine.
“I thought I told you not to let go,” he yelled.
I almost laughed. He held on to me as we forced our way through, blind but determined. It became almost impossible to breathe, and I started to feel faint, afraid to inhale, afraid the demon dust would find purchase in my lungs and strangle me from the inside out. Worse—it might take root, giving the summoner a hold over me.
By the time we staggered outside, our clothes hanging in tatters, I heard sirens in the distance. Leaning down, hands on my knees, I took deep, gulping breaths, willing the black dots to leave my field of vision. We had to get out of here. It wouldn’t go well if they took us in officially. I had a history of being near crime scenes, though it was hard to tell what local law enforcement would make of
“Can you travel?” When he turned without waiting for my reply, I saw that his back was a nightmare of ruined flesh. If he didn’t receive immediate medical attention, it would scar. Hell, it might scar anyway.
“Yeah,” I told his bloody back, and limped after him.
A guy in a black hooded sweatshirt slid out from between two buildings. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye and increased my pace to a quick trot. Most likely he was just a vagrant who slept in a box out
