Lightbreaker

'He's had a call from the Kitsap County Sheriff's office. They're at the farmhouse along with the Rural Fire Department. They've got a burned body and, well, it sounds like parts of another.'

I saw again the soul rising out of the third gunman, the abrupt departure leaving the owner disoriented and confused. I wondered if that was what happened to Summers on the boat. When control was ceded back to him, the flesh refused his Will. Their bodies simply immolated in the aftermath of the possessor's exit. Though in the case of the man in the barn, the exploding ward had done much more than simply burn the meat.

'He say anything else?' I asked.

'Wants to know if I'm with you. Says you are now considered a fugitive.'

'And?'

He shrugged and closed his phone. Putting it on the counter, he picked up the bagel. 'I'm on administrative leave, remember? Pender can't really say shit about how I spend my free time.'

'Doesn't that qualify as aiding and abetting?'

'Aiding and abetting what? I wasn't there, remember?' he said around a mouthful of food. 'What am I supposed to do about this magick thing? It's not just about me seeing things that-shit-may or may not be there. Something happened to me at the farmhouse-something was done to me. What do you a call it? An 'incantation'? A 'spell'?'

'It was a fear spell,' I said. 'Meant to trigger your flight instinct.'

'Sure as hell accomplished that. Why didn't you run?'

I smiled at him. 'I'm harder to scare.'

'Christ.' He took a large sip from the coffee mug. 'Okay, so it's like my rookie year in college all over again. Everyone's got more experience; they're bigger, faster, stronger. I'm just fresh meat, in on a scholarship and I barely know how to shave. I've got to take these fuckers down when they come at me. Over and over, until they understand that I'm not leaving the field.'

Adapt or die. The simple choice all organisms face when evolution sneaks up on them. Adapt along with the world or be discarded. Nicols was starting to figure it out.

He worked through another bite of bagel. 'So what value do I have to you? What do you gain by standing around in my kitchen, eating my food?'

'I don't have a car,' I pointed out. 'And I'm not entirely sure where I am.'

'I doubt either issue is really holding you here.'

'Well, there is the fact that you came back to the farmhouse, and picked me up before the sheriff's deputies arrived.'

'There is that.'

'Of course, those gunman probably would have shot you if I hadn't intervened.'

He shrugged. 'So we're even.'

'Okay.'

He stared at my face for a long minute, trying to read my expression, trying to ascertain some secrets that would help him gauge his next step. 'When's the last ferry?' he asked finally, pointing his cup at the ferry schedule clipped to the refrigerator door.

'Twelve fifty-five,' I said.

'The ferry terminal is a five-minute drive,' he said. 'And we should be earlier than later to be sure that we get on. My goodwill lasts until that ferry hits Seattle. At which point, either you'll have explained to me exactly what I gain by helping you or I'll be turning you over to Pender.'

It was simple, really: magick could do many things, but they all took time. Having access to a police officer, and all the databases that came with the badge, made people-hunting much easier. Much quicker.

But it only worked if I had a willing subject. Nicols' price was an explanation. I could afford to give him one. The question raised by his cooperation niggled at me though: What was he getting out of our relationship?

I sprang for hot chocolate at the convenience store on the way to the ferry terminal. We didn't stick around Nicols' empty house to finish our coffee, and the night had gotten cold. I didn't mention to Nicols that the store had been the place where Doug had jumped Gerald Summers. On the ferry, we stayed in the car, drinking our hot chocolate and fogging up the windows with our conversation.

'So Doug knows this woman Kat?' Nicols was trying to make sense of the cursory history lesson I offered, about why I had been charging through the woods and assaulting people on the ferry.

'She performed the ritual with him. You remember that smoke you saw in the center ring? That was a spirit memory of their incantation together. She was both the fulcrum and the wedge that was used to separate Doug's spirit from his meat shell. To make it happen, she had to bring him to a heightened state of awareness, something closer to no-mind where she could get between his gross body and his spirit form.'

'No-mind, eh? Some sort of sex ritual?'

I grimaced, and swallowed the sound in my throat. 'Yes.'

'This the same thing she did to you?'

I hesitated before answering. My head pounded as the memory came on again, as if there was something pushing behind the tattered images. The ritual circle in the woods, the trees with their dark branches and whitened leaves, the other attendants at the ceremony, the light in her eyes and the light shining from holes in my chest as she removed her hand. The sequence was there-like it always was-but something felt off-kilter. Like I was watching a home movie in slow motion, and had finally started to notice the gaps between the frames.

Nicols took my hesitation as disinterest in answering his question. 'That's the basis of the bone you've got to pick with her, isn't it? After ten years, I'm not buying that you're still carrying a torch for this woman. I saw you on the boat, saw how you came after Doug. It's not about being scorned or dumped. It's something deeper.'

All the way to my core.

The roots of the Chorus were lost in the dark soil. What gave them sustenance? What fed their need? Was it something other than the soul energy they took?

'Yeah, you don't have to say anything. No one operates in a vacuum, Markham. Especially those who insist that they do. Give me some credit. I've been tracking loners for a long time.' His eyes were bright and piercing like a hawk fixed on a lone rabbit out in the middle of a field. He was watching me in his own way, reading me as he read all those who came under his eye as a detective. I had to be careful not to give him reason to pounce on me. I had to be as honest as I could.

Why did that word seem so awkward? I looked at my hands as if there was some answer to be found in the patterns on my knuckles.

'My initiation into the world of magick was much like yours,' I said. The words came slowly as if I was telling a story I didn't quite know, as if it were someone else's tale. 'Sudden and unexpected. Your example earlier about fresh-faced football players is apropos. You're not equipped to play but you've got no choice. If you were just the rookie-the new guy with a couple of years high school experience-then I was. . the water boy who got drafted into the game because all the other players were injured. I had no clue, and the whole experience probably should have killed me.

'Kat-Katarina Nouranois, her grandfather emigrated from Greece shortly after World War II-Kat was still a neophyte. She had no business attempting the ritual that night. She was overzealous, and things. . got out of control. Before she could effect damage control-if she even knew how-the situation deteriorated, and I was abandoned. I had to figure out how to survive on my own.'

He nodded and said nothing, just let the words spill out of me. It's an old saw of his profession: everyone wants to talk; everyone wants to confess their guilty secrets. Self-absolution in a private trinity of sinner, penitent, and priest.

'Every light casts a shadow,' I continued. 'All routes to enlightenment pass through an inversion of darkness. You have to travel both forward and backward, and some people get lost when they reach that border. They can't let go of their hearts and their minds. They can't destroy their egos. They still have fear. They reach the Abyss, take one look at the Guardian and the path beyond, and they're done. They give up.'

'What happened to you?'

'I was left at the edge, completely naked and unprepared. I. . fell, I guess, and someone caught me.'

'Who?'