line, exasperated but not surprised: “The security tapes have been looped. We’ve got nothing. Is forensics there yet?”
I looked toward the entryway, where the team was just moving in. “Yeah. Look, did you get anything?”
“We’ll talk about it in the car. You?”
A frown creased my forehead as I turned the Sight back on, looking toward the forensics team and the museum’s entrance. Wisps of black tar caught against the floor, minute smears I wouldn’t have seen if the cauldron hadn’t tried to draw me in. The forensics team walked over them, smearing their slight presence into even less, and I started to jog down the hall, cell phone still at my ear as I passed the team. A few seconds later I charged out the front door, Sight still blazing.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I think I did.”
CHAPTER 10
Seattle was built on myriad hills. We’d driven up a bunch of them to reach the museum, but I’d been too intent on getting inside to stop and appreciate the vista when we’d arrived.
Now it was marred. Smears of black spread out like contrails, as if the cauldron had been broken into pieces and dragged across the city. I doubted it: thieves bothering with a reputedly magic cauldron would presumably be after the magic, and wouldn’t risk breaking its power by taking it apart. That, and destroying a seventy-gallon wooden tank banded by iron would leave a bunch of debris behind, so either we had the world’s tidiest killer on hand, or the cauldron was still in one piece.
Which, judging from the way the trails of its death-mark were spreading, meant the city would eventually be cloaked in the stuff. It also meant tracking the cauldron wouldn’t be easy: there was no nice straight line from A to B for us to follow.
An idle thought crossed my mind: either the cauldron had left a trail of misery behind it as it traveled, or whoever was responsible for packing it up and moving it from one location to another had some kind of serious mojo going on. I said, “Remind me to talk to the shipping company,” into my phone, and could almost hear Billy’s puzzled look. “Never mind. Look, what I found isn’t necessarily helpful—”
“What is it?”
I heard his voice both in the phone and behind me, and turned around. He hung up and quirked an eyebrow. I glanced back at the death shroud expanding over the city. “The cauldron’s gone. I mean, we knew that, but it’s out in the city somewhere, and it’s not leaving an easy trail to follow. Either it’s been broken into pieces—”
“Not a chance.”
Billy’s confidence made me feel all proud for having sussed that out myself. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. The thing is…” I trailed off, putting thoughts together. Billy gave me about a minute before impatience started dancing through his aura in bright flashes. “Its aura’s so filled with death it leaves marks everywhere it goes. The display area back there is just a big black smear, with the Sight. I’m sure this place has got loading docks, that they don’t bring the exhibits in through the front door, so I know the cauldron’s gone out the front door. The floor looks like a kid’s been walking through tar.”
“But?”
I held my breath, eyeing Billy. Of everyone I knew, he was least likely to give me hell if what I was about to suggest didn’t work. “You, um. Want to try something?”
His eyebrow requirked itself. “Is this something that’ll get me in trouble with Mel?”
Laughter took some of my nerves away. “No. I read this thing about how to give somebody the Sight temporarily. I think it wouldn’t hurt for you to see what I do.”
“You want me to stand on your feet and look over your left shoulder?”
My jaw dropped. “How’d you know?” He knew because I was the kid at the back of the class. “Does it work?”
“I don’t know. Melinda can tap into auras, but she doesn’t have the Sight like you do. I’ve never known anybody who does.” He walked up and put his feet on mine, keeping his weight on his heels. “Let’s give it a shot.”
I put my hand on top of his head, which was part of the ritual I’d read about, and drew breath to chant the charm. “…this isn’t going to work.”
“Not with that attitu—”
“No, I mean, it didn’t actually say, but I’m pretty sure you can’t be touching the ground. I think you need to really stand on my feet.”
Billy looked down. “I’ll crush them.”
“That possibility did occur to me. Will you please stand on them before somebody comes out here and finds us like this? Ow!” Billy weighed two-sixty if he weighed an ounce, and while my shoes were good solid clodhoppers, meant for stomping around all day in, they weren’t especially meant to be stood on by a second party. He wobbled and we seized each other’s waists, trying to keep balanced. Maybe I’d been wrong. Standing in parking lots clinging to coworkers might get him in trouble with Melinda after all. I blurted, “Between my hands and my feet, these things I do keep, to a warrior of light, I grant you the Sight!” and waited for my head to explode of embarrassment.
Billy, gratifyingly, said, “Oh,
My gaze jerked to his face, a couple inches away from my own. “It worked?”
His eyes were filmed with gold. Morrison and Thor had said mine had changed color when I’d used the Sight. I was pleased enough that I forgot having a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound man on my feet hurt, and let him stand there a while before I even thought to howl with pain. Just before I started to complain, he shook himself and stepped back, a broad, astonished smile on his face as gold drained out of his eyes and left them brown again.
“Is that what you always see?”
“God, no. I’d get a headache and keep trying to walk through walls if I saw them as translucent all the time.” Flippant half truths were my friends. I was a little afraid I’d become more and more disconnected if I used the Sight all the time. I wanted to belong in the world, not float above it, and I worried that using too much magic might unhinge me. On the other hand, I said, “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” and meant it.
“It’s amazing.” Billy let that linger a moment, then slid me a crooked grin. “Warrior of light, huh?”
I groaned. I was pretty sure the charm I’d read had been less stupid than mine, but I couldn’t remember all of its words. “I’m not a poet.”
“There are worse things than being a warrior of light.” His grin stayed in place a moment, before he brought himself back to the matter at hand. “The black film?”
“That’s the cauldron. Billy, I had a thought.”
He gave me a look that said “congratulations,” and I made a face. “Yeah, yeah. No, listen. It’s all over the city, that stuff. And the cauldron’s supposed to be death magic, the kind that brings the dead back to life.”
Billy thinned his lips. “So you’re thinking maybe you don’t have to throw a body in to the cauldron to bring them back.”
I touched a finger to the tip of my nose. “What time did our cauldron go nuts at the party last night? Around eleven?”
“About that.”
“Want to bet Jason’s time of death is eleven o’clock?” We hadn’t been told yet how long Chan had been dead, but I didn’t really think I needed a professional assessment on that one. “How long ago did the security tapes start looping? And what about the other guard, Redding? Why isn’t he dead?” I was mostly talking to myself, not really expecting answers, but Billy chuckled quietly.
“You’re getting better at asking good questions, Walker. One of our tech guys will look at it and see if they can figure it out, but the security tape loop’s got the right guards making the right rounds for the whole night. I don’t know when it was filmed, but somebody did his homework. He had to cover four different guards for the whole weekend, and he got them all.”
I sighed and looked out at the city. The Sight was gone, leaving Seattle overcast and dreary. It’d get worse,
