“Maybe like me,” I said with a grin. Nico muttered something nasty in Spanish and casually flipped me off. We pulled off the road, gravel crunching, as we parked beside the guard rail. This strip of 111 was dark. You could hear the waves crashing far below. The spring sky and the Beltane moon were masked by clouds. Nico kept the Z’s headlights on, and we climbed out. We walked down to the exact spot the Maven had given Nico, making sure to scan the ground with our flashlights for any evidence that might help. On the other side of the guardrail was a steep, hilly, rocky slope that led down to a narrow scar of equally rocky beach.
“How did they get her down there?” I asked. “Throw her from up here?”
Nico shook his head.
“No,” he said. “The body was placed ritually. It wasn’t just pull over and toss her down. Plus, no tire tracks or footprints up here. The sheriff’s department’s crime scene guys worked the scene. Nothing like that.”
“Obscurement spell?” I offered. I reached out with my senses and felt the fabric of this place, trying to sense any trace of it recently being altered with magic. I extended my perception farther down the cliff over the narrow beach. I sensed nothing. “Scene’s clean, no magic.”
“That was one nasty-ass crude-as-hell bit of magic you just did,” Nico said, flicking his cigarette butt over the cliff. “Boy, you can’t just get by on muscle. You have got to start working on refinement, visualizations, mantra, something.”
“Why?” I asked. I’ve always been able to get done what I want to get done with just power. Workings are a waste of time.” I looked over at the dark, choppy ocean; the waves looked angry. “Bottom line, if it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it. They didn’t do anything that left a trace here.”
Nico shook his head. “I guarantee every time you’ve done anything tricky, anything that took some finesse, or some serious heavy lifting, you did some kind of working. I’d put money on it. You’re a mutt, Laytham. You didn’t get brought up in one style or philosophy. Your granny started you on her path, as a Wisdom, but you’ve learned as you’ve gone, and you’ll keep doing that until you find the things, the ways, that work best for you.” Nico raised one of his bead necklaces to his lips and kissed it. He then whispered what I knew was a prayer to the Orisha it represented. He stood at the edge of the rail and began his spell: “Bendita madre, padre bendito, levantar las escamas de mis ojos. Mostrarme todo lo que está oculto, me habla en el lenguaje del silencio y secretos.” I was still learning Spanish, but I had to admit there was a poetry to the working. Nico kissed his beads and turned back to me. “They brought her here by boat,” he said. “There is a little magical residue from the ritual. It was done down there. It wasn’t a summoning. I fucking hate climbing. I’m too old for that shit.” As he walked by me, wearing an insufferable grin on his face, he slapped my cheek good-naturedly. “A sledgehammer won’t do shit for you if you need a microscope, boy wonder.”
We walked back to the car. A delivery truck rolled by us on 111. It was daylight now. The sky above the slate waves was flint. We got back in the Z. Nico yawned and lit a cigarette. He riffled through his case of cassette tapes, popping out Van Halen and replacing it in the case before slipping a new cassette into the deck.
“If it wasn’t a summoning, what was it?” I asked.
“It was faint magic, subtle,” Nico said. “Its lattice is already crumbling, and it’s only been about six hours. I think the magic was a means, not an end.”
I rubbed my face and watched the sky beyond the water. A flock of seagulls glided and dove toward the water. Their voices were taunting.
“To what end?” I asked. Nico shrugged.
We pulled away from the side of the road in a spray of gravel. “Saved by Zero” by the Fixx began to play through the speakers.
“I got us rooms at a little no-tell motel a little ways down the road. In a few hours we meet up with Rosaleen over at the county coroner’s and take a look at the body.”
“Rosaleen,” I said. “Good, she’s the best.” Nico gave me a sidelong glance, nodded, and laughed around the cigarette. “What?” I said.
“Nothing,” Nico said. “She’s here with us tonight at the motel. Maybe you two could go out, have a drink.”
“We’re working a homicide, Nico,” I said, shaking my head. “For god’s sake, don’t try to match-make; it’s disturbing.”
“Nothing like looking at death to remind you why life beats the hell out of it,” Nico said. “You’re too fucking young to be this uptight, kid.” He paused for a second and winced like he had been wounded. “Young, shit, I forgot. Sorry, man. How was your birthday, Beltane boy?”
“It was good,” I lied.
“You do anything special? Get drunk, get high, pick someone up?”
“I ran the beach,” I said. “Pushed a couple of extra miles out. And I got a few chapters read in that book I was telling you about, The Hevajra Tantra.”
“On your eighteenth birthday? You read a book and you jogged?”
“Ran, and yeah,” I said. “Can we drop this and go back to the dead person, please?”
“Son, you have got to learn how to live, while you got some living left in you,” Nico said. “Right now is the perfect time to be wild, to have fun, and make bad choices.”
“So you want me to tone down my magic and blow up my private life,” I said. “Got it. Thanks for the life advice. You’re like the dad on Family Ties.”
“Ain’t adulthood fucking great?” Nico said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve made enough bad choices already to
