clean up after themselves. Besides, daytime posed its own risks and I doubted whoever was in charge of revitalizing this area would like a woman prowling around the condemned buildings. It was now, or quite possibly never.
The next store was locked up tight. I squeezed down the narrow side alleyway to the rear and found the back door equally secure. Looking in through the gaps in the window boards, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Which left either the building on the other side of the gallery, or one across the street.
I was feeling a bit like a coward so I tried the one across the street. The door was nailed shut, but with some wiggling and considerable muttered curses I was able to wedge myself through two boards that blocked a rear window.
It wasn’t the smell of sage that came to me the moment I got inside but something else. The thick, sweet, coppery scent of blood hit my nose. It was summer, and in spite of the thunderstorm, today had been hot. Either the blood had been used in a ritual within the last day, or something had been added to it to help keep it fresh. Steeling myself for the worst, I readied my sword and my flashlight, and walked forward.
This building had been sectioned off into a maze with shelves and partitions. No wonder they’d gone out of business because the layout was a shoplifter’s dream. No employee could hope to be able to see what customers were doing with all little nooks, crannies, and aisles to hide in. There weren’t enough security cameras in the world to monitor this kind of layout. And it wasn’t even ideal for magic. As I’d learned trying to do a summoning in my apartment, carpet, walls, and fixtures meant the biggest space for a circle was teeny tiny. Summoning a demon was dicey enough without pissing one off by summoning them into a space too small to even turn around in.
Of course, not all magic was geared toward summoning. I’d always been fascinated by the greater spirits and that had been the avenue that the majority of my clandestine studies had taken. I was well aware that there were many rituals that benefited from a small, enclosed space. So I wasn’t overly surprised when I rounded a corner and laid eyes on a literal blood bath.
Bath. As in bathtub. Not one of those beautiful, clawed-foot ones that you see in posh home-improvement magazines either. This bathtub looked like something out of a third-world hillbilly digest. It was little more than a white plastic hundred gallon stock feeder, and it was more red than white.
I choked back the bile that rose in my throat. Flies swarmed all over the tub. Blood stained the sides and the linoleum floor beneath, nearly obscuring the white chalk circles and symbols. I needed to take pictures of the magical space to research later, but I only had two hands and was reluctant to put down either my flashlight or my sword.
The sword won. I propped the flashlight up on a nearby shelf and pulled out my cell phone, snapping pictures as I held the weapon with a white-knuckled grip. That done, I pocketed the phone, picked up the flashlight and moved forward to look inside the tub.
I had no fear of triggering wards or encountering residual magic from the ritual. Death magic was horrific, but it was efficient. Every last bit of energy derived from the killing went to its intended purpose. As messy as the site was from a crime-scene perspective, it wasn’t at all messy from a magical one.
Not that those facts made me feel any better. Something had died in that tub and I didn’t want to know what. But Ronald had died too, and clearly he’d been connected to whatever went down here. From what my LARP friends said, Ronald’s death had been no great tragedy, but he was still a human being. He was still somebody’s son or husband or brother. And beyond that, a mage doing sacrificial magic in my city was unacceptable. Spells powered by the murder of another human weren’t all unicorn sparkles and fairy dust, and besides
The next store was locked up tight. I squeezed down the narrow side alleyway to the rear and found the back door equally secure. Looking in through the gaps in the window boards, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Which left either the building on the other side of the gallery, or one across the street.
I was feeling a bit like a coward so I tried the one across the street. The door was nailed shut, but with some wiggling and considerable muttered curses I was able to wedge myself through two boards that blocked a rear window.
It wasn’t the smell of sage that came to me the moment I got inside but something else. The thick, sweet, coppery scent of blood hit my nose. It was summer, and in spite of the thunderstorm, today had been hot. Either the blood had been used in a ritual within the last day, or something had been added to it to help keep it fresh. Steeling myself for the worst, I readied my sword and my flashlight, and walked forward.
This building had been sectioned off into a maze with shelves and partitions. No wonder they’d gone out of business because the layout was a shoplifter’s dream. No employee could hope to be able to see what customers were doing with all little nooks, crannies, and aisles to hide in. There weren’t enough security cameras in the world to monitor this kind of layout. And it wasn’t even ideal for magic. As I’d learned trying to do a summoning in my apartment, carpet, walls, and fixtures meant the biggest space for a circle was teeny tiny. Summoning a demon was dicey enough without pissing one off by summoning them into a space too small to even turn around in.
Of course, not all magic was geared toward summoning. I’d always been fascinated by the greater spirits and that had been the avenue that the majority of my clandestine studies had taken. I was well aware that there were many rituals that benefited from a small, enclosed space. So I wasn’t overly surprised when I rounded a corner and laid eyes on a literal blood bath.
Bath. As in bathtub. Not one of those beautiful, clawed-foot ones that you see in posh home-improvement magazines either. This bathtub looked like something out of a third-world hillbilly digest. It was little more than a white plastic hundred gallon stock feeder, and it was more red than white.
I choked back the bile that rose in my throat. Flies swarmed all over the tub. Blood stained the sides and the linoleum floor beneath, nearly obscuring the white chalk circles and symbols. I needed to take pictures of the magical space to research later, but I only had two hands and was reluctant to put down either my flashlight or my sword.
The sword won. I propped the flashlight up on a nearby shelf and pulled out my cell phone, snapping pictures as I held the weapon with a white-knuckled grip. That done, I pocketed the phone, picked up the flashlight and moved forward to look inside the tub.
I had no fear of triggering wards or encountering residual magic from the ritual. Death magic was horrific, but it was efficient. Every last bit of energy derived from the killing went to its intended purpose. As messy as the site was from a crime-scene perspective, it wasn’t at all messy from a magical one.
Not that those facts made me feel any better. Something had died in that tub and I didn’t want to know what. But Ronald had died too, and clearly he’d been connected to whatever went down here. From what my LARP friends said, Ronald’s death had been no great tragedy, but he was still a human being. He was still somebody’s son or husband or brother. And beyond that, a mage doing sacrificial magic in my city was unacceptable. Spells powered by the murder of another human weren’t all unicorn sparkles and fairy dust, and besides
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