"Castle?" Falin's eyebrow lifted, and while he might have been faking ignorance, he sounded genuinely confused.

I shook my head, dismissing the question. "Okay, so I'm guessing this has something to do with the tear."

"Something? This has everything to do with the tear. What were you thinking, merging realities in the middle of a crowded street?"

"Uh, I was thinking Holly was about to get shredded," I said as I dug through my purse in search of the charmed disk. "What kind of fallout am I looking at?"

"Well, you drew the attention of at least two faerie courts. They are asking questions."

"I'm guessing their curiosity would be bad for my health?"

Falin set the untouched oatmeal creme pie aside. Then he propped my pillows against the wall and reclined against them, his hands behind his head. "If not your health, then definitely your freedom. If the courts realize what you can do, you'll likely end up sequestered in Faerie."

Sequestered? I was not a fan of that outcome. I retrieved the disk and set my purse aside.

"Fred said, 'They come.' Think that's about the courts?" Falin opened his eyes, which had drifted closed while we spoke. "Who's Fred?"

"Oh, uh, the gargoyle?" I shrugged. "I sort of named it."

He stared at me, and then burst out laughing. "The winged one with the cat face?" At my nod he laughed harder, which made him wince and grasp his injured side. "You realize that particular gargoyle is female and holds a position among gargoyles similar to that of a high priestess or a grand oracle?"

"Oh." I guess that explained why she'd seemed so amused when I'd named her. But she'd refused to give me a name to call her, and it was hard to converse with someone who didn't have a name-even if that someone happened to be made of stone. "Anyway," I said, "just before I found you last night, she told me, 'They come.'"

"That's a fairly vague warning."

"Tell me about it."

But he didn't because his eyes had drifted closed again. I let him rest and turned my attention to the charmed disk. The spells in it were inert now that the glamour and soul had been separated from the magic, but somewhere in the tangle of residual magic, there had to be a hint of what spell infected my friends. If I could find the spell, I'd be that much closer to finding the counterspell. And hopefully to finding the witch behind the spell as well.

I copied the runes from the disk onto a blank sheet of paper, making sure to leave each one incomplete in case it could be invoked without knowing what it was or did. I had to dig out a magnifying gla.s.s to make sure I copied them all correctly-the disk's design was intricate. And there had been over thirty of those ravens. Someone had way too much time on their hands.

Once I'd copied not only the runes but also the design they made on the disk, I flipped the disk over and broke the seal of wax. The wax covered a thin strip of paper, and I unfolded it, glancing over the heavy block-printed letters. The paper contained two words. A name. Mine.

Well, now there's no question as to whether the attacks are targeted.

I dug through the trunk at the edge of my bed until I found a small enchanted box that one of my teachers gave me when I graduated academy. Like the ABMU's magicaldampening evidence bags, the box locked magic safely away inside itself. It was one of my spellcasting instructors who'd given me the box, and I think she a.s.sumed I would eventually botch a charm so badly that it would have to be contained. I'd never used it before, but now I dumped the disk, paper, and wax inside and flipped the latch. The p.r.i.c.kly tingle of dark magic that had been nibbling at my senses for the last hour cut off and I sighed from the sudden relief.

PC, who'd curled up beside Falin on the bed, lifted his head to see why I was making so much noise. He must have judged my activities uninteresting because after a single glance, he laid his head on Falin's calf and closed his eyes again. I shook my head and settled in front of my computer.

Out of the sixteen runes from the disk, I thought that one looked similar to the rune for health-though it would have to be an archaic form of the rune-and that another looked like something I'd seen in academy, but couldn't quite remember. The other fourteen were complete mysteries. Pulling up a search browser, I dove into the task of solving those mysteries.

Several hours later, I'd gained a serious crick in my back and learned that the rune I thought looked like health was, in fact, very similar to an archaic version of the rune, though the older version also meant life. Is that the spell that animates the constructs? I'd added the idea to my list of notes on the case-a very short list.

I pushed away from my laptop and stretched. I'd gone through a pot of coffee since I'd started scouring the Net, but my gritty eyes were blurring with exhaustion. I'd even switched gears at one point and searched maps for the kelpie's "thundering gate." After all, I had multiple directions from which to attack this case. Finding the killer would lead me to a counterspell for my friends and it would fulfill my obligation to Malik.

I searched the Net as well as studied several maps as I looked for the gate. The major interstates pa.s.sing through Nekros had stylized gates, though they were just decoration, the recent beautification project downtown had added green s.p.a.ce, some of which was gated, and even some "art" that looked more like gates than anything else, but none of those were near the river and thus they were not good candidates. Most of the warehouse district had chain-link fence blocking off the river, as did many of the residential areas, but I couldn't see why they'd be considered "thundering."

With my muscles cramping and my b.u.t.t asleep from too many hours in a chair, I finally switched off the computer and gave the research a rest. Time for a little legwork. But first, lunch.

Falin woke as I ransacked my fridge.

"What else did she say?" he mumbled, still half asleep. Then his eyes popped open. He glanced at where the afternoon sun stretched across the floor and groaned. "I fell asleep? You should have woken me."

I shrugged and pulled a cardboard container of Chinese takeout from the top shelf of the fridge. What day had I ordered it? I didn't think it was more than a week ago.

"I got some stuff done," I said, though what I'd actually done was establish where I wouldn't find useful information.

Falin joined me at the fridge, his movements smoother and clearly less painful than before he'd fallen asleep. He glanced over the limited contents before plucking the carton of Chinese from my hands.

"Hey!"

He chucked the carton back on the top shelf and shut the fridge door. "I'll buy lunch," he said. Then cut off my protest with, "I need to stop by my office to grab Nori's case files. We can grab lunch afterward."

"I have a lead to follow up on as well." Okay, what I had was a plan to drive around town near the Sionan and search for a gate, but it was kind of a lead. "We should divide and conquer."

"You think I'm letting you out of my sight? Alex, you're a magnet for trouble, though, in the trouble's defense, you go out looking for it. What with tearing holes in reality in the middle of populated streets and wandering the wilds using raw meat to draw out a fae well known for tearing people to shreds and eating them, it's a wonder you're not completely entangled in trouble." He shook his head.

Like he was in any shape to help me should "trouble" come calling. Though I guess his point was to prevent the situations I occasionally-Not typically! Really!-stumbled into. Before I had a chance to respond, he continued.

"Besides," he said, "I need your car."

Chapter 16.

As it turned out, Falin did let me out of his sight, and at his own insistence. He requested that I wait in the car while he ran inside his office, so I sat in my own car, in the mid-August heat, glowering. Granted, his reasoning was sound. Letting on to Nori that Falin and I were friends probably wasn't in anyone's best interest, but I couldn't help feeling that our very a.s.sociation was a secret he didn't want his fae acquaintances to know. Hey, girls have feelings.

When he returned he carried only a single distressingly thin folder. It was my car, so I was driving, but with the case file so close, I was tempted to hand off my keys. I didn't. I'd seen Falin drive before, and I didn't trust him behind the wheel of my car.

"So what does it say?"

"I'm still on the first page, Alex," he said, his head bent over the file as I drove.

He tore two pages from the file, folded them, and shoved them in his pocket. I twisted in my seat, never actually taking my eyes off the road, but only just barely.

"What was on those pages?"

"Court business."

Right. As in none of my business. Why was he really here? I didn't know.

He'd finished reading the file by the time we reached the restaurant. I debated driving through to save time, but I wanted to get my hands on the file before he changed his mind and decided not to share. Folding myself into one of the uncomfortable particleboard booths that tended to populate all fast-food chains, I pored over the file, barely noticing the chicken nuggets I ate while I read.

The main thing I learned was that Nori couldn't doc.u.ment worth a d.a.m.n, and unless she'd left out a lot-or the two pages Falin removed had contained the useful information-her investigation had gone all of nowhere. Most of the events in the files were ones where I'd been present, and my firsthand experience was much more informative than her abbreviated write-ups. If she'd heard back from the ABMU about the spells in the feet or the disk, she hadn't included that information in her report. The only exhaustive record she kept was a list of fae who'd been questioned and relocated to Faerie, and that was a big, long list.

After flipping the last page, I shoved the file away in disgust and polished off the last of my fries. "Hey, agent in charge, I think your subordinate could stand to brush up on, well, everything."

"She gets her job done," he said, which didn't quite count as disagreeing with me, but he focused on his hamburger, obviously not willing to discuss the matter further.

As we finished lunch, John's ringtone-the theme song from Cops-cut through the air. I dug in my purse and grabbed the phone as the song started its second repet.i.tion.

"John, did you get my message?" I asked by way of greeting.

"Good afternoon to you too, Alex," he said, his deep voice full of amus.e.m.e.nt. "I did get your message. I also heard some water-cooler gossip that you might have had some trouble this morning. Everything okay?"

I gave him the summarized version of the morning's predawn events, then asked him the question no one seemed to be able to answer. "Has the ABMU turned up any leads on the spells in the feet or the disks?"

"Definitely not on my case, but if you're correct about the caster responsible for the feet being the same as the one who sent the construct, I can probably make a case to get a copy of the results from the disks. If there are any results, that is. No guarantee, and I'm not saying I'll be able to pa.s.s it on to you, but I'll check."

"I'll owe you one," I said, and suddenly, sitting in the middle of a fast-food restaurant with John all the way across town, I felt the potential for imbalance grow between us. d.a.m.n. It's going to take time to get used to that.

"Yeah, well, I'm inclined to tell you to let the police handle this, but with the attacks targeting you, and with Holly caught up in the middle of it, I know you won't. Have you tried contacting Dr. Aaron Corrie?"

The name sounded familiar, but it took me a moment to remember why. "He was one of the founding members of the Organization for Magically Inclined Humans, wasn't he?" I'd had to write a paper on him in academy. As well as being one of the founders of OMIH, he was from a family that had been practicing magic generations before the Awakening and reputedly had one of the largest collections of ancient grimoires in the world.

"Yeah, but did you know he was local?" John asked. "He consults for the police on occasion, and he likes puzzles, so he might help you for a modest fee. I'll give you the address."

Now I really did owe him, though I didn't say as much-I seriously disliked the feeling of debt racking up around me. I jotted the address John gave me on a napkin and shoved it in my purse.

"So, back to the message you left me," John said. "What makes you think you'll be able to raise a shade now when you couldn't before?"

"I'll bring another grave witch. I'm not promising it will work, but between the two of us, we might be able to pull a shade out of one of the feet. Can you get us access?"

The line was silent for a long moment, and I could imagine John tugging his mustache as he considered the obstacles ahead. "Well, technically you were already hired to consult on the case, so I guess there wouldn't be much need to file additional paperwork." In other words, if I performed another ritual, the higher-ups, and presumably the FIBs, wouldn't know about it. "But I couldn't pay you for your time."

Yeah, definitely off the books. "Don't worry about that, John. The department is already paying me for my time in the floodplain. Think of this as tying up loose ends." Besides, at this point, I was being paid to investigate by Malik-at least in a roundabout way-and it would have been sleazy to bill two different clients for one ritual.

The sound of papers fluttering on the other end of the line filtered over the phone and John said, "While we haven't gotten any magical results yet, the DNA profile on the first three feet we found came in. Nothing. Not a single match. I'm still waiting on results for the second batch. I'm grasping at straws in this case." There was a m.u.f.fled sound of something hitting the mic on the phone, and I knew John had rubbed his hand over his face, his knuckles sc.r.a.ping the mouthpiece.

"Okay," he said at last. "What could it hurt? Besides the FIB's egos if NCPD finds the killer first. Maybe your ritual will be the case-breaker. How does tomorrow evening, about six thirty, sound? Those FIB suits never stay around here that late."

I agreed to the time and wrapped up the call. Then I looked at Falin, who'd been listening avidly to my side of the conversation.

"Come on," I said, shouldering my purse. "We have to see a witch about a rune."

"This is the one?" Falin asked as he stared up at the large brick wall topped with ornate fleur-de-lis.

Fleur-de-lis fashioned out of cast iron.

I glanced at the address I'd written on the napkin and checked it against the large numbers in the brick. They matched. I nodded and shoved the napkin back in my purse.

While most witches lived in the Glen, the suburbs surrounding the Magic Quarter, Aaron Corrie lived in the Quarter. And not only in it, but in the very center of it. His house overlooked one side of Magic Square, the park in the middle of the Quarter. The streets this far inside the Quarter were narrow, cobbled, and reserved for pedestrian and horse-drawn carriages only, so I'd parked several blocks away and we'd walked. Now we stood on the sidewalk staring at the old house.

Okay, so in a city only about fifty years old, we didn't really have old houses, but in Nekros, Corrie's house was what pa.s.sed as historic. Not that we could see much of it. The tall brick wall blocked most of the house from view. The only opening in the brick was a narrow walkway barely wide enough for two people to walk through side by side-I'd hate to see what Corrie would do if he ever decided to replace his furniture.

A tall cast-iron gate blocked the walkway. More fleur-de-lis had been worked into the gate's intricate design, as well as several runes. From more than a yard away, I already could feel the buzz of Corrie's wards-and the nausea from being near such a high concentration of iron.

"I don't feel very welcome," I said, staring at the gate. While cast iron had been popular preMagical Awakening, post.i.t was considered rude. And a sign of bigotry.

"I'm guessing we're going in anyway?" Falin asked.

I nodded. I needed answers and I didn't care if the person who had them happened to hate fae. Or maybe we were jumping to conclusions. Maybe he was just a fan of pre-Awakening architecture.

I scanned the wall, searching for a call box. There wasn't one, and now that I really looked, I realized the gate didn't have any electronic locking devices. I guess we let ourselves in. But I didn't immediately try. Instead I reached out with my senses, feeling the magic in the wards and making sure old Corrie hadn't cast anything nasty for unwelcome visitors.

His wards were powerful, but the only unexpected spell I found intensified the sting of the iron. So much for the theory on pre-Awakening architecture. I stepped closer to the gate and a wave of sickness washed over me. My stomach clenched, my tongue curled, and I stumbled back, farther from the gate.

"Jeez, how do you deal with that?" I whispered, wrinkling my nose.

Falin watched me, his lips tugging down at the edges. "Iron didn't used to bother you, did it?"

I shook my head.

"You'll get used to it."

"Yeah, right. If that was true it wouldn't be one of the universal deterrents for fae."

He shrugged. "Hey, I can offer you hope, right?" He gave me a smile, but there wasn't much to it. "You will grow accustomed to feeling sick, but remember that the symptoms are warning signs. Fae can die from iron poisoning, and if you're experiencing the symptoms, you might be able to as well."

"Good to know, sensei."

The quip earned me another frown, and I immediately regretted it. Like most people raised in the mortal realm, I had only dodgy knowledge of the fae at best, more than likely filled with enough gaps to hold one of Faerie's endless halls. If Falin was willing to share information without making me trade for it, I really shouldn't discourage him.

"Come on, let's do this," I said, nodding toward the gate. The wave of sickness washed over me again, but this time I rolled with it and forced my hand to reach for the latch anyway. Falin caught my wrist before I reached the gate.

"Gloves," he said, splaying his own gloved fingers in front of me.

Right. That made sense-and explained the gloves he always wore.

Falin grabbed the latch, and as soon as his gloved fingers touched the iron, his glamour shattered, his ragged and bloodied clothing becoming visible for all to see. I noticed that this time his holster and gun didn't disappear. He must have picked them up at his office. The gun added to his b.l.o.o.d.y clothing didn't improve his appearance, and people on the street behind us stopped, staring.

I motioned him ahead of me as soon as he pushed the gate open. I followed close behind, and the moment we were inside he released the gate and let it swing shut behind us. It didn't latch, but neither of us bothered touching it again to close it properly.

I expected Falin's glamour to bounce back in place as soon as he released the gate, but it didn't. I hoped Corrie didn't peek out his window, because we certainly looked like disreputable guests at the moment.

"Give me a moment to rebuild the glamour," Falin said. He wasn't breathing hard, but the skin around his eyes was pinched and I knew that brief contact, even through the fabric of his gloves, had taxed him.

And how much worse did Corrie's spell make the effect?

"Iron does more than make fae sick, doesn't it?"

Falin nodded as his clothing returned to its immaculate glamoured state. "Iron blocks fae from the magic of Faerie."