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As I walked, I was checking out Main Street, mentally constructing a map of Columbus. Maybe I was just in a more hopeful mood than I'd been earlier, but the town seemed brighter now.
I still saw the For Rent signs on the shops, but I also noticed optimistic Opening Soon! signs on a couple. A banner over Main Street announced the annual strawberry social. Another in front of the library congratulated "Steve and Dawn" on their wedding. A shop-keeper helped an elderly woman load groceries into her car. I saw the pregnant teenage girl again, too, this time coming out of the diner, smiling, hand-in-hand with a boy carrying a steel lunchbox, and realized she hadn't been waiting to leave, just waiting for someone to come home.
Columbus might be a dying town, but not everyone was willing to give up the fight so easily. I admired that, and I was still looking around when a silver SUV pulled up in front of the post office. Cody Radu. He ignored the No Stopping signs. Hell, he didn't even bother pulling to the curb. Just stopped, slammed her into park, and hopped out.
I swung my gaze away. I'd get around to Cody eventually. Until then, I'd take no interest in the guy. Make him wonder why I was taking no interest. Make him sweat.
From the corner of my eye, I could see him checking me out. It wasn't the furtive interest of Michael Kennedy or even the lascivious ogle of the knuckle-dragger in the pickup. This was a cold, hard once-over, like I was an item on a menu, his to order if he decided I looked tasty. I kept walking.
I found the store--an empty furniture shop, sign announcing all inventory at 20 percent off, then 50 percent, then in final, desperate handwritten red strokes, 75 percent off, final sale.
I went around back, presuming that was where the trucker entered, and found a huge double door for the furniture place, a sign with foot-high letters announcing Deliveries.
The delivery door was dented so badly I was surprised it still closed. Kicked in by someone looking for a private place to conduct rituals? That might explain the shiny big padlock on it now.
An unlock spell cleared the way. Inside, I cast a sensing spell that came back clean. There were two doors off the loading dock. One led to an empty room with enough electrical outlets and phone jacks to tell me it had once held desks. The other was a bathroom. At the end, the hall opened into the display gallery.
The place had been stripped bare and kept reasonably clean, the owner still apparently optimistic about its resale value. A thin layer of dust said that optimism was waning, but the unit was still tidy enough to be shown. Too tidy to be an ideal place for anyone to practice the dark arts.
As I walked into the gallery, though, I could see a circle of black on the floor. I knelt and ran my finger over the ring. Wax. A black candle had sat here, dripping, for hours. I looked at the front and frowned. Big display windows. Not even boarded up. Who would conduct a ritual when anyone walking past could see the candle burning?
Near the candle wax, I noticed red smears on the linoleum. I bent and touched them. Long dried and faint, as if someone had mopped them up. I licked my finger and smudged some. Definitely red. Too red to be blood?
I took a picture and compared it with the one from the commune gate. The resolution was crap, though. I needed to see both on a laptop screen and zoom in.
The trucker's buddy said he'd seen a dead cat, too. You couldn't have a black mass without a dead cat. Or so said common wisdom. The truth was that cats--or sacrifice of any kind--had nothing to do with a real satanic black mass.
I searched the room, but found no sign of cats. I did, however, find a pile of rags in the corner. Black rags.
I reached down and grabbed an edge. It wasn't rags, but a huge sheet of black fabric. Other pieces lay beneath it, some black, some white, one red. The piece in my hand seemed like some kind of cape.
Something dropped from the fabric as it unraveled and landed with a dull thump. I glanced down and saw a hand. A human hand, pale in the dim light, the severed stump nestled in the fabric.
A creak sounded behind me. I wheeled as a shadow slunk from the hall. My fingers flew up in a knockback spell before I could think. A gasp as the figure flew back. Shoes scuffled, a door banged, and a man said, "In here!"
I backed up to the wall and cast a cover spell just as two men burst through the door. One was Cody Radu. The other was the younger officer.
The cop looked around. Cody passed him, circling the room. I shifted my gaze to the pile of cloth in the corner. When I'd dropped the cape, it had settled over the hand. Two curved fingers still peeked out.
Cody walked right past me, then planted himself in front of the pile.
"There's no one here, Mr. Radu," the cop said.
"Bill saw a girl sneak in the back," Cody said. "He flagged me down as I was leaving the post office ... not five minutes after that private-eye chick walked by. And someone opened the lock on the door."
"Okay, but there's no one here now. I don't know what you expect me to do, sir."
"I expect you to earn what I pay you. I expect you to protect my interests, and as the owner of this building, this is one of my interests."
"Okay but ..." The young officer turned, surveying the room. "There's nothing here to steal."
"It's my property. That's all that matters. I want a new lock on the door and drive-bys every two hours. If you see that lock broken again, you call me."
"Yes, sir."
They left. I cast my sensing spell. The building was empty.
So Cody Radu was paying off one of the local cops. That was definitely something to keep in mind, but right now, I was more interested in that severed hand.
