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“You’re here to clear the land?” he said, his eyes the most arresting shade of green I’d ever seen. He wasn’t particularly tall, but his golden hair glimmered like Delilah’s, falling to his shoulders, and the scruff of beard that lightly shaded his jaw made him look rugged. Yet he reminded me of one of the golden boys. An Apollo in training.
I nodded. “Mind if we head in?”
“Be my guest. I’m tired of sitting stakeout on a deserted lot. But be careful. I can sense the devil. She’s asleep, but she’s hungry.” His eyes flashed to gold, then back to green, and he placed a soft hand on my arm. “She’s stronger than she looks,” he added.
Morio edged in next to me and just as softly removed Finias’s hand from my arm. “Thank you for the warning. We’ll be cautious.” He hoisted the bag of ritual gear over one shoulder and his own bag over the other. “Let’s get moving,” he said, glancing at the blackening sky. “I don’t like the looks of this storm.”
Delilah fell in behind me and we followed Morio toward the lot. During the night the place had been spooky, but it wasn’t much better during the day. The land held a desolate air, and while we could see everything more clearly—including the dead body that still lay behind the rhododendron—there was a dank atmosphere that made me feel claustrophobic.
I tugged on the collar of my capelet, slipping my finger beneath the material to loosen it a bit. The air was close, and every time I took a breath it felt like I was inhaling a lungful of vapor. When we came to the body, I knelt beside it, not touching anything, just looking.
The man had been out jogging. At least it looked that way, judging by the sweats and sneakers he was wearing. A pedometer was attached to his belt, and I noticed a thin flashlight poking out of the pocket of his sweatshirt. He was short but muscular, and looked like he’d been in good shape. Rigor mortis had taken hold of the body, the chill of the night sustaining it. He was stiff as a board, with a look of terror on his face. I wanted to close his eyes, but knew better than to disturb the evidence even though I knew—and Chase would know—that the goshanti devil had caused the poor man’s death.
“I wonder who he was,” Delilah said, squatting beside me.
“Someone out for a little exercise,” I said. “Maybe somebody’s father, or husband, or lover. Chase will find out. At least the weather has kept away the worst of the insects.”
There were ants, yes, but not many, and a few beetles and flies swarming around the body, but the chill and the damp had fended off the worst of the bugs. From what I could tell, no animals had crossed through the lot. A thought occurred to me and I stood up and hurried to Morio’s side. He was setting out the gear on the trunk of a fallen fir tree.
“Do the goshanti devils suck out the life force from animals, too? It seems awfully quiet here today. Nothing—no cats or dogs or raccoons—seem to have disturbed the body.”
He frowned as he fit a white candle into a tall silver candlestick. “I honestly don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Here, can you create a ring of salt around us, about ten feet in diameter?”
I nodded, accepting the bag of kosher salt. Kosher salt was purer than iodized, and we used it exclusively in our magic unless we needed sea salt. For cooking, too, I thought with a grin, remembering Iris’s insistence on certain brands when we went shopping.
“What can I do?” Delilah asked, glancing around. She frowned at the weeping willow. “I do not like that tree. It has a nasty feel to it.”
“I think that’s where the goshanti has made her home,” Morio said, but then stopped as Delilah knelt by the roots and began sifting through the leaf detritus at the base of the trunk. “What are you looking for?”
“I just have a feeling,” she said, clawing away the moldy leaves and twigs and mushrooms that had grown up thick around the tree. “I smell something . . .”
Curious, I sat the salt down and joined her, kneeling to one side as she clawed at the dirt with Lysanthra, her long silver dagger. I had my own matching dagger with me but since I’d be using mine for magic today, I didn’t want to get it dirty. Delilah’s dagger had a soul and had contacted her. Mine—well, if my dagger was sentient in any way, it sure hadn’t shown any interest in striking up a conversation with me.
After a moment, Morio joined us, using a stick to pry at the dirt. I sighed, not wanting to be a shirker, so setting my capelet aside where it wouldn’t get caught by the flying dirt, I grasped at the soil with my fingers, digging out clods and pungent toadstools and weeds that were wilting from the moisture.
We dug in silence for a couple of minutes and then Delilah held up her hand. Morio and I pulled back as she began to scrape away a final layer from something that was about the size of a shoe box, buried seven or eight inches deep. After a moment, she sat back on her heels and we peeked in the hole.
A box—a metal strongbox by the look of it—was at the bottom of the hole. On the top were runes painted in a brilliant lemon yellow.
I glanced over at Morio. “I recognize the runes. They’re warding symbols, and one looks like it might be a hex symbol.”
“A curse,” Morio said softly. “But for which—opening the box or disturbing the land?”
“It would only make sense that they warded the land.” I leaned over the box and held my fingers a few inches above the runes. “They’re powerful but erratic. The uncle—what was his name? Whatever it was, Harold’s uncle was a necromancer, albeit a lousy one. I’ll bet you he put this together.”
“The question is . . . Camille, don’t touch it! It might be dangerous.” Morio motioned for me to move my hand. I quickly obeyed. He was more adept at Earthside magic than I was. “As I was saying, the question is, will the thing backfire on us if we remove it? Is the curse valid or just as screwed up as the Demon Gate he opened?”
Delilah scrunched her lip, biting the edge of it. I wondered how she avoided puncturing herself at times, given her non-retractable fangs. They weren’t as long as a vampire’s, but they were there and they’d caused plenty of damage to Chase’s private parts during a few ill-chosen blow job attempts. We’d all heard about the upshot of that activity.
“Do you recognize the curse? What’s the worst that can happen?” She wiped her hands on her jeans and stood. Six foot one, she was lean and muscled, but sometimes I wondered just where she stored her common sense.
“To answer your questions: No, and we could die. And not necessarily in that order,” I said. Then, a brilliant thought struck me. “I know! Let’s make Rodney drag it out. Then, whatever happens will happen to him.”
Morio gave me a crazy look but laughed, his lips curling into a devilish grin. “I knew that little bastard had to be good for something. And if it blows up in his face, then we don’t have to come up with an excuse so we can give him back to Grandmother Coyote.” He rummaged through his bag and pulled out the wooden box in which our skeletal jackass made his home.
Delilah stared at the box. “Who the hell is Rodney?”
Oops. This was going to be fun. I hadn’t gotten around to telling Delilah and Menolly about our bony-butted compatriot. Not yet.
