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“With luck, I will very soon.” I patted my bag. “The Symbol Man painted his sigils with blood, and I have plenty of luminol right here.”
Comprehension lit her face. “He was trying to summon Rhyzkahl.” She laughed softly. “And now you’re going to plagiarize his work.”
“Exactly! Seems only fair he should help me out now, considering everything he did.”
“You’re looking for the glyphs from the big circle on the meeting room floor, right?”
“Those are the ones.”
“I’d better give you a hand,” she said, getting to her feet. “I think I have a bit more experience with luminol than you.”
“You do.” I grinned. “I’ve never used it. I always waited for the crime lab to do all that stuff.” I dug the spray bottle and nitrile gloves out of my bag. “With two of us, it shouldn’t take long.”
I ducked outside to let Roper and Suarez know what we were doing, then Jill and I went to the meeting room and got down to business. The first task was to block as much light as possible from the chinks between the boards covering the windows, but the plunder of some old sofa cushions dealt with that issue. Once the room was nice and dark, I shone my flashlight on a place where I knew there’d been
sigils.
Jill spritzed the spot. I turned off my flashlight. The sigils glowed.
“It’s working!” I jumped up and down a few times and did a quick happy dance. “Hot damn!”
“So copy them down, you big weirdo,” Jill said with a touch of her old asperity. I seized her in a hug then got to work sketching the sigils and their placement. We quickly fell into a pattern of shine-spritz-draw, sidestepping our way around the large circle. But we’d barely made it halfway around when the shine-spritz produced a large solid glow instead of sigils.
“Crap,” I muttered.
“This is where the decapitated victim bled out,” Jill said. “His blood obscured the sigils.”
That victim was the summoner who’d caused all the trouble. Peter Cerise, whose head Rhyzkahl had twisted off. I peered at the area but couldn’t make out a thing.
Jill took another two steps and spritzed. “It should clear up right about here.” Light blood spatter glowed, but I could make out the sigils.
“Looks like that big blood spot obliterated close to a dozen sigils,” I said. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it but keep going. Kind of like life in general.
To my relief, we didn’t run into any other ruined areas, and we eventually shined, spritzed, and drew our way back to where we’d started.
I shone the light on the floor nearby, outside the ritual diagram. “Try here.”
“Kara . . .”
“Just do it. Please.”
With a resigned sigh, she spritzed the spot. I flicked off the light and crouched beside the glowing patch. My blood, where the reyza Sehkeril had hooked his claws in my belly and left me to die in a pool of blood and viscera. I drew my gloved fingers across the luminescence. “It seems like an eternity ago. I was so . . .” I couldn’t find the word.
“Innocent? Naïve? You were played by a player and had been kept in the dark about everything. Considering what and who you were up against, you kicked ass.”
My gaze drifted to the luminol glow in the shape of a boot print. Rhyzkahl’s, where he’d tracked my blood after nudging my intestines with his toe. I let out a long breath that felt like the purging of toxic sludge, then stood. “I still don’t know all of what we’re up against, but the past is ancient history. I’m not that naïve woman anymore.”
“You got that right, chick. You went through the fires of hell and came out fighting.”
“I plan to kick a lot more ass,” I said with a smile. “Starting with a Jontari imperator tonight.”
Jill laughed. “Slow down there, partner. Start off light with subduing him and bending him to your will.” She pulled a cushion from the window to let in shafts of sunlight. “Did you get enough of the sigils copied? I mean, considering about ten percent were ruined.”
“I think it’ll be enough,” I said, looking down at my diagram sketch, easily picking out which aspects pertained to bindings and protections. The missing spark wasn’t jumping out at me, but I strangled the worry before it could take up residence. As soon as I made it back to the house, I’d go through it sigil by sigil and figure it out. Somehow. “I have a hundred times more info than when I got here. I’d call that a win.”
Jill peered at a pair of sigils on the outer edge then pointed at my sketch. “Those two aren’t right. There’s supposed to be a long curved part that goes from the top of one to the middle of the other.”
“Damn, you’re right. I forgot to put in the joining link.” I quickly penciled in the correction then looked up at her with a frown. “How’d you pick out such a tiny discrepancy?”
