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Then I smelled it.
I stopped so abruptly that Belle had to do a quick sidestep to avoid me.
“Is there a problem?” Ashworth said.
“Yeah. There’s blood up ahead.”
“Fresh or otherwise?” Eli asked.
“Fresh.” I swept the light across the trees, but I wasn’t seeing a body and I certainly wasn’t sensing anything resembling magic.
“And is your ghost still here?” Belle asked.
“Not only here, but insisting we hurry.”
“Easy for her to say,” Ashworth muttered. “She hasn’t got old legs.”
“Or indeed any legs,” Eli said.
A smile tugged at my lips but faded all too quickly. I might not be able to sense any magic, but there was something here. Something unpleasant and wrong. Trepidation once again skittered across my skin, but I forced the concern aside and trudged up the hill. Both the growing number of rocks and the path’s roughness suggested we were getting close to the outskirts of one of the old quarries.
If we were dealing with the same sorcerer and this was another of his kills, why here? The last time he’d terrorized Canberra, he’d shown a distinct preference for old warehouses. None of the kills had been out in the open.
Did that mean we weren’t dealing with the same man? That it was all nothing more than a coincidence?
I honestly didn’t believe that to be true, but we’d find out soon enough.
The scent of blood strengthened. The ghost lightly tugged at my left hand, guiding me off the track and into the trees. After a few more minutes, the light picked out a shoulder-height, curving stone wall.
“Whatever we’ve being sent here to find is behind that,” I said.
“That’s Mawu’s hut, if I’ve got my geography correct,” Belle said.
I glanced at her. “Mawu being a witch, I take it?”
She nodded. “She claimed she was a goddess of the sun and the moon and was basically as mad as a march hare. But harmless. She’d be pissed if evil has used this site.”
“Could she be my ghost?”
Belle hesitated, scanning the area before shaking her head. “She’s here—I can sense her presence off to the left—but she’s definitely not the one who led us here.” She cocked her head, expression slightly distracted. “She wishes us to know she is indeed unimpressed and asks if we can cleanse the site once we have finished.”
“Suggesting that whatever we’re about to find was indeed left here by dark magic.” Ashworth stopped and undid his backpack. “I’m not feeling anything in the way of spells, old or new, but we’d better take some basic precautions.”
He handed us each small bottles of holy water and a coin warding charm on a leather chain. Belle and I each wore a multi-layered charm around our necks that countered all sorts of spells and supernatural beasties, but this felt very different. The magic in it was an intricate mix of both Eli’s and Ashworth’s spells, but I didn’t immediately recognize any of them.
“What does this do?”
“It’ll counter any attempts to magically locate you,” Eli said. “Be it via a summoning spell or a tracker.”
My gaze jumped to his. “You think this could be a trap?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that whatever lies within the remains of the hut was placed here at the same time you’re visiting the Sarr compound.”
I remembered what Samuel had said about the magic circling the first murder being designed to collect and catalogue information and swore softly. I hadn’t thought the implications of that through far enough.
I flipped the coin over in my hand. It was only small, but the weight of magic sitting on it made it far heavier. “There seems to be far more to the spells on this thing than just an anti-summoning spell.”
“That is a rather meaty spell at the best of times,” Ashworth said, “But we’ve also woven through a beacon spell so that if you are snatched, we can find you.”
