Most marked footprints, but here and there I saw a rune drawn in the dirt. Or at least what was left of a rune.
Footprints obscured most, and the one that had drawn my attention on TV had a long tunnel of dirt bisecting it where it attention on TV had a long tunnel of dirt bisecting it where it looked like someone’s heel had been dragged across the ground.
Damn.
I walked closer, trying to find some pattern in what remained of the runes. I felt the residue of the circle as I reached the outer edge, and I stopped before crossing it, letting my senses stretch. Unlike the charms I’d felt in the tent city, the circle definitely held the signature of the witch behind the murders and I shivered at the touch despite the fact that a magical circle was completely neutral magic.
“This is where the witch cast the circle.”
“I guessed that much,” Falin said, and when I glanced at him in surprise, he pointed toward the ground. “That’s where the dead grass starts.”
I blinked and looked around. All the grass was withered and gray in my grave-sight, so I never would have known that if he hadn’t told me. What kind of ritual kills all the grass in the area?
I had no idea, but there was only one thing left to do.
I crossed the edge of the circle.
Crossing someone else’s circle, even one long ago dispel ed, into someone’s ritual space is always a little uncomfortable for a sensitive. The area is almost guaranteed to be saturated with that witch’s magic, and even the trace of beneficial and friendly magic can be overwhelming. Not that I was expecting friendly spel s on the other side of this barrier.
What I expected even less was to find no magic at al , but that was exactly what I found.
I blinked. Over the last few hours I’d grown so accustomed to seeing the world through hazy swirls of Aetheric that their sudden absence was jarring. I glanced behind me. Outside the edge of the circle the Aetheric stil hung over the world, but inside the circle there were only a few thin wisps, like what the skimmers had been drawing from the tear. I’d heard of magical dead spots before, but from the tear. I’d heard of magical dead spots before, but that wasn’t what I was looking at, and I knew it. This was more like depletion. But what kind of spell uses that much energy?
Something major, that was for sure, and whatever it was, I definitely didn’t like it.
I squinted. I wasn’t used to my grave-sight opening multiple planes of existence to me, but I knew there were more planes than I had names for. I occasional y caught glimpses of different planes that didn’t “fit” with the land of the dead or the Aetheric, though those two were my only constants. Now I tried to look for another plane, one that might give me a hint of what had happened in this circle.
Colors splashed across the world. They weren’t the vivid, swirling colors of the Aetheric, but colors that seemed to emanate from inside objects and space. I’d seen this plane before, and from what I’d gathered, it absorbed the emotional resonance of the people who brushed against it.
Around the rift I could make out the bright, blissed-out spots where the skimmers had stood, but those were just splashes of color, already fading. Under them, in the very center of the tear, was the most bril iant light I’d ever seen. It was no color, or al colors—I couldn’t be sure. It created a silhouette of light instead of shadow. I stared at it, realizing this was the profile of the witch we were looking for, but I could glean no details from the shape except that the witch had stood in that very spot and felt hope . . . joy.
Hope and joy? What had happened in this circle? Had I been wrong about who cast it?
I turned, walking farther from the tear, and then I stumbled because as soon as I left the glow of the witch’s hope, the air turned thick with a deep stain of pulsing red.
The color bled up from the ground and throbbed against my skin. Fear. Pain. Desperation. I crashed to my knees. I could almost see the shadows of rage closing in around me, as they twisted and writhed in the circle. The very air hummed with anger, prickling my flesh and burning my hummed with anger, prickling my flesh and burning my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
I slammed my shields closed, blocking out the dead, the color, the rage, the pain. Darkness fel over me, and I welcomed the sudden lack of sight as I sucked down gulps of the night air.
“Alex, what happened?”
Falin.
He was beside me, his hands on my arms as he tried to help me stand. I let him.
“They died here,” I whispered. “So much pain. So many people.” And the witch had stood in the center of al that misery and had felt hope.
I didn’t tel the police what I’d seen. The anti–black magic unit had both an auramancer and a wyrd clairvoyant who could tap into the reality I’d touched if the cops real y wanted to know what the victims had felt, though I wouldn’t have wished what I’d just felt on anyone. When I saw John tomorrow—or real y, later today, as it was long past midnight now—I would tel him that I’d sensed only one witch in that circle. That was something he needed to know.