Blood Rites (The Dresden Files #6) - Jim Butcher Page 0,88

different today. No winding, slow buildup, no murder weapons manufactured by the Acme Corporation, and no spillover onto other people nearby. Unlike the others, Emma's death had been the result of a surgical strike of focused, violent energy. The earlier editions of the curse had been more like a stone-headed hatchet than a scalpel. Today's curse had been far stronger than the ones I'd felt before, too.

And Trixie was the lowest common denominator.

Any kind of magic spell requires certain things to happen. You have to gather in the energy for whatever it is you're trying to do. Then you have to shape it with your thoughts and feelings into what you want it to do. And finally you have to release it in the direction you want it to go. To use a rough metaphor, you have to load the gun, aim it, and pull the trigger.

The problem was that with a curse that powerful, you were talking about a very big gun. Even with a ritual supplying the power for it, controlling that power was a task that not just anybody could do. Aiming and pulling the trigger were easier, but handling them all at once would be very difficult even for some wizards. That's why for the big projects you need three people working together, and it's the basis for the stereotype of three cackling witches casting spells in concert over a cauldron.

Trixie stormed off the set before the curse had come at Inari last night, and she hadn't been in the studio when it happened twelve hours prior to that. But she had been there with me today. Trixie the Drama Queen's personality was stamped all over the near-insane deaths, but I was damned sure that she wasn't a wizard.

Therefore, she'd had help. Someone would need to manage the energy, while Trixie shaped the curse into some kind of ludicrous death scenario. And someone else had to pull the trigger, channeling the spell to its intended recipient—also something that required a little more skill and focus than I was willing to believe Trixie had. So it would take three of them.

Three stregas.

Three former Mrs. Arturo Genosas.

The curse that killed Emma had been different. It had been a hell of a lot stronger, for one thing, and it had come at her a hell of a lot faster. And the death it had brought down on her had been efficient and quick. If Trixie wasn't with them, then it meant that either one of the others had some serious skill, or they'd been able to find a replacement witch who had been content with making the murder swift, clean, and simple.

Four killers working together. I was the only one around who could get in their way, and they knew I was getting closer to them. Under the circumstances, they had only one logical target for the next iteration of the spell, twelve hours from now.

Me.

That was assuming, of course, that Mavra and the vampire scourge—or possibly the man I'd hired to help me kill them—didn't take me out first. Maybe they wouldn't get their chance. See? That's the power of positive thinking.

I got back to my apartment and got out of the car just in time to see Mister flying down the sidewalk as fast as he could run. He looked both ways before crossing the street, and we entered the apartment together. I started gathering things and shoving them into a nylon gym bag, then opened the door down to the lab. Bob flowed out of Mister, who promptly shuffled over to the fire and collapsed into sleep.

"Well?" I called down as I finished packing the bag. "Did you find her?"

"Yeah, I found her," Bob called.

"About time," I said. I went down the ladder in a hurry, and flicked several candles alight with a muttered word. I got out a roll of parchment about a foot and a half square. Then I spread it onto the worktable in the lab's center and set a fountain pen beside it. "Where?"

"Not far from Cabrini Green," Bob said. "I got a good look around the place."

"Good. You've got permission to come out long enough to show me what you found."

He made a sighing sound but didn't complain. The usual cloud of glowing orange motes of light slid out of the skull's eye sockets, though perhaps it was a little less bright and swirly than usual. The cloud of light surrounded the pen, and it rose up of its own accord,