Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4 )- Faith Hunter Page 0,39

roof, as soon as I was human enough to think of returning to my job. They wanted me to have a safe place to rest should I need Soulwood to rejuvenate. Or heal. Or a place to plant green things. Or anything. I wasn’t planning to use it, but it was nice to know it was there and even nicer to know that my coworkers—my friends—cared enough to do that for me.

He looked up and I heard the door to the stairwell open. T. Laine trudged up the hallway. Tandy asked me, “So what did you find in the dreaded NCIC database?”

“Local sheriff’s deputy reports about witch circles that were not routed to us, going back over three months.”

T. Laine dumped her gobag and laptop on the conference room table. “Yeah. That means I’m not getting any sleep tonight,” she groused.

“Should I have waited till morning to send them to you?” I asked.

Tandy tilted his head as if trying to read our emotional reactions.

“No. You did right. Update me.”

“I’ve found ten witch circles reported to the sheriff’s department that were not routed to us, plus the two we already know about. Three had dead black cats, two had white rats, one with a raccoon, four with no sacrifices on-site, all of them located on the bank of a creek or river.”

“Needless to say,” T. Laine said, “there might have been more circles that weren’t discovered or reported. And near running water is not an ideal location because of the possible disruptive action on workings—unless we have a water witch involved.”

“Was Rick in town on the other black cat ceremonies?” Tandy asked.

“No,” I said.

“I’m doing a prelim comparison on the photos of all the circles,” our witch said, her words slow and her tone thoughtful. “So far, they all bear the same magical signature.” She punched buttons on her keybord and photos of the circles I had gathered appeared overhead. “The runes are confusing. The focals are mismatched. Nothing about any of the workings or circles makes sense under the accepted rules of magic. Most importantly, according to the lunar calendar, none of the circles appear to have been worked at the full moon, which I would expect to be the case for any working calculated to hit a were-creature. Rick being called, showing increased signs of ageing, but not being killed when he shows up at the circles, still only makes sense as coincidence. In which case the curse is for someone else and that someone is in danger.”

“But none of us believe in coincidence.” Tandy pushed back away from the table and turned up the lights. “Let’s finish our workups. Send out the reports. In-house only. We’ll backtrack the local reports and see who sent them out.”

“Already done,” I said.

Reading my reports, T. Laine said, “And it isn’t just one officer. Multiple reports, five officers, and that doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if they send them all to one up-line officer who is supposed to liaise with us,” I said. “Tracking that requires more access than I have. Or an internal search.”

“Ah. That sucks donkey—” T. Laine stopped. “Oops. Sorry.”

An internal search meant someone in KPD looking through the records for us. Or a certain hacker going in for a look. Tandy and I stared across the table at one another, neither of us willing to take that step. Knowing I was being wimpy by passing the buck up the chain of command, I said, “I think we should send it to Rick and let him handle that info through proper or improper channels, as he sees fit.”

“Proper channels means we’ll never know who was suppressing reports to us, because KPD will never share that.”

“Copy that,” I said. I started typing my summation report to Rick. “The sacrifices appear to be evolving, accelerating and decelerating in terms of the focals used and the animals sacrificed.” I stopped typing and looked out the window into the night. “She’s good at killing things.” I put my fingers back on the keyboard and took up where I left off. “The runes in the circles suggest preparation and planning toward a greater black-magic spell. Future human sacrifice cannot be ruled out as an ultimate intent.” That part hadn’t occurred to me until I typed it out, and a chill went through me.

T. Laine said, “I just pulled up Rick’s schedule. He was hundreds of miles away on some of the older black cat circles. Either he felt a calling from way off and didn’t