Bol nodded to the old woman and stepped back, and she clutched her grocery bag tighter and hurried away. Cheryl sat on the curb with her legs crossed, toying with a porcelain doll whose painted eyes stared at nothing. She hadn't said a word in ten minutes.
"Another dead end," Bol muttered.
The street was quiet under the Sunday-afternoon heat pressing down on the cracked pavement. A few locals drifted past with their eyes averted; nobody wanted to talk. The old woman had been the fifth person he'd approached, and it was the same story every time. Makun was a ghost. No one knew him and no one spoke to him, and the few who remembered him at all mentioned his luck, terrible luck, the kind that made people cross the street to avoid him.
"They treat him like a plague," Bol said.
Cheryl didn't look up. Her fingers moved along the doll's porcelain arm, tracing invisible patterns.
"Did you hear me?"
"I heard you," she said flatly. "They're afraid. Fear is useful."
Bol crouched beside her. "We need more than fear. We need a location." He stood again, walked to the middle of the empty street and let out a slow breath. Things were getting worse. He had nothing solid to work with, only rumors and fear. Their one lead was the place where the signature had disappeared, and they had already checked it: Makun had been evicted and never came back, and the apartment was cleaned out, empty and useless.
He turned to Cheryl. "We need help. Perform your ritual. Contact a lesser spirit from the Dream Cycle. We trace his movements on the day the signature vanished."
Cheryl stopped humming, set the doll down carefully and stood up. "Finally. I was getting bored."
She walked into the center of the street, where the pavement was cracked and stained and there were no cars and no people, only heat and silence. She pulled a piece of chalk from her pocket and knelt. The chalk scraped as she drew four circles, one at each point of the compass, her hand moving with precision, and each line glowed faintly as she finished it; this was no ordinary chalk, and energy bled from it.
When the final circle was done, she stepped into the middle of the formation, which looked like a compass with four points radiating outward, and sat at its heart in the lotus position, hands resting palm-up on her knees and eyes open.
Then she began. The words came low and steady, and they were not English.
"Udug-hul..." Her voice sharpened. "Ki-bi-še..." Wind stirred as her voice dropped. "Ge-en-gi!"
The old syllables were heavy with meaning, and the circles flared. Energy pulsed outward in waves, the air thickened, and pressure built in Bol's chest. Cheryl's voice sank lower as the incantation stretched and twisted, her lips moving while the sound seemed to come from somewhere far away. Then she closed her eyes and her mouth, stopped breathing, and her body went utterly still.
Bol watched her form flicker, solid, then translucent, then solid again. Reality bent around her until the street looked wrong, too bright and too dark at once. His hand drifted toward his side, but he didn't reach for a weapon. He simply waited.
This was projection, and it was dangerous. Only third-grade Elites and above could enter the second layer of The Deep in their physical bodies. Cheryl wasn't there yet, so she had gone without hers and left it here, exposed and vulnerable. If something went wrong, her body would die where it sat, empty and lifeless. It was an act of trust, and Bol kept watch.
Fifteen minutes passed. The circles dimmed and the pressure in the air eased. Then Cheryl's body jerked, her eyes snapped open, and she gasped and doubled forward, catching herself with both hands on the pavement.
"Cheryl."
She didn't answer. Her chest heaved and sweat dripped down her face.
Something appeared beside her. A shape took form in the air, translucent and bird-like, with wings too long and a body too thin, and no beak, only a hollow space where a face should have been. It flickered in and out of reality, solid one moment and smoke the next, and then it screeched, a sharp, high sound like metal scraping glass.
Cheryl stood slowly, her eyes locked on it. The bird-thing hovered, phasing between visible and invisible, then darted forward in bursts, vanishing and reappearing twenty feet ahead.
"Let's follow it," Cheryl said. She grabbed her doll and ran, and Bol swore under his breath and went after her.
The room was small and dim: two chairs, a low table, incense burning in the corner. It was the room where Zuri always received her clients, but the man sitting across from her today was nothing like a client.
He was massive, six foot four, his broad frame layered thick with muscle. Scars covered his arms and neck, small ones and deep ones, stories written into his flesh, but the most distinctive was the jagged old scar under his left eye that disappeared into his beard. Zuri had noticed long ago that when he was angry, it seemed to warm under the skin and take on the faintest tint of gold, as if something very far away were keeping an ember alive in it.
"Why did you call for me, Zuri?" His voice was low, calm and dangerous.
Zuri sat across from him in her usual chair with her hands folded in her lap. She looked smaller than usual. "I need your help, Zorak."
Zorak tilted his head. Who could be causing trouble for Zuri in Naija City? The mystic circle here was small, and everyone knew she was under his protection. Who would dare? "What's troubling you?" he asked. Whoever it was, they were going to pay.
"Well..." Zuri hesitated. "I'm not sure."
She glanced at the table: the candles, the small bowl of water, the cowrie shells she had thrown for Makun two days before.
"I did my usual readings last night," she said. "They showed great trouble coming for me. And they showed you as the solution."
Zorak studied her. Zuri didn't lie. She was the most cautious person he knew; she did everything she could to avoid trouble, always careful and measured.
She was a second-grade Apprentice Seer, and Seers were rare and extremely useful. The further they advanced, the more they could pierce through reality; some could reshape the past or play with the future, and with their guidance a practitioner could advance safely along the path to reconnection. Knowing what someone like her was worth, Zorak had taken her under his wing in exchange for her services. It seemed the time had come to pay her back.
"All right," he said. "I'll help. Later, you tell me who put you in this situation." He huffed, already picturing the culprit and what he would do to them. "So tell me, when do you expect the troub—"
Someone knocked on the door.