Demon Hunts. C.E. Murphy

      I put on what I hoped was a convincing, cheerful smile. “I’m going to use myself as bait.”

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      Billy said, “Excuse us,” and hustled me out of Sonata’s house so fast it could have been magic. I warded off his outrage with raised palms, or tried to, and opted to explain rather than wait for him to stop telling me what a bad idea it was.

      It wasn’t that I thought it was a particularly great idea myself. It was just better than setting somebody else out as bait, which argument didn’t slow Billy down at all. “Look, I’m going to head up to the Space Needle and have a look around the city first,” I said in my best reasonable tone. “I’ll see if I can pull up any residue like I saw from Melinda’s circle—”

      That, at least, got his attention. “You saw something? Why the hell didn’t you say so earlier?”

      “Because I took a cab from your house to the coroner’s instead of you picking me up, and I forgot while we were examining decomposing bodies and talking to mediums, okay? I’m sorry.” Billy had the grace to look apologetic, and I charged onward. “Anyway, yes, I saw residue from Mel’s circle, so I thought I could at least try picking up someone else’s. If we’re lucky it’ll turn out there’s some lunatic controlling a…” I had no idea what, really. A cannibal, clearly, but beyond that I didn’t know. “A flesh-eating monster. And then we can bag the guy and be done.”

      Billy gave me a look that said when have we ever been lucky? and I shrugged it off. “And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll try the bait thing.”

      “Need I point out that this thing is going after outdoorsy types, which you’re not?”

      It was true. I was more the grease monkey type. I said, “Still,” like I’d presented that comment aloud, then leaned heavily on the hood of his minivan. “Ravenna Park isn’t exactly a great outdoors kind of landscape, either, Billy.”

      “You know, I’m pretty sure I hate where this is going, too.”

      “She was found in Ravenna Park. She lived in my apartment building. What if—”

      “I seriously doubt it.”

      A tiny rush of relieved laughter escaped me. “You didn’t let me finish.”

      “You were going to say, what if this thing that eats souls was after you. What if it’s circling around to you, and Karin Newcomb just got in the way. Joanne, do you know any of the others who died? Is there any kind of connection at all?”

      “No….” Even I knew the apartment building connection was tenuous, but my life had been one unpleasant coincidence after another all year long. Stranger things could, and had, happened.

      “Then don’t do that to yourself. This is bad enough as it is.”

      “On the other hand, if it’s not coincidence,” which I really wanted it to be, “I’d make good bait. So unless you’ve got a better idea, let’s try scoping out the city from the Needle, and then…” I shrugged. “Then we’ll see.”

      Billy ground his teeth, got in the minivan, and drove us to the Space Needle. Normally he might’ve proposed we do something crazy like actual detective work, but there were about a hundred cops on the cannibal case and so far no one had gotten a break. Every crime scene had been utterly bereft of DNA evidence. We hadn’t been able to pinpoint an area the killer might be in, because the victims were from all over the city. In my grumpier moments I suspected our cannibal had watched too many crime shows and knew better than to hunt in a six-block radius around his home. Or a six-mile radius, for that matter.

      The total lack of DNA was part of why Morrison had called Billy and me in. It wasn’t like chewed meat could be licked clean, and there were streaks of blood on the bodies, if not puddles under them, which suggested they hadn’t been thoroughly washed before being dumped. But even if they had been washed, even in the unlikely event that someone could scrub every last bit of their own genetic markers out of the body they’d just snacked on, that would’ve left residue, too. The absolute nothing was impossible, and impossible was supposed to be our department.

      Billy, who would’ve scolded me for doing the same thing, came down Broad Street, parked the van in a taxi zone about a hundred feet from the Needle’s foot and hung a police vehicle tag in it. We waved our badges at security and hopped the “only going to the restaurant, don’t need the tour guide” elevator to the fiftieth floor. It wasn’t as much fun, but it was faster.

      The police badges also meant we didn’t have to buy the restaurant’s overpriced lunch, although my stomach rumbled when the scent of food hit my nostrils. “Think we can expense it to the department?”

      “I’m writing off filling up the minivan’s tank. Might as well try expensing filling up mine.” We got a table at the room’s outer edge and ordered lunch while I turned the Sight on the city.

      It looked healthier than it had the last time I’d done this. Then there’d been a malaise spreading over Seattle, one that eventually awakened the dead. Today there was nothing so appalling, and, as the room turned and I drifted through the surreal, brilliant colors of the shamanic world, I thought there were worse ways to spend a lunch hour. Maybe I could come up here once a week to make sure all was well, though the pragmatic part of me suggested I’d better get an annual pass if I wanted to do that. They’d probably notice if I kept dropping by and cheating my way in with a police badge.

      Billy, diffidently, asked, “Getting anything?”

      I shook off my musings enough to answer. Our seats had rotated far enough to the north that I could now see down Aurora Avenue. Billy’s house, off to the west, lit up with the remains of the circle Melinda’d drawn for me. I glanced farther east, toward Lake Washington, and caught a glimmer of brightness at the corner of my eye. “Nothing I don’t recognize. I can see your house, but it’s almost straight on to us now. I might need line of sight to really pick things up.”

      “You didn’t with the cauldron.”

      “The cauldron was spilling gook all over the city,” I said irritably. “I’ve never tried looking for the remnants of somebody’s power before. I can see a glimmer over at Matthews Beach, but I—oh. I guess I don’t have to wait for the restaurant to turn that far before I get a straight look at it, huh?” Embarrassed, I got up and walked around the restaurant until I could see the lake.

      Matthews Beach was where the thunderbird had fallen six months ago, and where my prize idiocy had torn the landscape into a new shape. There was a waterfall there now, and almost no one in Seattle remembered how it got its name. Some of those who did, though—people who belonged, like it or not, to Magic Seattle, like me and Billy—came together there daily, greeting the sunrise, waking the world and generally pouring goodwill and power into a place they saw as mystically significant.

      The result was a glow that beggared the light from the Holliday’s home. It was like a miniature nuclear warhead had gone off, that much purity of white. I rubbed one eye and went back to the table. “I can definitely see power spots if I’m looking for them. Thunderbird Falls is brimming over. It kind of makes me wonder how things can get out of kilter here, if there’s that much basically positive energy being poured out.”

      “Watched the news lately?”

      I sagged and didn’t even perk up when the waitress brought my onion-and-cheese-tart appetizer. Hey, if I was expensing the meal, I figured I should enjoy it. And if I wasn’t able to expense it, I’d definitely better enjoy it. “Yeah. It’s all Laurie Corvallis, Talking Head, Spreading the Bad Word. Why doesn’t anybody ever report on the good stuff?”

      “Disaster’s good for the oligarchy. Ha,” Billy said to my goggle-eyes. “Fair’s fair. You pull out ‘exsanguinate,’ I pull out ‘oligarchy.’”

      “I’m in awe. There’s nothing sexier than a guy with a big vocabulary. Don’t tell your wife I said that.” I glanced