"Happy now?" I didn't have time to say much else. There was half a house that could be crawling with more zombies. "Watch him," I tossed over my shoulder, and plunged down the stairs.

The basement smelled bad but not overwhelmingly so. This used to be where Zamba kept a couple pit bulls all year, and a few goats inside during the autumn rains. The chickens had their own coop in the back yard, but as soon as my eyes adjusted I saw ragged bundles of feathers scattered over the concrete floor.

I hit the light switch. There was nothing living down here.

The dogs were shapeless lumps of fur. The feathers were chicken corpses, strewn around as if there had been some sort of explosion. In the middle of the basement, a chalk-and-cornmeal circle writhed. The lines were moving sluggishly as the sorcery in the air bled out, whispering with a sound like a kid drawing on pavement, a dry hollow whisper. The meal was scattering, bleeding away from the thin lines.

Inside the circle, the three goats were twisted together, their legs stiff with rigor mortis and their bellies bloated. The floor was awash with sticky, almost-dry blood.

This isn't real voodoo. Nobody even made an attempt to cook these, or to kill them kindly. My gorge rose, I pushed it down. Why was it that zombie-smell didn't make me puke, but the dead helpless bodies could?

No, the animals had been killed with sorcery. They lay twisted in agony, their throats ripped open. No self-respecting practitioner would do this. Not even a bocor would waste lives this flagrantly.

I examined every part of the scene I could see, gun in one hand, whip in the other. There were no teensy-tiny track marks in the blood here. My blue eye caught the fading marks of etheric violence, souls ripped from bodies.

The explosion of energy when something is killed is one form of food for the loa; it is the offering the practitioners use to make bargains or payments. Cooking and eating the animal afterward is a sacrament. Even a bocor won't waste good meat that often. But this kind of wanton death bore no relation to voodoo. It was destruction for its own sake-the destruction of souls, which carries its own price and its own charge of dark energy, like jet fuel. This was more like the work of the Sorrows, those soul-eating carrion.

The Church holds it as a point of doctrine that animals don't have souls. I know better. I've seen better. It's only one place where we differ, the Holy Mother Church and I.

There are plenty of others.

Oh, God. The basement was clear. I headed back up the stairs. Saul met me on the landing. "No more of them. Some bodies in the bedrooms, though."

In a minute. I nodded. Half-turned. Gilberto was still crouching on the porch, the wreck of the shattered door creaking as I stepped on it. He looked up at me, and before the walls behind his eyes could go up I caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like before whatever had made him into what he was.

The first time I'd met this kid, I'd known he was a killer. Strength, size, and speed are all useless without the willingness to do serious harm; someone smaller with the ruthlessness to hurt can take on a giant and come away a limping winner. The dead-eyed gangbanger had that willingness in spades. We recognize each other, those of us who have come out the other side of decency and settled for survival.

And sometimes, something just gets left out of people, and they don't see anything wrong with killing. That's one of the tests of taking on an apprentice-finding out if they're willing to hurt someone if they have to, or if they're just sociopaths.

You have to be sure. A hunter is a deadly thing, and that deadliness has to be disciplined. Otherwise you're no better than the things you put down. You're worse than a Trader, even.

"I told you to go home." I didn't have to work to sound unwelcoming. "Did you not hear me? I said go home, and leave the night alone."

"What was those?" He rose slowly, the gun dangling in his right hand. "Right out of a fucking horror movie, eh, bruja? And him, he's el gato. Lobo hombre, gato hombre." He was breathing so fast his narrow ribs flickered. That smell was on him-desperation, wanting so hard the teeth ache as if under a bad load of sugar.

"You're not listening." I glanced at Saul. "He was already here?"

"Yup." Saul's eyes glowed orange for a moment. He stood easily on the stairs, his back to the entire upper portion of the house, and I suddenly wanted to check every single room and cupboard.

It was ridiculous. He said he'd checked, and I trusted him to tell me when part of a scene was cleared. That was the whole idea behind having a partner, wasn't it?

I trusted his judgment, didn't I?

Of course I did. I swallowed hard, prioritized. "And you came out here because..."

"Galina called. She got no answer when she dialed Zamba. Figured you might run into some trouble." One corner of his mouth curled up. "Besides, I like seeing you."

My own lips stretched into a grudging smile. How did he do that, make me feel good with five little words? "Flatterer."

"Hey, whatever works." In this light he didn't look nearly as tired. And no doubt about it, he'd pretty much saved my bacon. I would've survived, but still. "Where's Zamba?"

"Don't know. Any blondes in the wreckage?"

"Not that I saw, but the bodies are a little... well, you'll see."

I looked back out onto the porch. Gilberto was following our exchange. He wasn't pale or in shock. He was just as he'd always been-sallow and dirty-looking. His eyes were a bit wide, but that was all. He seemed to be handling this well.

It could've been an act. Gangs are big on face, and he probably had a lot of practice in not looking scared. But usually, when someone encounters the nightside for the first time, there's more trouble. Screaming, fainting, puking, rage-I've seen it all. The initial reaction doesn't mean much. It's how people deal with having the rationality of the world whopped away from under them over the long term that matters. After a brush with the nightside some retreat into rigid logic, a bulwark against something their upbringing tells them shouldn't exist. Others get increasingly loud and nervous, ending up wearing tinfoil hats and screeching about conspiracy aliens.

Some of them get really, really quiet, go home, and eat a bullet or some pills. It all depends.

On the other hand, in the barrio they know about Weres. Enough not to mess with them, at least.

Gilberto just looked at me, his chin coming up a little. Stubbornness made him look mulish, especially when he hunched his thin shoulders and peered out under strings of hair. What's it gonna be, that look asked. What you gonna do with me? Because I ain't going home.

I stared at him, trying to make a decision. It's not like snap decisions aren't a part of the job-some days, it's nothing but, and you have to make the right one in under a hundredth of a second. But this wasn't a decision that would or could be made without a lot of thought.

Then again, the students come along whether a teacher is ready or not. The world was just full of on-the-other-hand answers today. "You got a car, Gil?"

He shrugged. Even the shrug was right-equal parts stray-cat insouciance and hesitation.

"All right. Here's the first thing: don't steal any fucking cars. From now on you don't break or even bend the law. Go back to my house. There's a key under one of the empty flowerpots stacked on the east side. Go inside and don't touch anything, unless you're getting yourself a snack. We'll talk when I get home, and I don't know when that will be. You got me?"

He nodded. The hunted look didn't go away, but at least he straightened a little.

"I mean it," I persisted. "Don't steal a car. Don't break the speed limit. If you have a gun, clean or not, ditch it before you step in my door. You come in clean, or I won't have anything to do with you."

"I'm not stupid." The sullenness returned.

"Prove it by being clean when you step in my door. Stay inside, don't leave until I talk to you. Go on, now."

He shrugged. His slim brown fingers loosened, and he dropped the .22. It made a heavy sound when it hit the porch, and I winced internally. He's going to be a live one.

I watched him go down the sobbing, squeaking steps. He headed across the street and vanished into the darkness. I hoped he made it, and I hoped he listened to me.

Then I shelved that hope, scooped up his .22, and got back to the problem at hand.

This was not looking good at all.

"What just happened?" Saul still stood on the stairs, watching. Bits of zombie glop still clung to him, dripping off the fringe of his jacket. It was going to be a job and a half cleaning the suede up. Thank God he believes in Scotchgarding everything. It doesn't do much good with the rags my clothes end up as, but it works wonders for his.

"I don't know yet." I might have an apprentice, that's all. We'll see. "Best to keep him out of the way until I do." I checked the pistol, made sure the safety was on, and wondered if it was one I'd seen him use before.

The thought of that case was uncomfortable, to say the least. And Saul still hadn't asked any questions about it. And there was a grave up on Mount Hope, with a good cop sleeping under a green blanket. The people responsible had been mostly cleaned up-but not all of them.

Prioritize, Jill. Get back up on the horse. "When did Galina call?"

"Just as I got in the door. I came out here. Was wondering what the hell the kid was doing here when I heard the fight." He shrugged, stuck his hands in his pockets. "Any idea what's going on yet?"

"Not much. Other than these cases are connected somehow. And if Zamba's not a body here, she might be involved."

"Great." He sounded as thrilled as I felt about that. "What does she look like again?" As if he wouldn't remember her, but he was being sure. Checking. It was a partner's responsibility to check.

"Blond dreadlocks. Tall. Bad legs, but a good smile." I tried a smile on my own face, but it felt like plastic. This was going south fast. "Show me the bodies. Let's get this wrapped."

"Sure thing." But he just stood there, looking at me, for a long moment. "I'm glad I came out."

What do you want, a tickertape parade? But that was uncharitable of me. I could just chalk it up to nerves, couldn't I? "Me too, catkin. Let's see those bodies."

"Are you really?" It wasn't like him to persist. "You sure?"

I exaggerated rolling my eyes, just like a teenager. I'll never see the sunny side of thirty again, but sometimes eyerolling is so satisfying I don't care. "Of course I'm glad. Jesus, Saul, what's up with you?" And can it wait? I've got a city about to blow sky-high here, and a pattern I don't like the looks of underneath.

"Nothing." He turned gracefully and led me up the stairs. "There are bodies in the bedrooms, nothing in the kitchen but a pot on the stove. Smells like the other place, a little."

"But no blondes? Blond dreadlocks, waist-length?" Wide face, big nose, bad skin, rotting teeth rimmed with gold making a bright-starred smile, and those dreadlocks. Zamba was tall and almost breastless, and I'd sometimes thought she was in drag. Nowadays you can't tell, and dealing with 'breed on a regular basis will wallop some of your assumptions about gender pretty hard.

"Come and see."

Goddammit. But he was right not to tell me, I suppose. I might not have believed it, if he had.

It was nine bodies, all told. I recognized an ebony-skinned trio, male and female, who had been Zamba's longtime acolytes. There was a small, compact Hispanic male-Zamba was truly catholic in her choice of trainees-and a taller, Grecian redhead. A double-gemini of husky dark-haired males completed the sets. They were three to a room, her inner circle all naked and twisted together like the goats in the basement. The beds had been scattered with chrysanthemum petals, and their throats had been ripped out.

They probably wouldn't rise as zombies, though I would nail the palms and feet before Forensics got here. There wasn't enough etheric residue in them to power that kind of motion, though. Zamba's devotees had been eaten. And either someone had brushed aside Zamba's protections and killed her followers and her, or...

Jesus.

In the kitchen, a pot on the stove was long cool. A stringy brew of something that smelled vaguely similar to Lorelei's still-bubbling concoction rested under a thick scrim of clotted grease. The kitchen was otherwise spic-and-span, the attached dining room where Zamba fed her acolytes holding a long table, chairs ranked neatly, and an altar on the wall under the window that looked out on the side-yard and the wall of the abandoned house next door.

"What do you make of this?" Saul asked quietly. He stood by the sink, arms folded, looking at the bottle of dishwashing liquid and scrubbies, neatly placed in a chrome rack.

"I don't like that we can't find her body." That's just one of the things I don't like about this.

"Any chance she could be the one behind all this?"

Trust him to say what I was thinking. "More than a chance, catkin. Still, I suppose there's always room to hope she's not. I'd like it better if the bitch was dead."

"Now there's something I don't hear you say often." He peered out the window. "It's almost dawn."

No shit. This has been a long night. I spotted the phone, hanging at the end of the counter. "If Zamba's behind this, it's bad news. If she's just disappeared it's bad news too; it means we might have another body site." I let out a sigh. The smell was bad, the situation was worse, and I had the idea I wasn't going to spend today sleeping, either. "I've got to call in and see who they can spare to come out and process this site too. No rest for the wicked."

"Amen to that." His shoulders went down a little. Had he been bracing himself? For what? "What's our next step?"

I thought about it. "Calling someone to come out and take care of this site. Seeing if I overlooked Zamba's body downstairs or in the back yard. Going over this place with a fine-tooth comb, then going through the files-" I tapped the counter with bitten-down nails, my fingers drumming. "This has all the earmarks of a serious fucking tangle."

As usual, Saul put the question in reasonable terms. "If Zamba is behind this, what does she have against the Cirque?"

"I don't-" I straightened, suddenly, and stared at the pot on the stove. "Huh."

Saul kept quiet, looking at the sink, and let me wander around inside my head. It was good to have him there-he served up the right questions, and knew when to keep his mouth shut so I could think. I found myself studying the lines of his fringed jacket, his jeans splattered with zombie, the edge of the stove, his boots, my own boot-toes. Eyes roving, snagging on the linoleum as I pursued the line of thought to its logical end, found it wanting-but not wanting enough.

"If a better theory comes along, I'll snag it," I decided out loud. "Call this scene in, I'm going to check the back yard and the houses on either side."

"I'm coming with you." His jaw jutted, stubbornly.

Oh, for Chrissake. "Of course you are. After you call."

16.

Piper was still processing the last scene. This time Foster showed up, his own brown ponytail slick as ever. He surveyed the stinking goop starred with porous bones that had been zombies and sighed. "Busy night. Anything else?"

I almost hated to tell him. Foster always reminds me of an otter-brown, sleek, with a cute little nose and quick clever fingers. "The bedrooms. Don't take the iron nails out of the corpses. And there's animals downstairs."

"Well, shit." But he motioned his team past, Carolyn holding the door log in front of her like a holy grail, Max with his camera, Stephanie and Browder with their matching smiles and bags of gear. "Beaucoup overtime."

Behind them, Sullivan and the Badger showed up. The Badger negotiated the stairs with her mouth set tight and turned down, her gray hair pulled back into its usual bun, the white streak down one side glinting, since I'd flicked the porch lights on. Sullivan, scratching at his coppery stubble, gave me a weak grin. He looks like dishwater even on a good day, but that pale, nervous exterior hides a sharp, inductive mind.

The Badger looks like a cookie-baking, kitten-sweatshirt-and-mom-jean-wearing soccer mom-a particularly cuddly and harmless one. She'd added a pair of steel-framed glasses to her round florid face, and moved carefully. I wasn't fooled-for such a rotund woman, she was light on her feet when it counted. And they don't call her the Badger for her hair.

No, she gets that name by being tenacious as hell. She does it in such a nice, unassuming way that people forget her namesake has teeth and claws.

Rumor has it she went a couple of rounds with a sex offender once, and busted him up bad by the time backup arrived. The perp thought one plump lady cop would be easy to bowl over. He spent three weeks in the hospital and another couple months in physical therapy, I was told.

I'd lay odds it's true.

"How many fucking scenes you going to give us tonight?" Sullivan said, blinking. He patted his breast pocket, where a pack of Marlboro Lights peeped up at me. For someone who looks so washed-out, he certainly has a big strident voice.

"As many as I've got. Hi, Badge."

She grunted, heaved herself up onto the porch, and eyed me. "Thought you didn't want a team tonight."

I shrugged. Silver tinkled in my hair, falling over my shoulders. "With bodies mounting up like this, I need backup." I'm glad it's you two.

"Huh. Should we check the other scenes?" It's amazing, the way her soft, modulated voice can slice through a hubbub. One of the forensic techs was laughing-shrill laughter with that edge of disgust you hear so often at homicide scenes.

It's not disrespectful. It's because sometimes you have to laugh to keep from screaming, crying, or throwing up. "Might as well. This turned out bigger than I thought it'd be. I thought I could save you guys some work."

Sullivan wheezed and the Badger chuckled. "You kidding?" she got out, between snickers. "If we wanted less work we wouldn't have chosen this job."

"Very funny. Make sure the techs don't take the nails out of the hands and feet. See if you can get any IDs on the messy bodies; the less-messy ones will be easier but I already know who they are. Find out where they were last seen, see if you can trace the animals-"