As promised, their car showed up in less than ten minutes, and with the addition of a third constable to our little group - one Samuel Paulson, who looked even more wet behind the ears than Meyers - we struck out in the direction indicated by the crystal. Its connection to Mina Rein remained more unstable than I’d have liked, but the glow grew steadily (though it still flickered, which worried me) over the next fifteen minutes as we crossed town and left the city proper. We ended up pulling off to the side of the road and parking along a stretch of woods.

I got out of the car and held up the crystal, which immediately shot out straight towards the woods, glowing brightly. Then it flickered, swayed and dipped…and suddenly went out completely, dropping straight down on it’s string. I winced.

“What does that mean?” Sergeant Chase asked, coming to stand beside me.

“I hope it just means that my spell wasn’t as stable as I’d thought and the connection broke,” I said, feeling a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach.

“What else could it mean?” he asked softly.

“That she just died,” I replied just as quietly, looking up to see him watching me closely.

His lips tightened and he nodded. “All right. Meyers, I know you can handle a Magearm pistol…break out two for us. Paulson, can you?”

“Not yet, sir,” the driver said. “I haven’t learned how yet.”

Wow. This guy was deep in rookie territory. I thought everybody who graduated from the police academy knew how to handle a Magearm. Maybe that was just the London Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard.

“All right,” Chase said, “stay with the car, then. Meyers, grab a shotgun while you’re in there.”

Constable Meyers had just unlocked and opened the police car’s boot, which I guessed was filled with various and sundry useful equipment - including, apparently, weapons. I supposed it made sense. “Yes, sir.”

“Mage Kinnear,” Chase said, turning back to me, “you and your familiars are coming with us. We might need your help or expertise. But if I tell you to stay back, you do so. Without question. Understood?”

Suddenly, he reminded me a little of my Special Magical Response trainer at Scotland Yard. I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded in return. “Good. Let’s go, then.”

As we followed the two policemen into the woods - which were dense and shadowy, and the day already cloudy - I was suddenly and powerfully reminded of the last time I’d followed someone into a forest.

I shivered a little. This was nothing like that. We were with two police officers, at least one of whom I was confident knew what he was doing, and the other seemed competent enough. Athena and I had been working hard to improve our fighting skills, both physical and magical (in my case). And besides, we had only the vaguest of reasons to believe anything was wrong. My tracking spell could have failed.

Sure…a spell I’d known how to work successfully for the better part of fifteen years…

I shivered again, then frowned a little. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, and when I glanced over at Athena and Artemis I saw their tails were lashing with agitation and bristled out.

“Sergeant,” I said softly, “hold up a second. Something’s wrong.”

Sergeant Chase stopped immediately and turned to look at us. He quickly saw the agitation my sisters were displaying and looked at me more closely. “What is it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. One moment.” I lifted my cane in my left hand and drew in a bit of ambient Anima…and shivered a third time. The energy here felt…I don’t know, wrong somehow. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was almost as if the Anima I’d pulled in was warped, or moldy.

“This is weird,” I said softly, resisting an impulse to cast my aura sight spell. If the energy around here was so weirdly twisted, trying to view auras here might do damage to me. “Something is…off. The Anima here is warped somehow.”

Chase tightened his grip on his Magearm pistol and nodded slightly. “Can you tell which direction the worst…warping is in?”

I turned slightly, holding my cane out and using it as a buffer between me and the local Anima as I reached out to touch it. After a moment, I pointed in the direction we’d been going. “Straight ahead that way. Not too far, either.”

Another ten minutes of careful walking brought us to a clearing of sorts. It was an uneven circle of land where no trees grew, and the canopy above seemed to almost draw back from it. Trees around the border of the clearing were actually leaning away from the center of it a little. The ground was overgrown and weedy, but only grasses grew there; no saplings, no wildflowers, nothing but grasses, and those looked anemic and brown in spite of it being the height of spring.

In the center of the clearing stood the ruins of an old, old building. It appeared to have been built from local stone, held together - once upon a time - with rough mortar, and had been just a single story tall. The eastern wall had collapsed outward at some point, and half of the roof had fallen in.

On the side of the building that was open to the sky, what appeared to be a spiral staircase rose up about three stories and stopped abruptly. It was made of some black material - I guessed iron - and at a distance the stairs looked unbelievably white and clean.

“That’s…kind of weird,” Chase said quietly.

Athena laid a hand on my arm and turned me gently. Artemis was crouched down at the edge of the clearing behind us, her ears flattened back and her tail lashing back and forth in agitation. I’d been so caught up in my own impressions of the clearing that I hadn’t felt hers.

> Artemis hissed. >

“Wrong?” I asked aloud.

“Pardon?” Chase asked, turning to look at us. He spotted Artemis and froze. “Problem?”

“She says this place is bad,” Athena explained. “That it’s wrong, somehow.”

“Can you tell us how, Artemis?” I asked.

She shook her head side to side, a fair approximation of a human ‘no’ gesture. Then she shook herself all over, from her head to the end of her tail, a feline ‘no’. > She sounded very frustrated.

“I’m guessing that means she can’t clarify,” Chase said.

“You speak cat?” I asked, trying - and largely failing - to lighten the mood.

“I have two cats at home, actually,” Chase replied, smiling faintly. “But even if I didn’t, I can recognize frustration when I see it.”

“Good call.” I turned back to look at the single-story building and its entirely paradoxical three-story spiral staircase. Then I looked around slowly, taking everything in again.

Withered grass. Half-collapsed building. Weirdly clean-looking wrought-iron spiral staircase with white stairs, way too tall for the building. Circular clearing, open to the sky…

Wait. Circular?

“Athena, am I seeing things, or is this clearing almost perfectly circular. Look at the opening in the trees above us.” I pointed up.

Athena looked up. Chase and Meyers did too, looking confused. After a moment, all three of them looked back at me.

“It definitely is,” Athena said. “At least, the opening in the canopy is.”

“She’s right,” Meyers agreed. “Is the whole clearing circular? And did you notice the way the trees seem to be leaning away from the center of it?”

I nodded. “I noticed.”

“So did I,” Chase said slowly. “You think this place was used for magical rituals of some sort?”

“That would seem likely,” I said. “Probably not good ones, considering how twisted the energy here feels, and the way it’s agitating Artemis.” And Athena and myself, for that matter, though to lesser degrees.

“You think this is where your spell was leading us before it fizzled out?” Chase asked.

I nodded, hoping against hope that that was the reason my spell had failed. “I’m willing to bet on it. If she entered this area - or was in this area already - it could account for my spell having trouble keeping a lock on her and finally collapsing.”

Athena gave me a look that told me very clearly she wasn’t buying it. But I refused to entertain the more obvious explanation for more than a few seconds at a time.

That Mina was dead.

Sadly, it made a lot more sense than energy disruptions causing my spell to fail. Yes, the ambient Anima in this clearing was weirdly twisted…but that wouldn’t cause a spell to fail. It might make a spell behave in unexpected ways if you weren’t prepared for it - which I might not be, come to think of it, so caution might be warranted if I had to cast any spells here - or even cause it to do something totally different than intended.

But fail altogether? No. I was deluding myself a little if I let myself believe that. At least I had an excuse. I wanted to find Mina alive.

I felt something brush against my leg and looked down to see Artemis crouched there, tense and unhappy. >

I crouched down and wrapped an arm around her. “This is where my spell led us. We have to see if the girl we’re looking for is actually here.”

“You can stay here, if you want,” Chase offered. “Meyers and I can check out the building.”

Athena and I exchanged an uneasy look. “No,” I said, “I think we should come with you. Artemis is right…there’s something very wrong here. You might need us…and I feel like we should stick together.”

Artemis rose from her crouch and shook herself. > She huffed out a noise that sounded a lot like a sneeze. >

I ruffled her ears and rose too. >

> she replied glumly.

“Let’s go, then,” Chase said, drawing his Magearm pistol and starting into the clearing.

I heard the soft leather-on-metal rasp of Athena drawing her shieldblade, and gripped my cane a bit more tightly as we followed them.

As we moved towards the building, a weight seemed to settle on me. My mood began to sink, and I had to shake myself slightly the same way Artemis had to get rid of it. This place was definitely not right. Even the grass showed it, thinning to just bare, dry soil about halfway to the building.

“Wait,” Athena said, “stop!”

We all did, and all of us turned to look at her. She was pointing to the ground a couple of yards ahead of us. I’d been focused on the building - or, more to the point, the weird spiral staircase. Athena, always the practical one, had been watching the ground.

I saw what she was pointing at immediately. The wide curve of a line drawn in the dirt. When I moved forward a little, I saw that it curled around either side of the building.

A circle. A large one. That was probably not good.

“Do you see any ritual objects?” I asked her quietly.

“What is it?” Chase asked at the same time.

“It’s a circle,” I answered him, “a large one. Until we have an idea of what it’s for, we shouldn’t try to cross it.”

“How do we figure out what it’s for?” Meyers asked.

Not a bad question, that. “We start by trying to find any ritual items used to enhance and focus it - crystals, prisms, mirrors, totems, that sort of thing.”

Athena had taken a few steps forward and was peering along the curve of the circle. “I don’t see anything. I don’t even see any other markings on the ground.”

“That’ll make it harder to identify,” I said, going to stand beside her. >

> Athena said.

“How much harder?” Chase asked as he and Meyers moved up even with us. “If she’s hurt, we may not have a lot of time.”

A master of understatement, that one. “It shouldn’t take me long,” I said. After all, a ritual circle of this size was rarely used for anything more complicated than containing or redirecting energy. A circle this large could be made insanely complex…but the more complex you made a circle, the more difficult it was to use properly.

For example, the amazing circle that Hollis Ellister had embedded in the floor of his spellcasting lab - with its concentric rings of platinum, copper and silver, its woven bands of gold and steel, prisms, tuning forks, mirrors, quartz crystals and more precious gemstones - was a work of art. But if I hadn’t had a decade of training under Jonathan Tremane’s careful tutelage, I never would’ve been able to use and control it to heal and Elevate Athena after claiming her.

As it was, I’d almost lost control of the Elevation ritual, and had slept for most of a day after completing it and passing out.

A ritual circle large enough to encircle a building could be made very complex indeed. But at that size it would be incredibly difficult to control it without several spellcasters working together to do so. Finding this large a circle out in the middle of the forest meant one of two things: Either it was a simple circle meant to contain energy, or it was the outer ring of something considerably more intricate.

I gathered up a bit of Anima and held out my right hand, palm up. I shaped a simple spell - a bit of light wrapped in a bubble of force - and watched it form above my palm. Then, with a flick of my wrist, I sent it spinning towards the building.

“Hey!” Chase said. “What…”

The little sphere of force and light passed harmlessly over the circle. I closed my hand before it went too much further, and it snuffed out as if it had never been.

“I don’t know what the circle was for,” I said, “but it’s not active now. If it had been, my spell would’ve interfered with it, and we’d’ve seen a visible disruption of some sort. It’s safe for us to cross.” I hesitated a moment, then added with a lopsided smile, “Or, rather, it’s no less safe for us to cross it than it is for us to be in this clearing.”

Artemis grumbled agreement, still close by my side.

“Come on, then,” Chase said, starting forward again. “I want a look inside that building.”

We skirted around to the collapsed side of the building first to get a better look at it. The wall at the end of the building - and part of the front and rear walls near it - had collapsed inward, bringing the ceiling down on top of it all. In spite of that, the spiral staircase rose out of the rubble, evidently untroubled by the chaos around it.

Up close, it really was a work of art. Its structure was made of wrought iron, twisted and woven together to form the stairs, rail and decorative bits between, all of it winding around a central support that had been molded in the shape of a Doric column. The iron was pristine, painted black and as rust-free as if it had just been installed instead of being standing in the open for who knew how long. The stairs were covered in clean white carpet and showed no sign of ever having been used, or even of being exposed to the elements.

Artemis rumbled uneasily and pressed up against my leg. >

>

>

> I assured her.

Even as I thought it, Meyers started to step forward toward the stairs. Athena caught his arm and pulled him back. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not?” Meyers asked, then pointed up with his shotgun. “Look at that! The stairs just…disappear. It’s not capped or anything, it just stops. There might be something up there.”

“If there is,” Chase said slowly, “we’re totally unprepared to deal with it. If Mage Kinnear and her familiars think we shouldn’t go near it, we don’t go near it.”

“Artemis says it’s bad, whatever that means,” I said.

“You don’t know?” Chase asked.

Athena smiled a little. “Her senses are often better about that sort of thing than ours. Felines and canines are very sensitive to the supernatural.”

“I’ll say one thing,” I added. “Finding a three story staircase rising out of the remains of a one story building, open to the elements but showing no signs of rust or mold…that’s not natural. I’d love to study it, but now isn’t the time, and it might be more dangerous than we’re ready to deal with, like the Sergeant said.”

Meyers sighed. “All right.”

“I saw an open doorway around front,” Chase said, “in the uncollapsed part of the building. It looks pretty sound up-close. Let’s go see what’s inside.”

The atmosphere in the clearing was starting to make my skin crawl a little. Or maybe I was getting sensory overflow from Athena and Artemis. Either way, I was more than ready to be done with this spot. The spot, however, was not ready to be done with us. Above us, and not far enough away for my comfort, something…screamed. A moment later I heard the flutter and snap of cloth overhead.

“What was that?” Meyers asked, pointing his shotgun at the sky and looking around nervously.

I shook my head. “No clue.”

“Sounded almost feline,” Athena murmured. “Like a cougar, maybe?”

“Except cougars don’t fly,” I said.

“Point.”

We stood there in tense silence for a moment before Chase pointed to the door. “No point lingering, and every minute we spend out here is a minute longer that girl might be in trouble.”

Or dead, I didn’t say, then forcefully stuffed the thought down and buried it. No pun intended.

Chase and Meyers took up positions on either side of the open doorway and gestured for us to stay back. Then Chase swung around and through the door, his Magearm pistol held before him. After a moment, his voice came back to us, firm and strong. “Clear. Bloody dark, but clear. Alys, you and your familiars come in next, then Meyers.”

“All right,” I said. “Do you want me to send a light in?”

“Yes, please.”

I shifted my cane to my right hand, gathered a bit of Anima and a moment later a fresh bubble of glowing force drifted above my cane’s head. It was almost exactly the same spell I’d cast a few minutes earlier, but I’d strengthened it to make it last. I gestured with my cane, and the magelight darted through the open door, illuminating the small room inside.

It was, I saw as I entered, a foyer of sorts, and looked much newer than the building’s rough stone exterior would seem to indicated. There were a few rusty old metal chairs sitting against one smooth wall, their leather seats long-since rotted away. The walls - I thought they might be relatively modern drywall, which was really weird - had been painted, but the paint had peeled and flaked away in several places, and was too mold-spotted to make out whatever its color had been.

There was another door that lead further into the building, and it did not fit. It was much newer than anything else here, made of shiny metal and heavily reinforced. I suspected it would be easier to go through the wall on either side of it rather than trying to get through it…it looked like it belonged in a bank vault.

Behind us, another shrieking scream echoed through the clearing, and I turned just in time to see Meyers - standing just outside - get hit broadside by a black mass and vanish without a sound. His shotgun banged against the door frame and clattered across the floor as he was yanked away.

“Chase!” I called, leveling my cane at the doorway and gathering Anima for a spell.

The sergeant was beside me in a moment as Athena sheathed her shieldblade and scooped up the fallen shotgun. “What happened?” He asked.

I shook my head. “I have no idea. One second he was there, the next second some dark mass hit him and then he was gone.”

Artemis made a strange whining sound in the back of her throat and backed up out of my line of sight. > She was almost babbling. In the two years - gods, but it felt so much longer - since I’d claimed her and her sister as my familiars, I had never seen her express fear like this.

Athena glanced down at her, just as surprised - and unsettled - as I was, then aimed the shotgun at the open door that led outside and flicked off the safety. We’d both learned quite a bit about handling firearms during our training with Scotland Yard’s Special Magical Response teams, and I was very glad we had.

Silence. Nothing but the rustling of leaves in the wind and the soft creaks of the building around us.

Then Meyers - uttering an entirely understandable scream of fright - thudded to the ground outside, several yards from the doorway. He lay there, dazed and staring up at the sky.

“Meyers!” Chase took a step towards the door, then stopped. “What the bloody hell…Meyers, are you all right?”

“…Yes…” Meyers said weakly. He sounded like he’d had the breath knocked out of him. Or the crap scared out of him. Probably both.

With a small effort of will, I shaped the Anima I’d gathered, and flickers of electricity began to dance around the head of my cane. Lightning was a long-standing favorite of mine. It might be more difficult to create and control than fire, but it was much easier to regulate the amount of damage it did once you knew how, and it was therefore - paradoxically - easier to keep it from doing more damage than you wanted.

Fire had a way of growing, whether you wanted it to or not.

“What do we do?” I asked Chase in a hushed voice, deferring to him. He was, after all, a police sergeant, and Hollis had urged me to let them take the lead if I ended up with them.

“Wait a moment,” Chase replied quietly, then called out, “Meyers, stay where you are. Don’t try to move yet.”

“Ok, Sarge.”

“Do you see…whatever it was?” Chase asked.

Meyers turned his head slowly from side to side, then shook it. “No…I don’t know where it went after it dropped me.”

Silence again. After perhaps two minutes, there was a frustrated-sounding scream from outside and above our heads. Then, almost faster than the eye could follow, a black, fluttering mass swept down into the open doorway.

Violence can be very loud. We made a tremendous amount of noise.

The thunder of Athena’s shotgun drowned out the cracks and snaps as my lightning bolt merged with the smaller bolt that leapt from Chase’s Margearm pistol. The black mass in the doorway lunged backwards with another spine-shivering scream - it almost sounded human, but at the same time was distinctly not - and swirled unevenly away across the clearing. It reached the edge of the circle, just before where the grass began to grow…and rebounded off of something we could neither see nor feel, then shot in a drunken swaying line off to the right and out of our sight.

During our concussive barrage, Meyers had evidently decided to take what cover he could. He was now lying on his stomach with his arms covering his head. As the noise died down, he lowered his arms and lifted his head to look at us, wide-eyed.

“What the bloody hell was that?” Chase asked.

I shook my head. “I have no idea,” I said. Then I realized I was shaking a little and took a deep breath to steady myself. “None at all.”

> Artemis said firmly, <>

“Not until we know if the girl is here or not,” I said firmly, sounding more confident than I felt.

“What?” Chase asked.

“Artemis says we need to go.”

“That sounds like good counsel,” he said, “but I agree with you. Not until we know about Mina.”

> Athena murmured. >

> I said.

>

“Then we go outside and get Meyers, for starters. Me first, then Alys close behind, followed by Athena.” Chase looked over his shoulder at Artemis, then back out of the open door.

Meyers had rolled onto his back again, craning his neck awkwardly to look at us now and then as he scanned the sky. I noticed that he’d drawn his Magearm pistol and was holding it at his side.

“Do you think we hurt it?” I asked.

“You’re the expert here,” Chase said. I thought he sounded just a little bit sarcastic. “Do you?”

It had fled from us, its path had been unsteady…but I didn’t know if we’d just surprised it, or if it moved that way normally. “I don’t know.”

Chase nodded. “Me neither. Let’s go find out.”