The flame guttered; I let out a soft breath and it straightened. My smart eye watered. The mass over the bed was seething, trying to find a purchase. The safe path I was following twisted to the right just as the victim gave another chilling, childlike chuckle.

“Come a little closer, said the spider to the fly,” it crooned, out through the man’s mouth. “Come closer, bruja, and look into our eyes. We want you to see us, yes we do—”

You’re about to get your wish, asshole. I reached the side of the mattress, kept my eyes on the flame, and tipped the wine-bottle up to my mouth. Blue light sparked in the fluid, whether it was the blessing reacting against the mark on my wrist or my intent flooding the alcohol I couldn’t tell.

The thing inside the man’s body chuckled wetly, smacking its lips, and I heard the groaning of leather as his body erupted into wild motion. But I was just a half-second quicker, and the wine I sprayed across the candleflame blossomed into blue flame just a fraction of a second before he would have smacked into me. I flung the taper too, shaking the flame out, and the sudden curtain of darkness gave me another critical half-second before I grabbed him by the throat and shoved, still dribbling blue-flaming wine from my lips.

It wasn’t pure theatrics. There’s not really enough alcohol content in cheap blessed wine to ignite, but sorcery helps—and the contact, mouth meeting flame or spit booze, is a symbol understood by the creatures in this man’s body. It’s what their followers do as an offering or a protection.

And it’s hard for the body’s natural protective reflexes not to trigger when there’s a ball of blue flame coming straight at the vulnerable eyes. That reaction gave me a thin wedge and a chance to drive it home.

I was on the mattresses over him, my knees on his shoulders, one hand on his forehead, pushing. My aura sparkled and flamed, and the thing inside him exploded out with a shotgun’s cough.

His screaming took on a harsher tone. I fell, hitting the floor with a thud, various implements in my coat digging into my flesh, and it tried to strangle me before my aura sparked again, sea-urchin spikes driving it away. It tried again, howling obscenities in a sweet, asexual child’s voice, and I shoved at it with a completely nonphysical effort, screaming my own imprecations. The scar was a live coal, pumping sorcerous force up my arm.

There was a crack, the physical world bowing out in concentric ripples of reaction, and a weird ringing noise. The man on the mattress was still screaming, and Saul’s growl spiraled up. Mixed into the noise, there was splintering wood and a sudden weightlessness.

I hit hard, narrowly missing clipping my head on a countertop, and little peppering noises resounded all around me. I blinked, chalk dust and splinters hanging weightlessly before descending in lazy swirls. The peppering noises were little bits of wrapped candy, falling out of thin air and smacking down around me with sounds like a hard rain.

Eva’s face came into view. She was chalk-white, dark bruised rings under her eyes, and she frankly stared for a few moments.

Saul peered through the huge hole torn in the ceiling, his eyes shining green-gold. The sound of the victim’s rubbery sobbing gradually overwhelmed the rain of candy. There’s nothing like hearing a grown man cry like a three-year-old.

Especially when that cry is blessedly, completely human. But we weren’t done yet, and I struggled against sudden inertia, my body disobeying the imperatives I was giving it.

“Well,” Eva said. “That was impressive.”

I blinked. Twice. It had knocked me right through the ceiling. “Shit,” I muttered, and the world grayed for a moment before I came back to myself with Eva gasping and Saul suddenly there, his face looming over mine. No, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t make my mouth work for a half-second, gapping soundlessly like a fish. NO, go back up and watch him—

It was too late. The flexing of the world completed, a hard snap with a thick rubber band. Or maybe it was leather peeling and popping free. The high-pitched, childish laughter came back, ringing, and more candy pelted down like stinging rain. Another rending, splintering noise, and the laughter was receding, along with a wet thudding sound, then light pattering footsteps.

Our victim, Trevor Watson, was on the lam.

This is getting seriously weird.” I crouched on the cellar stairs, easily, running my smart eye over the candle-lit walls. “The wife had no idea?”

“She was adamant.” Eva, behind me, was round-eyed. “I didn’t think to look in the basement.”

“Don’t worry about it. You did exactly what you should have. There was no indicator the guy was into voodoo.” The candles were arranged on an altar draped with green and gold, novenas flickering, a crudely done painting of the Trinity fastened to the concrete wall. A brass dish of sticky candy, a bottle of rum, and a few other implements, including wilted bunches of chrysanthemums. It was thick down here; the padlock on the outside door leading down to the cellar was new, and this whole thing was beginning to take on a shape I didn’t like at all.

“Well, there was the chanting. But I didn’t twig to it.” She folded her arms.

I decided there were no traps lying under the surface of the visible and rose, stepped down another stair, and crouched again, watching. “I said you shouldn’t worry about it. This guy wasn’t anything more than a low-level novice. Any serious practitioner would have some defenses down here.” Though I’m not sure yet. Slow and easy and by the book, Jill.

Saul was outside smoking a Charvil. If Eva felt bad about not checking the cellar, Saul probably felt just as bad for letting the victim—or whatever was riding him, to be precise—get away.

To be even more precise, I knew what was riding our victim, but I didn’t know why. I had a sneaking suspicion I’d find a connection to whatever was happening out at the Cirque, though.

I hate those kinds of suspicions. I moved down another stair, scanning thoroughly, but I found nothing that would tell me our victim was anything more than a secret follower. A complete and utter novice who shouldn’t have been able to fling curses while under a loa’s influence—who shouldn’t have even been able to be ridden.

It’s called “being ridden.” Like a horse. The loa descends on one of the followers during a ritual, and gains certain things from inhabiting flesh. Having it happen to a solitary practitioner isn’t quite unheard-of, but it only happens where the practitioner has sorcerous or psychic talent to burn.

This guy had no markers of initiation, intuition, or sorcery. At all.

I stepped off the last stair, boots clicking and my coat weighing on my tired shoulders. I really wish I wasn’t getting the feeling these things are connected. The cellar was narrow, meant for nothing more than storing a lawnmower or two, and the candles made it hot and close. The guy was lucky his house hadn’t burned down. But if the loa were taking such a particular interest in him, his house was probably safe.

They do take care of their followers, mostly. If you can get their attention. But the trouble is, once you have their attention, it’s the scrutiny of creatures without a human moral code. Capriciousness might not be cruelty, but when wedded to power it gets awful close sometimes.

The altar looked pretty standard. Twists of paper and ash half-filled a wide ceramic bowl, used for burning incense for communications, or the names of enemies. The only thing that didn’t fit was a cup.

It was an enamel camping-cup, a blue speckled metal number that looked easily older than I was. The blue sparkled for a moment, something running under the metal’s surface, and my hand arrived to scoop it up with no real consideration on my part. It was a reflex, and one I was glad of, because one of the candles tipped over and spilled flame onto the altar.