Unleashed

TWO

YOU MIGHT SUPPOSE THAT ALL ERS ARE MUCH the same, but they’re not. San Francisco General is like the ones you see on TV-gunshot victims, knife wounds, heart attack patients staggering in clutching their chests and gasping for air. Luckily, we were over at UCSF on Parnassus, a kinder and gentler place.

Victor wasn’t the kind and gentle sort, however. He never is, but right now he was more pissed than usual since the lower half of his left leg was shredded, almost to the bone in places. His pants leg was now soaked through with blood, which was the only reason he’d finally agreed to an ER visit.

“Pit bull attack,” I explained to the admitting nurse.

If only that had been true. Victor had been savaged by something far worse, and it was my fault, at least in part.

“Did you notify Animal Control?” the admitting nurse asked. He seemed genuinely concerned.

“Not yet,” I said. “It ran off and I was too busy getting my friend over here to even think about that.”

After months spent hunting the creature off and on, this time we had almost got it. We’d started taking an interest in tracking it when odd stories about mutilated pets had begun to surface in the newspapers. We were fairly sure we knew what was responsible for those attacks. But it didn’t become a priority for us until it started attacking Ifrits whenever it could. And now, it had apparently started targeting people as well. That was when we had got serious about it.

But we hadn’t been able to track it down. It was fast and it was smart. Being smart was a given, seeing as it was an Ifrit of sorts. Not a real Ifrit, like Lou, but the product of an incautious incantation by some very peculiar individuals. I had been instrumental in bringing them what they needed to accomplish it, and so I felt it was partly my responsibility. And Victor and I are also enforcers. Our job is to prevent problems like that from happening, not to help create them.

True Ifrits are small-seldom over ten pounds or so, although Lou, my Ifrit, was twelve and would have been twenty if I’d let him eat every time he felt like it. They are companions to practitioners-the lucky ones at least. Not everyone has one, although all practitioners wish they did. The reasons why Ifrits are relatively rare are still not clear, although we’d come up with some interesting theories lately.

Most Ifrits take the form of cats or other small animals; a few, like Lou, are small dogs. Lou looks just like a shrunken-down Doberman with uncropped ears and tail, black with a tan chest patch and muzzle and eyebrow markings. But he’s not a dog, not really.

The creature we were hunting was more like forty pounds. That may not sound very impressive, but your average wolverine weighs no more than forty pounds, either, and they can tear through the roof of a mountain cabin and have been known to drive an adult bear away from a tasty carcass. And I had no doubt this thing could have taken a wolverine in a fight.

If it had been only an animal, even a smart one, there would have been no problem. Animals just want to be left alone; they don’t plot revenge or possess agendas. But it was more than that, and psychotic as well. It killed just to kill, and it had an unquenchable hatred for true Ifrits.

An orderly helped Victor onto a gurney and rolled him into a side room. Sometimes it pays to be compact-Victor fit on the gurney quite nicely. My feet would have been hanging over the end. Victor was looking drawn and wan, a far cry from his usual dapper self. His face was ashen and his close-cut beard showed dark against his pale skin. That skin was drawn tight across his face, so tight that the cheek-bones looked as if they were about to burst right through. Below his left eye, a muscle twitched. The only other time I’d seen a twitch like that on his face was when he’d been trying to restrain himself from killing someone. But he was still Victor, in complete control of his emotions even with a mangled leg. An ER doc stopped by for a quick look.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said, lifting the sheet.

He spoke with that practiced, casual air of competence good doctors have, meant to reassure the patient that however bad it is, it can be fixed. You know it’s an act, but it’s reassuring nonetheless. But his involuntary intake of breath when he saw the leg dispelled that illusion. He took only a brief look before shaking his head.

“I’m afraid you’re going to need a plastic surgeon,” he said. “That’s a little beyond me.” He looked at the leg more carefully. “You say a dog did that? Hard to believe. Looks more like that mountain lion that’s been making news.”

Victor didn’t argue. He’s a master at saying just the right thing to avoid problems with civilians.

“I know,” he said. “Jim Schenkman is a personal friend of mine, and I’ll be seeing him first thing tomorrow. All I need is some basic suturing until then.”

I had no idea who Jim Schenkman was, but the ER doctor clearly did.

“That’s a break,” the doc said. “That’s who I’d want working on me. But I’m afraid suturing won’t be enough. You need to be admitted to the hospital. If we don’t get you into surgery fairly quickly, you’re going to lose that leg.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Victor said.

The doc stared at him as if he were insane. He tried to explain why going home wasn’t an option, and another doc came by to back him up. Victor didn’t argue, but he wasn’t about to spend the night in the hospital. He just nodded agreeably and waited for them to run down.

Victor might or might not actually know this Schenkman guy, but that wasn’t who he was going to be seeing anyway. I’d already called Campbell, my ex, and she was on her way down from Soda Springs. She’s the best healer around, and once Victor’s leg was stabilized, she’d be able to do more for him than any plastic surgeon. Without her, he might well lose his leg, even with the best of surgeons available. She wouldn’t be able to heal it overnight; the leg was too damaged even for her, but she could make it whole and cut his recovery time from months to a week or so. In theory. After I got a good look at the leg I wondered if the damage might not be too much even for her.

It was three hours before the staff was satisfied they’d done all they could for the present. They weren’t happy when Victor insisted on leaving, and the ER doc actually swore at him, but there wasn’t anything they could do keep him there. Despite what they like you to think, if you’re determined to leave, there’s not a thing they can do to stop you, even if it means you’ll die soon after.

While they worked on Victor, I picked up a tattered newspaper from the lounge and spent some of that time rereading what I’d already seen that morning.

THIRD MOUNTAIN LION VICTIM DIES

Cathy Brougham, 22, is the latest victim to die from a vicious mountain lion attack. While hiking Tuesday in the East Bay near Mount Diablo State Park she vanished, failing to return home that night. Her body, mauled almost beyond recognition, was discovered early Wednesday morning by another hiker.

Two other hikers believe they may have seen her on a hiking trail at dusk on Tuesday.

Farther down on the page, an interview with a park ranger explained what to do if you meet a lion-wave your arms, yell, try to appear large, never turn your back-all useful bits of advice. But only if it’s really a mountain lion. I knew better.

The ranger also said he’d never seen a lion do anything like that before. The injuries were more consistent with a bear attack, he said, but noted there hadn’t been a fatal bear attack in California in more than a century.

Two of the attacks had been in the East Bay Hills, and one had been in Marin. Nothing in the city so far-maybe the creature was smart enough to know that would bring more heat than it could handle. Usually Lou could have tracked it down for us-he can find almost anything. But this creature was a distorted version of an Ifrit, with some of the same qualities. It was resistant to magical energy, and that messed with Lou’s tracking radar. The only reason we’d been able to find it at all was a brief story in the paper about a man who swore he’d seen a wolverine near the Presidio. He’d been ignored, most people chalking up his story to mountain lion hysteria.

When we were ready to leave, my old battered van came in useful for once. A hospital orderly helped me load Victor into the back of the van where he could lie flat without having to bend his leg. The ER doc had given Victor a scrip for Demerol, which showed how serious he thought the pain was going to be. Victor wouldn’t fill it, though. He thought using drugs to deal with a problem of any sort was a sign of moral weakness, although he wasn’t above using talent to dull his pain. I didn’t see the difference, except that while talent isn’t available to ordinary citizens, drugs are. But that’s Victor.

A half hour later we were back at his Victorian house out by Ocean Beach. It’s a beautiful place, a mansion really, but it seems a bit out of place for the neighborhood. I didn’t find out the truth about it until I’d known him quite a while. In reality, it had been built not that many years ago from plans Victor had brought back from England when he’d lived there. So it really was a faux Victorian, complete with gables, windows overlooking the Pacific, and authentic period furniture. It must have cost a fortune to build, but Victor has never had any money concerns.

I helped him up the stairs, moving one step at a time. He stretched out onto the couch in his study, extending the damaged leg and sighing with relief. For once neither one of us was sniping at each other-I was shaken by the viciousness of the attack on him, and even the usually unflappable Victor was subdued by the extent of the damage to his leg.

I called Eli, my best friend and Victor’s as well, although Eli was more of a colleague to Victor, more of a mentor to me. He was away at a conference and not answering his cell, so I left a noncommittal message for him to call me back.

Maggie, Victor’s Ifrit, stalked over and looked at me as if somehow I was responsible for the situation. Being a cat-well, sort of-she believed the proper assignation of blame is always the most important thing. Lou quietly backed out of the way. She and Lou don’t get along particularly well, though they tend to set up an informal truce whenever there’s real trouble.

The three hours we’d spent in the ER had given Campbell just enough time to make it down from her cabin in Soda Springs, up by Donner Summit. She breezed in ten minutes later, gave me an abstracted wave, and immediately went to Victor’s side. His leg was wrapped in bandages from the ER, which had to be removed before she could assess the damage. She looked at the leg and drew in her breath exactly like the ER doc had done.

“Wow,” she said, slipping off the backpack that carried the tools of her trade. “I’m surprised they let you leave.”

“They can’t actually keep you there against your will,” I said. “And even if they could, well, it is Victor after all. Can you fix this?”

She threw me an annoyed glance. Campbell hates it when I referred to healing abilities as “fixing” things. She doesn’t consider herself a practitioner as such, not the way Victor and Eli and I do. She’s a healer more in the Wiccan tradition, although she’d fallen away from that lately. She couldn’t create illusions or aversion shields. She couldn’t animate the inanimate or perform magical forensics, or do any of the things Victor and I could. But what she could do was heal, using plants and a great deal of personal energy, and she was far better at it than I could ever dream of being.

But this time she was too shaken to even comment on how I’d phrased it. She kept shaking her head, looking doubtful. Campbell is confident in her own abilities, and rightfully so. And if she was worried…

“Well?” I said, suddenly a lot more worried than I had been. Maybe Victor really would lose the leg.

“Piece of cake,” she said, almost bitterly, which was very unlike her. “That is, if we’re talking about a five-tiered wedding cake that takes two days to create. I had no idea it was going to be this bad.” Only Victor seemed unaffected.

“Do what you can,” he said.

Campbell pressed her lips tightly together. Then she nodded slightly as if having an internal dialogue with herself, and the worry lines on her face smoothed out.

“I’m going to need some special materials I don’t have with me.”

“I’m guessing it’s not anything that will be available at the local Safeway,” I said.

“No, not exactly. But I do know where to get what I’ll need.” She turned to Victor. “Are you going to be all right alone for a while?”

“Of course,” he said. “Timothy should be home soon, anyway.”

Timothy, somewhat to my surprise, was still hanging in there-in fact, it was taking on all the aspects of a real relationship. After years of clueless twinks, Victor finally had met a real person. Now, Timothy wasn’t exactly in love, as far as I could tell, but he did really like Victor. He refused to take any of his crap, though. Maybe that was the kind of person Victor had been waiting for.

I wasn’t much of one to judge. My own relationships haven’t turned out so well, Campbell being one notable example. But at least we were still friends, and there was clearly still something between us. We’d both been through some changes, and although we never talked about it, there was that someday possibility hanging around. And surely if Victor could find someone, there was hope yet even for me. At least I’m easier to get along with than he is. I think.

“Okay, then,” Campbell said. “We’ll be back in a while.”

We took my van, and the place she had in mind was a botanica over on Church Street in upper Noe Valley, not far from where I live. I’d passed by it many times before but never had reason to go inside. The front display windows were dusty and crammed with every sort of object imaginable, all related in some way to religion or magic. Miracle candles. Statues of the Virgin Mary and various saints, all with copper-wire halos. A large statue of many-armed Kali next to an African wood carving of an ibis. Dolls with rose-patterned gowns hanging on wires from a tree branch. Scattered throughout, seashells and dried starfish from the sea. And tucked discreetly in a corner, something labeled herbal Viagra.

The woman behind the counter stared at me with a flat, impassive expression that darkened when she saw a small dog at my side, invading her precious sanctum. But when she saw who was with me a broad smile transformed her face. She rushed out from behind the counter and embraced Campbell, still looking suspiciously at me out of the corner of her eye.

“Campbell!” she said, with just a trace of an accent. She wore a white baseball cap perched jauntily over a grandmotherly face. I couldn’t even begin to guess her race or ethnicity.

“Hello, Mama Yara. How have you been?”

“Good, good. And you?”

Campbell just shrugged. She noticed the eye Mama Yara was giving me.

“Mama, this is a friend of mine,” she said. The suspicious look did not abate. Campbell altered her tone, almost as if she were reciting a ritual. “I have helped him and he has helped me.”

Mama Yara relaxed and the suspicious expression faded, but I can’t say it was replaced by any actual warmth. She turned back to Campbell.

“You are needing some herbs, I would guess.”

“I do indeed. And I’m in a hurry. A bad wound, and a friend.”

Mama Yara nodded and made her way back toward the counter, Campbell in tow. I looked around the store, politely keeping my distance. The floor was painted a sky blue, faded with age. A series of white lines, barely visible, delineated astrological signs. Fresh flowers abounded, along with plants, more statues, bronze censers, and bells of all different shapes and sizes.

“I could use some pau d’arco,” I heard Campbell say. “And some white cobol.”

“Some benzoin of Sumatra, you think?” Mama Yara asked. “It could help.”

“Surely. It couldn’t hurt. And most important, I need some…”

Her voice trailed off and I didn’t catch the rest. Whatever she was asking for must have been special, because I could see Mama Yara’s eyebrows go up and she lowered her voice. She glanced over at me again, clearly not happy to have me there despite Campbell’s vouching for me. It felt like we were scoring dope from a particularly paranoid dealer.

The bell over the door tinkled as another customer came in, a woman. I glanced over briefly and then looked again. Tall, willowy, long red hair, and longer legs. A sleeveless top showing off two dragon tattoos, one red and one green, curling down each arm. A striking figure, but that wasn’t why I gave a second look. I knew her.

It was Ruby, a practitioner I hadn’t seen for years. I hadn’t known her well, but she wasn’t someone you forget. Also, I’d pursued her with some determination when we first met, oblivious to the fact she was gay, until she casually mentioned an ex-girlfriend to help clue in the clueless.

She noticed me the same time I noticed her, and her face lit up with delight. Apparently, all was forgiven and forgotten.

“Mason!” she said. “I’ve been meaning to look you up. How have you been?”

“Getting by,” I said. “You? I thought you’d left the city for good-didn’t you move to Paris or something?”

“Florence,” she said. “Studying art. And some other things. Have you heard of Giancarlo?”

I certainly had. Giancarlo was not only in the same league as Eli in terms of magical scholarship but he also possessed the same innate level of talent as did Victor. Giancarlo was also a magical enforcer of sorts, although from what I’d heard, more like a Mafia don than a cop. He and Eli were great Internet friends.

“You were studying with Giancarlo?” I said, impressed.

“I was. The last five years, to be exact.” She bent down as Lou rushed over to greet her. I remembered he’d liked her. “Louie. Good to see you, too.” She pulled gently on his ears for a moment before straightening up.

“Are you back for a while?” I asked.

“Yep. Back for good, or at least that’s my plan. Are you still playing music?”

“As often as I can.”

“Still working with Victor?”

“Only when I have to.”

She laughed. “Not much has changed, I see.”

In some ways that was true, although a lot had happened in the last few years.

Campbell came out of a back room where Mama Yara had taken her, saw us talking together, and joined us. Introductions were made, and Ruby looked curiously at the herbs Campbell was holding.

“What’s that root you’re holding?” she asked. “That’s new to me.”

The conversation took off from there, and I was momentarily forgotten. I didn’t blame Ruby-I’m sure she was interested in the herbs, but it didn’t hurt that Campbell was hot; no doubt about that. She’d let her blond hair grow out, and even though she was wearing nondescript clothes and standing in a dingy herb store, nothing could hide her vitality and energy. A strong face and a toned, athletic body-she was an outdoors girl all the way. Unfortunately for Ruby, Campbell was also completely straight. Or at least I assumed she was from previous experience, but if anyone could make a woman think twice, it would be Ruby. She turned back to me after just a minute, though.

“I’m actually glad I ran into you,” she said. “Apart from wanting to see you. You’re still in touch with Victor, right?”

I certainly was, considering Campbell and I were at the botanica collecting herbs for his recovery. Ruby didn’t know that, but she did know that the last time she’d seen me I had been working for him, and she knew that Victor is the chief magical enforcer for San Francisco and the Bay Area. It’s his job to keep an eye on the magical practitioners living here, making sure they don’t use their special talents to scam civilians, win beauty contests, fix elec tions, or any of the other things that might occur to an unscrupulous person who possesses magical talent.

Chief enforcer is an impressive title, but maybe less so once you realize he’d appointed himself to the job. Practitioner society isn’t very structured-there are no official titles or positions. Practitioners are far too individualistic to develop any sort of hierarchical system. But without Victor and those like him, that society would soon devolve into chaos, with each practitioner doing whatever struck his fancy.

Then our existence would become widely known-already far too many people have at least an inkling that the world is not as prosaic as it seems to be. What would happen after that is anyone’s guess, but judging from the history of mankind, it wouldn’t be pretty. Laws passed against the practice of magic. Suspicion, envy, blame, and eventually lynch mobs. And although some of us do possess impressive abilities, our numbers aren’t large and one army special forces unit could cause us a lot of grief. We’d put up a good fight, but you can’t take on the whole world.

So, some type of magical enforcement squad, official or not, was a necessity. And for a while I worked for Victor as part of his enforcement group, along with Sherwood and Eli. Sherwood and I had been together for a time, but it hadn’t worked out. Then, about a year ago, she had fallen victim to a bad practitioner. That loss had left its mark on me. Eli, my mentor and best friend, didn’t exactly work for Victor-he acted more as an elder statesman and an adviser. Victor relied on Eli and seldom went against his advice. I was either a valued colleague or a low-level employee, depending on the day.

Eventually I’d got tired of playing cops and robbers and quit the group. I wasn’t cut out for the job anyway. I started playing music full-time as a jazz guitarist, my true passion, and I was a whole lot happier, though poorer.

But then some unpleasant things started happening in the city. Ifrits were vanishing, and someone kept trying to kill me for reasons I didn’t understand. Sherwood talked me into coming back to the group, and we eventually found out who was responsible-but there had been a price to pay. There always is.

Then, not long after, more trouble. Dead practitioners, and worse-others whose minds had been destroyed, leaving nothing but a husk behind. And finally, although the person responsible had eventually been stopped, there was one small matter that still needed to be taken care of-the creature we’d been hunting.

But all that history would take an hour to relate, so all I said was, “Of course. Just came from his house, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s good. I need to talk to him.”

“You looking for a job?”

“You never know. Actually, he offered me one before I left for Florence. I didn’t think I could handle it back then. But that’s not it. There’s something odd going on in this city, and I was wondering if he’d heard anything about it.”

“What kind of odd?”

“The kind that Victor deals in. I’ve got an idea about something, but I’m not sure I’m on the right track. There’s… Well, I don’t know what it is, but I think there’s some sort of creature wandering around these days, and I think it might be dangerous. Have you read about those hikers that have been savaged lately?” That got my attention.

“Yes,” I said. “We’re aware of it. There is something out there-in fact, we’ve been trying to hunt it down ourselves.”

“What is it?”

“We don’t know.”

“Where did it come from?”

“We’re not sure.”

That wasn’t exactly true. I didn’t know what it was, but I did know it had come from an energy pool that I’d helped create. We had been testing the theory that Ifrits are actually creations of a practitioner’s subconscious. The idea had been to create an Ifrit, and it had worked, sort of. Except, as usual, things didn’t go according to plan-what had come out of that pool was no Ifrit, and it was dangerous.

Campbell had a puzzled expression on her face. She started to say something, then thought better of it. Ruby put her hand on my arm.

“Well, I’d like to talk to Victor about it. Maybe I could help. I learned a lot over in Italy.”

“I can well imagine. Giancarlo’s got quite the reputation.”

The bell tinkled on the door to the shop, and Ruby looked up and waved at the person coming through it.

“I’ve got to talk to Mama Yara,” she said to me. “Be back in a sec.” She left my side and went over to the counter where Mama Yara stood.

It looked like Mama Yara’s botanica was practitioner central today. I also knew the practitioner standing in the doorway. Everyone knew Ramsey, though few were glad they did. He might not have been the worst practitioner in the city, but he had to be the most annoying.

“Mason,” he said, holding out his hand as he came toward me. I gave the hand a lukewarm shake and had trouble retrieving it.

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” he said. “Ruby and I are onto something. I left Victor a message, but he hasn’t got back to me.”

No surprise there. Ramsey was a wannabe enforcer, always bugging Victor about a job, and providing bits of information about totally inconsequential things. He would have made a great enforcer, except for his lack of three small things: talent, judgment, and intelligence. To make up for that, his personality was nonexistent, except for the ability to clear a room at any party five minutes after entering it.

“Well, Victor’s been busy lately,” I said.

He nodded knowingly.

“Yeah, lots of stuff going on.”

He spotted Lou and ran over to him. He bent down and picked him up, something Lou hates, even with people he likes, and Ramsey wasn’t one of those. I saw Lou’s mouth open slightly. He was going to bite him; I just knew it. For a second I thought about watching it play out, but that wouldn’t have been very mature on my part. Amusing, yes, but not a good thing.

“Lou,” I cautioned. He glanced over at me defiantly, but he closed his mouth. Ramsey continued pull on his ears, totally oblivious to the byplay. Finally he put Lou down and walked back over to me.

“So, did Ruby tell you what we’re working on?”

“She mentioned there was something odd going on.”

“Odd? Bizarre is more like it. This is something we really should look into.”

I loved his use of “we.” Ramsey was like those wannabe cops who can never make it onto the force, so they become security guards. They wear their uniforms, tailored to look as much like real cops as the law allows, with pride and a certain amount of arrogance. They put scanners in their cars to keep track of police calls and show up at unexpected times, always oh-so-helpful, always acting with an odd combination of contempt for civilians and obsequiousness toward real cops. They’re a sad lot, but they can be dangerous as well-occasionally you read about one of them shooting a shoplifter who refuses to turn out his pockets on demand.

I was saved from having to answer by Ruby’s return. Her arms were full of packages, and Ramsey leapt to take them from her.

“Be a dear and put those in the car, would you?” Ruby said.

Ramsey smiled happily and scooted on out the door. I looked at Ruby, who looked back blandly.

“Really?” I said. “Ramsey?”

“It’s not what you think.”

Whenever anyone says that, it’s usually exactly what you think. But this was a mystery. First of all, Ruby was gay. Or so I thought-I had a moment’s horrified suspicion that she’d been putting me on just to avoid my attentions, but then I remembered having met one of her girlfriends.

But if she was going to dip a toe in the other pool, why Ramsey? I could understand if she’d decided to hook up with some gorgeous man, or even some brilliant practitioner. But Ramsey was far from either-short and unprepossessing, with lank hair that always looked greasy and a perpetually unkempt beard. Plus, small talent as a practitioner and the aforementioned obnoxious and clueless demeanor.

“What, then?” I said. “His sparkling personality?”

“Don’t be mean. He’s not that bad.” A smile flitted across her face. “Besides, he can be quite useful.”

I didn’t doubt that. Like many marginally talented practitioners, Ramsey did possess one area of expertise-he was a consummate sneak. He could slip wards, unless they were very strong, and had a way of remaining unnoticed even if you were looking for him. He could indeed be useful, but putting up with him would be quite a challenge.

“I’ll bet,” I said. “But if you have any sense, you’ll keep him away from Victor. He’s not as tolerant as I am.” She laughed and patted me on the shoulder.

“Actually, I’d just as soon you not mention this to Victor. He’s a bit judgmental, you know.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Campbell had become increasingly impatient and finally grabbed me by the arm.

“Mason. We have to go,” she said.

“Sorry,” Ruby said. “I’m keeping you. Anyway, I have to go myself-I’ve got to pick up some things across town.” She went over to the counter, found a scrap of paper, and scribbled down her number. “Call me. We’ll catch up.” I tore the paper in half, wrote my number down, as well as Victor’s, and handed her the other half.

“Do give Victor a call,” I said. “I’m sure he’d like to hear from you. But not for a few days. He’s going to be… a bit tied up for a while.”

As soon as we were out on the sidewalk, Campbell said, “What was that about? Why didn’t you tell her the whole story about the creature and where it came from?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Just habit, mostly. I’m not used to confiding things, even to friends, and I haven’t seen her for years. I’ll let Victor decide how much to tell her.”

“You are one paranoid puppy.”

“Maybe. But I’ve learned to be.”

“I’m sure. But let’s get back to Victor’s before that leg just falls off.”

AS SOON AS WE GOT BACK, CAMPBELL UNWRAPPED her purchases and started pulling plastic baggies containing various other plants out of her pack. Then a small glass bottle and a dish. She unstoppered the bottle and poured oil from it into the dish, adding a floating wick. As soon as she lit the wick, a thick chocolaty scent filled the room.

A medium-sized bowl of wood was next, and Campbell carefully measured out bits of plant matter and shredded them into it. She uncorked a flask and poured a different oil, thick and viscous, into the bowl. Again the aroma of chocolate filled the air. As she stirred up the ingredients, I looked at her questioningly. I hadn’t seen her use anything like this before.

“Lwil maskrati,” she said, indicating the oil in the bowl.

“Come again?”

“Lwil maskrati. From Mama Yara’s. Something I learned about from Montague.” A brief sadness passed over her face.

“Voodoo?” said Victor, with interest. I noticed that his hair was damp with sweat. He wasn’t having as easy a time of it as he was making out.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Same tradition, but not the same at all, not really.” She applied the paste to Victor’s leg, smoothing it over his leg from the ankle to just above the knee, wiping the excess off her hands with a soft cloth. “Almost ready.”

I expected to feel a wave of healing energy coming off of her. That was her usual practice, and her healing powers had more to do with her personal abilities than the plants she used. Talent is about redirecting energy, not what objects are employed. The plants were just a focusing device to help enable her potential. That was my take; Campbell vehemently disagreed. She saw herself as simply empowering the intrinsic properties of specific plants. Who knows? She might even be right. She often was.

This time, however, she’d come up with something new. She started a slow, sinuous dance, using precise movements. It wasn’t improvised; it was a carefully constructed ritual. It wasn’t like any form of pagan dance I’d ever seen; it was suggestive, aggressively sexual, without being obvious. Whatever tradition it was from must have been one of emotion and feeling, not cold reason.

She kept it up until her eyes started to go glassy, then threw herself down next to Victor like a stage diva playing the dying swan. Finally, that familiar surge of energy rolled off her, but stronger than I’d seen before, and with a different tinge.

Victor hissed, drawing in his breath with a quick intake, and immediately after, a muffled grunt of pain escaped him. He prides himself on being stoic-he hadn’t even flinched at the emergency room, so either this had caught him completely off guard or it had hit him like a ton of bricks. Campbell remained on the floor a few seconds before climbing shakily to her feet.

“That should help,” she said, out of breath. “It will take a few more days, but when it’s healed completely there won’t even be any scars.” A shadow of doubt passed across her face. “Hopefully.”

Victor gingerly extended his leg. It was hard to see under the goop that Campbell had plastered over it, but from what I could tell, the skin beneath had already partially healed. In places it looked almost undamaged except for a network of fine red lines crisscrossing over it. Campbell had always possessed an aptitude for healing, but she now appeared to have taken a quantum leap toward being a major talent.

“Thanks,” Victor said, slightly out of breath himself. It’s not a word he uses often.

“You’ll need to keep off of it for a couple of days,” she told him. “And you’ll need some rest. A major healing, especially a quick one, isn’t entirely free, you know. It’s taken something out of me, of course, but it’s taken a lot more out of you-more than you probably realize. I think you might need some help with stuff for a while-where is Eli anyway?”

“Out of town for a few days,” I told her. “Some conference of medieval history academics. He’s due back tomorrow.”

“You should call him.”

“I will,” Victor said. “But Timothy can take care of pretty much everything.”

Victor was obviously drained and mostly just wanted to be left alone, so I suggested to Campbell we get a bite to eat. We stopped in at Marnee Thai, a small Thai restaurant in the Richmond, one of my favorites. We chatted over ample portions of Pad Thai and Mi Krob, catching up since we hadn’t talked for a while. Campbell was in the loop and knew about the creature we’d been hunting, but she hadn’t understood just how dangerous it was.

“What if you just left it alone?” she asked. “Maybe it would go back to wherever it came from, or just settle down somewhere.”

“If only. It doesn’t seem to have any desire to leave. And it seems to have a tremendous hatred of Ifrits-why, I can’t say. Maybe because it’s a distorted version of the true thing. In any case, Jasmine’s Ifrit, Mercedes, came up missing a while ago. In the old days we would have just assumed she had abandoned her-it’s sad, but it does happen. But then last month came an attack on Peewee, that little Ifrit/ferret who hangs with Jim Marvin. Jim was there and managed to drive it off, but it was a close thing. Then other deadly attacks, but this time on humans-by the supposed mountain lion that had been in all the papers. So it’s become serious and Victor and I have been trying to hunt it down ever since.”

“It never ends, does it?” Campbell said.

“Apparently not.”

“You been seeing anyone lately?” she asked, changing the subject. I shook my head.

“After my last misadventure, I haven’t much felt like dating.”

“I can understand that,” she said.

I didn’t ask her the same question. What had happened to Montague was still too raw. When Campbell was ready to resume a seminormal life, whenever that might be, I was sure she’d let me know.

Lou was waiting patiently on the sidewalk when we left and accepted a spring roll with good grace. No peanut sauce, though. As we walked back toward where I had parked, a homeless guy detached himself from a doorway.

Lou took one look and started over to greet him, then stopped, then started again, then stopped again, as if he were a toy mechanical with a gear out of whack. It takes a lot to confuse an Ifrit, but I didn’t blame him. This guy had long wild hair and a huge beard plaited in dreadlocks. He also flickered as he walked. And I knew him, all too well.

“Spare a quarter for a cup of coffee?” he said.

“What, you’re living in the sixties now? Where are you going to find coffee for a quarter?”

“A buck, then,” he said, smiling through discolored yet surprisingly strong teeth. And not just strong. Sharp, too. “Who’s your lady friend?”

He wasn’t threatening in any way, but he did project an unsettling aura of suppressed violence, as if he were a bomb that could go off at any moment. A year ago Campbell would have instinctively pulled closer to me, but she’d been through a lot since then. She gazed levelly at him and then walked over and offered her hand.

“I’m Campbell,” she said.

He looked a bit taken aback, which amused me no end, but he put out his own hand and grasped hers. When he let go, he stepped back and considered her curiously.

“You’re a healer,” he said. “An important profession. I’m honored. My name is Rolf.” She inclined her head gravely in acknowledgment.

I stared at him in astonishment. I’d know him for almost a year, and the only name I ever had for him was Bridge Guy, since that was where I’d first met him, living under the span of the Bay Bridge. He’d never shown any inclination to give me his name, and I hadn’t been sure he even remembered what it was anymore. But he casually handed it over to Campbell like he’d met her at a party in the Mission.

I also wasn’t entirely sure just how human he still was. He’d been the one who called up that creature we’d been hunting-with a little help from me.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said “You screwed up, I see.”

I nodded, unsurprised. “That goes without saying. But you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“That thing you’ve been hunting? You’re supposed to get it, not the other way around.” Once again, he seemed to know more about my life than I was comfortable with.

“Maybe things would have turned out different if we’d had some help. You didn’t seem that interested the last time we talked, remember?”

“True. I had other concerns at the time. But there’s something else. That’s why I was looking for you.”

“Oh?” He shot a questioning glance toward Campbell. “She knows,” I said. “I tell her everything.” Campbell mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch, but it sounded like “not everything.” Bridge Guy, or rather, Rolf, nodded.

“Well, the creature that ran off that night wasn’t the only thing that came out of the energy pool. And not the worst, either.” Rolf could always be relied on to bring good tidings.

“How encouraging. What other things?”

“That’s not entirely clear to me. But it’s troubling.” Rolf wasn’t troubled by much, so this was also not great news.

“Yes, I can see how it would be,” I said.

He smiled, showing teeth that were suddenly a lot sharper than they had been. One of the unsettling things about Rolf was that he didn’t keep any one persona for any length of time.

“You could be of some help with this. You do owe me, you know.”

That wasn’t how I saw things at all, but I let it pass. But not completely. If I just went along with what he said, he’d be sure to take advantage of it.

“You got something to trade?” I asked. It wasn’t that I needed anything, or even wanted anything, but bargaining was mandatory. That was the way Rolf operated. He smiled again, teeth sharper yet.

“Actually, I’m the one doing you a favor, but I’ll let it ride this time. Meet me tonight, over by the bridge, same place. Don’t be late.” He nodded politely at Campbell and turned and hobbled off, just another street person.

“What time?” I called after him, but he didn’t turn around.

“Charming fellow,” said Campbell as we watched him shuffle down the street. “What was that about?”

“No idea,” I said.

“Are you going?”

“I have to. He’s not the sort to show up on an idle whim.”

“You want some company?” I thought about it.

“Couldn’t hurt,” I said. “He can be very particular about who exactly has been invited, but I think he likes you.”

“Oh, wonderful,” she said. “At last, an admirer.”

BY NOW IT WAS GROWING LATE, SO WE WENT back to my place. I was still living in my in-law apartment in the Mission, converted many years ago from a garage. It was a lot nicer than that sounds-blond wood paneling throughout, a garden in the back, and a landlord upstairs who traveled a lot. It was a good thing he was seldom home. If he’d been there full-time, he would eventually have noticed some very strange happenings indeed.

A dog door provides Lou with the freedom to come and go as he pleases, and the warding around the house, designed mostly by Eli, keeps out most unwanted visitors, at least those of the magical sort. It doesn’t do much to keep away the occasional Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon missionary, though.

I made some coffee and we sat at the little kitchen table. Campbell knew the basics of how the fake Ifrit had come into existence, but now that we were going to the very spot where it had happened, she wanted details. I could tell her what had happened, and how, but not why. I still didn’t understand a lot about it.

“So the creature just formed out of nothing?” she asked.

“Not exactly. It’s an embodiment of something, I think, brought into existence by that guy we met. As far as I can tell, he was once a practitioner himself.”

“Like you?” That was a sobering thought.

“I guess maybe he was. But he’s since evolved into something different. Or devolved.”

“Into what?

“I’m not quite sure. The closest I can come to would be a troll.”

Campbell looked at me, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly to let me know she understood I was putting her on.

“Folklore troll, or the kind you find in bars? Or the Internet sort?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Anyway, he and a couple of friends like him tried to create an Ifrit, using Lou as a template and some strongly magical objects that I obligingly supplied.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It’s complicated,” I said. That’s what people usually say when they’ve screwed up and have no good explanation.

“I’ll bet,” Campbell said, well aware of that.

“The long and short of it is that something unexpected showed up, and we’ve been trying to deal with the after-math. And now, apparently, there’s another problem.”

“Which is?”

“That’s what we’ll have to see.”

We talked about other things until it was full dark, then headed downtown to the construction site on Harrison, under the shadow of the bridge, the place I’d first met Rolf and the place he’d held his ritual.

It had been a few months since I’d been there, so I expected at least some change, but it was like time had stood still. In the darkness I could make out the same pallets of lumber, the same piles of broken rebar and industrial trash, the same silent backhoe parked in the same place. Not unusual for a construction site, come to think of it. Construction time moves at a very different pace from normal time-like dog years.

But there was one difference. The fence and gate. Lou ran over to the place he’d squeezed through before, but it had been replaced with strong new mesh. The new gate was taller, with an even heavier chain and padlock and an extra strand of barbed wire all along the top of the fence. I hadn’t counted on this.

A figure detached itself from the shadows inside the site and strolled over toward the gate. Rolf. He reached one thick hand through where the chain met the post and tapped the lock. There was a faint snick and the shackle moved a fraction. It was now unlocked.

“Show-off,” I muttered. I wasn’t good with metal objects myself; few practitioners are. Rolf wasn’t exactly a practitioner anymore, though.

I unhooked the padlock, pulled the chain free, and swung the gate open. If Rolf was surprised to see Campbell with me, he didn’t show it. He beckoned to us and led the way to a familiar area. We were right under an access ramp to the Bay Bridge at the base of the massive concrete pylons that supported it. The sound of traffic far above us was surprisingly loud.

I had no idea what he wanted to show me, and I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do about it in any case. My strength is improvisational magic-I use my talent to pull together various threads gathered from the environment around me and weave them into useful spells. Much like the way I compose jazz tunes and play solos.

But as far as understanding things or investigating odd occurrences goes, I’m not the best choice. Victor is far better at that sort of thing, and so is Eli for that matter, despite his relative lack of intrinsic talent. But at least I could report back to them if there was anything worth reporting.

And there was. A faint glow was coming from the site of the area of the original ritual that had called up the beast we had been hunting. As we got closer, I saw what was causing it: an area about five feet across. A whirlpool of smooth swirling colors, one-dimensional, flat against the ground, but hinting at depths like a pool of water. The colors were separated into discrete bands of different widths, but they blended into each other at the edges and each band slowly changed color as I watched.

The colors moved with a slow, pulsating, hypnotic motion. The whole thing reminded me of the pattern I had seen while looking into certain jewels I once had the misfortune to find.

Lou walked up and stared into the center of the pattern with an intense yet curiously detached interest. That wasn’t like him; he was usually all for something or all against it. There are few shades of gray in his world. Campbell came up and stood beside me.

“What is Lou so interested in?” she said. That surprised me. Campbell isn’t technically a practitioner, but she does have talent. She wouldn’t be the healer she is if she didn’t.

“You don’t see it?” I asked.

“See what?”

Rolf chuckled, although his voice was starting to slur as it sometimes did so it sounded more like a gargle.

“She can’t see it,” he said. “Just about no one can, except me and those like me. Even practitioners.” He pointed down at Lou. “And him, of course. He’s an Ifrit, after all.”

“I can see it,” I said. “Why is that? What is it, anyway?”

“I figured you might be able to see it, ’cause you were here when it was made. You helped, remember.” Indeed I did. “There might even be a little bit of you in there.”

Half the time I had no idea what Rolf was talking about. I bent down closer to the swirl. Raw power was coming off it, wild talent. The only other time I’d felt something like this was in the tunnels by the Sutro caves.

“You might want to take care,” Rolf said. “I don’t think touching it would be a good idea.”

I appreciated the warning, but it wasn’t needed. He might as well have been a shop foreman telling me, “I wouldn’t stick my hand in that circular saw if I was you.”

Lou was still staring intently, motionless. His eyes had gone vacant and were starting to take on a glazed expression. The edges of his fur were beginning to glow, ever so slightly,

“Lou,” I said. “Back off.”

He ignored me. I don’t think he even heard me. I reached over and grabbed him by the collar, which I make him wear for just such situations. He gave a start, as if I’d rudely woken him from a nap, shook himself, and rapidly backed away from the lip of the swirling pattern.

“What the hell is this thing?” I asked Rolf.

“It’s the energy pool,” he said. “You remember; what that creature came out of? It was small at first. I never even noticed it; I thought it had gone, but it never went away. I think that has something to do with those stones you gave me. They had a lot of magic in them, and I think the power they contained may have caused the pool to become self-sustaining. After you left that night, after the fake Ifrit we called up ran off, it started growing. And then something else came out of it.”

“Like the first creature?”

He shook his head.

“No, something else. I didn’t get a good look at it, but it made me nervous.”

“I didn’t think there was anything that made you nervous,” I said.

“There’s not too much. Not anymore. But this was… well, different.”

Campbell had been listening intently, at the same time scanning the ground, hoping at least to catch a glimpse of what we were talking about.

“How long ago was this?” she asked. Rolf looked momentarily baffled. I don’t think he had much of a sense of time.

“A few months ago,” I put in, helping him out. “About the same time as all that other stuff.” She stared at him, quizzically.

“And you’re just now getting around to telling someone about it?”

She spoke in a gently reproving manner, something I wouldn’t have wanted to try myself. Rolf wasn’t entirely human, not anymore, and I was always leery of pissing him off, which isn’t difficult to do. But Campbell, for some reason, seemed to have a different effect on him. He shrugged, but at the same time shuffled his feet in embarrassment.

“I didn’t think much about it,” he said. “It wasn’t doing anything to me. Live and let live is my motto. But a few days ago I was over in Marin with Richard. Richard Cory.” He turned to me. “You remember him, right?

I did. Richard was one of Rolf’s circle, a man who had gone so far along that same strange path that he was now a walking embodiment of what used to be called the fey. He made me extremely nervous, and Lou even more so.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, we were out at the Marin Headlands-”

“What were you doing out there?” I asked.

Rolf stared at me without answering, and what little I could see of his face in the dark started to subtly shift. Apparently I wasn’t being given the same latitude as was Campbell. I put both hands up and ducked my head in the universal “sorry, my bad” gesture.

“We were out at the Headlands,” he said again, pausing for just long enough to give me a chance to interrupt again. I looked at him with polite and attentive interest. “Richard was up a little ahead of me when he stopped and put up a hand as if he had heard something. All I heard was a meadowlark singing in the tall grass. Then he got this look on his face, kind of blissed out, you know? He took off running, crested the hill, and by the time I got to the top he was out of sight. I haven’t seen him since.”

“I don’t get the connection,” I said.

“Well, I never heard anything and I never saw anything, but I did feel something.” He waved his hand toward the swirling pattern. “Feel that energy? I felt the same thing coming from the other side of the hill. I don’t know what came out of that thing, but whatever it was, it took Richard.”

“Maybe he just decided to leave,” I said, hearing how lame that sounded the moment I said it.

“I can’t do anything about it,” Rolf said. “I can’t mingle like you can, so I can’t really look for him. I can’t get around like you can. You were pretty good at figuring things out the last time you was here, though it took you a while.” He straightened up and became oddly formal. “If you can find Richard Cory, or even tell me what happened to him, I’d be beholden to you.”

That could be useful. It wouldn’t hurt at all having Rolf owe me. Maybe he could even hunt down the Ifrit creature for us-if anyone was suited for the job, it was him. Besides, I was partly responsible for what had happened. I’d like to know what else we’d unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Any idea at all what it is I’d be looking for?”

Rolf shook his head.

“If I knew what it was, I wouldn’t have to ask you for help,” he said.

We started back toward the gate. I was happy to get some distance between me and the color swirl. It made me nervous to stand next to it. As we approached the gate, I turned for one last look to see if I could find it from a distance now that I knew it was there. There was the faintest glow, more at the corner of my mind than my eyes, but it was there. And something, barely visible in the shadows, right behind it.

Lou had noticed it as well, of course. He was standing stock-still, focused, but without his usual warning growl to alert me to danger. He finally took a few steps toward it, but then stopped again, one paw off the ground, motionless. I can read him pretty well. He’s as expressive as any dog in body language, and a lot more in facial expression. He was… “baffled” is the word that came to mind.

“What is it?” asked Campbell, looking at the two of us.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You might want to stay back, though.”

I walked back toward the swirling pattern, Lou paralleling my steps. As I got closer, it became apparent there was a figure standing in the shadows, right behind the energy source. The closer I got, the more familiar it seemed. Then it stepped forward and the glow from the energy bands lit up its face for a fraction of a second.

My mouth turned dry and I had trouble catching my breath. Lou made a sound unlike anything I had ever heard from him-not a bark, not a cry, almost like a human gasp. The figure was no ghostly apparition; it was as solid and real as your next-door neighbor. It took another step forward, stepped into the swirling mass of colors, and disappeared, sinking through and leaving not so much as a ripple of disturbance in its wake.

It was Sherwood. But Sherwood had been dead for more than a year.