beautiful. And it can actuallyfly? "

beautiful. And it can actuallyfly? "

"Amazing piece of conjuring," said Wyrdrune. "And exquisite workmanship, too. Rhiannon. The name

rings a bell. Oh, right. She's one of the adepts we went to see tonight. Loomis said she threw a fit when

she found out her familiar was gone. I take it this is her familiar?"

"Please don't send me back," said Ramses. "I'd like to help. I never get to do anything."

Wyrdrune smiled and gave a small snort. "All right. You can stay. But you'd better keep out of sight if

Loomis comes around or we're liable to get arrested for grand theft."

"How bad was it after we left?" asked Kira.

Wyrdrune grimaced. "Bad. Two victims dead. The entity killed two cops and another one's badly

injured. And Loomis suspects that Modred knows more than he's telling him. We tried to get him to

cancel the fiesta, but he doesn't think he'll be able to do it." He shook his head. "Modred wanted him to

institute a curfew. There are some things he just doesn't understand. Like proper police procedure, for

one thing. Cops simply aren't trained to shoot first and ask questions later. It goes against everything

they're taught. But if this keeps up, and more cops die, they're liable to get trigger-happy and some

innocent bystander might get shot. I don't know what we're going to do if we can't find the Dark One

before Friday. I shudder to think what might happen."

"Where's Paul?" asked Billy.

"He'll probably be along in a while," Wyrdrune said. "Modred didn't feel like answering any more of

Loomis's questions, so he simply teleported away. And I guess that means he left Paul to hold the bag."

"I'll bet Paul was thrilled," Kira said.

"Yeah. Modred can be a real prick sometimes. You still have those unicorns?" asked Wyrdrune.

"They're outside, in the yard, grazing on some grass."

"There's only one thing we can do," Wyrdrune said. "Get out there and ride around. If we're lucky, we

might get close enough to where the Dark One is for the runestones to detect his presence."

"We were already working on that," said Kira, taking out the map of the city. "We've divided the city

into sectors. We've already covered most of this area here tonight," she said, pointing to the map she had

laid out on the table. "We can start here and work our way north and east. We should be able to cover

at least two more sectors tonight."

Wyrdrune shook his head dubiously. "We'll never get it all done by Friday."

"You got any other ideas?" she asked.

"No. This is about the best that we can do. But first thing tomorrow, we'll have to get a car. We should

have done that as soon as we arrived in town. Otherwise we'll just exhaust those animals, to say nothing

of ourselves." He exhaled heavily. "We're going to need to get some sleep. The last thing we need is to

go up against the Dark One when we're tired."