now why Modred hadn't wanted the Bureau involved. If they were all like her, they were a bunch of

assholes. He was still functioning on no sleep and he wasnot in a good mood.

now why Modred hadn't wanted the Bureau involved. If they were all like her, they were a bunch of

assholes. He was still functioning on no sleep and he wasnot in a good mood.

Velez did not find Megan Leary at the university, because by the time he arrived, she had left as well.

She had sensed the growing hostility to her questions about Ramirez, from the people in the

administration building, in the faculty dining room, and in the student center. And she had quickly

concluded two things: 1) whoever Kira was, she was almost certainly not a student at the university,

which Megan had already assumed; and 2) that few, if any, of the friends and colleagues of Ramirez

knew about his relationship with her. Which was something else she had assumed. But it felt good to

have it confirmed. Whoever this Kira was she was shaping up better and better as a suspect.

Privately, Megan had no question in her mind that Kira was a necromancer, if not the one who was

committing the murders, then certainly a member of the cult. There was no way, no possible way, she

could have successfully resisted her compulsion spell unless she were, herself, an advanced adept, a

sorceress of at least equal standing and ability, and since Megan was one of the youngest ninth-level

sorcerers in the country, and Kira looked to be almost a decade her junior, that meant she had either

rejuvenated herself magically or altered her appearance. To maintain spells like that over a long period of

time required a great deal of energy. And Kira had been strong.

Megan didn't know that Kira's strength came from her runestone, which had allowed her to resist the

spell. Not knowing that, she came to the only other possible conclusion. Kira was a necromancer. As far

as Megan was concerned, shehad her suspect. All that remained now was to build a convincing case and

make the arrest. And necromancy, appropriately, carried the death penalty.

There was no question but that she would have to take the entire team in to make the arrest. She wasn't

about to make any slipups on this case. It would make her career. The people at the upper echelons of

the Bureau were absolutely obsessed with what had become referred to in the Bureau simply as "the

cult." The I.T.C. was hot on it, as well. In both agencies, it was the case with the highest priority.

Necromantic murders committed in London, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, and now Santa Fe . . . all with

the same M.O., all following an almost identical pattern. And none of them solved to anyone's

satisfaction.

In London, Chief Inspector Michael Blood of Scotland Yard had supposedly solved the murders, but

there were still many unanswered questions and Blood wasn't very cooperative about answering any of

them. He simply stiffened his British upper lip and repeated what he'd put down in his report, which

officially "cleared" the crimes, but was still full of holes. Ditto the case in Los Angeles, where the

L.A.P.D. insisted on blaming the whole thing on some degenerate adept who had operated a mission on

the Sunset Strip. But then there was the panic that had taken place at the amusement park and those

reports of children being abducted—later claimed to have simply been lost in the crowd during the mass

hysteria—and dragons soaring above the magic castle attraction. Some people had even reported seeing

a knight in full armor riding atop the dragon and stabbing at it repeatedly with his sword!

In Paris, more fantastic stories with inadequate explanations. Horrors lurking in the sewers,

shapechangers, and God only knew what else. Again, the crimes in Paris had been "solved," but there

were too many questions left unanswered. It was no different with the incidents in Tokyo. And in none of

the cases had any arrests been made. The perpetrators had all conveniently been killed. It seemed clear

to Megan, and to others in the Bureau and the I.T.C. as well, that the local authorities concerned were