"Hold it," Murphy told me. I stopped outside of her office, as I always did, while she went inside and turned off, then unplugged her computer and the small radio on her desk. Murphy is used to the kind of mayhem that happens whenever I get around machinery. After she was done, I went on in.

I sat down and slurped more coffee. She slid up onto the edge of her desk, looking down at me, her blue eyes narrowed. She was dressed no less casually on a Saturday than she was on a workday—dark slacks, a dark blouse, set off by her golden hair, and bright silver necklace and earrings. Very stylish. I, in my rumpled sweats and T-shirt, black duster, and mussed hair, felt very slouchy.

"All right, Harry," she said. "What have you got for me."

I took one last drink of coffee, stifled a yawn, and put the cup down on her desk. She slipped a coaster under it as I started speaking. "I was up all night working on it," I said, keeping my voice soft. "I had a hell of a time figuring out the spell. And as near as I can figure it, it's almost impossible to do it to one person, let alone two at once."

She glared at me. "Don't tell me almost impossible. I've got two corpses that say otherwise."

"Keep your shirt on," I growled at her. "I'm just getting started. You've got to understand the whole thing if you're going to understand any of it."

Her glare intensified. She put her hands on the edge of her desk, and said in a deadly, reasonable tone, "All right. Why don't you explain it to me."

I rubbed at my eyes again. "Look. Whoever did this did it with a thaumaturgic spell. That much I'm sure of. He or she used some of Tommy Tomm and Jennifer Stanton's hair or fingernails or something to create a link to them. Then they ripped out a symbolic heart from some kind of ritual doll or sacrificial animal and used a whale of an amount of energy to make the same thing happen to the victims."

"This doesn't tell me anything new, Harry."

"I'm getting there, I'm getting there," I said. "The amount of energy you need to do this is staggering. It would be a lot easier to manage a small earthquake than to affect a living being like that. Best-case scenario, I might be able to do it without killing myself. To one person who had really, really pissed me off."

"You're naming yourself as a suspect?" Murphy's mouth quirked at the corner.

I snorted. "I said I was strong enough to do it to one person. I think it would kill me to try two."

"You're saying that some sort of wizard version of Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled this off?"

I shrugged. "It's possible, I suppose. More likely, someone who's just really good pulled it off. Raw power doesn't determine all that you can do with magic. Focus matters, too. The better your focus is, the better you are at putting your power in one place at the same time, the more you can get done. Sort of like when you see some ancient little Chinese martial-arts master shatter a tree trunk with his hands. He couldn't lift a puppy over his head, but he can focus what power he does have with incredible effect."

Murphy glanced at her aikido trophies and nodded. "Okay," she said, "I can understand that, I think. So we're looking for the wizard version of Mister Miyagi."

"Or," I said, lifting a finger, "more than one wizard worked on this at the same time. Pooled their power together and used it all at once." My pounding head, combined with the queasy stomach and the caffeine, was making me a little woozy. "Teamwork, teamwork, that's what counts."

"Multiple killers," Murphy drawled. "I don't have one, and you're telling me there might be fifty."

"Thirteen," I corrected her. "You can never use more than thirteen. But I don't think that's very likely. It's a bitch to do. Everyone in the circle has to be committed to the spell, have no doubts, no reservations. And they have to trust one another implicitly. You don't see that kind of thing from your average gang of killers. It just isn't something that's going to happen, outside of some kind of fanaticism. A cult or political organization."

"A cult," Murphy said. She rubbed at her eyes. "The Arcane is going to have a field day with this one, if it gets out. So Bianca is involved in this, after all. Surely she's got enough enemies out there who could do this. She could inspire that kind of effort to get rid of her."

I shook my head. The pain was getting worse, heavier, but pieces were falling into place. "No. You're thinking the wrong angle here. The killer wasn't taking out the hooker and Tommy Tomm to get at Bianca."

"How do you know?"

"I went to see her," I responded.

"Dammit, Harry!"

I didn't react to her anger. "You know she wasn't going to talk to you, Murph. She's an old-fashioned monster girl. No cooperation with the authorities."

"But she did talk to you?" Murphy demanded.

"I said pretty please."

"I would beat you to crap if you didn't already look like it," Murphy said. "What did you find out?"

"Bianca wasn't in on it. She didn't have a clue who it could have been. She was nervous, scared." I didn't mention that she'd been scared enough to try to take me to pieces.

"So someone was sending a message—but not to Bianca?"

"To Johnny Marcone," I confirmed.

"Gang war in the streets," Murphy said. "And now the outfit is bringing sorcery into it as well. Mafioso magic spells. Jesus Christ." She drummed her heels on the edge of the desk.

"Gang war. ThreeEye suppliers versus conventional narcotics. Right?"

She stared at me for a minute. "Yeah," Murphy said. "Yeah, it is. How did you know? We've been holding out details from the papers."

"I just ran into this guy who was stoned out of his mind on ThreeEye. Something he said makes me think that stuff isn't a bunch of crap. It's for real. And you would have to be one very, very badass wizard to manufacture a large quantity of this kind of drug."

Murphy's blue eyes glittered. "So, whoever is the one supplying the streets with ThreeEye—"

"— is the one who murdered Jennifer Stanton and Tommy Tomm. I'm pretty sure of it. It feels right."

"I'd tend to agree," Murphy said, nodding. "All right, then. How many people do you know of who could manage the killing spell?"

"Christ, Murphy," I said, "you can't ask me to just hand you a list of names of people to drag downtown for questioning."

She leaned down closer to me, blue eyes fierce. "Wrong, Harry. I can ask you. I can tell you to give them to me. And if you don't, I can haul you in for obstruction and complicity so quick it will make your head spin."

"My head's already spinning," I told her. A little giggle slipped out. Throbbing head, pound, pound, pound. "You wouldn't do that, Murph. I know you. You know damned well that if I had anything you could use, I would give it to you. If you'd just let me in on the investigation, give me the chance to—"

"No, Harry," she said, her voice flat. "Not a chance. I am ass deep in alligators already without you getting difficult on me. You're already hurt, and don't ask me to buy some line about falling down the stairs. I don't want to have to scrape you off the concrete. Whoever did Tommy Tomm is going to get nasty when someone comes poking around, and it isn't your job to do it. It's mine."

"Suit yourself," I told her. "You're the one with the deadline."

Her face went pale, and her eyes blazed. "You're such an incredible shit, Harry."

I started to answer her, I really did—but my skull got loose and shaky on my neck, and things spun around, and my chair sort of wobbled up onto its back legs and whirled about precariously. I thought it was probably safest to slide my way along to the floor, rubbery as a snake. The tiles were nice and cool underneath my cheek and felt sort of comforting. My head went boom, boom, boom, the whole time I was down there, spoiling what would have otherwise been a pleasant little nap.