The interior of the house was painted in unexciting colors, a palette of browns and dark maroons that might have been called “autumnal” a decade ago but now merely made the house feel dark and depressing. No wonder Greg went elsewhere to do his work, I thought. The front door opened onto a living area occupied by a dull brown couch that was so close to the color of the wall that it almost blended in. There was no television in the room, just a floor lamp in the corner and a glass-topped coffee table in front of the couch. A hallway led off to the left from the living room, and to the right was a swinging door that I decided probably led to the kitchen. There were no decorations on the wall, no shelves with pictures or trinkets, no ornamentation of any sort anywhere that I could see. And it was painfully clean. The tracks from a vacuum were still visible in the dull tan carpet, marred now by a multitude of boot prints from the TAC team.
I paused as a fluttering touch of sensation brushed against me—a nebulous whisper of the arcane. I frowned, trying to catch that fleeting sense again. I couldn’t see any arcane markings in the house so far—no wardings or protections, or even traces to show that arcane activity had occurred here. But something wasn’t right.
I heard a shout from beyond the swinging door, then the voice of Sergeant Dimera, the TAC team leader. “Hey, Gillian. You need to get in here.”
I quickly pushed through the door, then stopped in my tracks and let out a low curse. Now I knew what it was I’d felt.
Ryan came up behind me. “Ah, shit.”
Lying in the middle of the linoleum of the kitchen floor was Greg Cerise, spread-eagled like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and surrounded by a chaotic circle of runes and sigils painted in blood. On his chest, gouged messily as if with a butcher knife, was the symbol, large enough to cover nearly his entire torso. In my othersight, ugly purple clots of arcane potency twisted around the body, bloated and wallowing with hatred and anger. This had been done quickly and nastily—both the murder and the arcane sigils and markings. Even if I hadn’t spoken to Greg a few hours ago, I would have known that this was not done with the same care and precision as the others.
“Is anyone else in the house?” I asked Dimera, not taking my eyes off the body. There was always the chance—slim though it was—that the killer was still here.
Dimera shook his head. “It’s all clear.”
I muttered a curse again and shoved my gun into its holster. “Call this in, please. And we’re going to need the lab.”
Dimera nodded and stepped out of the room, door swinging shut behind him. I could hear him relaying the information on his radio as he moved toward the hallway, checking on the rest of his team. I crouched, looking over the pattern of blood and the markings on the artist.
“These aren’t the same runes that I saw on the other body,” I said, glancing up at Ryan.
“Do you know what they are?”
I peered at the runes that had been painted in blood, then stood and moved to a point near the artist’s head, being exceedingly careful not to mar or touch anything. “Yep. These are diagrams of warding, the kind used in a summoning.”
“So, wait, is this our guy? Did he fuck up a summoning?”
I shook my head. “No, he’s not the one.” Shit. “I just talked to him a few hours ago, which means he was probably killed right after he talked to me.” I felt cold. “This is not an actual summoning diagram. There are certain elements missing. But this was drawn deliberately to be recognized by anyone who is versed in those arts.” I rubbed the back of my neck, tense.
“It’s a message,” Ryan said, voice quiet. “To you.”
I looked at him sharply. “Or a test. To see how much I know, how much I can see.” The implications of that were deeply unsettling. He knows I can use the arcane. So what will his next step be? I must be getting close. But if I was close, why did I still feel like I was stumbling around blindly?
“Kara! Ryan!” Garner called. “Come see this!”
“You go,” Ryan said. “I’ll stay here and make sure no one messes this up before it can be documented.”
I nodded, then headed through the living room and down the hall toward Garner’s voice. As soon as I entered the room, I knew why he was so excited. “Oh, wow.”
It was a workroom where Greg had obviously done a great deal of the final work on the comic. Framed covers of the series were arrayed on walls that had been painted in chaotic patterns—wild colors that clashed with the black-framed pictures and presented a sharp contrast to the muted tones of the rest of the house. Interspersed among the covers were photographs of varying sizes, thumbtacked or taped to the wall, and each photograph had several drawings surrounding it, tacked up in similar haphazard fashion.
“Oh, wow,” I repeated, stepping into the room, looking more closely at the drawings that surrounded the photographs. Some were just pencil sketches, others fully inked and colored. I shifted my attention to the photographs. “It’s more victims. Holy shit. They’re all here. All the victims.”
“Plus a bunch of others,” Harris said, expression dark. “We have our link now.” He jerked his head toward the door. “So, our guy is dead? Did a victim fight back and do him in?”
“No, he’s not the Symbol Man,” I said absently, eyes still traveling over the pictures. “But the Symbol Man sure as hell knew him or worked closely with him.” I tapped my chin. “Did Greg do all of the work on the comic himself? If not, we need to get a list of everyone else who worked with him. Check them all out.”
Garner shook his head. “It looks like he did all of the work by himself.” He let out a low whistle. “Amazing that he turned out such an impressive product on his own.” He glanced up at me. “Comics usually have teams of people who work on them. Different people do the concept, script, penciling, inking, coloring, lettering, and so forth.” He touched one of the framed covers. “He was talented, that’s for sure.”
I stepped closer to the wall of pictures. “All these people. He used them as models.”
“Maybe he wasn’t very good at drawing people out of his imagination,” Garner offered. “Lots of artists use references. In fact, there are websites devoted to pictures that can be used as references for comic artists.”
My mouth twitched. “I take it you like comics.”
Garner grinned shamelessly. “Love ’em.”
I couldn’t help but smile. And people said I was weird. Garner looked far more like a jock than a comic nerd, with his tanned face and surfer-blond hair. “Okay, so he took pictures of these people so he could use them as models? Why these people?”
“He probably didn’t want to pay for regular models,” Garner said. He tapped a latex-gloved finger on the wall. “All these folks are homeless or drug addicts or prostitutes. He could probably buy a couple of hours of their time for about ten bucks or a hot meal.”
“But there are a lot of pictures here. More than the victims that we already have.” I narrowed my eyes. “Which means that some of these people are possibly still alive,” I said. “We need to find them.”
“That’s going to be tough,” Harris said, tucking his thumbs behind his belt as the buttons on his shirt strained dangerously. “But if we can find even one of them, we’ll finally have a strong lead.”
I clenched and unclenched my hands. “We’re close. I can taste it.”
Garner nodded at me, but Harris was silent, his gaze traveling slowly over the display on the wall. “Why don’t you think that this artist is the killer?” he asked. “All the links are here. It seems possible that his death was a retaliation, either by someone he knew or a potential victim.”
I shook my head. “The way that Greg was killed and the way the blood was displayed around him doesn’t indicate a revenge or self-defense death.” Harris should know that. Was he just brainstorming again? Or was he baiting me? Testing me? It was so hard to tell with him. “The pattern is too accurate,” I added, more to myself than to him.