“Small town out west.”

He nodded. “Okay, Small Town. Forensics has been through the scene but try not to alter anything. Until your boss signs all the paperwork, this is still our baby, which means it’s my head if you screw it up.”

He thought I was fresh off the farm. Oh, this would be good.

Officer Fleming gave me his serious stare to communicate that he was about to pass on Important Information. “I’ll give you some background. This area was hammered by magic. You saw the black trees?”

“Yes.”

“It gets worse as you go deeper in. Everyone who could afford to move did. The church used to thrive, but after the first couple of flares, they closed it down, because everyone had taken off. It sat abandoned for a while, then Pastor Haywood asked if he could have it to minister to whoever was left in the Warren. They gave it to him. He lived here too, in a little apartment in the back. The church door was never locked, and if you rang the bell on the door in the back, he would come to talk to you, day or night.”

“You knew him.”

“Yes. Most people around here knew him. You see all sorts of shit in Atlanta. Most of it makes sense. Someone needs something, food, drugs, wood for the winter, so they steal. Someone gets mad, hurts somebody else. It’s bad but it makes sense. This, this makes no sense. It’s evil.”

He halted. The raised platform where the pulpit should have been stood empty, littered with broken glass. Blood stained the pine floorboards, dried to a dark crust. The light streaming through the shattered skylight painted a bright circle in the gore, and the crushed glass glittered, like diamonds on burgundy velvet.

I glanced around. A heap of broken wooden shards lay crumpled against the left wall—the pulpit. Something had come through the skylight and batted it aside. The pulpit had flown into the wall and splintered into shards.

“First time in Atlanta?” Fleming asked.

“Mhm.”

“It’s a rough city.”

You should see LA. It will turn your hair white overnight. “So I gathered.”

“It can be tough to get your bearings.”

“I can see that.” Please, crusty veteran, enlighten this humble rookie.

“Have you found a place to stay yet?” Fleming said. “I can recommend a few of the safer areas.”

The last thing I needed was him trying to find out where I was staying. I needed to shut this down flat. “The Order likes to keep an eye on us. I’ll be in the barracks for a bit.”

“Let me know when they let you out for recess and I’ll show you around.”

Recess? “I might take you up on that generous offer.”

He grinned at me. “Happy to help.”

I blinked, bringing my magic into focus. Translucent swipes of color appeared. Bright blueish silver, the color of human magic infused with divinity. Pastor Haywood. The flecks and smudges of silver were everywhere, but the bloody platform glowed with it. The twisted cascade of feathery magic stretched from the skylight all the way down, as if someone had taken a radiant spider web, woven of pure light, crumpled it together, and dumped it from the skylight onto the floor.

A bright trail of green, a familiar shade, led to the platform. Shapeshifters, too recent to have been involved in the murder. I crouched, getting a closer look. One particular ribbon of grass-green stood out. Ugh. Just my luck.

“Have any shapeshifters been here recently?”

“No.”

Right. They didn’t come through the skylight. The trail started at the door. Someone let them in, which meant either the cops owed them a favor, or some money had exchanged hands. Probably both.

I moved closer, into the space between the front row of pews and the platform. A second shapeshifter trail. These guys did come through the skylight and left only a couple of hours ago. Strange. Two separate crews? Why?

A single thread of green in that second trail caught the light, glowing with magic. It was the most beautiful mint green, translucent and pure. The other shapeshifter trails, grass-green or hunter, had degraded slightly, fading a little into the environment. But that mint green stayed, still bright and vibrant. If the other traces were watercolor, this was a metallic acrylic. It drew the eye. I had never seen anything like it.

As beautiful and strange as it was, the thread was too recent to be connected to the murder.

I stepped onto the platform and knelt down, trying to parse the explosion of silver. So much power expended so quickly. Death wasn’t instant. Pastor Haywood had come face-to-face with his attacker, and he’d fought back. The struggle hadn’t lasted long, but it was savage and brutal.

The magic was too dense. I needed a better point of view.

I lay down on my back and looked up into the funnel of silver stretching to the ceiling.

“Are you okay?” Fleming asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

Some of the silver was tinted with gold. It spiraled down, feathery and gossamer, mixing with Pastor Haywood’s silver blue. Yellow usually meant animal magic, but not always. When Nick went undercover with my grandfather’s people, they had forced his body to absorb an alien power, which is why his signature had a yellow streak to it. Still, such light gold… A divine beast?

“Remember how I said not to mess with the scene? I don’t know how to break this to you, but you’re contaminating things all over the place.”