Page 122 of Cold Curses

That had to be Sorcha. She was gone, and Black had wanted Ariel to transfer Sorcha’s magic to him. Did he think that was the solution to his magical problems?

“Did he say why?” I asked.

“Just that it was a waste that magic couldn’t be redistributed.”

“Anything else?” Lulu asked.

“No,” Ariel said. “I need to go. I have a client shortly.”

“Thanks, Ariel,” I said.

“Sure. Hey,” she added, “be careful of him. He always seemed to be on the edge. Like he was waiting for something.”

An opportunity, I thought. That was what he was waiting for.

* * *

We said our goodbyes, and I went back to my search. When I was out of ideas, I went back to the “clue” Claudia had given us.

“Sorcerers love fire” didn’t mean anything specific to anyone I asked, other than the potential link to Chicago’s Great Fire, which had been started by a sorcerer. But a sample size of one didn’t make for a pattern.

I started by searching the exact wording. Few humans wereprivy to the real source of the Great Fire, so at least I didn’t have to wade through that. But I did have to wade through dozens of search results related to Rambath, the fire mage of Lyrfront, who was an expert in fire sorcery. InJakob’s Quest.

“Rambath,” I said, testing the waters.

“Fire mage of Lyrfront,” Connor said without looking up. Then he paused, met my gaze. “No way does Black playJQ.”

“Because there aren’t any sociopathic gamers?”

“I think he’s mostly Elisa-pathic,” Lulu said, then offered her bag. “Gummy worm?”

“I’m good.”

“Gaming attracts all kinds,” Connor said. “ButJQrequires a lot of sacrifice and teamwork. I don’t think he’s the type.”

“He’s definitely a single-player type,” Alexei agreed.

Dead end there, so I added “Chicago” to the search. And on the fourth page of the results, I found an article from nearly twenty years ago.

Home of Accused Sorcerer Burns,read the headline.Arson Suspected.

That had me swiping and then screaming at a pay wall and uploading my credit information to pay for a thousand words that might be totally irrelevant.

And then I started reading, and it wasn’t irrelevant at all.

And I kept looking and found more articles, and a story began to piece itself together.

“What is it?” I heard Lulu ask. “You’re practically vomiting magic.”

I held up a finger, holding her off until I got to the end of the article I was scanning. Then I looked up. “You are not going to fucking believe this.”

NINETEEN

When Roger and Petra were dialed in (Theo was still in the field with Gwen), I told them the story.

Once upon a time, an evil sorceress named Sorcha Reed murdered her (equally evil) husband. She gathered up all of the hard and painful emotions that Chicagoans sent into the world every day, and she made those emotions sentient. She gave them physical form.

She called that creature the Egregore.