It was dark and cold. The clock on the University tower had recently struck midnight, but it seemed to Margaret that she had been standing on the corner of Evlenn Rhode for several nights in a row. The girl stamped her feet in warm boots, put her hands deeper into the muff and buried her face in it furry side. The only lantern scantily illuminated the wrought-iron gates of the cloister of knowledge, but where the street fell into narrow alleys, deep darkness reigned. But still, Miss Sheridan noticed how a door opened in the gatehouse of the University gatekeeper, and a thin man of the middle height slipped at night. He carried a small valise in his hand, and Margaret thought about the fact that he could just hit her with this suitcase without using magic. And then what will she do?
"Mister Moore!" The girl called out melodiously when he quickly walked past the alley in which she took refuge. The ex-accountant stumbled out of the blue and shied away from her like a cat from a Doberman.
"Oh wait, don't run away from me so fast!" Margaret pleaded, stepping out of the shadows. "After all, we can agree."
Moore raised his suitcase, as if he were really thinking about whether to hit her harder and tail off.
"Please," Miss Sheridan took another small step toward the Strangler; a flat black medallion under her clothes chilled her skin. Margaret was breathing intermittently. If he hits her...
"You're not with the consultant," Moore said suddenly, and he also stepped forward to meet her. "He's at the church now. So you're alone here..."
"No," the girl answered quickly. Moore froze; his eyes sparkled warily in the dark. "With me is the other you met at the department at night."
"Ah! He wanted to shoot me," the Strangler recalled with a grin.
"And you wanted to fry it, so you're even. And since you are alive thanks to me..."
"Oh, really?"
"I did not let him shoot you," Margaret said with pressure. "Because we can all agree. You are pretty good at it for an amateur."
Moore paused, looking thoughtfully at Miss Sheridan. The girl crossed her fingers in the muff.
"Has he sent his mistress for me?" finally the Strangler said. "Is this a tempting offer in advance?" He measured Margaret with an appraising look, and the girl burst into paint.
"No," she said through set teeth, "I am not your prize for loyalty."
"Too bad," the Strangler grunted. "However, we will discuss this. If I want."
"You can no longer want or not want anything. The consultant knows who you are, he was in your house, and it takes just one hair of your hair to find you anywhere."
"Hmmm," Moore put in his valise (Margaret took a breath) and crossed his arms over his chest. "Is your patron ready to provide me protection? Who does he think he is? Fairy lord from under the hill?"
Miss Sheridan smiled and said nothing, hoping she would make the right impression.
"And if not? If I refuse? What if I just end up killing you and disappearing into the night?"
"Try it," Margaret answered. She must have found a good tone, because the Strangler stepped back and muttered:
"So you are already threatening me..."
"Not yet," the girl said placidly. "But you can always do something stupid."
Moore quickly looked around, apparently in search of her companion, squinted unkindly and mumbled under his breath, staring into the girl's face. The medallion on her chest warmed up, and Moore suddenly recoiled with a cry, covering his eyes with his hands.
"Come on," Miss Sheridan encouraged him. "Try again."
The accountant rubbed watery eyes and cursed.
"Painfully?" Margaret asked sympathetically. "Want to repeat it?"
"Where is he?" Moore hissed.
"Go ahead," the girl pointed with a nod to the depth of the alley. "To the bridge over the canal."
The accountant picked up the valise, walked around Margaret and moved to the bridge. She followed to him.
At one time, a canal system was built in Blackwhit to deal with floods. One of them stretched along the University, parallel to the Evlenn Rhode. The Destination was in the middle of a massive bridge of the 17th century, which took so much stone, that a more modern builder would build a house from it. Moore sensed something - when water splashed ahead, he slowed down and turned to Margaret.
"Go ahead," the girl said. "Or should I hold your hand?"
"After you," Moore stepped back. Margaret held out her hand to him, but he again stepped back.
"Come on," the girl purred with a smile, glad that he could not see her trembling knees behind her skirt. "Don't be a coward. I'll hold you so it won't be so scary."
The Strangler looked at her intently and suspiciously. Margaret figured out how heavy his valise was and whether she could manage to dodge. Finally, the accountant took her hand and squeezed painfully. The girl shuddered in disgust.
"You're too old for his daughter," Moore whispered; now she saw his face close - sparkling eyes and a mocking smile. "But you are still quite fresh and not too shabby."
The trembling in the knees disappeared. Margaret stared intently into the Strangler's eyes for a long second, until the smile somehow slipped from his face. He tried to pull his hand away, but now the girl tightly dug into his palm.
"Please follow me," she resolutely stepped onto the bridge and pulled the Strangler along with her.
"So what?" Moore asked sharply when they stopped exactly in the middle of the bridge. "Where is he, your generous patron?"
Margaret pulled her other hand out of the muff and opened her fist. Purple dust fell on the snow, and a lilac circle flashed underfoot, a wreath of elegantly intertwined symbols.
"Bitch!" the Strangler shouted and rushed.
"Hush!" Margaret ordered sharply. "If you want to survive!"
A wave of lilac radiance glided upward, cut off the valise under the handle, and for a moment they were wrapped in velvet darkness.
"And if you don't want to, you can break out and run," Miss Sheridan kindly permitted, while violet stars flashed past them. Her heart was beating so fast that it was difficult to breathe. Angel told her how the Destination works, but listening is one thing and getting inside...
"Heck!" Moore escaped, bounced to the side and hit the thickened air.
They were in the middle of a flimsy wooden bridge with a rickety railing, far beyond the city, which spread like a dark blot across the bluish-glowing night sky. Margaret sighed in relief when she saw a tall man in a long coat leaning against the railing. Under the hat, the familiar hook-nosed profile whitened. The girl hastened to meet Angel. He gave her a quick, searching look and smiled faintly. The anxiety in the dark eyes melted into a cold, fierce expression; Angel laid a hand on Margaret's shoulder, and they turned to the Strangler. Miss Sheridan noticed of the corner of her eye a newspaper hanging from the railing.
Mr. Moore quickly figured out what was happening. He could not leave the circle and ran his finger through the air, which made him wave in lilac waves. The strangler chuckled:
"Hurry to protect yourself?"
"Don't flatter yourself," said Angel dryly. "I just have no time to chase you if you want to run away."
"You have a high opinion of yourself, mister Lord-under-the-hill."
"Yes. I don't need crutches in the form of evil spirits."
The Strangler fell silent in surprise. He looked at Angel with the appearance that he could not understand what was the matter and what it was about.
"Crutches?" Moore repeated finally. "What are you about?"
"You opened the portal to the other side and lured ifrit from it. What for?"
Moore raised his eyebrows.
"Are you worried about the reasons?"
"No," said Angel indifferently. "But they interest my lady."
The accountant frowned at the girl. He was clearly wary and instinctively stepped back from the edge of the circle.
"You killed fourteen children," Margaret said. "I understand that it's easier to deal with them than with adults, but I want to know why. Reason."
Moore rubbed his beard, turned his eyes from Miss Sheridan to Angel, and finally shrugged.
"Why not? If you had a chance to get more than you have, would you not have used it? Imagine that you can do ten times more, because you have ten times more strength. What magic would then be available to you!" His eyes lit up. "You have no limits! You can do anything, whatever you want, and you don't need to delve into books, spend years looking for spells, sniff out where what restriction will throw you a curveball..."
"See, Margaret? This is just greed, I told you so."
"But you stopped," the girl said thoughtfully. "Just half a step away from the target. Why?"
The Strangler looked away in annoyance.
"There is one beast here," he muttered. "It made the nest right in the city. I tried to track it down, do not think that I didn't; but it leaves no trace. It dissolves in broad daylight. And it came into the temple almost with thunder and lightning, in the divine, f*** his mother, halo. Grace soiled his pants without leaving a place."
"Do you know what that is?" asked Margaret in surprise with Angel; he frowned and shook his head. "Is it evil?"
"I don't know," Redfern said slowly. "But I'll know."
"Come on!" Moore cried impatiently. "Night and frost, after all. What do you want to offer me?"
"I?" Angel said with a chill. "Nothing."
The Strangler blinked in surprise.
"But... how is it? Why, then..." His gaze darted from Margaret to Redfern and flashed angrily. "What the heck?! Why did you drag me here?!"
"For some reason, people like you are always sure that for their antics with magic, rituals and other side they will not be anything. But you are mistaken. Will be."
Angel took a newspaper from the bridge railing and rolled it into a funnel.
"What are you... what are you..." Moore stumbled back from the edge of the circle, ran his back against an invisible wall, twitched, turned around. "Damn bastard!"
"The principle of likeness, Margaret, is one of the founding principles in magic," Angel continued. The Strangler hissed a spell and threw a sparkling clot of fire into the wall. The wall above the circle flashed with lilac, pulled a clot into itself and sent it down to the wreath of symbols. Margaret followed the flash, gasped loudly and grabbed Angel by the elbow:
"But there!.. There!!"
"She noticed," Redfern said with a smile. "And you are not as good as you seemed."
Moore stared at his feet, and his eyes widened: letters, headers and even pale copies of pictures crawled around in circles, on the boards of the bridge and on the wall.
"Oh my God, how are you..." he hit the transparent wall, mumbled again, waved his hand sharply, but from his gesture it only began to ripple lightly. "Listen! Whatever you're up to... I decided everything for both of us, I found the ritual, I figured out where to conduct it! This thing killed Grace, but I, I am alive, and I am much more valuable than that..."
"I killed Father Grace," Angel said impassively. All paints poured off Moore's face. Now in the night it turned white like a mask.
"But why?" the Strangler gasped; Margaret first noticed that he was scared. "What good is it for you?"
"Good? You are greedy idiots. That's enough," Angel held up the newspaper higher and whispered, "Flamma."
The newspaper caught fire, and then a flame flared up in a circle. Moore screamed back into the middle of the circle, but the fire followed him, curling into a spiral. Angel turned the newspaper this way so that it would not burn too fast.
"See?" He asked Margaret. "When the condemned were burned at the stake, the victims sometimes suffocated in smoke and died from suffocation earlier than from fire. But this flame does not smoke, and therefore..."
"Stop it!" Moore howled, trying to bring down the fire from the sleeves and trousers. "You crazy maniac! Stop it! What do you want from me?!?
"So," Angel continued calmly, "he will burn until he dies."
A piercing cry of pain erupted from the Strangler. Margaret looked at him with wide eyes. Fire gripped his arms and legs and crawled onto his stomach, chest and back. The girl started from a wild cry. Angel threw the newspaper onto the bridge. It cringed rapidly in the flame.
"The fire will burn until I order it to fade," he leaned toward the girl and picked up her chin with his fingers. - To order?
Through the crackling fire, a howling scream sounded again.
"No," whispered Margaret; her anger flared with the fire.
...she remembered them all - fourteen children's faces, although she saw them only once, on the wall in the department. And now their portraits and name cards were whitening in front of her as clearly as a flame burning in the night.
"Just one time!" She thought furiously. Just once, each of these fourteen boys agreed to go with an unfamiliar gentleman - where? For candy? For a toy? On the carousel? And she knew - even if the Strangler had been burned at the stake from these portraits, cards and extracts with the addresses of families, he would hardly have squeezed out even a drop of remorse.
"No!" Margaret hissed. "Let him burn!"
He was still yelling. A burning body hit the transparent wall, and a charred, black, twisted arm scratched on it. The girl started and suddenly smelled for the first time. Nausea rolled up her throat and Miss Sheridan pressed a fist to her lips.
"Take it," Angel handed her a generously perfumed handkerchief. "The smell is rather unpleasant, even some of the younger inquisitors couldn't stand it."
Margaret buried in a handkerchief. A continuous hoarse screech came from the fire. The girl involuntarily snuggled up to Angel.
"The sight is also unsightly," he glanced at Margaret. "Do you want to leave?"
"No," Miss Sheridan snapped into her handkerchief. The stench had already become unbearable, and Margaret squeezed Angel's hand more tightly, swallowed the sour liquid that filled her mouth. Redfern carefully pulled the girl to him and hugged, or rather, wrapped both his arms around her.
"You don't have to watch it all the way through," he whispered softly. A creepy, already unrecognizable, almost inhuman face flashed in the fire. Margaret buried Angel in the shoulder.
"Watch no," she managed. "But I want to wait until the end. I want to know that he died like that... like... like he should."
"I can speed it up..."
"Don't!" Margaret said fiercely and met her eyes with Angel. She saw him vaguely, because her eyes were watery from the stench, and did not understand whether he really smiled or imagined.
"Good," Angel said quietly.
... Margaret seemed that the Strangler burned for long hours. A squeal gave way to a howl, a howl to a whining, whining to a barely audible moans. After only a few minutes of silence, Angel motioned the fire to fade. Miss Sheridan timidly raised her head from his shoulder and squinted toward the bridge.
The circle was burned out. Inside was something black and crouched, remotely resembling a human body. The girl could not help shivering, and Angel suddenly covered her eyes with his hand. Margaret jerked weakly, because that was the last thing she expected of him.
"You have enough impressions for today," Angel said. "It's time to take you home."
"And this?" Margaret, without looking, pointed to the remains.
"Let it be. It should enough for the identification and for the commissar. However, I can leave him a note."
"Here?" the girl was flabbily surprised, leaning on Redfern's hand to go down from the bridge.
"No," Angel said with a grin, "in the department when I'll pick up my things."
***
Standing on a clear morning over a hole in the ground that remained from the church of St. Helena, Brennon could hardly believe that everything was real at night.
"Hmm," Dwyer said thoughtfully, "and Regan in Tomlehlen missed all the fun. The kid is upset."
"Yeah, fun," the Commissar muttered. "Screamingly funny."
The police cordoned off the parvis in a tight ring. Gawkers crowded behind the cordon (where did they get so many at the height of the working day?); Bishop Whitby tried in vain to break in, fiercely quarreling with the police chief over the elbows and shoulders of the police. Broyd snapped rather listlessly, while delving into the Commissar's report, which he outlined during a night vigil near the remains of the church. Brennon hoped that after this the chief would not hand him over to the nearest nuthouse.
"Well, what?" He asked at the back of the consultant; Paw sniffed at the edge of the pit while Longsdale was digging up a pile of dust or ashes with a spatula.
"Well, at least it's relatively safe here," he concluded, turning to the commissar. Brennon sincerely envied him - Longsdale was the only one who managed to sleep for at least seven hours. Nathan, remembering the need for sleep for a consultant, let him go to bed as soon as the first policemen arrived from the department.
"The ashes should be carefully collected, taken out of the city and buried in a deserted place. I think a depth of ten yards will be enough."
"And here? That's all," Brennon waved a hand over the parvis.
"The pit can be filled. But I do not recommend building anything in the next thirty years."
Brennon glanced at the bishop, uttering ringing screams, and sighed. He wonder how much time will pass before the churchmen start a great construction in order to "cleanse this place from filth"?
"How's Raiden?"
"Who?" Longsdale asked absently, pouring a handful of dust into the bag.
"Raiden. Your butler. He looked like hell yesterday, didn't you think?"
"Yes?" the consultant handed in surprise. "Today he slept for a long time."
"No wonder," Brennon said through set teeth. Valentina promised to take care of the girl, but who knows what they can and can't do, these witches? He'll have to go in and check it out...
"Sir!"
The commissar turned to panic scream. Finnel penetrated through the cordon and rushed towards him, literally radiating despair.
"Sir! You need to department, urgently! Evidence..."
"Again?!" Brennon growled. Finnel paled and backed away:
"Sir, this is that box! Well, the one you brought from Grace's house when someone got into it at night! Sir, we are not to blame! We watched in both eyes…"
"What are you poking yourself in both eyes if you can't see a damn thing with either one?! Dwyer, in charge!" Brennon shouted. "I'm in the department!"
...the box was waiting for him on the table. The policemen scaredly shied away from the commissar while he rushed to himself, not paying attention to the bleating of the duty officer, "We did not let our eyes go, sir!" Brennon announced his opinion about their eyes, barely burst into the department. And here it is, a priceless box with a single thread to the damn nameless pyromaniac... Nathan tore off the lid. The box was empty. At the bottom a sheet of paper lonely whitened. Brennon grabbed it and read.
"You will find your Strangler on the bridge over the Twinn River, eight miles from the northern outskirts of the city. And henceforth, do not take someone else's without asking."
Nathan cursed in impotence and threw the note back. Maybe the consultant will be able to get something out of it with the help of his witchcraft stuff. He opened the door and barked at the flight of stairs:
"Hey you! One of the local blind-eyed - trotting after Longsdale, to the church! And get Kennedy out of his hole - we go to Twinn for the Strangler!"
A sweeping clatter came from below, and the commissar caught a light smell of burning. Looking around, he saw the smoke from the box, grabbed it and nearly threw it into the wall - a soft, light ash remained from the note.