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area.
    Riley knelt and touched two fingers to the white line, coming away with fine grains sticking to her skin.
    "We're having that analyzed," Jake told her.
    She glanced at him, then touched one finger to her tongue.
    "Jesus, Riley-"
    "Salt," she said calmly. "Ordinary, everyday table salt. Or possibly sea salt. It's supposed to be purer."
    Leah said, "You knew what it was."
    "I suspected." Riley stood up. "It's sometimes used in occult rituals. To consecrate the area inside the circle." An area which included the boulders, the hanging body, and the fire.
    Jake was still frowning. "Consecrate? You mean make it holy? Because there's nothing holy about this."
    "That depends on your point of view, really." Without giving him time to respond to that, Riley added, "A circle of salt is also used as protection."
    "From what?" he demanded.
    "A threat or perceived threat. And before you ask what kind of threat, the answer is, I don't know. Yet." She smiled faintly. "All this is only preliminary, you have to understand that. First thoughts, hunches, instincts."
    "And no inside knowledge, huh?"
    Riley felt everything inside her go still and chilled, but she held on to her slight smile and waited.
    "I mean, if the paranormal is your thing, then you must know more than the rest of us about this sort of shit."
    She didn't let her relief show, and acknowledged to herself that it was extraordinarily draining to keep up her guard and try to behave normally when she was constantly digging for memories, for knowledge, for answers.
    And, more often than not, coming up empty.
    Still coolly professional, on the outside at least, she said, "The paranormal as defined by the SCU has absolutely nothing to do with occult or satanic rites or practices. That is a totally different thing, not grounded in science but in belief, in faith. Just like any religion."
    "Religion?"
    "To most practitioners, that's what it is. If you want to understand the occult, that's the first rule: It's a belief system, and not inherently evil in and of itself. The second rule is, it's not a single belief system; there are as many sects within the occult as there are in most religions. Satanism alone has at least a dozen different churches that I know about."
    "Churches? Riley-"
    She interrupted his indignation to add firmly, "Practitioners of the occult may be nontraditional and their rites and habits blasphemous from the viewpoint of the major religions, but that doesn't make their beliefs any less valid from their own point of view. And believe it or not, Satan is rarely involved-even in Satanism. Nor is any sort of sacrifice, barring the symbolic kind. Most occult groups simply honor and worship-for want of a better term-nature. The earth, the elements. There's nothing paranormal about that."
    Usually, at least.
    "And the SCU?"
    "The SCU is built around people with real human abilities, abilities that are, however rare and beyond the norm, scientifically definable." If only as possibilities.
    He shrugged off the distinction, saying only, "Well, call it whatever you like, you obviously know more about this shit than the rest of us. So you think this is somebody's idea of religion?" He waved a hand back at the carnage behind him. "This?"
    "I think it's too early to make assumptions."
    Jake gestured again toward the hanging body. "That's not an assumption, it's a murder victim. And if he was killed in some kind of ritual, then, goddammit, Riley, I need to know that."
    Still reluctant, she turned her attention at last to that victim.
    Riley had seen corpses before. In war and in peace. She'd seen them in the textbooks, in the field, at the body farm. She had seen corpses so mangled they barely looked human anymore, destroyed by explosions or dismembered by an arguably human hand. And she'd seen them on the medical examiner's table, laid open with their organs glistening in the bright, harsh lights.
    She had never gotten used to it.
    So it demanded even more concentration and