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although they’re doing their best, their meetings more closely resemble an audition for a seventies soft porn horror film than anything else.
    One interesting thing is that the girls who leave Jodi’s cult don’t seem to remember anything about it the next day. Using her position as the guidance counselor as an excuse to call each girl into private meetings, Moo has carefully questioned all the cast-offs about what they did the night before. As she has to keep her magic dampened, Moo can’t use magic to force them to answer, and all of her questions yield vague responses involving “the mall” or “some homework or something.” Frustratingly, they also present all the cues one normally does when one’s telling the truth, and yet we know they’re lying. They also don’t stink of a glamour, although there are subtler mind magics that aren’t detectable. All of which leaves us unsure whether they’ve been forced to forget, somehow really forgotten, or “forgotten” in that way teenage girls do so well, when memories might lead to them getting grounded.
    Moo’s long since decided Jodi’s the wrong tree up which to bark, and I can’t help but agree. We no longer bother to accompany Shar or even mic her when she goes to meet Jodi. For her part, Shar still insists that there’s something fishy about Jodi, but I can’t help suspect Shar’s just out for the easy essence refuels she gets rolling around with the wannabe cultists. While this case leaves Moo and me frustrated, and my nails a wreck from all the janitorial work, it’s keeping Shar in the succubus version of lobster and caviar.
    But we do need someone watching Jodi, leaving our other suspects to Moo and me. Oh, and me to clean the school. Because I’m still the janitor, and the real cult has been as active and scary as Jodi’s has been pathetic.
    Rather than dancing around naked, making out a bit, and bothering dead pigeons, like Jodi’s, the real cult had progressed in their own animal sacrifices all the way to a very-much-alive goat, which they beheaded on the front lawn of the school. That no one saw them attested to why Tom had sent Father Matthews to us. After all, while they keep an incredibly low profile—so low many of the girls don’t even know they’re there—the school’s being monitored by police, FBI, and not a few private investigators, including us. At night, after everyone leaves, the surveillance is amplified by actual foot patrols. And yet, no one saw anything. The girls managed to get onto school grounds and past various cameras, patrols, and random passersby, all in order to behead a goat and string it up by its back legs in the school auditorium.
    Worse yet, we never felt an ounce of magic. So whatever’s helping the girls can do it with magic so strong he or she can cloak it, something that’s virtually impossible. I may have camouflaging capabilities, but they only extend to myself. That’s the nature of the power. So the thing that’s helping the girls has a different kind of magic altogether, and I don’t even want to contemplate what that means.
    “They still haven’t moved,” Moo says, her flat voice gone even flatter with boredom.
    “I know,” I say, putting down my binoculars. We’re watching McEachern’s house, but he and his fiancée, Stacey, had sat down to watch TV a few hours ago and hadn’t moved since. We can see their forms perfectly through their sheer curtains, making me wonder what they watch every night with such close attention.
    I bet they’re reality television people. They seem the sort.
    I start as my musings are interrupted by a loud beep, indicating that one of the trackers we’ve hidden on our suspects is active. Moo had borrowed Frank’s and Fernando’s cell phones, during which time she’d slipped a tiny tracker in their phones’ cases. Masters and Powers had been a little more difficult, as they didn’t carry cell phones. I’d had to slip a tracker in their voluminous