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without her own sins,
clothes might never have been invented.
    Doyle stopped at the top of the marble staircase that would
take them underground, into the subway system.
    "We're going down?" she asked, still fascinated by
the weird vibe she was picking up from most people within the station.
    "Yes," he said, taking hold of the brass railing
and beginning to descend. She followed. "Despite Sweetblood's best
intentions, a link had been established between the medium, her psychics, and
the mage."
    Doyle went around a random commuter who stood frozen on the
stairs, clutching the handrail as if for dear life. He had been very brief in
the car, giving to Squire only their destination, as if he had needed time to
process the information that he had obtained at the brownstone. Eve found it
particularly nasty that Doyle had to stick his fingers into somebody's brain to
find what he was looking for. Better him then her.
    Not that she hadn't rooted through her share of viscera in
her time. It was only that brains were so grotesquely unpleasant to the touch.
    "So you got Sweetblood's location out of the medium's
brain?" Eve asked.
    "With some minor difficulty, yes," Doyle
confirmed.
    "Don't you think that was kind of sloppy on your old
pal Lorenzo's part?" she asked him curiously. "Leaving that kind of
information lying around in somebody's head when he's supposedly all hot and
bothered about not being found?"
    They reached the bottom of the stairs and proceeded through
a pair of double doors into the underground system.
    "That is where Sanguedolce's arrogance worked against
him," Doyle said.
    Eve thought he sounded more than a little arrogant himself. She
didn't know what it was with mages, all of them so full of themselves that she
was surprised they could fit their swollen heads through their front doors.
    "He never believed that another mage would demonstrate
the skill necessary to actually track him," Doyle said, grim satisfaction
etched upon his face. "And, Heaven forbid that they did, he left a warning
that should have successfully ended the trail."
    She looked about the platform. There were people waiting,
but not half as many as there should have been at this time of the morning. "But
Sweetblood wasn't counting on you being the one doing the looking, was he?"
she asked, playing with the man's cockiness.
    Doyle's smile was fleeting. "He never recognized my
talents," the sorcerer said, walking to the end of the platform. A
homeless man surrounded with shopping bags full of empty cans snoozed against a
wall and Doyle was careful not to wake him as he peered down the tunnel into
the inky darkness beyond. "He thought me incapable of mastering the
weirdling ways."
    "I guess you showed him," Eve muttered, standing
by his side. She noticed that some of the commuters had begun watch then with
interest. "If you're thinking of continuing this little expedition down
into the tunnel you might want to use some of that mojo you're so good at so
nobody calls the transit police in to arrest our asses."
    Doyle looked away from the tunnel and toward the small crowd
waiting for the next train. "Ah yes, prying eyes," he said, his own
eyes sparking with mystical blue energies. "Perhaps I'll make them see us
as workers from one of the utility companies," he said, a strange, lilting
spell upon his lips as he raised a hand, barely visible wisps of supernatural
manipulation streaming from his fingertips to work their magick upon nosey
commuters.
    Eve heard the rustling of plastic bags and turned to see
that the homeless man had awakened from his slumber and was staring at them.
    "You don't want to go down there," the man said,
his voice gravely and rough, as if not used to speaking. He hooked a dirty
thumb toward the tunnel entrance behind where he sat. "Some nasty shit
goin' on down there." The poor soul was covered in grime and was dressed
in multiple layers of clothing, the shoes upon his feet held together with
wrappings of electrical tape. A foul