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thought.
    “I guess maybe he was. But he’s since evolved into something different. Or devolved.”
    “Into what?
    “I’m not quite sure. The closest I can come to would be a troll.”
    Campbell looked at me, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly to let me know she understood I was putting her on.
    “Folklore troll, or the kind you find in bars? Or the Internet sort?”
    “Never mind,” I said. “Anyway, he and a couple of friends like him tried to create an Ifrit, using Lou as a template and some strongly magical objects that I obligingly supplied.”
    “Why would you do that?”
    “It’s complicated,” I said. That’s what people usually say when they’ve screwed up and have no good explanation.
    “I’ll bet,” Campbell said, well aware of that.
    “The long and short of it is that something unexpected showed up, and we’ve been trying to deal with the after-math. And now, apparently, there’s another problem.”
    “Which is?”
    “That’s what we’ll have to see.”
    We talked about other things until it was full dark, then headed downtown to the construction site on Harrison, under the shadow of the bridge, the place I’d first met Rolf and the place he’d held his ritual.
    It had been a few months since I’d been there, so I expected at least some change, but it was like time had stood still. In the darkness I could make out the same pallets of lumber, the same piles of broken rebar and industrial trash, the same silent backhoe parked in the same place. Not unusual for a construction site, come to think of it. Construction time moves at a very different pace from normal time—like dog years.
    But there was one difference. The fence and gate. Lou ran over to the place he’d squeezed through before, but it had been replaced with strong new mesh. The new gate was taller, with an even heavier chain and padlock and an extra strand of barbed wire all along the top of the fence. I hadn’t counted on this.
    A figure detached itself from the shadows inside the site and strolled over toward the gate. Rolf. He reached one thick hand through where the chain met the post and tapped the lock. There was a faint snick and the shackle moved a fraction. It was now unlocked.
    “Show-off,” I muttered. I wasn’t good with metal objects myself; few practitioners are. Rolf wasn’t exactly a practitioner anymore, though.
    I unhooked the padlock, pulled the chain free, and swung the gate open. If Rolf was surprised to see Campbell with me, he didn’t show it. He beckoned to us and led the way to a familiar area. We were right under an access ramp to the Bay Bridge at the base of the massive concrete pylons that supported it. The sound of traffic far above us was surprisingly loud.
    I had no idea what he wanted to show me, and I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do about it in any case. My strength is improvisational magic—I use my talent to pull together various threads gathered from the environment around me and weave them into useful spells. Much like the way I compose jazz tunes and play solos.
    But as far as understanding things or investigating odd occurrences goes, I’m not the best choice. Victor is far better at that sort of thing, and so is Eli for that matter, despite his relative lack of intrinsic talent. But at least I could report back to them if there was anything worth reporting.
    And there was. A faint glow was coming from the site of the area of the original ritual that had called up the beast we had been hunting. As we got closer, I saw what was causing it: an area about five feet across. A whirlpool of smooth swirling colors, one-dimensional, flat against the ground, but hinting at depths like a pool of water. The colors were separated into discrete bands of different widths, but they blended into each other at the edges and each band slowly changed color as I watched.
    The colors moved with a slow, pulsating, hypnotic motion. The whole thing reminded me of the pattern I had seen