“I guess I should have parked on the grass,” Tamara said, drumming her thumbs against the steering wheel as traffic stopped, stranding us in the center of the bridge.

“I’m sure we won’t be stopped long. See, we’re already moving again.” Okay, it was more like crawling, but at least we were moving.

I squinted as I tried to make out anything in the shadows on the far side of the bridge. My glasses were in my purse and I dug them out. They tended to help with the blurriness that plagued my sight after a ritual, but they couldn’t do much for my night blindness. Still, it couldn’t hurt to try. I shoved the glasses on my face and leaned forward. Then I jumped as Roy materialized on the console between Tamara and me.

“Okay, that wasn’t the spot I was aiming for,” he said, glancing down at the gearstick pressed against his inner thigh. “This isn’t a stick shift, is it? She’s not going to change gears on me, is she?”

“Like you’d feel it if she did, but no. It’s an automatic.”

“Alex?” Tamara’s voice sounded concerned, but I couldn’t see her clearly through Roy’s shimmering form. I smiled in her direction anyway. She couldn’t see the ghost, so she wouldn’t have trouble seeing me.

“Roy’s back,” I told her before focusing on the ghost again. “So, did you see anything important?” I asked. It had taken some coaxing—he was still unnerved about almost running into the soul collector near the tear earlier—but I’d talked him into doing some reconnaissance for me.

I was hoping for news about what was happening closer to the tear, but Roy was still staring at the gearshift precariously close to his crotch.

“Uh, Alex. I can definitely feel that gearshift. And the console.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” I pushed the seat belt off my chest and twisted in my seat until my shoulders were cattycorner to the passenger-side door. As soon as my bare shoulder lost contact with Roy, the gearshift slid harmlessly through his shimmering leg.

Roy released a relieved breath and let his head roll back as if he’d been spared unspeakable torture. “You should warn me before you do that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Hey, you’re the one who materialized touching me. Not my fault.”

Once upon a time, when the highlight of any week in academy was a visit from Death in which he let me experiment with making objects tangible to him, I’d actually had to focus to accomplish things like letting him interact with a mug of coffee. Not anymore. Now if I had physical contact with something, anyone—or any being—touching me could interact with the item as well. Alex Craft, the nexus at which realties converge—lucky me.

“So, anything?” I asked Roy again.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Bad news. Bell has private security and barricades. He’s not letting anyone but his inner circle near the rift.”

“Damn.”

“What’s wrong, Alex? Damn what?” Tamara asked as the car crawled off the bridge. Traffic had improved marginally in that Tamara no longer had to sit on the brake, but she wasn’t using any gas either. I related what Roy had told me and Tamara clicked her tongue. “I swear, if I rolled out of bed just to stand three hundred yards from that tear, I’m going to be pissed.”

She wasn’t the only one.

The taillights in front of us flashed red, and Tamara sighed. To our right, blue lights strobed in the dark, illuminating the crowd milling outside a tall chain-link gate. News vans hugged the perimeter, shining bright spotlights at the gate, but Roy was right: no one was being permitted inside.

“Roy, can you go out for another look? Also can you try to find out what Bell and his people plan to do with the tear?”

“Nope. I’ve done my brave deeds for the night. That reaper was still out there the last time I checked.” He crossed his arms over his incorporeal chest. “I’m staying with you. Unless the reaper comes over here. Then, I guess, I’ll go hang out at my grave, or something. As far as Bell is concerned, when I was out there a few minutes ago he and his followers were huddling around that rift.”

Great. I’d been afraid they would be. That was where I’d seen the runes. I could only hope they weren’t trampling all over the evidence of the ritual.

Our snail’s pace finally led to a gravel lot a block down the road. We parked and headed back toward the bridge—the walk back didn’t take half the time the drive had. Roy followed, his hands balled in the front pockets of his shimmering jeans, but his head snapped back and forth as if he thought a collector might descend on him at any moment. When we crossed Lenore he lost his nerve completely.

“I’ll catch back up with you later,” he said. Then he vanished without waiting for me to say good-bye.

I tugged the bill of my cap down and avoided meeting anyone’s gaze as Tamara and I reached the edge of the gathered crowd. Not that anyone was looking around the crowd—everyone wanted to see the tear.

“So you have a plan to get us to the front of this crowd, not to mention behind that gate?” Tamara asked as we joined the onlookers.

I shrugged. “I met Bell once.”

“Yeah? And did you get on well enough that he’s likely to let us pass?” The tone she used betrayed the fact that she anticipated a no, and I didn’t need to reflect on my short conversation with Bell in his limo to know she was right.

Tamara stood on her toes, her neck straining as she peered around the shoulders of the people in front of us. In my boots, I was as tall as or taller than all but the tallest men in the crowd, so I didn’t have to strain to see over people like Tamara did. I strained to see, period, though the media and security lights helped.

Bell had obviously intended to invest in some sort of industrial enterprise, but judging by the vacant lot, he had never gotten around to moving forward with the project. A nine-foot chain-link fence ringed the property, but it was an old fence, rusted and dilapidated. One section of it had fallen completely, and it looked like people had been using the opening as a path for years. Two of Bell’s thugs guarded the opening, stopping anyone who pressed too close, and Bell’s lawyers held the front gate.

“There has never been any legislation put in place making it illegal to own an opening into the Aetheric. Unless you return with a warrant, you have no grounds for entering this property,” a middle-aged man with flame red hair the same color as Holly’s said to a uniformed officer as we wove our way nearer the front gate. Holly’s father was a big-shot defense attorney with a high-powered client list, and while I’d never met him—Holly’s relationship with her father was almost as screwed up as mine, one of the many reasons Holly and I got along so well—I had the feeling we were looking at him now.

I touched Tamara’s shoulder and pointed to a clearer spot about twenty feet away. Most of the crowd had gathered around the front gate, so we might see more if we moved farther along the fence. Excusing ourselves as we stepped around people, we slipped through the crowd. I kept my head down as we passed cops and reporters, but they weren’t paying us any attention. We managed to find a better spot right up against the fence, but between my ruined vision and the flashing police lights blowing any shot I had of my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I couldn’t see a thing more than a yard or two into the vacant lot.

“Can you see the tear?” I asked, leaning closer to Tamara.

“Yeah, a little, and Alex, I don’t like this. Those skimmers are drawing raw Aetheric energy with no filtering and minimal training. I don’t even think they’ve drawn a protective circle.” She shook her head in disbelief. “The raw magic filtering through the air is throwing off my senses, but I’m not sensing a circle at all. Lots of other spells, though.”

Yeah, I was picking up on that too. Magic was everywhere. Most of the crowd wore charms, Bell’s security had laid down a perimeter ward along the gate so they’d know if anyone tried to sneak in, and beyond the gate . . . I let my senses reach out, trying to sift through the magic in the air. I closed my eyes, stretching my senses, and a hand closed on my biceps. I yelped, my eyes flying open.

“What are you doing here?” a familiar and none too happy voice asked.

“Falin.” Busted. I turned to face him. “Hey, yeah, about that . . .” I told him about spotting the rune when Channel 6 reran Lusa’s footage and about the assumptions I’d made from there, as well as my thoughts on the soul collector’s presence. His pissed expression didn’t change through my explanation, and I ended with a shrug. “It seemed like it was worth the risk.”

“It might be enough for us to get a warrant,” he admitted after a moment’s hesitation, and his grip on my biceps loosened. “Now you should get out of here.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders as he tried to steer me away from Tamara and the fence. “Come on. I’ll take you home and call about the warrant on the way.”

“No, you won’t,” I said, but he was already dragging me forward. I glanced over my shoulder at Tamara, who looked unsure if she should interfere or not. “I’ll be right back,” I told her before turning to Falin again. I was okay with him leading me to where other people couldn’t hear us discuss—okay, argue—about why I needed to stay—after all, there were aspects of my life I wasn’t sharing with my friends, let alone strangers—but I wasn’t about to leave. “I came here to—”

I didn’t get a chance to finish as a female voice, smooth and camera-ready, said, “Alex Craft.”

Crap. I didn’t bother smiling as I glanced toward the voice. “Lusa.” And her cameraman, of course. What, do I have a sign over my head attracting everyone I’d rather avoid?

I’d no sooner had that thought than I spotted Agent Nori in the crowd. Luckily, she at least wasn’t looking my way.

“So, what brings you to the river tonight, Miss Craft?” Lusa asked, pushing a mic toward me.