The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

He said, "David, I have been a practicing thaumaturge for twenty-seven years now." Utterly characteristic of him to be exact; had it been me, I'd've said somedring like going on thirty. He went on, "In that entire period, I do not believe I have ever seen an abomination oftilis magnitude."

"Enough to cause apsychia in a fetus?" I asked.

"I'm surprised it didn't desoul the mother," he answered.

From anyone else, that would have been exaggeration for conversational effect. Michael doesn't talk that way He handed me a sheet of parchment. "Here are the preliminary results of the analysis." • My eyes swept down the list. For a few seconds, they didn't believe what they were seeing, just as at first you refuse to draw meaning from pictures of camp survivors - and camp victims - of the Second Sorcerous War. Some horrors are too big to take in all at once.

I went back for a second look. The words, curse them, did not change. I made my mouth utter them: "Human blood, Michael? Flayed human skin? Are you sure your techniques distinguish between the substitute and the real thing?

Maybe it was a substitute made through contagion rather than similarity?" That would be bad enough, but - I was grasping at straws and I knew it.

But Manstein shook his head. "Probability zero, I'm afraid. I hoped the same thing, but I didn't just use sorcerous tests: I also employed mechanical forensic analysis. There can be no doubt of the actual human component of this elixir."

I gulped. What he'd just told me meant that Lupe Cordero, a very nice girl, was also an unwitting cannibal. I wondered how anybody was supposed to break that to her.

Poor kid - all she'd wanted to do was keep her breakfast down. As if she didn't have troubles enough.

I looked at the diaumaturgical column on the parchment.

Most of it was innocuous, even beneficial: Manstein had found invocations of the Virgin, the Son (I remembered the name of Lupe's son), several saints from Aztecia, a couple of minor demons related (his neatly printed note said) to childbirth. But there in the middle of them, standing out like a dragon in a fairy ring: "Huitzilopochdi," I said.

"Yes." Michael's understated agreement held a world of meaning.

Why, I wondered, couldn't the Aztedan war god have been teetering on the edge of extinction? No one, not even the sort of people who march to save Medvamps, would have shed a tear to see him leave the Other Side for wherever gods go when they the. His influence on This Side has always been baleful, his power fueled by hearts ripped from human victims.

What maniac, I wondered, had imagined he should be summoned to strengdien a potion that exalted life, not gore?

But I knew the answer to that: Cuauhtemoc Hemandez. I must have said the name out loud, for one of Michael Manstein's butter-colored eyebrows rose an eighth of an inch or so. "The wrandero who made this stuff," I explained.

"Ah," Michael said. The eyebrow went down.

"Have you called the constabulary about this yet?" I asked.

"No; I thought it appropriate that you be the first to know."

"Thanks." I added, "Thanks twice, in fact I don't think I'll eat any lunch today, so my waistline thanks you, too."

"Heh, heh," he said, just like that I'm afraid he reaHy is as straitiaced as that makes him sound.

"We're going to be involved in nailing this cwandero along with the constables," I said. "I don't remember the last time anything so nasty got loose in the environment, and God only knows how many jars are still sitting on shelves in the nostrums cabinet or next to the sink. If we're real lucky, Hemandez will have kept records on the women he's sold it to so he can try and poison them again with something else.

Odds are, though, we'll have to spread the word through the dailies and the churches."

"Hemandez may not even be totally responsible," Manstein said.

"How's that?" I asked indignantly.

The tests I performed seem to me to indicate that the mfld beneficial influences in the potion were overiain on top of the already present summoning of Huitzilopochtii," he answered. The cwandero may not have been aware that the latter was present."

"If he didn't know it was there, then he's responsible for being a damned fool," I snapped, and I meant it literally. "He certainly shouldn't be allowed to run around loose practicing thaumaturgy and inflicting this garbage"-I pointed at the tartar-sauce jar-"on innocent, ignorant immigrant women."

There I cannot disagree with you," Michael said. "Do you want to call the constabulary, or shall I?"