I climbed down and whistled. A few seconds later Tulip came trotting from around the corner. I mounted and headed south on Turner.

Twenty-five minutes later I dismounted in front of Garden Lane Chapel. If there were gardens here, no trace of them remained. The street bordered the Warren, a patchwork of ruined houses and crumbling apartments that had been hit by magic so many times, everyone who could afford to move had. The neighborhood looked bleak; abandoned buildings staring at the world with black-hole windows, ugly grey lichens on the walls that seemed to suck the color out of the paint and stucco, and black trees. The trees were the worst, their bark coal-black and slightly fuzzy. Even their leaves had turned dark and narrow, sharp enough to cut.

Against this backdrop, the chapel all but glowed. White and freshly painted, with a bright red door, it perched on the corner like a beacon of safety. A young cop stood by the door, a gladius on one hip and a service revolver on the other. Traces of magic sometimes lingered even during the tech waves now, and the revolvers tended to misfire less than semi-automatics.

Personally, I preferred blades. They always worked.

The cop tilted his head, presenting me with a flat expression. In his mid-twenties, tan and fit, with blue-black hair, he wasn’t a rookie or a veteran putting in time till retirement. He was in the prime of his copness, and the way he stood told me he enjoyed every minute of it.

He took in the tattered cloak that hid most of me, the worn saddlebag on Tulip, and the bow protruding from the scabbard attached to her saddle and classified me as “move along.” I clearly had no business on this street.

I pushed back my hood. He blinked. The flat expression slid off his face. Suddenly he was alert and professional. He was treating me to his “polite badass” persona.

The face strikes again.

Like many teenage girls, I had gone through a stage when I thought I was the ugliest thing on Earth, but by eighteen, I had realized that I was pretty. I used to have one of those pixie faces that could look beautiful or mousy. My old face was like a simple black dress. I could dress it up or dress it down.

That was no longer an option. My new face made an impact no matter what I did to it. Dirty, clean, makeup, no makeup, it didn’t matter. The eye I had absorbed reshaped me. Nobody even remembered my old face except me.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” the cop asked.

I pulled out my freshly minted Order ID and presented it to him. “I’m here to take this murder off your hands.”

“I haven’t seen you before. I would have remembered if we met.” His face moved a little. He had considered hitting me with his “smooth smile” but decided that the professional colleague angle might work better.

“I just transferred.”

He gave me an understanding look. “New guys get all the shit jobs.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” I smiled at him.

He raised his eyebrows slightly. I waited, but nothing came out of his mouth.

“I would like to see the crime scene, Officer…” I let it hang.

“Officer Fleming. This way.”

He opened the red door and walked through. I followed.

The inside of the church was clean and bright. Sunshine flooded through the windows and the round skylight right above where the pulpit would have been, so the pastor standing at it would have been bathed in light during the sermon. But the pulpit was nowhere to be found.

Fleming strode down the aisle between the pews. “You’re not from around here.”

“No,” I lied.

“So where is home?”

“Small town out west.”

He nodded. “Okay, Small Town. Forensics has been through the scene but try not to alter anything. Until your boss signs all the paperwork, this is still our baby, which means it’s my head if you screw it up.”

He thought I was fresh off the farm. Oh, this would be good.

Officer Fleming gave me his serious stare to communicate that he was about to pass on Important Information. “I’ll give you some background. This area was hammered by magic. You saw the black trees?”

“Yes.”

“It gets worse as you go deeper in. Everyone who could afford to move did. The church used to thrive, but after the first couple of flares, they closed it down, because everyone had taken off. It sat abandoned for a while, then Pastor Haywood asked if he could have it to minister to whoever was left in the Warren. They gave it to him. He lived here too, in a little apartment in the back. The church door was never locked, and if you rang the bell on the door in the back, he would come to talk to you, day or night.”

“You knew him.”

“Yes. Most people around here knew him. You see all sorts of shit in Atlanta. Most of it makes sense. Someone needs something, food, drugs, wood for the winter, so they steal. Someone gets mad, hurts somebody else. It’s bad but it makes sense. This, this makes no sense. It’s evil.”

He halted. The raised platform where the pulpit should have been stood empty, littered with broken glass. Blood stained the pine floorboards, dried to a dark crust. The light streaming through the shattered skylight painted a bright circle in the gore, and the crushed glass glittered, like diamonds on burgundy velvet.

I glanced around. A heap of broken wooden shards lay crumpled against the left wall—the pulpit. Something had come through the skylight and batted it aside. The pulpit had flown into the wall and splintered into shards.

“First time in Atlanta?” Fleming asked.

“Mhm.”

“It’s a rough city.”

You should see LA. It will turn your hair white overnight. “So I gathered.”

“It can be tough to get your bearings.”

“I can see that.” Please, crusty veteran, enlighten this humble rookie.

“Have you found a place to stay yet?” Fleming said. “I can recommend a few of the safer areas.”

The last thing I needed was him trying to find out where I was staying. I needed to shut this down flat. “The Order likes to keep an eye on us. I’ll be in the barracks for a bit.”

“Let me know when they let you out for recess and I’ll show you around.”

Recess? “I might take you up on that generous offer.”

He grinned at me. “Happy to help.”

I blinked, bringing my magic into focus. Translucent swipes of color appeared. Bright blueish silver, the color of human magic infused with divinity. Pastor Haywood. The flecks and smudges of silver were everywhere, but the bloody platform glowed with it. The twisted cascade of feathery magic stretched from the skylight all the way down, as if someone had taken a radiant spider web, woven of pure light, crumpled it together, and dumped it from the skylight onto the floor.