"Goats, sacrificial, summoning, for the purpose of. The Watch Team were so busy keeping an eye on the explosives stockpile that nobody noticed the metalworking tools and the crucifixes, or the fact that they'd rented a deconsecrated Lutheran chapel three months earlier and invited their bishop over for a flying visit. It was only last Tuesday that they put two and two together and realized what was really going on. That's when they called me in."

She looks bleak and alone, clutching her wineglass as if it's the sole source of warmth in the world.

"The bomb was a decoy. Turns out there were two cells working, one of whom—outer church—didn't know they were set up as a cover story. The other cell, the ones with the goat and the summoning grid in the crypt of the chapel, they were the real operators, initiates of the true faith. They were all set to open a gate to a, a—" She swallows. I sit down next to her and take her free hand in mine. "I hate those things," she says plaintively.

"It wasn't just goats, was it?" I probe. "The goats were the setup for something else."

"The chapel was right next to a nursery school," she says, and falls silent.

Ick is about all I can say to that, so I keep my mouth shut and squeeze her hand gently until she feels like continuing.

"We'd picked up a squad of UIM specialists and a police anti-terrorism group who prepared to seal off the area. Trouble is, it was mid-afternoon and the neighborhood was busy; the last thing you want to do is to run an anti-terrorism exercise next door to a nursery school when the parents are coming to pick their kids up. It's a target-rich zone and it draws journalists like flies to a sewage farm. So we were going to hold off until evening. But then the OCCULUS command truck monitors lost the sound from the bugs, and I began to pick up probability disturbances in the vicinity of the chapel, and it looked too risky to hold off. The troops went in, and I followed them. It was unpleasant."

"What did they . . . ?"

"They'd built a summoning grid in the altar. And they'd set up a greater circuit, with a geodesic pointing straight at the . . . the nursery school over the road." She dry swallows again. "They started with the goats as a warm-up exercise. But there was a homeless woman, and they'd used her as, as—" Mo gulps, then wipes her lips. "Intestines. Ropes and hanks and skeins of—a greater circuit made of human guts, still joined to the sacrifice." She's not swallowing: she's trying not to throw up.

"Stop." I try to let go of her hand. "You don't need to go on."