“What’s wrong?” Theo asked.
“So,” she said, frowning at her screen, “the ash from Cadogan’s yard was a no-go. It’s literally just ash. Charcoal, really.”
“Damn.”
But then she went very still. “Holy crap, you guys. Holy absolute crap.”
There was elation in her voice, so I peeked over at her screen. She was looking at a black-and-white photo with a barely discernable circle in the center of it. “What is that?”
“Your picture of the Cadogan House lawn,” she said.
“Wait—what? There was nothing on the Cadogan House lawn. I mean, certainly not a circle. Just a few dots of ash.”
“I sent the pics to the lab along with the ash, just in case they could enhance. They ran some filters on it.” She swiped to show a second photograph. The circle was clearer in this one, and there were fuzzy marks inside it.
My heart began to beat.
“Holy absolute crap,” I said. “We got Rosantine’s sigil.”
***
What we had, really, was asuggestionof Rosantine’s sigil. A whiff of it. A circle with some vague marks inside, which apparently described eighty percent of demon sigils, and didn’t give us nearly enough to command her, much less to seal her.
But it was a place to start. We put the ward visits on hold fornow and put the phantom sigil’s outline, or what we could see of it, on-screen. Then we went back to the flicking videos to find the details.
Two hours later, I was frustrated and ready to scream. I’d found absolutely nothing, and wasted more time in the process. That we were so close to our goal—and our deadline—made the frustration worse.
My screen buzzed, and I was hoping against hope for a good old-fashioned demon confrontation. But it was Hugo’s name that appeared—the warehouse Machinist. I was irritable, and for some reason assumed he wanted to talk to me aboutJakob’s Quest. Which was ridiculous.
I tried to shake off the attitude and answered. “Hey, Hugo. What’s up?”
“I have your video.”
“My video?”
“Of the demon outside the warehouse. I thought you might want to see it.”
It took several seconds for my brain to catch up. I held up a hand to stop the general chatter in the room. “Wait,” I said. “I thought that video didn’t work.”
“Well, it didn’t at first. But I’m still feeling guilty about what happened—all that damage—so I played with it a while, did some research. My dad installed the security system, and the video used a very old codex. Once I found that, it played like a top. I’m going to upgrade the system—but you don’t care about that right now.” He smiled. “Anyway, I have the video now. It’s not much, and it may not help, but I’ve got it.”
Hope instantly deflated.
“Why don’t you think it would help?” Because there was no point in wasting time to watch it if it wasn’t going to help us get her.
“Mostly she just stands there and wiggles her fingers.”
I went absolutely still. “Hugo, are you saying you got her hand movements on camera?”
“Well, yeah.” He paused. “Is that good?”
“It’s the best thing I’ve heard all week,” I said. “You might have just saved Chicago.”
“Down with Korkath!” he said. Which I assumed was aJQrallying cry.
Hugo sent the video to me, and I sent the video to the team. Two minutes later, we identified the gestures. We conferenced in Lulu at the town house, and she sketched out the sigil as she watched Rosantine move. Then she played the video again, refined the sketch. Then again a third time.
“That’s as good as it’s going to get,” Lulu announced, and put the image on screen.