Eleanor watched the change come over Teajay. Her guts tightened and she felt her adrenaline spike. Anything that upset the woman was more than cause for concern. Something was going on here beyond one unexplained body.


“Adri, Blythe, see if you can run down our witness,” she told the pair. Adri had the skills and Blythe was muscle in the worst case. A distant part of her shuddered at what Blythe’s muscle actually entailed.

“Keep me updated,” she called back over her shoulder as she followed Teajay and Alcander as they headed up the fire escapes to the roof, irritated that her jacket and skirt made climbing so awkward. Even before she reached the top she felt the tingle or arcane energy through her palms. Teajay reached the top and turned to offer her hand to help Eleanor the last few steps, she took it grateful, feeling the unnatural aura of the other woman through her sensitive flesh.


“There was a spell,” she began but Alcander was already gesturing to the obvious source. A perfect pentagon was cut into the flat top roof of the building, descending through concrete and insulation with the precision of a microtome. Sigils were marked around the opening with metallic paint. Empty krylon cans lay scattered where they had been tossed. A brass plate had been screwed into one point of the design. A pair of jumper leads connected the plate to a raspberry pi wired to a cell phone. Black fluid, like a slug trail, slicked the rooftop from the hole to the edge of the roof.

“Looks like we found the source at least,” Eleanor noted redundantly. She walked over to the edge of the hole, carefully avoiding stepping on any of the scribings, and looked down into it. The room below looked like a storage attic. Even from here she could see it was filled with books and papers, some lose, some in crates. Other items, antiques, musical instruments and other less identifiable things were scattered around, tossed chaotically as though by frantic hands. The rain had done extensive water damage, swelling and ruining hundreds of books. Already a faint smell of mold wafted up to tickle her sinuses. A rope ladder had been bolted to the roof with a masonry drill, allowing people to climb down into the hole.


“This must be storage for the auction house,” Eleanor said, pulling the street map from her memory. 

“It looks like it might have been a heist,” Eleanor decided, crouching down to examine the raspberry pie. She flicked a finger and both alligator clips snapped free. She picked it up and tapped at the control. 

“Looks like a … like the opposite of a summoning,” she explained. “He.. they.. sent the roof piece… somewhere else.” It was a sophisticated spell, Eleanor could have managed it without the electronics but she wouldn’t have attempted it. The list of practitioners who could work it even with the programming wasn’t huge. She would need to take a look at the code and see if she could narrow it down.


[hider=Synopsis]
Eleanor sends Ardi and Blythe to look for the homeless guy. She then follows Teajay and Alcander up onto the roof. A hole has been mystically cut in the roof to provide access to the room below. It appears to be storage for the auction house which operates out of the building.
[/hider]