The nocturnal chill plucked at Sophia’s smooth armpits as she half stepped, half stumbled out of the van, her legs warm with the heat of blood returning after long repose. The smell of the distillery crinckled her nose, the sour mash was redolent on the air, like old laundry that had been boiled with too little soap. Sofia rolled her shoulders to loosen them, a sinuous catlike motion that stretched the fabric of her top around her pointed scapula. The moon was already losing its lustrous fullness taking with it the promise of an entire month. Sophia grimaced and rubbed her aching  her fingertips against the coarse weave of her jeans. Almost an entire month she had laboured polishing a silver mirror under the light of the ripening moon, buffing and rebuffing until her fingertips cracked and bled .Twenty eight nights with neither sleep nor rest, all for nothing because this God cursed spider had chosen this night of all nights to make its appearance.  It was fair to say that her mood had been better.

The distillery looked like it might have started life as a warehouse but was fast succumbing to the gentrification that was rippling out from the city center like the shockwave of a bomb blast. The brutally functional building had been graced with a pale stucco facade complete with a steeply roofed portico. Pipes and exhaust ducting jutted out from the sides and above, giving the building a peculiarly overstuffed look. Sophia lifted her tracking construct and peered into it, even though Morgan’s conversation made it clear that such caution was unnecessary. When magic was involved there were plenty of things you couldn’t control, Bruja that lived to be crones tended to be the ones who took no chances. Those were few enough in all truth.

The construct, a vessel for a tracking spell, was a simple coca cola can. Held upside down so that the concavity at the bottom formed a shallow bowl, it was an ideal vessel. Sophia had used a paper clip to scratch runes and designs into the thin coating of red paint around the sides, the intricacies of the working visible as bare aluminum against the trademark red background. Inside the improvised bowl the severed leg of a regular house spider floated in a half inch of spring water. The hairy limb twitched in the direction of the distillery with a gentle insistence, waking ripples that were vaguely luminous in the moonlight. Sophia nodded her head in agreement and dropped the can to the gravel of the parking lot, crushing it flat beneath the heel of her brown leather hiking boot. *Blank* could lecture her about littering another time.

“If we could move this along?” she asked acidly, running her fingers through her lank and unwashed hair. It had been a long day, the scent of febreze tickled her sinuses and she blinked her eyes rapidly to avoid sneezing. Her main task had been to track the creature, and now that was done she was eager to be done with the job. In terms of combat experience she was a junior member on this team, most of her killing had been done from a safe distance with a drop of blood or a lock of hair. With studied nonchalance she crossed her arms beneath her breasts, hugging herself against the chill and wishing she had bought a jacket.

Even at this close range she couldn’t get a sense of the spider. It was unclear to her whether it was truly a magical being, the result of a spell, a demon, or some sort of arcane construct. They simply didn’t have enough data to tell. Assuming it would act like a regular spider might be a mistake but in the two months she had been with Priest and Hawthorne she had learned that Morgan and the others could pretty generally be relied upon to handle an unexpected reversal. Her hand slipped into her pocket to wrap the hilt of a slender obsidian blade she kept there. The athamae was a more reliable weapon than the automatic pistol tucked into the waistband of her jeans, currently concealed by her dark grey Slytherin t-shirt. The cold metal pressed against her hip, heavy with the promise of easy violence. She blew a breath out from between her lips and muttered to herself in Quetuha. Something told her that the night was just beginning….