Death of an Adept

"Somehow I don't think it's that prosaic," Peregrine murmured, almost to himself. He paused, recollected himself, and started again. "Noel, could we perhaps be dealing with a group of copycats?" he asked. "You know, like one criminal using another criminal's methods as camouflage for his own activities? I'm thinking of Randall Stewart's murder, two years ago," he added. "Every time I look over these drawings, I get a sense of deja vu - and it isn't just that both incidents happened in the snow."

Julian went a little taut, and McLeod looked at her sharply before picking up one of Peregrine's sketches.

"There are surface similarities," the inspector conceded, not really wanting to consider a closer connection. "The white robes, the careful adherence to known Druidical practices, the confinement of the sacrifice in a magic circle of blood. But there are also notable differences, not the least of which is the sacrifice of a bull rather than a human being."

"How do we know they didn't also sacrifice the man in the bull skin?" Peregrine asked. "Just because it wasn't human blood on the sleeping bag doesn't mean he didn't die."

"I think it's far more likely that his role was that of a medium, rather than a sacrifice," Julian said fairly confidently. "And to function as a medium, he was almost certainly a willing subject. As Noel can tell you, it takes years for a good medium to come to his or her full potential; one doesn't lightly throw away such talents."

Peregrine nodded, but he was still unconvinced.

"Maybe it was something besides murder, then," he muttered. "Maybe something worse than murder. It was certainly more than mere theatrical posturing to re-enact a historical procedure. There was - betrayal here. Of whom, I have no idea."

"Perhaps there was," McLeod allowed. "But it takes time, resources, and energy to conduct a ritual as complex as this one. Anyone knowledgeable enough to organize the ceremony in the first place would know better than to perform it under false pretenses - or should know better."

"Indeed," Julian agreed, and added grimly, "If the events surrounding Randall's death proved nothing else, they served to demonstrate that the old elemental powers are still a force to be reckoned with, and are ill-disposed to being exploited."

Peregrine nodded, slowly beginning to gather up his sketches.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "All the same, I feel that there's something here we're overlooking - something right under our noses." He shook his head as he continued. "It connects with my sketches somehow. It's funny, but all the while I was drawing, I had the feeling that I wasn't Seeing the whole company."

McLeod picked up two of the sketches and looked at them more closely, then held them out to Julian.

"You know, I think he's onto something," he said. "Look at these two. Notice anything unusual about them?"

Julian cast her eyes over the two pages, and nodded. "I do believe you're right. He's drawn almost every figure so that you can't see the face. The only exceptions are these two men holding the bull - and the Taliere figure."

As Peregrine himself came around to look at the sketches again, an odd expression stole over his face. "Now that you mention it, there's something else odd. That Taliere fellow may have been running the ceremony, but I had the sense that there was someone else present who never appeared in my Sight, someone shadowy and aloof. I made several attempts to focus in on him, but nothing ever came of it. Each time I tried, some other person or thing always seemed to get in my way."

McLeod eyed him up and down. "You never mentioned this before."

Peregrine grimaced. "I'm not sure I even really noticed until I started trying to pin down why I'm still so uneasy about this whole thing. I'm still not sure whether it was worth mentioning."

His elders traded glances. "It's still possible that the fogginess can be ascribed to whatever entity they were trying to contact," Julian suggested.

"Aye, or it could have been someone's attempt to set us up for a wild goose chase," McLeod said grimly. "God, I don't want to even think about possibilities like that, especially with Adam away!"

"Do you think we ought to give him a call?" Peregrine asked, owl-eyed behind his spectacles.

An odd smile quirked at the corners of Julian's mouth.

"Actually, no," she said. "He's otherwise engaged."

McLeod glanced at her sharply.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means," she said, "that Adam is engaged. He's going to marry Ximena tomorrow night. Philippa rang me a few hours before you arrived."

"But, why didn't you tell us?" Peregrine blurted, a huge grin creasing his face as McLeod's stunned first reaction gave way to a similarly delighted smile.

"I am telling you - and I didn't want your analysis of the situation at Callanish to be clouded by distractions. Since we're all agreed that we don't really know anything yet, I think it's safe to delay bothering Adam until we do know something."