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spare parts and his thick white wooly hair shocking atop such a wasted face, actually jumped.
    This back room was low and indifferently lit, and the chalked charter-symbols on the floor were all subtly skewed. Some were scuffed and others redrawn—Salt had been a busy little boy tonight. He wasn’t quite a sorcerer, or a chartermage; the man didn’t have the discipline. Instead, the twisted drained bodies of small furry things lay at certain points within the diagram, false-iron nails driven through skulls, paws, tails. It stank of spoiled mancy and clotted-thick rust.
    “Well now.” Gabe rested a hand on a pistol butt. If he had been back East, it would have been a knife instead. He restrained the urge to shake the memory away. “What have we here?”
    “Sheriff Gabriel.” Salt’s thin lip curled. “Pleasure, as always.”
    “Not fixin’ to be. Dead bodies inside the charter this morning, Salt. Start explainin’.”
    “Since when do dead bodies have shit-all to do with me ?” As if butter wouldn’t melt in his lying mouth.
    “These were walkin’ around.” Gabe eyed the walls, rough boards covered with an intaglio of twisted, slurred charter-symbols. Even the dust in here reeked of blood. “Ridin’ the circuit again put me in a bad mood, and the charter was solid. Which means I’m lookin’ real hard at you, Salt.”
    A mockery of innocent shock twisted the chartershadow’s lean face. “Me? Maybe you need a better chartermage. That one you got is all tarbrush and no talent.”
    “So are you, Freedman .” It was a sure way to nettle the man, and Gabe almost regretted it as soon as Salt’s face suffused with ugly maroon.
    “I ain’t no—”
    Gabe’s free hand flicked forward, the charm biting and fizzing in midair. Salt backpedaled, his boots smearing unfixed charter-symbols. A twinge of satisfaction burned Gabe’s chest just as the choking chartershadow managed to get about half a syllable out. The curse went wide, splashing against the wall and punching a fist-sized hole.
    Then Gabe had the man down on the floor, the gun cocked and pressed right behind Salt’s ear. This close, he could see the dark roots of the man’s charm-bleached hair, and also smell the faint smoke and slippery wetroot rot of the lean lanky body as the bad mancy kept twisting him, one slow increment at a time. Salt’s hair frayed, chalked charter-symbols on the flooring writhing as Gabe scrubbed the shadow’s face across them.
    There was, he reflected, almost too much enjoyment to be had in terrorizing the wicked. The Order did not precisely frown on such enjoyment…but it was dangerous.
    “Settle down.” Or so help me, I will settle you. That curse could have taken my face off.
    The only problem was, Salt’s replacement was likely to be worse. Every town, no matter how small, had at least one chartershadow. Even when there wasn’t a respectable mage to be found, the shadows crept in.
    Harsh breathing. The tips of Salt’s boots scrabbled against the planking before he went still. Gabe knew better than to think he’d given up.
    But for right now, it was enough. “Now.” He didn’t relax. “You been doing something that brings walkin’ corpses into Damnation, this’n your chance to tell me.”
    “Would I be so stupid?” The words were muffled by the floor. At least he wasn’t writhing anymore. “I got a nice li’l nest here, Sheriff . Except’n you, it’s a bed of fucking roses.”
    There’s always a thorn somewhere, isn’t there. “Well now. Mighty suspicious, then, that I’ Ken,ses.m the one who ran across walkin’ dead.”
    Still, if Salt had brought the corpses in or charmed them, he would have been ready for Gabe to come through his door, and would have had a lot worse than a half-measure of curse waiting.
    “I don’t know. It warn’t me.” Half-hysterical now, with the edge of a whine underneath the words. Salt could have been a reasonably employable chartermage with enough application