Cole read the date in his own handwriting a third time before he believed it.
Friday, 4:11 p.m.
stamped over a trooper named Larsen like a stopped clock, no accident behind it, just a date the Writ had decided on.
He stood in the hospital lot with the notebook open against the hood.
Larsen was bleeding from the inside out and nobody in that building could tell him why.
Three days.
That was the whole shape of it.
Cole had seen this kind of thing before.
A hex bag.
Somewhere close.
Somewhere the trooper touched every day.
He drove to the state patrol barracks in Hutchinson and parked two blocks over.
Walked in through the west entrance like he had a reason to be there.
The desk sergeant looked up.
“Help you?”
“I’m with the union,” Cole said.
“Here about Larsen’s medical.”
The sergeant waved him through.
The locker room was empty.
Larsen’s locker was third from the left, combination lock hanging open.
Cole opened the door.
Spare uniform.
A thermos.
A photo of a woman and two kids taped to the inside.
He ran his hand along the top shelf.
Nothing.
He checked the boots.
The pockets.
The gym bag.
There.
Tucked into the rolled spare belt.
A small cloth bundle tied with red thread.
Cole pulled it out and held it under the light.
The thread was knotted seven times.
He could smell the rot from here.
He bagged it.
Closed the locker.
Walked out the same way he’d come in.
The desk sergeant didn’t look up.
Cole sat in the truck and opened the bag on the passenger seat.
The bundle was about the size of a walnut.
He didn’t open it.
You didn’t open hex bags unless you wanted the hex on you instead.
He needed to know what was in it.
Specifically what was in it.
Because burning the wrong herb could backfire, and backfire could land the death on someone else in the building.
He pulled out his phone.
Scrolled through the contacts he’d picked up over the last three months.
No one who’d know botanicals off the top of their head.
He called information.
Asked for the ag extension office at the university.
“Botany,” a woman said.
“I need someone who can identify a dried plant sample,” Cole said.
“Fast.”
“Dr.
Keene’s in her office.
I’ll transfer you.”
The phone clicked.
Rang twice.
“Keene.”
“My name’s Brenner.
I’m a consultant working a contamination case.
I need a plant ID today.
Can you help?”
Silence on the other end.
Then: “What kind of contamination?”
“Agricultural.
Possibly toxic.
I can bring the sample to you.”
“How big?”
“Small.
Dried.
“Bring it by.
I’m in Haecker Hall, third floor.”
Cole drove.
The campus was fifteen minutes south.
He parked in a visitor lot and walked into Haecker Hall with the hex bag in a sandwich bag in his jacket pocket.
Dr.
Keene was in her fifties, gray hair pulled back, reading glasses on a chain.
She looked up when he knocked.
“Mr.
Brenner?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s see it.”
Cole set the sandwich bag on her desk.
She pulled on gloves and opened it.
Lifted the hex bag by the thread and frowned.
“This isn’t an agricultural sample.”
“No.”
“What is this?”
“A bundle someone made.
I need to know what’s in it without opening it.”
She looked at him over the glasses.
“You’re not a consultant.”
“No.”
“What are you?”
“Someone trying to keep a man from dying on Friday.”
She set the bag down.
“I could call security.”
“You could.”
She didn’t move.
She looked at the bag again.
At the knotted thread.
At the faint smell of rot coming through the cloth.
“If I help you,” she said, “you leave and I never see you again.”
“Deal.”
She picked up the bag and walked to a lab table by the window.
Opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of fine tweezers and a magnifying lamp.
She worked in silence.
Turned the bag over.
Pressed it gently between her fingers.
Sniffed it once and made a face.
“Mandrake root,” she said.
“Dried.
And something else.
Yarrow, maybe.
And” She leaned closer.
“Graveyard dirt.”
“You sure?”
“The smell’s distinctive.
Old moss and mineral salts.
Someone dug this up from a cemetery.”
Cole wrote it down.
“Anything else?”
“A hair.
Human, I think.
Knotted into the thread.”
“Can you tell whose?”
“No.”
Cole nodded.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.
Get out.”
He left.
Back in the truck he pulled out the notebook and checked the lore.
Mandrake, yarrow, graveyard dirt, a hair from the target.
Standard bleeding hex.
You burned the bag and the hex broke.
Unless the bag had a rider sigil.
Then burning it backfired.
He didn’t see a sigil.
He turned the bag over twice under the dome light.
No markings on the cloth.
He drove to the edge of town and pulled into a empty lot behind a closed diner.
Dug a small pit in the gravel with the tire iron.
Set the hex bag in the bottom.
Poured lighter fluid over it.
Lit a match.
The bag caught.
Burned fast.
The thread popped and the cloth curled black and the smell that came off it was sulfur and spoiled meat.
Cole watched it burn all the way down.
Covered the ashes with gravel.
Kicked the pile flat.
He drove back to the hospital.
Larsen was sitting up in bed when Cole walked past his room.
Awake.
Talking to a nurse.
The death-print was gone.
Cole kept walking.
He was in the truck, engine running, when his phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
“This Brenner?” a man’s voice said.
Gruff.
Older.
South Dakota flat.
“Yeah.”
“Bobby Singer.
You just worked a case in Hutchinson.”
Cole didn’t answer.
“Larsen’s my contact.
He called me this morning, said he was dying.
Called me an hour ago, said he wasn’t.
You wanna tell me what happened?”
“Hex bag,” Cole said.
“Burned it.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“His locker.”
“You I.
D.
the caster?”
“No.”
Silence on the other end.
Then: “You got a last name, Brenner?”
“No.”
“You working the circuit, or just passing through?”
“Passing through.”
“Uh-huh.” Bobby’s voice was dry.
“You do good work.
Clean.
But you’re careful.
Real careful.
Like you don’t want anyone looking at you too close.”
Cole said nothing.
“I’m gonna make a call,” Bobby said.
“See if anyone else has seen you.
You got a problem with that?”
“No.”
“You should.”
The line went dead.
Cole set the phone down.
Started driving.
He had a vetala waiting in Sioux City and Bobby Singer somewhere behind him, talking to someone who’d probably talked to Rena, and the network was closing in whether he liked it or not.
He counted the exits between here and the state line.
Okay, he thought.
Okay.
The kit worked.
The trooper lived.
Bobby was going to call Rufus, and Rufus was going to say the same thing Rena had said, and Bobby was going to keep asking.
Cole couldn’t avoid him forever.
Just today.
Bobby was already a step ahead of him in the only way that mattered talking to people who’d talked to Rena and Cole crossed into Iowa without much hope that the miles between them would hold.