I didn't know how well the spirit would stand up under serious interrogation, but I wasn't too worried about that.

Shows how much I knew, doesn't it? I guess I'm naive, but I thought the automatic anathema that falls on anyone who tampers with Church property would be plenty to keep snoops at arm's length. I'm no Christian, but I wouldn't have wanted an organization with a two-thousand-year track record of potent access to the Other Side down on me.

Of course, the veneration of Mammon goes back a lot farther than two thousand years.

I stopped by Brother Vahan's office on the way out so I could thank him for his help, too. He looked up from whatever he was working on - none of my business - and said two words: That bad?"

He couldn't possibly have picked that up by magic. Along with the standard government-issue charms, I wear a set of my own made for me by a rabbi who's an expert in kabbalistics and other means of navigating on the Other Side. So I knew I was shielded. But abbots operate in this world, too. Even if he couldn't read my mind, he must have read my face.

"Pretty bad," I said. I hesitated before I went on, but after all, I'd just pulled the information from his files. All the same, I lowered my voice: "Three soulless ones bom within that circle in the past year."

Three?" His face went suddenly haggard as he made the skin of the cross. Then he nodded, as if reminding himself.

"Yes, there have been that many, haven't there? I talked with the parents each time. Thatfs so hard, knowing they'll never meet their loved ones in eternity. But I hadn't realized they were all so dose to that accursed dump."

An abbot does not use words like accursed casually; when he says them, he means them. I wasn't surprised he hadn't noticed the apsychia cluster around the dump. That wasn't his job. Comforting bereaved families was a lot more important for him. But the Thomas Brothers collected the data I used to draw my own conclusions.