The spellchecker duly noted all the apotropaic incantations on the wall… and yes, there were catchspells behind them. But it didn't see anything else. I shrugged. I hadn't really expected it to: its magical vocabulary wasn't that large.

Besides, if the sorcerous leakage from the dump was so obvious that anybody with a thirty-crown gadget from Spells 'R'

Us could spot it, Charlie Kelly wouldn't have needed to send me out to look things over. Still, you'd like things to be easy, just once.

There was a parking lot across the street from the entrance.

I set my carpet down there, chanted the antitheft gear before I climbed off it I do that automatically; Angels City has had big-city crime for a long time. Leave a carpet unwarned for even a few minutes and you're apt to find it's walked with Jesus.

I crossed in the crosswalk. They still call it that here, though in a melting pot like Angels City it also has symbols to let Jews and Muslims, Hindus and Parsees and Buddhists, and several different flavors of pagan (neo and otherwise) get from one side of the street to the other in safety. I don't know what you're supposed to do if you're a Samoan who still worships Tanaroa. Run like hell, I suppose.

The entryway to the Devonshire dump projected out several feet from the rest of the wall. A guard in a neat blue denim uniform came out of a glassed-in cage, tipped his cap to me. "May I help you, sir?" he asked politely, but in a way that still managed to imply I had no legitimate business making him get off his duff and step outside.

I flashed my EPA sigil. At a toxic spell dump, that effectively turns me into St. Peter - I'm the fellow with the power to bind and loose, at least. The guard's eyes widened. "Let me call Mr. Sudakis for you. Inspector, uh, Fisher, sir," he said, and ducked back into his cell. He grabbed the phone, started talking into it, waited for his ear imp to answer, then replaced the handset in its cradle. "You can go in, sir. I'll help you."