“Listen,” Jesse began, “did you test that weird dirt you found in the Reed Jeep?”
Glory sighed into the phone. “Of course I did.” Jesse grinned to himself. “It was something called…wait, let me remember this right…industrial plasticine. It’s mostly used to make full-size models of cars before they go into production, to see how they’ll look when completed. I just figured maybe Mr. Reed did something like that for work.” She yawned into the phone. “I was gonna call you about it when I woke up.”
“What’s it made of?”
“Basically? It’s man-made clay.”
“Thanks, Glory,” he said. “That was a big help. Go back to sleep.”
He hung up the phone and relayed the information to Kirsten. “I don’t know if that helps us any, but it’s something,” he finished, but Kirsten had frozen in her seat, eyes big and round. Her phone slipped from her hand onto the car floor. “What? What is it?”
“It can’t be,” she whispered. She was shaking her head. “Jewish magics…Jewish artifacts…God, I’m such an idiot.”
“Kirsten,” Jesse said impatiently, and the witch’s gaze snapped over to him.
“It was the witch, the one who’s working with Olivia,” Kirsten said. “She’s made a golem.”
Jesse was a child of the movies before anything else. “Like…in Lord of the Rings?”
“No, no. A golem is a creature, made from clay and shaped like a man. The witch uses magic to animate the clay, sort of like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.” She rubbed her face with her hands like she was scrubbing something away. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.”
“Is it…alive?”
“I’ve never seen one—as far as I know, no witch has created a golem since the sixteenth century. But think of it more like a windup toy. The witch builds a humanoid statue out of clay and funnels magic into it. That’s the windup. She then gives it a task, usually something simple, like ‘take this heavy box and carry it until I tell you to put it down.’”
“Just to play devil’s advocate here, how do you know that’s what this is? Aside from the bits of clay we found at the scenes?”
She shrugged. “It just fits. Clay is very heavy, and I understand the weight of the spell makes a golem heavier yet. It could easily have crushed Erin to death.” She straightened up in the seat, as if she’d just thought of something. “And in dim lighting, with a long coat and hat, it could pass for human for a few minutes. If the witch and the golem surprised Denise at her car, the golem could easily have carried her to the end of the pier and thrown her over. They’re incredibly strong.”
Jesse tried to picture it. A shadowy figure in a long coat and fedora, marching straight down the pier with a struggling woman…it didn’t fit. “The Santa Monica Pier is crawling with homeless people,” he objected. “Wouldn’t someone have noticed?”
“I told you, there are spells for taking away a few seconds of memory. Or for creating a small distraction, or helping people to sleep…”
Jesse held up a hand, a little frustrated. “Okay, okay, I believe you.” He was beginning to understand why witches made Scarlett a little uneasy. At least with the other Old World creatures, you knew what they wanted and what they could do. He wished Kirsten could just hand over trading cards with all the witches’ stats. “We operate under the conclusion that it’s a golem. But what exactly could you do if you had a golem, the Book of Mirrors, and Lilith’s amulet, all at once?”
“Oh, God.” Kirsten said. “I hadn’t even gotten that far. I have no idea; there are too many variables, and it depends a lot on what kind of witch you are…death magics,” she said suddenly, paling in the midday sun.
“What?”
“A golem to be your henchman, and possibly take the lightning strike if something goes wrong. The Transruah, which collects the energy of life.” Jesse got the feeling Kirsten wasn’t entirely aware of his presence anymore, and fought the urge to hurry her along. “With the right magics, the right specialty, you could live forever, like I said before…kill someone remotely…even bring someone back from the dead…”
“Slow down,” Jesse said, before she could speculate any further. “This is getting too big, and there’s too much we still don’t know about what Olivia and this witch are planning, or when. What do we focus on first?”
“The golem,” Kirsten said immediately. “That’s their muscle. If we could dismantle the golem right away, it would cripple them and make the witch much more hesitant to begin the Transruah spell.”
“Okay, how do we kill the golem?” Jesse asked, feeling like an idiot as the words left his mouth.
He looked across at Kirsten, who was frowning. “I’m not sure…I need to consult some texts. A golem is one of those creatures that has many different legends and stories. Most of it is folklore, some of it is truth.”
Jesse couldn’t resist. “You mean like witches?”
She smiled. “Touché.” The smile faded from her face as quickly as it came, and she gasped with a sudden realization.
“Kirsten?”
“It’s tonight,” she said solemnly, turning in her seat to face him. “Whatever Olivia and her witch are doing, it’s going to happen tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the winter solstice,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“The longest night of the year, right? What does that have to do with anything?”
Kirsten gave him an incredulous look. “You don’t…the solstice is a holy night for many religions and pagan rituals. I usually have a big party for all the witches, sort of like a multi-holiday party. I canceled this year because of Denise and Erin.”