I got tossed out of the hospital pretty quickly, after being assured that Monica needed fluids and rest, and wouldn’t get the latter with friends around.

They were probably right. So, I went to the Mall. I tried to imagine it with the sounds of battle. Well. Of sites in the city where something like this could happen it was actually one of the better ones. Except for being so dang obvious. Rock Creek Park was better.

You could hide stuff there. I hesitated on one of the cross roads, looking first towards the Washington Monument, then the Capitol. The monument felt slightly magical, something I’d noticed before.

Probably just because it was a memorial to an important man, but maybe one of these days I should ask Seb. It was the kind of thing he’d know. It also wasn’t hugely important right now.

Not compared to other things.

Okay. If I was going to fight somebody here, I’d…probably try to do it here, right out in the open space. But that would be too visible. It came back to the same thing.

People would see this, and things were already frayed. True, it seemed people were slowly forgetting about what Anansi had done to death, slowly.

But I wasn’t sure whatever kept normal people from really knowing what was going on could stand another crack in it.

“It’s the fact that they don’t want to know,” came a raven voice from nearby.

“Hello, Munin. And I figured that was part of it.” Or maybe all of it. People who chose to know, knew. Kids knew, of course they did. Kids believed in Santa and the tooth fairy and magic.

He landed on my shoulder.

“You would have been handy earlier.”

“Not really,” the raven quipped. “I can’t use cell phones.”

I laughed. Both of the ravens had a sense of humor; but then I was pretty sure they were brothers, spiritually if not literally. “I suppose talons don’t work well for that.” I sighed. “Do you have any bright ideas?”

“I’m memory, not foresight. I only have ideas about what happened before.”

Which was clearly supposed to be a clue. I glanced at the monument.

“It’s a lynchpin for an old spell. Doesn’t work as well as it did.”

“Thanks. I was curious.” I didn’t ask why. Probably it was simply so old that it had outlived its casters by enough to make the magic fade. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t, perhaps never had been, dangerous. “What happened before.”

That was a clue, but if people tended to forget…but then. I tugged out my phone, trying not to dislodge the raven. “Kanesha. Hey, busy?”
“Never for you.”

“Meet me at the library? I have a thought.”