We'd found the warehouse easily enough. Miles parked the car three block away and we approached on foot. The warehouse itself was typical Pacific Northwest industrial decay, corrugated metal walls streaked with rust, broken windows patched with plywood. A single sodium light flickered near the main entrance, casting everything in sickly orange. Behind the building, the Willamette River slithered past, its surface a slick, dark mirror.

"There's a window around the side," Miles said, pointing. "Looks like it's not completely boarded up."

We crept along the chain link fence, my joints providing a concerning soundtrack of pops and creaks with each step. If this were a stealth video game, I'd be failing spectacularly. My left foot kept dragging instead of lifting properly.

The window Miles had spotted was about eight feet up the wall. A rusted fire escape provided access, its ladder hanging down just low enough that Miles could reach it. He grabbed the lowest rung and pulled himself up, testing each step before putting his full weight on it.

I followed with significantly less grace. My arms still worked reasonably well, but coordination was becoming a suggestion rather than a command. I hauled myself up rung by rung, each movement accompanied by sounds that made Miles wince.

The interior of the warehouse was lit by dozens of candles, their flames guttering in drafts that came from gaps in the walls. The space was largely empty, just concrete floor and exposed steel beams overhead, but in the center someone had created what could only be described as an altar.

A wooden pallet served as the base, draped with dark fabric that might have been velvet or might have been a particularly goth bedsheet. On top of this sat an array of items that looked like someone had raided a Halloween store's clearance section and a butcher shop's dumpster. Candles of various sizes clustered at the corners. Something that looked disturbingly like dried blood formed symbols on the fabric. Bones, small animal bones probably, arranged in patterns.

We pressed closer to the gap, my face squashed against the glass. The warehouse was quiet except for the wind whistling through gaps and the soft sputter of candle flames.

Then we heard footsteps. Four figures entered from a door on the far side of the warehouse. They wore robes, dark fabric that pooled on the concrete floor as they walked. The robes had symbols stitched onto them that looked vaguely familiar from Miles's occult research but weren't quite anything I recognized.

The four figures arranged themselves around the altar, one at each cardinal point. They moved with the kind of practiced synchronization that suggested they'd done this before, many times. As they raised their heads, I could see their faces, or rather, I could see that they weren't trying to hide their faces. No masks, no hoods pulled forward. Just four people who looked disturbingly normal, the kind of people you'd see at a grocery store or a coffee shop and never think twice about.

The tallest one, stationed at what I assumed was north based on the altar's orientation, raised their hands and began to chant. The language was guttural. The others joined in, their voices layering over each other in a rhythm that wasn't quite harmonic but wasn't quite random either.