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Being a smoker made you a social pariah. Kryst's father had told him stories about the good old days when a man could smoke in hotel rooms, restaurants, and even airplanes. But now the places where a man could enjoy his bad habit in public were vanishing like dodo birds and passenger pigeons. You were relegated to little corrals that seemed deliberately designed to make you uncomfortable, and if you mentioned your habit to the wrong person you were treated with the same courtesy as someone who had just vomited on their shoes.

Kryst had picked up the habit in school and never quite dropped it. He'd halfheartedly tried to quit a few times, but he enjoyed it. Smoking relaxed him and helped him think. It was just unfortunate that the only place he could do that relaxing and thinking was on the roof of his apartment building, which was caked in garbage and pigeon shit.

It was an odd thing, but he always smoked more when his relic was out for recharging.

He'd been told to rest and unofficially put on official leave, but his mind refused to stop grinding against the case. Maybe there were some officers who could sleep after having a fight for their lives, but he was still riding the adrenaline and mentally winding forwards and backwards through what happened.

And he had to be honest with himself, something wasn't right. He had battled spirits and constructs before and the whole fight was practically textbook, but it didn't quite feel like he'd remembered the scuffles of the past. He didn't want to sleep while the event was still fresh in his mind. Details could easily fall away and be lost forever. He had recorded it all on paper, but the images in his head were more precious then words, and could slip away like the plumes of smoke he breathed out.

The cigarettes killed the sour reek of dead fish and flotsam blowing in from the coast. He'd been warned that smoking could damage his sense of smell, but after spending his evening at the Southgate and all of its colorful odors he'd welcome the loss with open arms. Kryst lazily blew a soft plume of it between his teeth and watched it dissipate in the warm summer air.

It was then that it hit him. The thing that had been wrong about the whole attack. It was so subtle anyone could have missed it, and it was so obvious he cursed himself for only realizing it now.

Kryst took another drag from his cigarette and held his hand out. He exhaled slowly and watched the smoke seep between his fingers before being carried off by a breeze. His mind mirrored the events as the apparition had attacked him, and then escaped through the broken window.

A spirit was an artificial construct that one could summon and dissipate at will. You needed to stay in proximity to control it, and have quite a bit of power for it to take on corporeal form and make it the same size as a person. Children often summoned very small spirits in their playground games and had them collide with one another like marbles. The winner was the one that had managed to keep his little spirit in one piece despite repeated batterings and attacks.

He stubbed out his cigarette and rushed back down to his apartment. He needed to call Anderson, and then he needed to call the hospital. He also needed a shower, a meal, and a gallon of coffee, but those would come later.