Free Shadow Ritual by Eric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne

but I’ve only tested this contraption on a few guinea pigs. Weight and height also play a role. Perfection is not of this world.”
    The front closed a bit more, and the iron stakes tickled the victim’s eyes, stomach, knees, and genitals.
    “I am too kind. I set it for a mere fifteen minutes. Adieu, my friend,” the man said, turning to the others and adding, “How about lunch? An excellent meal awaits us.”

18
    Marcas’s phone rang as soon as he entered the terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
    “Zewinski here. I need to see you right away.”
    “I’m not your subordinate,” Marcas said, ready to hang up. “I don’t take orders from you.”
    “These don’t come from me. They come from the ministry, so you’re out of luck.”
    “Then meet me at the Bibliothèque François Mitterand in an hour,” Marcas said. As much as that woman irritated him, he couldn’t shake Sophie Dawes’s murder.
    “Why there? Is that one of your Freemason haunts?”
    “I just like the place. The cafeteria is good for private conversations.”
    “Hey, didn’t President Mitterand get himself elected with the help of his Freemason connections and appoint some of your brothers to his cabinet?”
    “So they say, but he distanced himself later. You know how good he was at calculated ambiguity.” Why was he even discussing this with her? “In an hour,” he concluded, ending the call.
    If only she knew how much he hated influence peddling, even though he’d applied to be a Freemason in 1990 as much out of opportunism as curiosity. He was still a rookie cop when Freemasons in high places singled him out. After a dinner with quite a bit of drinking, a superior officer asked him if he wanted to be a Freemason, as if it were like joining a tennis club. Marcas didn’t know how to answer at first but quickly realized that it was idiotic to refuse the invitation.
    Freemasons had been numerous in the French police system since World War II, and as one climbed the ranks, the number of brothers rose.
    A month after the invitation was extended, three people he didn’t know came to see him—at his apartment—to discuss his commitment. They asked questions about his lifestyle and tastes and tried to dissuade him from joining the Masons.
    A month after that, Marcas was summoned to a Freemason temple in the fifteenth arrondissement. He waited in a small black room full of alchemical symbols, where he meditated and wrote a philosophical testament. Then, blindfolded and stripped of some of his clothing, he underwent tests symbolizing a perilous journey across water, air, and fire to finally reach the light, the crucial moment of rebirth.
    There was nothing really secret about the rite, and anyone could read about it in one of the thousands of books about freemasonry. But Marcas understood on this night that going through the ritual had added a new dimension to his being and had changed him. He had felt something indescribable, as though he were frozen in a moment of eternity. It was hard to articulate. This wasn’t magic. It was an alternative awareness that he had never before experienced.
    After his initiation, Marcas met the other brothers in the lodge, none of whom held influential positions. He was almost disappointed: no well-known politicians, no emblematic judges, no celebrities. Just ordinary people: cops like him, teachers, some business owners, a handful of craftsmen, a few retired academics, and a cook who had received some attention for getting a Michelin star.
    But Marcas applied himself and rose from apprentice to fellow craft and master mason.
    When he was preparing for the police chief’s exam, he was invited to join a group of a hundred or so police officials from different lodges. Marcas never knew if being one of them had earned him points, but he did build a solid network of connections.
    That was history. He didn’t need to explain any of it to the snide Embassy Security Chief Jade Zewinski.
    A chilly rain