Death Magic

TWELVE

LILY woke to the sound of voices downstairs. She knew before opening her eyes Rule wasn’t beside her, so no surprise that one of those voices was his. The other was familiar, but unexpected.

She glanced at the clock—6:22. A normal time to wake up, but those glowing numbers said she’d slept for nearly ten hours. She never slept that long. But then, she didn’t usually pass out from exhaustion.

Her head didn’t hurt. She felt fine . . . in a “gibbering in fear” sort of way.

What was wrong with her?

She wasn’t going to figure that out by pulling the covers over her head, even if that sounded good at the moment. Might as well get her day started.

Fifteen minutes later she headed downstairs with her hair still wet from the shower. Rule met her on the staircase and handed her a mug of coffee without speaking . . . at least, not out loud. His eyes said plenty.

She sipped. Rule made incredible coffee. “I feel fine. I don’t know what’s wrong. Something is, but until we have more facts, I don’t see any point in thinking about it.”

His mouth crooked up in spite of the worry in his eyes. “Qualified denial?”

“It isn’t denial if I admit something’s wrong.”

“I spoke with the Leidolf Rhej. She’ll be here by noon.”

The muscles across her shoulders loosened in relief. “Good. It’s probably some sort of weird migraine.”

“You won’t use the investigation as an excuse to delay seeing the Rhej.”

“You need to stop pulling mantle on me. It doesn’t work, and it annoys me. But yes, I’ll make time for her. I’ll come home for lunch. I’m not an idiot.” She started down the stairs again. “Cullen’s here.”

“I asked him to come yesterday.”

“You said something about that just before I got the headache we aren’t talking about. Is Cullen, uh . . . is he part of Ruben’s group?”

“I’ve briefed him on what I know about Bixton’s death.”

In other words, she wasn’t part of their secret club, so he couldn’t tell her who was. Lily kept moving. “I smell sausage.”

“There should be some left. I threatened Cullen’s life if he ate all of it.”

The only lupus sorcerer in the history of the planet sat at their kitchen table, finishing up a plate of French toast. He was a bit shorter than Rule, his hair a bit lighter brown—more spice than mink—and his face stopped people in their tracks. The spectacular face went well with a supernally graceful body.

This morning that face was unshaven, the expression surly, and the body dressed in disreputable jeans. He wore a small diamond in one ear, a larger one on a chain around his neck, and his T-shirt bore a cartoon of what seemed to be a Sasquatch in a ninja costume.

Sometimes Lily did not get Cullen’s sense of humor. “A ninja Sasquatch?”

“Cool, isn’t it?”

“Sit,” Rule said. “I’ll fix you some French toast.”

Lily wasn’t going to argue with French toast. She sat. “What time did you get in?” she asked Cullen.

“Plane landed at one. Traffic sucked. Got here about two. Napped for a couple hours.” He dragged the last bite of battered bread through a puddle of maple syrup. “You going to eat your sausage?”

“Yes. How—”

“Don’t know yet, but you’ve got a minimum of five perps.”

“So I assumed. What I was about to ask is, how are Cynna and the baby?”

Surly vanished, eclipsed by what Lily could only call a glow. Cullen’s phone was on the table. He shoved it at her, tapped the screen a couple times, and said, “Beautiful. See? They’re both ungodly beautiful. She’s smiling in some of these pics. I don’t care what they say—that’s a real smile.”

“She” meant Ryder, Lily assumed, the six-pound, seven-ounce explosion that had rocked the clans’ world. Cullen and Cynna had a daughter. And she was lupus.

That was impossible. There had never been a female lupus and there never would be. Lupi had daughters sometimes, sure, but only their sons could Change. Only their sons were lupi. Yet according to Cullen, who could see the magical energy around his daughter, little Ryder would someday turn wolf. According to the Rhejes, Cullen was right.

A lot of lupi were dealing with this knockout punch to their worldview in the time-honored way: selective denial. Yes, the Lady said that the arrival of a female lupus meant that war had resumed with their ancient enemy. War was fine. They understood war. They did not understand the concept of a female lupus, so they refused to talk about it.

Lily had started scrolling through a few hundred lovely if incredibly repetitious photos of the mother and baby stored on Cullen’s phone when Rule set a plate of French toast in front of her. As she ate, Cullen talked about cloth diapers, tiny fingernails, Cynna’s breasts—she was breast-feeding, as about a hundred of the photos testified—infant massage, and gas.

It was surprisingly comforting. Not interesting, no. She couldn’t say she found a lecture on various ways to burp a baby interesting. But comforting. By the time Rule joined them with his own plate, Lily had almost finished thumbing through the photos and Cullen was discussing the potential problems of seeing a daughter through First Change.

“. . . one of the biggies, of course, being contraceptives.” He brooded on that a moment. “We have to assume the pill won’t work. As soon as she goes through the Change, her body will reject any drugs in her system. So we’ll have to rely on mechanical methods, but fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds aren’t noted for their skill at planning ahead. Telling the boys I’ll kill them if they forget to use a condom won’t work.”

Lily didn’t quite choke on the food in her mouth, but it was a near thing. She swallowed. “You don’t think abstinence is a possibility?”

Cullen snorted. “Not with lupi boys—and not, I’m guessing, with a lupus girl. Normally we control availability. New wolves simply aren’t around potential sex partners at terra tradis. But the only way to control availability with Ryder would be to separate her from the other new wolves. I won’t do that to her.”

Puberty arrived a bit later for most lupi than for humans, typically around age fourteen. When it did, it triggered First Change. At that point the boy—or, as the lupi usually said, the new wolf—was sequestered with other adolescents at the terra tradis, a private area where new wolves could be closely supervised and trained. It took a young lupus several years to learn to control the Change and his wolf. “I guess new wolves want to be around their age-mates.”

“It’s more need than want,” Rule said. “The two years following First Change are critical to integrating our dual natures. Lupi who are deprived of age-mates in that period can be forever at war with themselves.”

Cullen didn’t look happy. “So limiting availability is off the table. Chemical and mechanical means won’t work. I’m going to have to find a magical method.”

“Is there such a thing?” Lily asked, startled. “A magical contraceptive?”

“By the time my daughter turns thirteen, there will be.”

“I guess that’ll be complicated, since, uh . . . I mean . . .” This was not an easy subject. “It’ll have to be a flexible method, won’t it? There aren’t condoms for wolves. And they couldn’t put them on if there were.”

“Oh, you’re talking about when she’s wolf.” Cullen said. “That shouldn’t be as much of a problem. We’ll have to wait and see to be sure, but it’s unlikely she’ll be in perpetual heat the way human females are.”

Lily opened her mouth. Closed it.

“Biologically speaking,” Rule said apologetically, “being in heat means being fertile. Human females don’t have heat cycles because they remain potentially fertile. Female wolves generally go into heat only once a year, in the winter.”

Cullen nodded. “We may have to segregate Ryder when her wolf’s in heat, but the jury’s still out on that. We can only speculate based on the behavior of wild wolves, but abstinence might work for her wolf form. Most female wolves refuse to mate with non-dominants, and the dominants Ryder will be around will be adults and able to control themselves.”

“Out of charity for Mason,” Rule said dryly, referring to the Nokolai elder who had charge of the youngsters at terra tradis , “segregating her during her cycle might be best.”

Cullen chuckled. “Maybe so.”

Lily sighed. “I’m really, deeply uncomfortable talking about fourteen-year-old kids having sex.”

Two uncomprehending male faces turned toward her.

“It doesn’t feel icky to you? Never mind.” Clearly it didn’t. Lupi were deeply protective of their children. Lily knew that. No pedophile who preyed on—or tried to prey on—a clan child had to worry about arrest. He’d be way too dead to worry about anything. And kids having sex with kids was not the same thing at all, and there’d been a time when fourteen-year-olds married, but . . . not now, she told herself firmly. “Let’s talk about something simpler, like illusion spells.”

“They don’t exist,” Cullen said promptly. “Not in any meaningful way. Not in our realm.”

“And yet someone who looked like Ruben killed Senator Bixton. Wait, wait,” she said, shoving her chair back. “I need my pad.” Taking notes was how she thought.

Rule put his fork down, reached out one long arm to the nearby counter, and retrieved the little spiral she knew damn well she’d left in her jacket pocket.

She accepted it from him. “When you stay three jumps ahead of me, I start feeling inadequate.”

“You’re welcome.” He handed her a pen, too.

She flipped to the page where she’d jotted down the questions she wanted to be sure she asked Cullen. “Okay. Illusion spells don’t exist in our realm, but the Great Enemy isn’t from our realm, isn’t human, and doesn’t have a lot of limits on what she can do. One of the limits she does face is contacting someone here directly. She’d need a telepath on this end to do that, right?”

“For the kind of clear communication it takes to teach someone a spell, yes,” Cullen said. “At least she did three thousand years ago. If she’s learned any new tricks since then, she didn’t use them when she was getting the Azá to open that gate for her. Friar probably dreams about her.” He shoved his chair back and headed for the coffeepot. “I mean that both ways. He’s smitten, plus she probably contacts him in dreams.”

“But it would be somewhere between unlikely and impossible for her to teach him an illusion spell in a dream, right?”

“In my opinion, yes. But I’m not an Old One.” Cullen refilled his mug and leaned against the counter to sip from it. “Still, what little I know about illusion spells suggests that they’re mage-level, if not adept. Friar’s got a gazillion oomphs of power now, but even if she managed to convey the details of such a spell in a dream, he lacks the training and experience to execute it.”

“You’re sure.”

“Spellwork isn’t just saying some fancy words while you stir together eyes of newt and toes of frog. You have to know what you’re doing in blood, body, and brain, and the only way to get that kind of knowledge is through practice and lots of it. It’s like the difference between watching football and playing it. Armchair quarterbacks might be able to analyze the hell out of a play, but they couldn’t execute it.”

“The Great Bitch is an Old One. Couldn’t she just inject that kind of knowledge into Friar when she gave him his Gift?”

“Not according to my sources—whose names wouldn’t mean much to you, so you’ll have to take my word for it.” He sipped again. “But that’s why she gave Friar a Gift, not a lot of fancy spells. He won’t be able to use any but very basic spells for a good, long time.”

“Bring that pot over here, would you? I wonder why mindspeech doesn’t work across realms.” She made a note to ask Mika about that.

“You’re sure that it doesn’t?” Rule asked.

“Based on the fact that she hasn’t been doing it all along, yeah, that seems a good bet.” She frowned at her notebook. “If illusion is out, what does that leave us?”

Cullen carried the pot back to the table with him. “I didn’t say illusion was out. I said an illusion spell was extremely unlikely. There’s still the possibility of an illusion Gift.” He set the pot by her elbow and sat down. “That Gift has never appeared in a human, but elven lords often develop it. I suspect illusion is the mature form of their innate ability to cast a glamour.”

Lily drummed her fingers. She truly and deeply did not want to be dealing with another sidhe lord. The one they’d encountered last month had been more than enough. Still, she noted the possibility . . . and caught a glimpse of her watch. “Shit. I’m going to have to rush through the rest of the questions, or leave some for later. You’ll be here later?”

“I’ll be around.” For some reason, that amused him. “You have a time clock to punch?”

“Drummond wants me at Headquarters at eight. I’m supposed to vet every agent on the team—make sure none of them are tainted by death magic. Which takes me to my next question. How long would the taint linger in someone who took part in a death magic ritual?”

“There’s an easy one to answer. I don’t know.”

“If you could give me some idea—”

“Anything I tell you is likely to be wrong. Your Gift is going to find traces that non-sensitives can’t, but I don’t know how long those traces linger—too damn little to go on and too many variables. Some people are more”—he gestured vaguely—“more porous than others. They’d soak up more. Plus it would depend on how many participants were at the ritual, whether the sacrifice was animal or human, and how many were sacrificed.”

“How many? You mean there could be more than one victim at a single ritual?”

“Sure. Theoretically, the only limit comes from how much power the chief celebrant can absorb or channel. The old Aztecs managed to do at least a thousand people a day when they consecrated their temple.”

“A thousand a day.”

“Some experts put it much higher. I suspect they wasted most of the power, but you’ve got to give them points for enthusiasm.”

“No,” she said, “I don’t. You think it could have been animal sacrifice?”

“Could be. The Azá used animal sacrifice.”

“That’s not what they had in mind when they grabbed me.”

“Human sacrifice is needed for a major working, sure, if you’re powering that working through death magic. But the real question is why they used death magic at all.”

Lily frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Spells that kill don’t need mega-oomphs of power. How much depends on the precision of the spell and the skill of the caster, but anyone with a strong Gift should have enough power on his own to enspell a knife to kill. So why involve at least four more people? Why use death magic?”

“Could it be someone with a weak Gift? Or someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing? Maybe he or she thought they had to use death magic to kill.”

“That’s . . .” Cullen stopped. Scowled. “Never underestimate the power of ignorance. Yeah, that’s possible. There is so much hogwash out there masquerading as fact.”

Progress. Lily jotted a few things down. “For whatever reason, the perp used a lot of power. That’s why I assumed human sacrifice. The dagger was still loaded with the nasty stuff over an hour after doing its job.”

“If you’ve got an ignorant asshole in charge, that would make sense. Overloading the power, I mean. I need to see that knife.”

“I’ll try to arrange it, but so far Drummond isn’t cooperating.”

“Yeah, Rule told me I’m not getting paid.”

“Speaking of ignorant assholes, Drummond may yet approve the consult, which would let me get this on the record. So do you think we’re talking about Friar as the perp? He lacks experience.”

He shook his head, looking frustrated. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit for me. If she passed a killing spell to him in a dream, she did a pisspoor job.”

“Maybe he had to find one on his own. Maybe he used some flunky. It’s a place to start, anyway. Next question. Why would someone suddenly leak death magic?”

He frowned. “You’d better explain.”

She told him about the trail she’d found and followed to a bench in the park.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I don’t . . . wait.” He sat up straighter. “If your perp didn’t do the deed himself—if he gave the knife to a null—”

“A null? Someone unGifted could use the spell on the knife?”

“Sure. Remember those sleep charms I made? A death spell on a dagger is a charm, basically. More difficult to shape than a sleep charm, and it takes more power, which is why I assumed . . . but they’ve got the power. That would explain why they used death magic. Blades will take a killing spell readily, but they don’t store magic well. It can be done, but then it would take magic to trigger the spell. A null couldn’t do it.”

“And this makes you think a null used the knife? Because he couldn’t?”

Cullen rolled his eyes. “Let me take you by the hand and lead you step by step. We’ll call the guy who did the actual killing Perp Number One. He’s null. Perp Number Two, who probably was part of the death magic ritual, is Gifted. Perp Number Two meets Perp Number One at that bench. Number Two activates the spell on the dagger and hands it to Number One. It doesn’t start leaking until it’s activated.”

It fit. It fit really well, and yet it bothered Lily. She couldn’t put her finger on why. Maybe it was the sheer complication. “Why have a null do the killing? What’s the advantage? You’re talking about a pretty elaborate conspiracy.”

Rule spoke. “We’ve been talking about a conspiracy all along.”

She looked at him. His mouth was grim. His eyes were dark and clear. “Yeah, I guess we have been. But I—shit.” She’d caught a glimpse of the clock on the stove. She shoved her chair back. “I have to go.”

Cullen shoved his chair back, too. “Okay.”

Suspicion dawned. “Why are you agreeing with me?”

“I’m going with you.”

“Drummond isn’t going to let you—”

“Lily.” Rule stood. “You can’t drive, so Cullen will. You passed out last night. It could happen again at any time.”

Her lips thinned.

“You could take one of the guards instead, but there are advantages to having someone with you who can see and work magic. And answer questions about it.”

“I hate it when you’re right.” She looked at Cullen. “You’ll have to wait in the car, maybe for hours. You’re going to be bored.” Cullen hated being bored.

He snagged his phone from the table. “Got a new app. I’ll play while I wait.”