Mind Magic (13 page)

IT
took forever for Demi’s heartbeat to settle down after the Mercedes drove away. She consulted her “get the hell out” list several times, but of course she’d never expected Lily Yu to drive up and buy gas from her and ask about hotels, so that wasn’t on her list. FBI agents were, but only if they were asking people about her—the original her, that is. The one who was female and seventeen.

Finally she decided that if Lily Yu had wanted to arrest her, she would have done so instead of driving away. This wasn’t a “get the hell out” situation, which meant she was probably okay, as long as she didn’t do anything to draw attention. So she stayed at work, and everything was just like usual, only better. She kept smiling, thinking about how she’d actually met Lily Yu and spoken to her. Lily Yu was a genuine hero. She was brave and smart, plus she was married to Rule Turner. That was beyond cool, but it wasn’t why Demi read everything she could find about the FBI agent.

Lily Yu was like
her
. Like she might have been, that is, if not for Asperger’s.

Most of the time she liked herself the way she was, Asperger’s and all. Being an Aspie had its good points, like being orderly and logical and able to immerse herself in things that interested her. But there was no denying that some things were hard for her, such as making eye contact and understanding body language, social cues, and facial expressions. She’d make a terrible FBI agent. She always thought people were telling the truth. She knew that wasn’t so, but she had no idea how to apply that knowledge to individual people. FBI agents needed to be able to tell when people lied to them. So she’d never be like Lily Yu, not really, except maybe in some ways . . . she was brave sometimes. She hadn’t panicked today. She’d used her lists to get her mind working instead of bumblebee-ing around, and she’d been able to reason her way through.

Demi felt happy as she sold gas and cigarettes and candy. Instead of worrying about Mr. Smith and what she should do next, she thought about meeting Lily Yu. She thought a lot about how to figure out if the wolf she’d glimpsed in the backseat of the car had been Rule Turner. If it had, that would make today just about perfect.

ELEVEN

THE
sun was hot, the freshly cut grass smelled sweet, and the push of Ruben’s mantle was annoying. Rule could live with it, but it was annoying. He was, he admitted, a bit on edge. The storm in his gut had never really gone away. It was quieter now, but not gone.

Had anyone been watching, it would have looked like they were sitting on Ruben’s rear deck enjoying a couple glasses of lemonade and a chat. The hypothetical watcher wouldn’t have heard them, however, no matter where he stood or what Gift or technology he might be using. The crystal Rule had set on the table was brand new and, at the moment, one of a kind. It was based on a silence ward Cullen had recently learned from a former hellhound.

The crystal had two drawbacks. First, those without the Sight couldn’t tell when it ran out of charge. Second, it needed to be employed within a circle to contain the effect. Rule couldn’t set a circle. With very few exceptions, the power that resides in lupi can’t be used for spells.

Ruben, however, was Gifted, and that type of power was available in ways Rule’s magic wasn’t. He’d chalked a circle around the table and chairs before they sat down to enjoy the slant of the late afternoon sun, the tart lemonade . . . and their chat.

One of Rule’s duties as second-in-command of the Shadow Unit was to function as CFO. He’d just finished going over the books and was briefing Ruben on the protections Cullen had recently put in place. “. . . can’t guarantee anything should a large-scale magical attack on the bank’s computers be mounted, but any individual tampering with our accounts will now be blocked.”

Ruben didn’t look happy. “I wish you had consulted me before acting.”

Annoyance mounted. Rule told himself firmly that Ruben was not challenging him. “Given the current communication difficulties, that would have meant waiting until we spoke in person. I judged that an unnecessary risk. Was this not within my authority as CFO?”

“Would you have acted unilaterally on similar Nokolai business without discussing it with Isen?”

“If for some reason I couldn’t reach Isen, yes. Would you be acting as if I’d challenged your authority if we weren’t sitting so close with our mantles pushing at each other?”

“You’re making unwarranted assumptions.”

Rule gritted his teeth. “You’re leaning forward.”

“I don’t see what that—”

Rule leaned forward, too. “Don’t you?”

Ruben froze. After a moment he sighed and leaned back in his chair. “You’re right. Being around you—or being so near the mantles you carry—reinforces instincts I’m not yet accustomed to. My apologies. You were unable to discuss it with me and felt there was enough risk that you wanted to go ahead, and you do have the authority for that.”

It was harder than it should have been to lean back and let go of the need to defend himself. Rule did it anyway. Long experience let him keep the difficulty from his voice. “You don’t agree with my decision.”

“It seems unnecessary. Unit Twelve has investigated a number of cases in which practitioners tried to shift money into their accounts magically. Often the mere use of magic on electronic records either shuts down the bank’s computers or causes multiple glitches without making the change the thief desires. Sometimes funds do magically appear in the thief’s account, but not in the amount intended, or the funds are withdrawn instead of deposited. On the rare occasions when the thief gets the result he’s after, the tampering is easy to spot and quickly rectified. Finding sufficient evidence for prosecution can take time, but the problem itself is fixed quickly.”

Rule shrugged. “Perhaps that’s true with most practitioners, but if Cullen can undetectably alter electronic records in a manner that is not ‘easy to spot and quickly rectified,’ someone else might be able to.”

Ruben’s eyebrows shot up. “He’s done this?”

“Yes.” Two years after the fact, Visa still didn’t know why the credit card they’d issued to one Cullen Seabourne had gone overnight from a thousand-dollar limit to none while the minimum payment remained twelve dollars a month.

“Ah. I see why you considered this more of a threat than I did. I still don’t see how it’s possible. Any use of magic to ward an account should set off the same problems an attempt at tampering would.”

“I can’t explain what I don’t understand, but apparently using sympathetic magic makes a difference. The ward isn’t installed on the bank’s computers, but on a symbolic representation of them.”

Ruben considered that a moment. “He put these protections on Nokolai’s accounts two months ago, you said?”

“Yes. There have been no problems.”

“I see. Or rather, I don’t see how it works, but if you and Cullen say it does, I’ll take your word for it. It would be inconvenient to have our funds suddenly disappear.”

“That it would.” Surreptitiously Rule checked his watch. Five minutes until six. Whatever Lily was needed for in Whistle, she should encounter it soon, if she hadn’t already. Such a large word, “whatever.” He tried not to think about how many grim possibilities it covered and carefully did not check for her. The utter wrongness of the distorted mate sense seemed to reach him at a deeper level than it did Lily.

If Ruben noticed Rule’s preoccupation with the time, he didn’t comment on it. “Before we discuss the communications problem, I’d like to brief you on a few situations. Two of them involve Shadow agents. The other one is a case Unit Twelve is investigating that could become of interest to the Shadow Unit, depending on how things develop.”

And so they left the legal part of the discussion for murkier regions.

The Shadow Unit had three great strengths any clandestine organization would envy. First was the instant, untraceable communication the dragons provided. Wars have been won or lost due to communication. Their second strength was Ruben’s position as head of Unit 12, which gave him access to the vast information-gathering resources of the FBI. It was, of course, illegal for him to use those resources that way, which underscored the need for secure communications.

Their third strength was Ruben himself.

Precognition wasn’t well understood. Many dismissed it as useless because it was so often wrong. Precogs whose Gift manifested only in dreams or visions couldn’t be tested in a laboratory—but most precogs were hunchers, like Ruben. The experts had derived a test for them. It involved randomly generated three-digit numbers and was scored based on statistical models that accounted for sequencing and partially correct answers.

Using that weighted scoring system, most precogs tested between twenty and thirty percent—well above pure chance, but nothing anyone would want to bet the farm on. A few of the strongest ones had hit in the forties.

Ruben had tested at seventy percent.

Tests are not real life, of course. In real life, Rule had never known Ruben to be wrong. That was partly due to the strength of Ruben’s gift, but just as important was that he knew when he had a hunch.

Ruben had told Rule once that being a strong precognitive was like having background music on all the time . . . music made by a couple dozen different bands, each playing a different tune. Fast or slow, faint or loud, familiar or eerily alien, the songs all had one thing in common: they were instrumentals. No vocalist, Ruben had said wryly, ever added a spoken refrain to explain things. It was a music composed of feelings, not notes. That’s why precogs often mistook their own unconscious fears or fantasies for the prompting of their Gifts.

Ruben didn’t. For him, it was like the difference between listening to music and humming a song himself. He couldn’t mistake one for the other. That accounted for much of his uncanny accuracy: he knew when he didn’t know.

“. . . mystifying and potentially connected to
her
, given the nature of the cult,” Ruben finished. “I’ve had trouble deciding who to send. Suggestions?”

“That’s Ybirra territory. Is there some reason you don’t want a couple of Manuel’s people checking them out?”

“Nothing concrete, but I suspect that whoever I send will need good spellcasting abilities.”

“You’ve thought of Cullen.”

“Not him.” Ruben was certain. “Someone I haven’t yet considered.”

“You must have considered all the usual active Ghosts.” Rule glanced at his watch again. Six ten. He wanted badly to call Lily. That would be stupid, potentially interrupting her at a key moment, so he didn’t do it. But he wanted to. “Arjenie isn’t active. She is skilled, but bear in mind that if you send her, Benedict will go, too.” Benedict would never let his Chosen go into danger by herself the way Rule had been forced to do.

“Not Arjenie, but . . . ah, that’s it. Someone connected to her.” Ruben nodded briskly, pleased. “Her cousin. He’s done some off-the-books work for Unit Twelve and I’ve been considering recruiting him for the Shadows. This is the right time and the right job.”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

They discussed the man briefly, then moved on to the meat of their discussion. With Mika gone, the Shadow Unit effectively lacked two of their three strengths. Ruben couldn’t lead effectively without quick, clear communications. “The solution,” Ruben said, “is obvious. While Mika is absent, I need to leave D.C. for another dragon’s territory. With you here—”

Something
happened.

When it finished happening, Rule was on his feet. His chair lay on its side behind him. His entire being seemed to vibrate like a gong a second after being struck—the sound had passed, but the reverberations continued.

He felt settled. At peace.

Ruben clearly did not. He was on his feet, too—his shoulders hunched, his head lowered, his eyes fixed on Rule. The posture of a wolf prepared to attack. “No?” he said very low.

Rule smiled at him. “My apologies. I take it I reacted very suddenly?”

Ruben’s posture didn’t change. “You don’t remember?”

That would strike Ruben as deeply suspicious. “No, but it’s all right. It was the Lady.”

Ruben’s posture eased slightly, but he still looked ready to attack or defend. “The Lady spoke to you?”

“Not precisely. Not in words.” But he would need to find words to express her message, or the man across from him would think he’d been possessed or placed under compulsion or some such. “She . . . agrees with me. Or approves of my instinctive response, or . . .” He shrugged. “You know how you feel on full moon night, when you open completely to her song? Just before the pain hits, when there’s nothing but her song . . . it was like that.”

Silence, except for the distant sounds of birds, a car with its radio on driving along the street in front of the house, a dog a couple houses away, Deborah humming in the kitchen . . . and the elevated heartbeat of the man across from him. Who gradually relaxed the rest of the way. “What did the Lady agree with you about?” he asked dryly.

“I can’t be trapped here.” There was more . . . the warm glow of her approval, the sense that she regretted something . . . and the utter certainty that his instincts were correct.