Mortal Danger (12 page)

The living room was small, beige, and spotless. She stopped in the middle of it, looking around. Kim Curtis had been a tidy person. The carpet was recently vacuumed, the room itself as tidy as Lily’s apartment, if not as sparsely furnished. The matching armchairs looked new. The couch was slip-covered in ivory matelassé, with two pale green pillows that precisely matched the chairs. A couple of prints hung on the walls—nice frames, conventional landscapes. The entertainment unit held a large television, an old VCR, a new CD/DVD player, and five cloth-covered boxes.

No glasses or plates in sight. If Curtis had offered Harlowe a drink, they hadn’t had it in here.

Lily went to the entertainment unit and opened one of the boxes.

“What are you looking for?” Cynna asked from behind her.

“I don’t know.” The boxes all held CDs and movies— tapes and DVDs. “She liked old musicals. And chick flicks.”

“She was doing okay for herself, wasn’t she? She was just twenty-two, but she had her own place, decent stuff.”

“Yes.” She straightened. “Maybe some of this wasn’t paid for yet, but she was doing okay.” Until she ran into Harlowe. Lily’s jaw tightened. “Let’s check out the bedroom.”

‘’It was a real treat, watching you take that little pissant apart.“ Cynna said as she followed Lily down the hall. ”Quite a lesson for me in respecting local authority.“

Lily winced. “Is it too late for ‘do as I say, not as I do”?“

Cynna chuckled. “Did you make up all that legal stuff you quoted at him?”

Lily stepped into the back bedroom and looked around. “I may have gotten some of the section numbers wrong. The gist was accurate.”

“That’s just scary. You really know all that code?”

“Bits and pieces. I’ve been trying to get up to speed.” Kim hadn’t done as much decorating in here. White walls, hand-me down furniture that didn’t match, but it wasn’t an interesting mismatch, either. “I don’t know if Karonski told you, but I haven’t been with the Unit long. I used to work homicide.”

The unmade bed drooled white sheets and a faded pink-and-yellow comforter onto the floor. No blood, but the body had voided itself in death, so it didn’t smell great in here.

“Gah.” Cynna’s nose wrinkled. “I’m glad I’m not Rule.”

“He doesn’t react to smells the way we do,” Lily said absently. No pictures on the wails, but above the bed were three wooden crosses. Handmade, she thought. Pretty things, really. “Most of the time, scent is information to him. Like if we see a pile of dog shit on the ground, no big deal. We get the message to step around it. Smells are mostly like that for him.”

“If you say so.”

There was a Bible on the bedside table. Lily frowned at it, trying to fit the signs of religious devotion with someone who picked up a stranger in a bar. Some religious types strayed from the straight and narrow on a regular basis, yet that didn’t seem to fit this time. Why?

Because the devotional items were in here, she realized.

In Kim’s personal space, not out in her living area. Her faith hadn’t been for show, yet she’d picked up a stranger in a bar. She turned to Cynna. “From what you told me, you can’t look for traces of Harlowe yet because you don’t have his pattern, but you can look for bits that don’t match with the victim’s.”

“I’ll need to sort some of her things first, pick up her pattern. Then…” She glanced at the bed. “Then I’ll see what 1 can pick out that isn’t hers.”

“Have at it. I’ll check things in my own way.” Lily had only touched death magic once. It hadn’t been pleasant. She tugged off one glove, steeling herself.

Cynna was removing her gloves, too. “I was thinking that we might be able to estimate the strength of the staff.”

“How’s that?”

“What’s your I.M.P.?”

Lily paused. “My what?”

“I.M.P. You know—Innate Magic Potential.” When Lily looked at her blankly, she asked incredulously, “You
have
been tested, haven’t you?”

“Oh. Right.” She remembered Karonski saying something about it. “The test wouldn’t work on me because it uses a spell to gauge the strength of the subject’s Gift. The spell would slide right off.”

“Shit. I guess that makes sense. Maybe there’s some other way to estimate the strength of your Gift. It was strong enough to keep the staff from affecting you, so—”

“It doesn’t work that way. I don’t…” Lily’s voice drifted off as she placed her palm on the pillow, right where an impression remained from Kim Curtis’s head.

“Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine.” That came out automatically. It was almost true. “I just hate the feel of this stuff.”

“Death magic, huh? What does it feel like?”

“Ground glass and rotting flesh.” Only worse. She didn’t have words to describe the corruption of it. She’d hoped she could tell if there was some difference, some change in the magic with someone else using the staff, but the sheer foulness overwhelmed everything else.

Lily shook her hand to rid herself of the lingering sensation and pulled her glove back on. “As I was saying, being a sensitive isn’t like other Gifts. I never used to think of it as a Gift at all. actually.”

“Why not?”

Lily struggled for a way to explain. “You’ve got some kind of shields, right?”

“Sure.” She looked around. “Um… I’m going to need to touch something of Kim’s.”

“We’ll tag whatever you handle. Try not to leave fingerprints on anything else.” She moved to the dresser, which held a mirror, jewelry box, and several bottles of perfume on a little tray. “Anyone with a Gift can learn to do spells, right?”

“Pretty much.” Cynna elbowed open the closet door. “Some are better at spellcraft than others. Most of us are only really good at a few types of spells, the ones related most closely to our Gift.” She sat on the floor and pulled out an athletic shoe, running her bare hand over it. “This will work.” she said with satisfaction.

Apparently shoes absorbed more than sweat from their wearers. Lily opened the jewelry box. Kim Curtis had liked earrings and bracelets. No necklaces, though. “So shields would be stronger or weaker depending on how strong your Gift is and how good you are at that type of spell.”

“Basically. There are ways to store power, but it helps to have a strong Gift.”

“Well, I can’t use magic,” Lily said flatly, closing the jewelry box. “And I don’t have shields. Being a sensitive is more like… like not being porous. Some substances won’t soak up water, no matter how much you pour over them. Magic can’t soak into me, no matter how much I’m hit with. Except…”

“Don’t stop now. If there’s an exception, I need to know about it.”

“Last night Nettie was able to put me in sleep. I’m told she used some sort of religious energy, not magic. But it was still a spell. I don’t see why it worked on me.”

Cynna shrugged. “Can’t help you much. I don’t know what the difference is, either.”

She put down the shoe and rose.

“I’ve got Kim’s pattern. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick up enough of Harlowe’s to do any good, but I’ll give it a shot.”

“You
can
limit your scan to Harlowe, right? So you won’t get anything from the staff.”

“I don’t scan. I sort.”

“I’m not following you.”

“They’re two different operations. Scanning would be… oh, like looking for a red scarf you dropped on the floor. You’d see it from a distance. You wouldn’t have to touch it or pick it up. Sorting is more like looking for a silk scarf in a tangled pile of scarves. You’d have to touch the scarves to find the one you wanted and work it loose from the others.”

“Then be careful what you pick up.”

She flashed Lily a grin and moved up to the bed. Gradually all expression bled out of her face, leaving only focus. She held her left hand at her waist, palm out as if deflecting something, and extended her right arm, elbow locked and fingers together, pointing down at the bed.

Slowly her arm swung to the left. Nothing else moved. She might have been a statue with a single moving part— the slowly swinging arm, moving now to the right. If she still breathed, it didn’t show.

The arm hesitated and stopped. Gradually, her fingers spread out.

Her eyes rolled back in her head. As if every muscle in her body had simultaneously melted, she collapsed.

Lily leaped for her. She got there just before the woman’s head smacked into the bed frame, but not with any grace. Off balance, Lily ended up going down with Cynna sprawled half on top of her.

She managed to sit up, shifting so Cynna’s head rested on her thigh. She was checking her pulse when those whiskey-colored eyes blinked open and Cynna said, “Shit.”

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“Turns out the sorcerer was right. That staff does not want to be found.”

For a second Lily just stared at her. “You tried to find it. After everything I said—in defiance of a direct order—you tried to find the damned staff.”

Now she looked sheepish. “I, uh, figured you didn’t know what you were talking about.”

Lily stood. Cynna’s head hit the floor. “Hey!”

“Karonski was right when he called you a loose canon. How am 1 supposed to work with you when I can’t trust you?” She wanted to punch something. “Did you bother looking for Harlowe’s pattern at all?”

“Of course,” She had the nerve to sound indignant. “What I found—I assume it’s from Harlowe—was all tied up with the ugly stuff. Couldn’t sort it out.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“I wasn’t excusing myself. Just letting you know.” Gingerly Cynna got to her feet. “Whew. I feel as if I’m coming off a three-day drunk. Ah… I was wrong about one thing, so maybe you should, ah, check to see if… well, if something was done to me. It shouldn’t be possible,” she added hastily. “Not at a distance. But the impossible just keeps happening lately.”

Lily was mad enough to let her stew a while. It was only after a severe struggle with her less professional side that she managed to say curtly, “I touched your skin when I checked your pulse. No trace of death magic, so I’d say the staff didn’t do anything but knock you down.”

“I guess you couldn’t have missed it if there was just a teensy trace?”

“If death magic had a smell, it would be like that stuff they put in natural gas to make it smell bad—even the tiniest whiff and you know it’s there. If I touch death magic, I know it.”

“Good.” There was no mistaking the relief in Cynna’s voice. “Uh… there’s one more thing I need to tell you. It’s about Kim Curtis.”

“Yes?”

“She isn’t entirely gone.”

TWELVE

RULE felt sick. “You’re sure the residue you picked up isn’t a ghost?”

They were waiting for the FBI’s crime scene specialists to arrive. He and Cynna stood in one corner of the yard. Lily was on the porch, talking to the uniformed officer who’d been first on the scene. The rest of the police were gone. Leung had dismissed them in a temper fit when his chief told him to let the FBI have the scene.

At least the press hadn’t showed up. Yet.

Cynna shook her head. “I don’t know what I picked up, but with ghosts there’s always a direction, you know? This time there wasn’t.”

“What made you try to find a dead woman?”

“I always check,” she admitted. “When I’m called in, a lot of times someone has died violently. That’s a good way to throw up a ghost. So I do a Find on the victim to make sure. If there is one, we call in a specialist.”

He looked at her quizzically. “You’ve Found ghosts, then?”

“Sure. They’re not that unusual. Most times they aren’t strong enough to manifest, so no one knows they’re around.”

“And when there isn’t a ghost, you get… what?”

“Nothing. When people die, there shouldn’t be anything for me to Find. This time there was… well, not all of her, but something of her. That’s what a ghost feels like. Only this remnant wasn’t tied to a place like a ghost would be. I don’t know what it means.”

“It means,” Lily said grimly as she joined them, “that he didn’t just kill her. He took her life—and fed it to the staff.”

Cynna shook her head stubbornly. “I couldn’t get a fix on the staff. How could I pick up on something inside it?”

“You connected with it, though. It knocked you on your ass. So where is it?”

“1 couldn’t tell, dammit! Something…” She stopped. Swallowed. “Something’s blocking me.”

“The staff, yes.”

Cynna looked ill. Rule didn’t feel too great himself. Was the remnant of Kim Curtis aware? Trapped, bodiless…

He turned to Lily. “Did you learn anything useful?”

“Maybe.” There was strain around her eyes, a tightness he instinctively wanted to ease. “I heard a lot more about Mike Sanderson, the one who found her. I’m trying to get a handle on why she brought Harlowe home with her.”

“You want to know if she was compelled.”

“I know you don’t think the staff can do that, but this isn’t adding up. She had these crosses on her bedroom wall and a Bible by her bed. And the boyfriend thinks she was a virgin.”

Rule’s eyebrows went up.

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Of course, just because a guy thinks a woman’s pure as the driven snow doesn’t make it so, but according to Sanderson, she believed in chastity until marriage. That put him off—he isn’t religious himself—but he was hooked. He kept hanging around. That’s what he was doing last night. He knew she loved to dance, so he went to the Cactus Corral to see if she was there, and sure enough.” She shook her head. “He’s messed up now because he didn’t try to stop her when she left with Harlowe.”

“He blames himself. That’s natural.”

“He knew something was wrong. She danced with Harlowe one time and then she left with him.”

Cynna shrugged. “Maybe Sanderson didn’t know her as well as he thought. Or maybe Harlowe gave her some roofies or K.”

“Maybe. We’ll see if anyone noticed her acting sleepy or drunk. But I don’t think Harlowe slipped the reluctant boyfriend a date rape drug.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Sanderson saw her leaving with a man she didn’t know, he went up to them. He asked her what was going on. And Harlowe just smiled at him and told him she’d be fine with him. And Sanderson completely bought it. That’s what’s eating him now. He thought it was just fine if she left with a stranger.”

Rafe knew where she was heading. “This isn’t the same as what Helen did to Abel. Harlowe didn’t erase Sanderson’s memories.”

She hesitated, then said quietly, “It’s more like what she did to your brother. Changed the way he thought about something.”

His breath sucked in, quick and sharp. Memory’s teeth only grew sharper when you turned your back on it. “Yes. She did do that.”

“The effect seems to have worn off on Sanderson pretty quickly. A couple hours later he was here, checking up on Kim. He didn’t buy the ‘she’ll be fine’ bit for long.”

Cynna looked skeptical. “You’re drawing a lot of conclusions from very little evidence. Telepathy isn’t the only explanation. For one thing, there are other Gifts.”

Lily looked at her. “Such as?”

“Well, charisma. It’s not as rare as telepathy, and if you put a good persuasion spell with a really strong Gift—”

“Shit, shit, shit!” Lily smacked her hand against her thigh. “I forgot. Karonski said something like that. That maybe Harlowe had a minor Gift of charisma.”

“It’s not in his report.”

“It came up when we were talking. He was speculating, I think. I can’t place the conversation, though. Can’t get it in context.”

That triggered Rule’s memory. “After he and Croft had been tampered with, when we met them in their hotel room. He was describing their meeting. He said Harlowe might have a touch of a charisma Gift.”

“It would explain a lot. Like why a devout young woman picked him up—”

“And why a man half in love with her didn’t object.”

“Whoa!” Cynna held up a hand. “I know I mentioned charisma as a possibility, but it would take one hell of a strong Gift plus an outstanding persuasion spell to alter people’s normal behavior and morals that much. A touch of a Gift wouldn’t cut it.”

“The staff,” Rule said grimly. “It changes the possibilities.”

Cynna shook her head. “Did Sanderson say anything about Harlowe toting five feet of black wood? Did any of the witnesses? Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing they’d let him bring into the club.”

“He could have charmed them into allowing it.”

“Or,” Lily said quietly, “maybe he has a ‘don’t see me’ on it.”

“A what?” Cynna demanded.

“A spell that makes people not notice something.”

Cynna thought about it and shook her head again. “Demons can do that, go unseen. But that’s innate, like Rule’s Change. Spells that duplicate the innate abilities of those of the Blood just don’t exist. Too complex by far. It’s like the difference between manipulating DNA and creating it.”

“And yet Cullen cast a ‘don’t see me’ on my apartment last night.”

“I’m impressed… if it worked. But your apartment’s stationary. A moving object would be a whole ‘nother story. A ’don’t see me‘ on a five-foot-length of wood carried around a crowded bar? Nuh-uh. I’m not buying it.”

Rule and Lily exchanged glances. “I’ll call him,” she said, taking out her phone. “He said he’d answer if— damn.” A white, American-made sedan pulled up, with a white, American-made van right behind it. The two vehicles parked, bracketing Rule’s car. The men in the car wore gray suits.

Either the FBI or the IRS had arrived, and Rule didn’t think the deceased was being audited.

“Weaver—”

Cynna grimaced. “Make it Cynna,.okay?”

“Right. I forgot. Try to get hold of Karonski. Find out if he remembers why he thought Harlowe might have a charisma Gift. 1 need to brief our associates, see what kind of equipment they brought. Rule—”

“I’ll call Cullen.”

“Thanks. Use mine. He’ll be more likely to pick up, since because he wants something from me.” She handed him her phone and headed for the newcomers.

Rule watched Lily as he punched in Cullen’s number. She’d told him once that a person her size either learned to move fast or got left behind. Not a bad metaphor for how she approached life in general, he thought. Her walk was brisk, efficient, utterly unself-conscious. And utterly female.

Then there was the way her hair swayed with her movement. He loved her hair. It was as black as a secret wish, shining in the clear light of the young sun, newly risen from its bed beyond the horizon…

“You’re really gone on her, aren’t you?” Cynna said.

Rule glanced at her sharply. As the phone rang on the other end, he thought of all he hadn’t told Lily. All he couldn’t tell her. She suspected he’d kept some things from her about Cullen’s search for the staff, and she was right. But that wasn’t the worst of his omissions.

He hadn’t lied to her last night. But when you slice truth too thin, you deceive.

The mate bond held them together, an inescapable gravity. But they had other ties—of affection, loyalty, duty. And sometimes gravity caused avalanches, mudslides, even earthquakes as opposing plates shifted, placing intolerable pressures on ground that wasn’t as solid as it seemed… “Yes,” he said at last. “I am.”

For once, Cynna’s natural extravagance was dimmed enough to make a mask of the web of patterns over her face. “I see. Well, I need to get my phone. It’s in your car, in my tote.”

“Here.” He gave her the keys, frowning as she walked away. After so many years, it shouldn’t have mattered to Cynna that he wasn’t available for fun and games. Apparently it did. He wasn’t sure what to think about that, much less what to do.

Finally the ringing was cut off by Cullen’s voice. “Changed your mind already, luv?”

“No,” Rule said dryly. “I’m still of the same mind I was last night.”

“Oh, it’s you. If you’re calling to pester me about the tracking spell—”

“I’m not, but I wouldn’t mind knowing how it’s working.”

There was a moment’s silence; then, grumpily: “It’s not. Not properly, at least. I told you it was basically an earth spell, didn’t I? Well, you wouldn’t believe how many blasted churches source in part from earth—which would amaze their parishioners, I’m sure. The earth energy gets all tangled up with spiritual energies, which creates a bloody blast of interference every time you come within a few hundred feet. I
knew
that would happen, so I tried tying it to air, too, but air is chancy, and with all the pollution—”

“I get the idea.” Three people had gotten out of the van. Lily broke away to talk to them. Cynna was talking on her phone. “You lost us.”

“Twice,” he admitted. “Picked you up again, but you were off the map for nearly a mile at one point.”

“That’s not good.” Rule looked at his car, blocked now by two federal vehicles. He’d tucked the charm Cullen gave him last night under the driver’s seat, where Lily was unlikely to see or touch it.

She was so bloody stubborn. Observant, too, unfortunately. Cullen’s charm was supposed to allow her bodyguards to trail her, undetected—an excellent idea, if it could be made to work.

Rule slid his hand in the left pocket of his slacks and fingered the small gold button. It looked ordinary enough, though it was, in fact, truly gold—twenty karats, very soft and pure. “Perhaps we should test the panic button you gave me. If that doesn’t work—”

“If you’re not trying to insult me, then roll your tongue back up into your mouth so you don’t keep stumbling over it. That thing is
simple
. Witches make them all the time. Now, if you didn’t call to pester me about the tracking spell, what the hell do you want?”

“The answer to a question.” Lily and the crime scene techs started for the house. Cynna had put away her phone and was following. Briefly he explained about Harlowe’s victim and her reluctant boyfriend.

“You’re right about one thing,” Cullen said. “Helen could make people forget they’d seen the staff. Harlowe wouldn’t be able to do that. At best, a charisma Gift might persuade them to lie about seeing him with it.”

That could complicate things, Rule thought, when Lily talked to witnesses. “The boyfriend seems to have thrown off whatever effect Harlowe had on him pretty quickly.”

“Charisma’s a chancy Gift. Some are more susceptible to it than others, and if there’s a lot of dissonance, the effects don’t last. If that’s all you needed to know, I need to get back—”

“Not so fast. If Harlowe needed the staff to get the effects he did on his victim and the boyfriend, then he had it with him, but no one mentioned seeing it. A ‘don’t see me’ spell would explain that, but I’m told that’s impossible with a moving object.”

Cullen snorted. “It would present more problems than I’m up to handling, that’s for damned sure. I can’t even get this blasted tracking spell to work right. I need to talk to that Finder of yours. She might have some spells I could use. Or bits of them, anyway, once I take them apart to see how they work.”

“She’d like to meet you, too. But right now, I need to know if the staff could be made invisible.”

“Not true invisibility, I wouldn’t think. That alters the physical properties of an object, which requires not only enormous power, but—”

“Cullen.”

“Right. No theory, no explanations, just an answer.” Rule could almost hear his friend shrug. “The staff is Hers. I wouldn’t want to guess what all She can do that I can’t.”

“She’s limited in how she can operate in this realm.”

“But we don’t know what those limits are. except in a very general way. We know she can’t operate directly in our realm—she has to use an agent. Nor can she spy on us—on lupi, I mean.”

That was both lore and, according to Cullen, common sense. He claimed that the supposed omniscience of the gods—or Old Ones, as he preferred to call them—was basically one hell of a good farseeing spell. And farseeing spells didn’t work well on those of the Blood. “Or on Lily, as long as she wears the Lady’s emblem.”

“According to the Rhej, yes, and I’m inclined to think she knows what she’s talking about. But otherwise… we know damn little about the staff. Don’t know that much about demons, either,” he added thoughtfully. “Except for the lower sort that idiots sometimes summon.
She
seems to have made some kind of alliance with one of the demon lords, though. Hard to say what that means.”

“You’re not cheering me up.”

“You’ll feel cheerier once I’ve destroyed that bloody staff.”

Rule’s gut clenched. “I’m moving up the time for the next circle to tonight.”

There was a heartbeat’s silence. “Something’s happened.”

All sorts of things. “I’ll explain tonight.”

“It will have to be late, or between shows. I’m dancing.”

“Between shows, then. The same place—make sure Max saves it for us. Tell the others to arrive singly, as before.”