by Eileen Wilks
None that anyone lived in, that is. Hannah’s old cabin was about two hundred yards from the workshop, but despite the current crowding at Clanhome, no one had moved in. It was still filled with her things, and because she had no living relatives, it would stay that way until Isen gave permission for them to be removed. So far, he hadn’t.
Isen was in the steel-reinforced study now. Rule had run ahead so he could check out the perp’s trail, and Lily was nearly at Cullen’s workshop. Two lupi kept pace with her. She had her weapon, her purse, and a flashlight. She couldn’t see in the dark the way they could.
She did know a few things about the intruder now. It looked like he’d acted alone—and yes, the intruder was a he, and he was human. His scent had told the lupi that. He was a thief, maybe a pro, and he liked motorcycles.
Cullen was fast, even two-footed. He’d reached his workshop maybe fifteen minutes after his wards were breached, and he’d followed orders. He hadn’t gone inside…but he had nosed around outside, including looking in a window. That’s how they knew the intruder was a thief—something was missing. José had shown up at the workshop with his squad while Cullen was cursing the thief, but he didn’t send one of his wolves in to check out the workshop. By then, Isen had gotten home, and he’d altered Rule’s orders. Nokolai had an explosives expert. Pete had sent for him when the whatever-it-was exploded on Big Sister, but he lived in a small town nearby, not on Clanhome. Isen had wanted everyone to wait for the expert. Even a really good nose might miss something if he didn’t know what he was sniffing for. This guy did.
Lily couldn’t fault Isen’s caution. The intruder had already shown he knew how to blow things up. Plus the delay gave her to time to get to the scene before it was completely contaminated by Cullen and the others. Maybe. If she hurried.
The expert was there now.
While José and his squad had been waiting for the expert, though, they’d been busy. The four-footed contingent had found the intruder’s scent quickly—fresh, male, and human. The wind was with them, too, so they had scent in the air and on the ground. They’d taken off after him. The thief had had less than twenty minutes’ head start at that point. Not enough, not when he was human. They’d expected to catch him, and they would have—if not for the second fire. And the motorcycle.
The second fire was started with plain old lighter fuel, not explosives, and laid smack-dab on the trail the thief had taken. Laid with the wind in mind, that helpful wind that had carried his scent to them. The wolfbane-contaminated smoke took out five of the twelve-man squad immediately. Five of the others were affected to a lesser degree, leaving only two at full strength. Still, one of them managed to pick up a scent trail on the other side of the fire.
That’s when the klaxon went off.
Lupi do not all react the same way to the same dose of wolfbane. The nausea is universal, but the degree varies, the duration varies, and some lupi have other symptoms. José was one of those who lost their sense of smell. He hadn’t inhaled much smoke, so he was queasy rather than incapacitated, but his nose was horribly and infuriatingly dead.
There is little that makes a lupus crazier than losing his sense of smell. Maybe that had led José into error, or maybe he’d have done the same thing had his sniffer been at full strength. He ignored the klaxon as an obvious attempt to lead them away from the real trail—the scent trail he could no longer detect, but two of his wolves had it. He and the remaining squad members took off down that trail, crossing onto state land.
Then they heard the dirt bike…half a mile of very rough country away. Right about where the klaxon had gone off.
When they got there, both motorcycle and thief were gone.
Smart thief, Lily thought as she crested a rise, breathing hard. The klaxon had been a double-dip of deceit. What kind of fool would set off a klaxon to announce his location while pursued by wolves? One who knew something about lupi, who knew they’d trust their noses over their other senses. Rule was investigating that deceptive scent trail now.
A man stepped out of the darkness in front of her. “Lily.”
She couldn’t see his face well without shining her flashlight in it, and that would be rude. But she did lift the light slightly. “Ah—David, right?” She’d met the leader of this squad at some point—tall, with a blocky build and reddish brown hair, but mostly what she remembered was the mustache. Very few lupi kept any facial hair.
“Yes. This is the perimeter Merowitch suggested should be safe.”
Merowitch was the explosives guy. “He’s in the workshop still?” When David nodded, she said, “I need to talk to Cullen.”
“He’s at the workshop.”
“Dammit, he was told—”
“Not inside,” David said quickly. “But Isen didn’t tell him to stay away from the workshop—just not to go inside. He, ah, takes orders very literally. And only,” he added with justified exasperation, “from his Rho or Lu Nuncio. Or so he informed me.”
That sounded like Cullen. “Does he have some reason to think that’s safe, or is he just being an asshole?”
“He did some kind of spell and said he didn’t find any explosives—but he thought we should all wait on Mero witch’s okay, just to be sure. But if he isn’t sure, he shouldn’t be there.”
“I’ll take care of it,” she assured him, and raised her voice. “Cullen? I’m heading down there to talk to you.”
A voice floated up from the darkness. “Like hell you are!”
“Lily?” David said, worried. “You can’t—”
She patted him on his arm as she passed him and kept her voice raised. “If it’s safe enough for you, it’s safe enough for me.”
“Dammit, David, can’t you stop one little bitty human female?”
Either David had caught on or he was truly appalled. “You want me to physically restrain a Chosen? Rule’s Chosen?”
“She’s not going to shoot you,” Cullen called back. “I don’t care what she says, she won’t shoot.”
That made Lily grin as she picked her way down the path. “I don’t threaten what I won’t do.” There were trees on this side of the ridge—pine and scrub oak, mostly—and the trail down was steep and skid-inducing, with scree and pine needles. She kept her flashlight on the ground right in front of her, but farther down she could see light through the branches. It wasn’t very bright, but it gave her a target. She could hear something, too—Cullen cursing as he hurried up the trail toward her. The light brightened as he got close, resolving into a small ball of pure light floating just ahead of a half-naked man who could have given nine out of ten Hollywood stars a run for their money.
Ten out of ten, if he hadn’t been scowling so hard. “Did it even occur to you that I wouldn’t be down there if it wasn’t important?” Cullen demanded as he came to a stop in front of her.
“Important and urgent aren’t the same thing. Are you going to behave, or should I tell Cynna?”
“Cynna would understand. If there was a firebomb, I could put it out, couldn’t I? But there isn’t. I did a quick Find spell.”
She didn’t say a word.
“I may not be a Finder, but my spell’s pretty good.”
She kept looking at him.
“And don’t tell me I proved anything by coming up here to stop you. If something did blow, I’d heal. You wouldn’t.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, where David and the rest of the squad waited—all of whom were every bit as good at healing as Cullen—then looked back at him, eyebrows raised.
“All right, all right. But it was important enough to take a small risk.” Cullen ran a hand through his hair—something he’d been doing a lot of, judging by the way it was spiked up all over. “You don’t have to mention this to Cynna.”
“I need to know about the prototype that’s missing.”
“Yeah, well, I need to know how the rat bastard got through my second ward, which I can’t figure out from up here.”
“We can start
there. What does your second ward do?”
“Stops kids.”
“I’m pretty sure the perp isn’t a kid.”
Cullen waved one hand impatiently. “It takes too much power to outright block people with a ward. If I could figure out how they used to do it, using ley lines to—never mind. The point is, I can keep out fleas and scorpions. Flies are harder. So are kids. You tell kids they can’t go somewhere, they’re immediately going to want to check it out. Can’t have that. Aside from the sheer nuisance of having them sneak into the workshop, it isn’t safe. So I added a second ward. If someone crosses it, a wall of flames springs up around the building.”
Lily’s eyes widened. “You’d risk burning nosy kids?”
“It won’t burn anything.”
“I thought you couldn’t do illusions.”
“It’s real fire. It just doesn’t burn anything.”
“But—”
Cullen rolled his eyes. “Look, let’s skip the explanations. You wouldn’t understand ’em anyway. I’ve got three wards on the workshop. The first one’s the keep-away. There’s layers to that one, but it’s basically a single ward. It makes anything with a nervous system deeply reluctant to go farther. A motivated adult—or a kid being egged on by his buddies—can summon the determination to keep going. Or you can hit it at a run and be through before you have time to stop.” He stopped, his scowl returning. “The rat bastard wasn’t running, so he—”
“You know that how?”
“Tracks. He left some clear prints, so I know he walked through the first ward. But like I said, if someone’s determined enough, he can do that. But then he should have set off my second and third wards. The third ward worked. That’s strictly a warning to me that there’s an intruder. But the second one didn’t. No pretty flames.”
“Pretty flames that don’t burn,” Lily said. “Maybe he knew that and kept going.”
“It’s real fire,” Cullen said again. “Even if he somehow knew it wouldn’t burn him, he’d have a hard time talking himself into walking into it. He wouldn’t just see it and hear it—he’d feel the heat. It should have at least slowed him down. But that doesn’t matter, because the ward wasn’t triggered.”
“You’re sure? With the way your workshop’s tucked away in this cleft, you wouldn’t have seen the flames from Big Sister, and since they don’t burn anything there would be—”
He snorted in disgust. “What do you think I was doing just now? I can see the power loss if one of my wards gets triggered. That one wasn’t, so I was looking for signs of tampering.”
“Did you find anything?”
“No, but someone dragged me away before I could finish.”
“Okay. We’ll come back to that. Tell me about this prototype the rat bastard stole.”
“Have you listened to me at any point in the last month?”
“You’ve been working on a thingee that shields tech from ambient magic. You thought you had it figured out, but the device didn’t work.”
“Oh, it works, aside from a little problem with sporadic discharge. Unfortunately, the side effects preclude using it.”
“Did you tell me about side effects? Because I don’t remember that. I remember you found out it had a problem when you did a demo for some bigwigs from a tech company.”
“The demo didn’t go well.” He brooded on that a moment. “T-Corp knew it wasn’t ready for production—I told them about the unpredictable discharge—but they wanted a demo anyway. I agreed. We’d tested it plenty here at Clanhome. How was I to know it would affect nulls that way?’
He definitely hadn’t told her this part. She’d have remembered. “What does it do to nulls?”
But she’d lost him. His head came up, alert and listening. Without a word, he spun and sprinted back down the slope, nimble as a deer or a cat—more like the cat, she thought sourly, since he could see in the dark. “Am I about to be blown up?” she asked the empty air.
“Merowitch gave the all clear,” David said from behind her—right behind her, though she hadn’t heard him approach. “I imagine that’s why Seabourne took off.”
Cullen might have taken two seconds to mention that. “I need to get down there before he tramples over any evidence the thief left.”
EIGHT
LILY had never been to Cullen’s workshop. He discouraged visitors of any sort, but especially her. That wasn’t personal. The minute trace of magic her touch siphoned off made no difference normally, but there were some spells and charms that were fragile enough during some stages that even the slightest alteration might affect the outcome.
On the outside, it wasn’t much to look at—a plain cinderblock rectangle with a shingled roof. There was no electricity, and water was supplied by a cistern that had been filled through a combination of magic and muscle. Eventually the building would be connected to Nokolai’s water supply, but that was delayed for now. Too much other construction going on.
On the inside, it was a cluttered visual cacophony. Aside from the intricate circle inscribed in the center of the cement floor, it looked like a junk room with a few odd outbreaks of order. And it smelled like…everything. The scents were too many and jumbled for her to sort—herbs, ashes, leather, ozone, coffee, all mixed in with stinks both organic and chemical.
No wonder it had taken Merowitch awhile to check the place.
Lily had wrested an agreement from Cullen: she’d stay in the doorway if he would refrain from touching things. The door where she stood was set precisely in the center of the north wall. She could see well enough; a pair of mage lights bobbed around on the ceiling. There were three windows placed with equal precision in the middle of each of the other walls. Two of the windows held window boxes where a few brave herbs struggled for survival. In addition to being a sorcerer—which meant he could see magic—Cullen was Fire Gifted. Not a good match for growing anything but flames. Cluttered shelves sprouted along the two longest walls, almost as miscellaneous as their contents—three of them wood, two metal, one plastic, and one an incongruously elegant glass étagère.
The corners of the room held a ratty old recliner, a woodstove, a sink, and a cage. On one side of the circle laid into the floor was a long table—counter height, not dining. On the side nearest Lily was a perfectly ordinary looking pair of filing cabinets and a desk. The top of the desk held a lizard—alive—three Nerf balls, an ornate spoon, a surprisingly healthy aloe plant, a litter of papers, two pencils, a paperback book by Douglas Adams, a broken clock, a bottle of ink, and a small cauldron. And Cullen’s grimoire.
It was large, covered in black leather, with a runic symbol of some kind on the front. Anyone looking at that would guess what it was. “Why didn’t he take your grimoire?” she asked.
Cullen was squatting in front of one set of shelves, frowning at its contents. Apparently that wasn’t enough. He leaned forward to sniff them, too. “He didn’t see it.”
“A lookaway spell?”
“Yeah. Though the one you’re looking at is a fake.” He rose to stand with his hands on his hips, scowling around at his invaded domain.
“I take it he didn’t find the real one, either.”
“I don’t keep it here.” He dropped to his haunches suddenly. “If that dung-begotten abortion of a thief got hold of my—” He started to reach under the table.
“No hands!” Lily reminded him firmly. “No touching.”
Cullen swung his scowl around at her. “And how the hell am I supposed to know if he found my copy of Czypsser’s grimoire if I don’t look?”
“Smell?”
“Shit, the whole place stinks of him!”
She frowned confused. “Does he have an unusually strong odor, then?” The perp couldn’t have been in here long. “Or did he touch a lot of things?”
“No.” Cullen grudged that answer. “Go investigate somewhere else for a while.” He turned away and stalked over to the glass étagère.
“Have you found anything else missing?”<
br />
“No.” Cullen bent to study one of those outbreaks of order: an empty shelf. His worn-to-a-thread jeans looked ready to give up the battle for intactness any moment. His running shoes were equally ragged, and his spice brown hair stood up in spikes. He was as pretty a bit of eye candy as any woman was likely to see, and he was in a rage.
Not just pissed off. He’d been that earlier. Maybe it was a lupi thing, set off by the smell of an intruder in his space? Whatever the reason, he all but vibrated with anger. “Not,” he added crisply as he stopped scrutinizing the barren shelf, “that I can tell for sure without touching things.”
She nodded. “Makes sense, if he’s a pro.”
“A pro?” Brilliant blue eyes focused on her. His lovely mouth sneered at her. “He left behind my copy of Czypsser’s grimoire! Do you know what that thing’s worth?”
“He came here for one thing, got it, and got out. Didn’t let greed make him linger because he knew he didn’t have much time.”
His eyes were even wilder than his hair, the blue flame-bright—and starting to darken. The pupils seemed to be growing as black ate into the irises. “If the rat bastard is a pro, he’d better be ready to be professionally eviscerated. When I—”
“Cullen.”
“—get my hands on him I’m going to ask real nicely how he got past the flare ward, and if I like his answer maybe I won’t—”
“Cullen!”
Cullen stopped midword. Closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and ran both hands through his hair. Again. “I’m okay.”
The black had receded from his pupils, so she believed him. “Good. Let’s step outside. I need to call the CSI team in. While we wait for them, I’ve got some questions about your prototype.”
He fell into step beside her. “When I think about all the hours and hours of work I put into it, and then some—”
“Best if you don’t think about all those hours right now. Think about how you’re going to condense what you know about the prototype so you don’t drown me in explanations.” She paused on the other side of the doorway. David and one of his squad had taken up positions there. She checked her phone. No bars. She put the phone back and pulled out her flashlight. “Looks like I’ll have to head up out of this ditch your place is in to use my phone.” She glanced at David. “You’ll keep the scene secured until my CSI people get here?”