Blood Magic wotl-6

by Eileen Wilks

  If the public transportation wasn’t up to the standards of London or Paris, it was adequate to his needs today. There was a bus stop right at the hospital, though he did have to make two changes to get there.

  When the bus slowed to a stop he climbed on board carrying what he needed in a white grocery sack. After some consideration, he’d chosen to play it safe. His target had already confounded him once, proving resistant to both knife and spell. He couldn’t assume his other spells would work on lupi as beautifully as they worked on humans. Nor could he assume the sorcerer was too unwell to set proper wards. He ought to be—but then, he ought to be dead, too.

  He purchased a day pass from the driver and took a seat. The bus was crowded, and the woman sitting beside him wanted to chat about the weather. Johnny agreed that it was very hot, then took out his phone with an apology and pretended to make some calls.

  It was all very well to be friendly, but it would not do to be memorable.

  Besides, the woman was too tall. He didn’t like tall women. Once the city was his, he wouldn’t allow any woman over five foot three in his presence. He’d considered doing the same with men above a certain height, but that wasn’t practical. He accepted that some of his subordinates would be larger than he.

  Johnny prided himself on his practicality. Practicality, patience, and tolerance—those were his chief virtues. He did not, after all, become angry at the woman for being tall. Poor thing, she couldn’t help her height. Instead he cheerfully anticipated the day when women of her excessive inches would not be part of his daily life.

  But then, he was a modest man. How could a man achieve success if he did not understand his limits? He knew, for example, that he was not unusually bright or brave. Neither was he stupid or a coward. When he was young, he had thought one must be one or the other—bright or stupid, brave or cowardly. Now, he knew those were poles—signposts, one might say—at either end of long paths. Most people fell somewhere between those signposts, rather than at one end or the other. One might move slightly closer to one signpost or the other as life proceeded, but one would not greatly alter one’s natural position.

  He also understood that he was exceptional in two ways. Some quirk of ancestry had gifted him with the ability to see and use magic. Obviously, sorcery was both rare and valuable, but he took no credit for possessing this skill, just as he laid no blame upon himself for lacking great intelligence. He had not achieved the one nor failed at the other. He had simply been born as he was.

  Johnny’s other exceptional trait was less obvious—indeed, it was invisible to most people, and was commonly held to be twisted or perverse. A limited judgment, of course, but most people were sadly limited. They wanted good and evil painted in black and white so they knew what was what. Very few grasped the essential elasticity of those qualities. Moral behavior was contingent, always contingent, upon circumstances.

  This should be obvious to historians, if not to the dreaming majority. In how many ages and cultures had it been considered acceptable, even correct, to torture one’s enemies? In some cultures the eating of animal flesh was abhorred; in others, the hunter was elevated. And how many variations existed on proper sexual behavior?

  Yet people clung to the idea that some acts were inherently good and performing them made one good. Other acts were inherently evil, committed only by evil persons.

  And wasn’t English a clever tongue in some ways? This thought had come to Johnny many times since he learned the language, and it never failed to amuse him. One committed to evil, not good; good was simply a performance. Acting as if you were good might make it so, at least in the eyes of others.

  But men are always more comfortable thinking themselves like their fellows. Even now, with the fascinating things they were learning about the brain, scientists persisted in viewing abnormalities in the brain as flaws, failures, a problem to be fixed.

  Johnny was naturally curious about such things, given the nature of his second exceptional trait. He had read many popularized accounts of brain research and psychology. Happily, he’d been able to conclude he was not what experts called a psychopath. Whatever might be wired differently in his brain, it didn’t prevent him from making meaningful connections with others. Clearly he had a deep and loving connection with his beloved.

  Psychopaths were also said to lack empathy. That was certainly not true of him. How could he take such pleasure in giving or receiving pain if he were unable to sense the feelings of others?

  No doubt he would have shared the common view had he been born “normal.” Johnny chuckled as he climbed down from the bus with his white grocery sack. Had he been born without his other exceptional ability, he would also be long dead. His Beautiful One would not have fallen in love with him had he been unable to appreciate the exquisite pleasures she offered.

  Johnny sat on the hard bench to wait for the next bus. So many had failed his Beautiful One. This was not their fault, for they could not help it if their brains didn’t make the connections his did between pleasure and pain. But it was sad, he thought, that his second gift was so rare and so unappreciated.

  Not by the one who truly mattered, though. She loved and valued him as passionately as he did her. He owed her so much. She said that debt had no meaning where there was love, but she wasn’t human. Johnny adored her, cherished her, and feared her, but she was not human, and she sometimes misjudged or underestimated what humans could do.

  That’s why he was here today without her. One of his beloved’s less human traits was her manner of sleeping. While asleep, she attenuated, losing her grip on the physical—though that would change, she told him, when she fully manifested. When first they met, she had slept most of the time. Now she needed less sleep than did he, but did not know when the need for sleep might strike, or how long she would remain asleep when it did. She might sleep for a day or an hour, then remain awake for a day or a week.

  She slept now. When she woke she would be angry with him, oh yes, and the thought of her anger made him tremble. But she was wrong, that was all there was to it.

  The sorcerer could not be left for later. From all Johnny had learned, the man was far too good with fire.

  TWENTY-THREE

  LILY took some satisfaction from slamming the door—but not much. She wanted to go back and yell at Rule some more. Where did he get off, telling her what she thought, what she felt?

  She couldn’t believe he’d picked now to dump that on her. That was just wrong. He was wrong. What made him think she didn’t know what she wanted? She wanted him, dammit. Marriage was . . .

  She dragged a hand through her hair. Marriage was scary.

  There. She’d admitted it. Marriage scared her, but it was the right thing to do . . . wasn’t it?

  She started walking.

  The Medical Examiner’s building was a graceless white Lego set in the midst of a sea of concrete. They were supposed to move to a new, larger facility soon—they’d long since outgrown this one, which had been built in the 1960s. But construction delays had them still working in the same old cramped quarters Lily used to visit, back when she was with Homicide.

  It was stupid to feel a twinge of nostalgia for the dead house.

  Cody straightened as she reached his car and fell into step beside her. “Hey, there. You’re not wearing your happy face.”

  “Gee, I wonder why not. Big investigation, stinky corpse. What’s not to put a smile on my face?”

  “No, that’s your just-had-a-fight face. I ought to know. I used to see it often enough.”

  The past ghosted across Lily’s mind. It smelled like cigarettes and wet sand, burnt coffee and bourbon. She slowed without meaning to, tilting her head for a sideways look at the man beside her.

  Cody’s face hadn’t changed much, and his body was still strong, muscular. But he didn’t smell of cigarettes anymore. Or bourbon. “I was never sure how much you remembered of those fights. Toward the end, especially.”

  “Most of them. Most o
f them I remember better than I’d like. If it makes any difference, you were right.”

  She shot him another glance. “What, about everything? That’s a dangerous thing to say.”

  He grinned. “I live for risk.” The grin faded. “Not for booze. Not anymore.”

  They walked in silence for a moment, heading for the loading bay on the side of the building. “I heard,” she said finally. “I heard you went to rehab.”

  He snorted. “Got my ass shoved into rehab, you mean. I screwed up big-time and I got caught, which was the best thing that could’ve happened. Course, I was too stupid to see that at the time. Not entirely stupid, because I knew it was only luck I didn’t get anyone killed, but pretty damn stupid. You told me that’s where I was headed. You were right.”

  She’d heard about it. Cody had been off duty when he tried to stop a liquor store robbery. Unfortunately, he was there as a customer—and way over the legal limit already, which was why the idiot had a cab take him to the store. Typical Cody, she’d thought at the time—half asshole, half hero. He’d known he was too drunk to drive, but he’d still tried to take down an armed perp.

  It could have been so much worse. Cody ended up with a slug in his thigh and the clerk got his hair parted by a stray bullet, but they both survived. The perp got clean away.

  Oh, yeah, she’d heard about it. Some of CJ’s friends had made sure of that. The way they saw it, if she’d stuck by him, he wouldn’t have needed to drink so much. “I didn’t want to be right.”

  He smiled. “If you’re not going to take the opportunity for one helluva good I-told-you-so, I can’t make you.”

  That smile flicked a lot of memories on the raw. She stopped, looking at him. “Did you know what Hammond and Sheffield said after we broke up?”

  He shook his head. “I was too down-deep in my own miseries to pay attention to much else.”

  “They told everyone I’d used you. That the Armani bust should’ve been yours, but I used you, took the credit, then dumped you once I got some attention from the brass.”

  “Shit. Those assholes. I should’ve guessed they’d shoot off their mouths, but I didn’t. I didn’t think, which was typical for me back then.” His voice went low and fierce. “Lily, you gotta believe me about this much. After you dumped me, I said some shit I shouldn’t have. I was hurting, and I wanted like crazy for it all to be your fault so I wouldn’t have to look too close at me. But I never talked you down professionally. Not to those two or anyone else.”

  Some of the rawness eased. Though she noted the qualifier—he hadn’t talked her down professionally—she could let that go. After a breakup, people talked bad about the other one . . . or that’s what seemed to be the norm, anyway. Lily hadn’t talked about Cody at all, good or bad, but that was her norm. When she hurt, she clamped down tight.

  “Okay. I believe you. Maybe we’d better let all that rest in peace now. I’m here to get a look at that body. There’s a lot riding on this one.” She started forward.

  He fell into step beside her. “Guess I picked a bad time to drag up auld lang syne. You’re smarting from whatever you were arguing about with your new man.”

  “You said the vic was found in a storage shed.”

  “I can take a hint. You don’t want to talk about him, but I can’t help wondering—”

  “Is Magruder the pathologist on this one?’

  He shook his head sadly. “Guess I might as well let it drop. You aren’t talking. But you could have knocked me down with a feather when I learned you’d taken up with a lupus. Fun and games I could understand . . . well, sort of. You weren’t exactly the fun-and-games type back when I knew you, but that could’ve changed. I hear lupi are real good at changing a woman’s mind about that sort of thing. But you and he are an item, right? Been together a few months.”

  “I’m remembering another reason we used to fight so often. One that had nothing to do with your drinking.” They’d reached the loading dock. She jabbed the buzzer next to the normal-size metal door, but the light stayed red, meaning the door was still locked.

  “You fight with your lupus dude much?”

  She punched the button again. “On what planet would that be any of your business?”

  “Friends get to ask that sort of thing.”

  “We aren’t friends!”

  That came out too hard, too strong. The flicker of hurt in his eyes was real, judging by how quickly he hid it with a grin. “Don’t think I mentioned it at the time, but that’s one of the things I appreciated about you. You didn’t give me that ‘let’s just be friends’ crap.”

  “Cody.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “You want to get together and have a heart-to-heart, fine. But later, dammit. Right now, I’ve got an investigation. It’s not about just one guy—one lupus—who got stabbed. It’s a whole, huge, scary lot more than that. That’s where my focus belongs. You are not helping.”

  He regarded her out of eyes gone flat and unreadable, then pushed the button she’d tried twice, and held it down. “Magruder’s on vacation. Davis did the autopsy. He’s new, so you may not know him, but he’s got a good eye.”

  The door opened. “You don’t have to lean on the goddamn buzzer,” the young man snapped. “I’m coming as fast as I—oh, hey, Cody. What’s up?”

  “Jamal, my man.” Cody and the attendant executed an elaborate high five, then Cody intoned, “We’ve come to see dead people.”

  Jamal cracked up. Cody could do that—make the corni est line sound fresh and funny. And he knew everyone. There were one and a quarter million people in San Diego, and Cody seemed to know half of them by name. Grinning, Jamal said, “You’re at the right place, then.”

  “Then I got one thing right today. Jamal, this is Agent Yu,” Cody said as they came in.

  “Sure, I know you,” the attendant said, amiable now. “Lily Yu, right? But I thought you were a detective.”

  “Used to be. I’m with the FBI now.”

  “Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Want to have a seat? Dr. Davis is working on another one right now, but he’ll be out to talk to you when he’s done.”

  “I need to see the body with the wound to the heart. I can do that while I’m waiting for Dr. Davis.”

  “Guess that ought to be okay. He’s a smelly one,” Jamal warned as he started down the hall. “I’ll get you a mask, but it won’t help.”

  “Worse than a floater?”

  “Four, five days in this heat—what do you think?”

  The door to the second autopsy room opened and a tall, lanky man with silver-rimmed glasses, a Jay Leno chin, and dirty blond hair stepped out. He was unfastening his green surgical gown when he noticed them. He frowned. “Cody. You don’t have a case here, do you?”

  “Not today,” Cody said cheerfully. “You called me about that one you did this morning, remember?”

  “Right.” His gaze flicked to Lily. “This must be the FBI agent you mentioned.”

  “Lily Yu,” she said, moving forward and holding out her hand. “You’re Dr. Davis?”

  He reached out to shake automatically. His hand was large, dry, and devoid of magic. “Good to meet you, Agent Yu. You’re interested in Mr. Xing, I understand.”

  Lily’s heart kicked up a beat. Maybe she knew this vic. “If he’s the man with the wound to the heart, then yes, I am. You’ve ID’ed him?”

  “I did that,” said another voice. “It’s tentative, pending the dental.”

  An older man sauntered down the hall from the direction of the offices. His white hair and beard gave him the look of Santa in civvies. The blue eyes twinkling behind gold-rimmed glasses heightened the effect, though Santa wasn’t supposed to have . . . Well, those weren’t just bags beneath his eyes. More like steamer trunks.

  “T.J.,” Lily said, grinning with pleasure. “You’ve grown fur.”

  He gave a nod to Cody and stopped in front of Lily, fingering his new beard. “Hides the wrinkles.”

  T.J. didn’t just have wr
inkles. He had deep, droopy crevasses. “It looks good on you, but how in the world do you get away with a beard?”

  Cody’s phone chimed just then. He plucked it from his pocket, glanced at it, and moved a few feet away. “Beck here.”

  “Doctor’s orders,” T.J. said.

  “The doctor ordered you to grow a beard?”

  “Got this dermatitis thing that’s irritated by shaving.”

  He looked completely serious. T.J. always looked completely serious when he was winding you up, which was pretty often. The man might resemble Santa, but he had a sick and twisted sense of humor. He was also one of the best cops she knew. He’d mentored her when she got transferred to Homicide. “This your case, then?” she asked.

  “It was. You going to grab it away from me?”

  “I play nice, when I can.”

  He shook his head mournfully. “Didn’t learn that from me.”

  Actually, she had. “You said the vic’s name is Xing. Anyone I know?”

  “Probably. I made him based on what’s left of the tattoo on his right bicep. One of those Chinese thingies they use for writing. You’d recognize it.”

  The Xings had an import company. They brought in cheap pottery, souvenirs, and heroin. “Which brother was it?”

  “Too short for Zhou, so it must be one of the twins. We’ll need dental to be sure.”

  Cody put up his phone. “Lily, that was dispatch. I have to go.”

  There were maybe a dozen things she might say, but none seemed right. She kept it business. “I’ll be in touch about what I learn here. Thanks for the tip.”

  Cody’s dark eyes flicked between her and T.J. “T.J., good to see you—however briefly. Later.” He lifted a hand in a casual farewell and headed for the door.

  She didn’t realize she was watching him go until the door closed behind him and T.J. drawled, “He does have a cute ass.”