by Eileen Wilks
He heaved a sigh and went after his version of life support.
Their little haven had originally been intended for the use of business types. With cops everywhere, the suits hadn’t thought this was a good time to discuss a merger or acquisition or whatever, so Karonski had commandeered the room and the coffee. While the four of them conferred, the S.O.C. team was going through their routine—they’d arrived on Karonski’s heels—and other local cops took the names and addresses of everyone in the restaurant.
This included the entire wedding party, much to her mother’s distress. Susan and her new husband had been allowed to leave—the only ones, so far, to receive permission. Lily’s parents were trying to soothe their guests, and Grandmother had summoned Li Quin to take her home. The local cops would try to stop her, of course, but Lily was putting her money on Grandmother.
It was weird, sitting on this side of the local-federal fence. “So Croft’s in Virginia already?” Lily referred to Karonski’s partner.
“On his way. It’s a major outbreak, the biggest in decades.”
“Any fatalities?”
“Two confirmed. The nasty little shits caused a major pileup on the interstate by riding a trucker’s windshield.” He brought two full mugs back to the table with him. Today’s suit was brown, wrinkled, and missing a button. His tie suggested he’d had something with ketchup for lunch. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Lily wrapped her hands around the steaming mug and took a sip. Caffeine had analgesic properties, right? It was bound to help.
“What about you?” Rule asked the agent. “You’re leaving, too?”
“I’ll be heading there as soon as I’ve got things lined out here.”
“I don’t know much about imps. They’ve always been rare on this coast. Were they summoned?”
“No one summons imps on purpose. They can’t be controlled. But a poorly executed spell can call them up instead of a demon, and most summoning spells suck. That’s one thing lost during the Purge that I hope we never rediscover.” Karonski took a sip of coffee, sighed with pleasure, and added, “More often, though, imps bleed through some weak place between the realms. We don’t know why. Not usually in such numbers, though.”
“Hell’s restless lately,” Cynna commented.
Lily looked at her. “You would know about that?”
“Not directly. I’m righteous these days. But I hear things.”
Lily knew that the section of the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division called the Unit was more flexible than the rest of the Bureau about any less-than-respectable skills its agents possessed. They had to be open-minded. The Unit couldn’t function without the Gifted—witness her own hasty recruitment. And over the years, the Gifted had found different paths for their talents, paths often cloaked in secrecy. The Purge had put an end to making such explorations openly.
But a Dizzy who worked for the FBI?
“All right,” Karonski said, “I’ve got a plane to catch, and Lily here has to go get her head examined—yes, that is an order,” he said directly to her. “So let’s make it quick. What happened?”
“I saw Helen.”
Karonski spilled his coffee. “You’re worrying me.”
“It wasn’t really Helen. I know that. But I’m not talking about a resemblance, either. This woman looked exactly like her—body, face, hair, everything was exactly the same.”
Karonski frowned. “A twin?”
“That was one possibility. Or she was an illusion. Or I was going nuts. I didn’t think I was crazy, but I couldn’t see any way to prove or disprove that right away. The other two possibilities meant she’d been planted to get my attention or Rule’s. Since I knew it wasn’t an illusion—”
“Wait a minute,” Cynna said. “How could you know that?”
Lily raised her eyebrows at Karonski.
“Cynna just flew in. I hit the high points on the way here, but she doesn’t know much more than she read in the papers after the big raid.”
Okay, so Lily had to explain herself—something she wasn’t used to doing. Until last month, she could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of people who knew about her Gift. “I can be fooled, but not by magic. I’m a sensitive.”
Cynna’s lips pursed as if she’d bitten into something sour. “A sensitive.”
“I never outed people.” It was a refrain Lily had used a lot lately. Too often, sensitives had been used by witch hunters both official and otherwise to sniff out the Gifted or those of the Blood. Most of that was in the past… but not very far in the past. “It came in handy sometimes in my work, but I was with homicide, not the X-Squad. You going to have a problem working with me?”
“I can handle it. Think you can handle working with me?”
“Let’s see.” Lily held out her hand.
To her credit, Weaver didn’t hesitate to offer a quick, businesslike shake. Then she cocked her head to one side. “So what did you pick up about me?”
“Not about you. I’m no empath. I read magic, not people.” She took a moment to gather her impressions from the brief contact. “You’ve a strong Gift,” she said at last. “And complex, like lots of fingerprints on top of each other. I haven’t run across your brand of magic before.”
Weaver showed her teeth in a smile. “There aren’t many like me around.”
Rule shifted in his chair. “Let’s get back to this woman who looked like Helen. It wouldn’t be hard for an uninvited guest to crash the party.”
“No. But how did she know there was a party to crash?”
“That’s rather my point. You suspected she’d been planted to get your attention. That meant they’d learned enough about you to get her here, at your sister’s wedding. So naturally you followed her.” His fingers drummed once. “Did it occur to you she might be bait?”
“Of course she was bait. That didn’t mean I could ignore her. Harlowe’s still missing. So’s that damned staff. This Helen look-alike had to be connected to him, it, or both, and someone knew enough to send her to my sister’s wedding. What was I supposed to do—let that link walk away?”
“You could have come to me for backup.”
“If I’d hunted you up, I could have lost her.”
“You lost her anyway.”
Because that was patently true, she didn’t argue. “Maybe I miscalled it, but I’m the only one who can’t be affected by that staff, and I didn’t want to take the chance. If it had been there…” She started to shake her head, winced, and turned to Karonski. “She went to the ladies’ room, I followed, and that’s the last I know. Something clobbered me as soon as I stepped inside.”
“And locked you in there,” Rule said. “Then vanished.”
Karonski’s forehead knitted. “What do you mean?”
“The restrooms are in the middle of the building. No windows. No way in or out except through that one door—and it was bolted on the inside.”
“Get real,” Cynna said. “A locked room mystery?”
Lily was tired, hurting, and—if she was honest with herself—scared. They’d struck at her in the midst of her family. How had they known where and when to find her? “Are those tattoos for show, or do you actually know something about magic?”
“I know enough to not buy into vanishing villains. Invisibility was impossible before the Purge. It sure hasn’t become possible now.”
“The bolt,” Lily snapped. “Whoever knocked me out didn’t have to disappear. She just had to spell the bolt into moving from the other side of the door.”
Cynna’s mouth opened—and closed. She grimaced. “My stupid. Sorry.”
Anger was not good for concussions. Even minor ones. The throbbing increased, bringing on a wave of nausea. Lily rode out the wave, then said, “We need to—hey!”
Rule had pulled her chair back from the table. “You’ve played macho cop long enough. We’ll be going now. Abel, good to see you again. Cynna, you, too.”
“Wait just one minute.” But when that
gentle, inexorable hand propelled Lily to her feet, the room hit the spin cycle. She closed her eyes and waited for it to firm up again. “Okay, okay. I’ll even let you drive.”
“The ambulance crew is still here. I told them to wait.”
Her eyes snapped open so she could glare at him. He smiled and slid an arm around her waist.
“You’re going to the ER, Yu,” Karonski said. “Don’t be a baby about it.”
“I said I’d go.” Pride wouldn’t let her lean against Rule, but it was tempting. As much as she hated to admit it, determination had about run its limit in keeping her upright. “But this is not an emergency. I don’t need to tie up an ambulance.”
“They’re here. Might as well make use of them. Be sure your phone’s turned on, and I’ll let you know what Cynna and I find out before I leave.”
“You’re flying to Virginia tonight?” Lily tried to hide her distress. She was a very new FBI agent. She might know how to conduct an investigation, but she didn’t know FBI procedures and resources.
He grunted an affirmative. “I don’t know how long we’ll be gone. Imps aren’t hard to deal with, but there’s a lot of them and we have to figure out how they got loose. If there’s a leak, I’ll have to close it.”
“You can do that?” Rule asked.
“Piece of cake.” He grinned. “Pretty fancy cake, maybe. I might even need a little help. In the meantime, Lily and Cynna will be handling the hunt for Harlow and that staff. Lily, you’ve got authority to call on the local office as needed. Cynna, you have seniority—”
She snorted. “As if I cared about that shit.”
“No, you’re a damned loose cannon. Like I was about to say, you’ve got seniority, but you’re not in charge. This is Yu’s investigation. You’re to assist.”
She was leaning, dammit. Lily forced herself to straighten. “You call it my investigation, but you brought someone in without telling me.”
“Blame Ruben. He had one of his notions yesterday. Says he thinks you’ll need her soon.”
Ruben Brooks was the head of the Unit. He was also an amazingly accurate precog. When he got hit by a notion, it paid to listen.
Lily turned her head to look at Ruben’s latest notion— the woman whose body had been covered, inch by painful inch, with impossibly intricate patterns of power.
Or that was the idea, anyway. The Dizzies had been a big deal on the street about a decade ago, a quasi-religious group based on poorly understood African shamanistic practices. Most of them had been black, connected to gangs, and without enough of a Gift to cause much trouble—or to keep the movement going. It had pretty much died out when it became obvious the leaders couldn’t deliver on their promises of power.
Beneath the inky tattoos, Cynna Weaver’s skin was white. Lily assumed she was an exception in more than pigmentation. The Unit wouldn’t have signed her up if she were as ineffective as other Dizzies. “So how are you going to assist the investigation?”
“I’m a Finder.” She bared her teeth in a hunter’s grin. “You get me something to work with, and I’ll find that Harlowe bastard for you.”
Shit. “That may be a problem. His house burned down two days ago.”
THREE
CYNNA watched Rule hustle his pretty little cop out the door. He was so careful about her, and it was so unnecessary. That one was tougher than she looked.
She remembered when Rule had been all careful like that with another female who’d insisted she didn’t need any man looking out for her.
Her mouth twisted wryly. Such a prickly little shit she’d been! Twenty going on twelve, street smart and cocky and scared of all the wrong things. But no matter how much she’d insisted she didn’t want to be coddled, Rule had known better. And she’d eaten it up, hadn’t she? Hoarded the memory of him, too, all these years. Rule’s caring had fed the hungry child she’d been back then.
Well, she wasn’t that hungry brat anymore. So maybe she was disappointed that he was taken. She’d get over it. She turned to Karonski. “So what the hell am I doing here? I can’t find Harlowe without sorting his pattern, and I can’t sort without something of his to sort from.”
He shrugged. “Blame Ruben. He thinks it’s a good idea for you to be around.”
“And doesn’t know why, I suppose.”
“Does he ever?”
She shook her head. “Pretty big coincidence, Harlowe’s house burning down right before I arrived. How’d it happen?”
“Someone doused the bushes with gasoline.”
“Huh. Think the bad guys have a precog, too?”
“Maybe. Or else they were just being careful, and the timing really is coincidence.” Karonski pushed back his chair and grabbed his mug. “Come on. Let’s go hassle the locals. I’d like to run a diagnostic on that bolt and find out for sure if it was shifted magically.”
She stood, too. “Nothing I like better than hassling a few cops.”
“You are a cop.”
“Weird, isn’t it?”
Their little dining room opened onto the main dining room. The Odyssey’s patrons were still being interviewed by the local cops; from snippets Cynna overheard as they made their way to the back, some were excited about their proximity to a crime, some worried, some angry. The poor waitresses and waiters were still trying to deliver food, but no one was much interested in the meal they’d come here for.
The place must do a lot of private party business, Cynna thought as they made their way through the crowded dining room. The public dining area occupied only about half of the donut. The rest was all private rooms.
The restrooms were in the center of the donut, off the hall that circled the kitchens at the center. A uniformed cop stopped them just inside that hall. Karonski’s badge persuaded him they could be allowed to advance to the next sentry, a tired-looking woman in front of the ladies’ room. The sound of a hand-vac inside announced that the crime scene techs were still busy, and a quick exchange brought an estimate of fifteen minutes before they’d let the feds have the scene.
She and Abel moved down the hall a short distance to wait. Cynna leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. “That’s a lot of hullabaloo for a simple knock on the head.”
“Assault on a federal officer in connection with her investigation is a big deal. Try to remember that you’re important now.”
Cynna just shook her head. She didn’t feel like a federal officer, for all that she’d been with the unit five years now. Most of her fellow agents would say she didn’t act like one, either. “So who is this Helen Yu thought she saw?”
Karonski took a healthy swallow of his coffee. “She was a telepath. She’s dead now.”
Cynna’s eyebrows shot up. ‘The one who wanted to open a gate to hell?“
“That’s her.”
Cynna considered what little she knew. The dead woman and Patrick Harlowe had belonged to the Church of the Redeemed, also known as the Azá. Some of those involved in the hell-raising scheme had been true believers; others had been magically bound to the cause with the help of a mysterious staff Helen had wielded. With it, she’d been able to control minds.
Which, of course, was impossible. Or so everyone had always said.
Three weeks ago the Azá, led by Helen and Harlowe, had taken Rule and Lily Yu captive. Somehow they’d managed to turn the tables on their captors, but Harlowe had gotten away. And the staff had vanished. “Seems like the staff should be our primary target.”
“We know a fair amount about Harlowe, next to nothing about the staff. Hard to track a piece of wood.” He sipped his coffee, watching the activity inside the rest-room. “Seabourne tried, right after the staff went missing. Couldn’t do it.”
“That’s the one you told me about. The sorcerer.”
Karonski chuckled. “Your skepticism’s showing.”
“Well, Jesus, Abel, there haven’t been any sorcerers since the Purge! Not real ones, anyway. A few wannabes who know just enough to get in trouble.”
She tipped her head to one side. “Sorcery’s still illegal, last I heard.”
He snorted. “And I know how that troubles your conscience.”
“It’s important to be flexible. Is this guy working for us?”
“Hey, sorcery’s illegal. He can’t work for us.” Karon-ski grinned. “Call him a friend of a friend. Turner and Yu wouldn’t have stopped Helen without him.”
“It was the China doll who offed her, though, right?”
“Yep. And if you call her that to her face, I want to be there.” Karonski set his empty mug on the floor, pulled a mint from his pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it in his mouth. “So where do you know Turner from?”
“Oh, me and Rule go way back. All the way back to before you arrested me.” She grinned. “I was just a big bite of mean back then, all attitude and no sense.”
“And you’re different now in what way?”
“Smart-ass.” She shook her head. “Lord, but seeing him does bring back memories. I used to hang out at a place called Mole’s in Chicago. Wonder if it’s still around?”
“You met Turner there?”
She nodded. “We hooked up for a while.” Now, there was a nice, low-key way to refer to someone who changed your life. “What’s this deal about him being unavailable, anyway?”
“None of your business.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense. Lupi don’t do the faithful bit.”
“Rule is. Leave it alone.”
He hadn’t been when she knew him. He’d made that clear up front, and she’d accepted it. In that respect he hadn’t seemed much different from the other men she knew, just more honest… but she hadn’t exactly hung with a stellar crowd back then.
That was thirteen years ago. Jesus. Hard to believe in some ways… and in others, it seemed like a couple lifetimes ago. He would have changed since she’d known him, but this one was a real one-eighty. Sexually open relationships were a moral must for lupi. Something to do with their religion, she thought.