by Eileen Wilks
He moved closer to her. “This wasn’t a sudden decision,” he told the old woman grimly. “You can’t get a visa for China overnight.”
“Can I not?” Her expression suggested he’d fallen from grace. She shrugged and spoke to her granddaughter. “For years, I have thought of such a trip. I am many years now in America. There are people and places in China I would see again before I die. Or they do.”
“You’ve talked about a trip,” Lily said, “but you never made plans. Why now?”
“I am an old woman. I am reminded of this recently.”
The unexpected wryness in Grandmother’s voice made Rule think she referred to the battle two weeks ago—one involving a number of armed Azá, himself, Cullen, Lily, a handful of FBI agents, several wolves, … and one very large tiger.
Madame Li Lei Yu hadn’t seemed like an old woman to him at the time.
Lily had herself back under control. “Li Quin will go with you?”
“She, too, has people and places to see. My gardens—” She broke off, turning as Rule did toward the east end of the hall.
Rule knew who was coming by the sound of the footsteps. A moment later the man appeared around the bend in the hall: Abel Karonski, sometime friend, full-time FBI agent, part of a special unit of the Magical Crimes Division. And witch. The satchel he carried wouldn’t hold file folders or a change of clothes.
But the person with Abel wasn’t his partner, Martin Croft. Instead the agent was accompanied by a long, lanky woman with a butch-crop of silvery blond hair, half a dozen earrings in each ear, a badly fitted gray suit, and deep-set eyes the color of old whiskey.
Most people wouldn’t notice the eyes. Not at first. All they’d see were the tattoos.
“Cynna!” Rule exclaimed.
Her mouth tilted up between the indigo whorls looping from cheeks to chin. “Hey, Rule. Fancy meeting me here, huh?”
“YOU’VE added a few,” Rule said, pulling out a chair.
After a brief confusion, Lily, Rule, Karonski, and the unexpected addition to their task force had adjourned to the restaurant’s smallest private dining room. It held one table, six chairs, and a coffee pot.
“More than a few, but some of ’em don’t show in polite company.” The woman’s grin rearranged the designs on her cheeks. “Damn, you look good. Haven’t changed a bit. Maybe you’d like to check out some of my new tattoos later.”
Lily sat in the chair Rule was holding. She supposed she’d better get used to women propositioning Rule. It was going to happen.
Karonski put down his satchel, pulled out one of the chairs, and sat. “Dammit, Cynna, I told you—”
“And I told you that was bullshit. Rule’s a lupus.”
“Ah, Cynna.” Rule’s smile held a definite tinge of regret. “As delightful as such a study would be, I must decline. I’m not available.”
The woman’s eyebrows went up. She looked at Lily, her expression hard to read behind all the tattoos. But she didn’t look friendly.
Lily decided her head hurt too much to figure out how to handle this blast from Rule’s past. She knew how she felt about it, though. Pissed. But who was she supposed to be angry with?
Karonski, maybe, for springing Cynna Weaver on her like this. She’d wondered if Weaver was here to execute an AG warrant—in effect, an order of execution signed by the U.S. attorney general. The FBI’s temporary director was pushing for one, though so far the attorney general wasn’t buying. No surprise there. The political fallout could be huge, since AG warrants had traditionally only been issued against nonhumans.
Like lupi.
But Karonski had assured her Weaver was part of the unit. She was here to help find Harlowe, not to kill him. Lily turned to him. “What exactly did you tell her about Rule and me?”
“That she’s to behave. Rule’s taken.” He looked around. “Didn’t someone say something about coffee?”
Lily would have smiled if her head hadn’t hurt so much. Karonski was an overfed white male with a severe wardrobe impairment, the stubbornness to outlast a jack-ass, and a firm belief in the power of caffeine. He was also her boss. “Sure. It’s right there. Get me a cup, too.”
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 eyebro
ws 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.