by Eileen Wilks
Glossy, Rule had called him. So far Lily hadn’t gotten so much as a peek beneath the polish. “But you don’t know anything about any of those crank letters the senator received.”
“I’m sorry, no. We never discussed that sort of thing. But you have copies, you said.”
“Of those that were turned over to the Secret Service, yes. There could be more.”
“You’d need to ask Nan about that. I’m afraid this is all the time I can give you today, but Nan will have passed on my request that the staff cooperate with you fully.”
Nan was Nanette Beresford, the senator’s secretary, a handsome older woman with a thick drawl and the proverbial steel-trap mind. She was arranging for Lily and Mullins to use a small conference room to question staffers.
“Just one more question.” Mullins smiled vacuously at the glossy Parrott. “Won’t take but a moment. I know you’re busy—very important job, and with the senator’s passing, you must be buried in work as well as grieving the loss of a friend. I really appreciate the time you’ve given us.”
“Of course.” The pleasant smile made a brief appearance on Parrott’s thin face. “I’m very eager for you to catch whoever did this terrible thing. But we do have to make it quick.”
Mullins had seriously surprised Lily. As they rode up in the elevator to see Parrott, he’d transformed into a snub-nosed Colombo with a whiff of Andy Griffith. The funny thing was, he was good at it. His bashful, bumbling version of a TV detective set Parrott at ease.
“I just wondered . . . couldn’t help wondering, really, it’s the way this job gets you thinking, you pick up on any little discrepancy, even though it’s probably meaningless. When we were talking about the senator’s work, his campaign against the misuse of magic, you said you weren’t Gifted yourself. I wondered why you said that.”
“Because I’m not.”
Mullins looked confused. He glanced at Lily. “But you gave me the sign—when we all shook hands, you signaled that he . . . but he says he isn’t.”
“A minor Gift, I think,” she said, “though the charm he’s wearing to conceal it does a pretty good job, so he might have more power than I think. A Water Gift, I believe. Isn’t that right, Mr. Parrott?”
No smile now, and at last Lily got that peek beneath the surface. Way down deep in those pleasant brown eyes lurked a predator who was not happy with Lily. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She shook her head sadly. “That’s not going to work. Sometimes people don’t know they have a touch of magic. When it’s not a strong Gift, it’s not that hard to suppress without knowing you’re doing it. But people who are unaware of their Gift don’t make or obtain a charm intended to hide it.”
Mullins blinked, looking stupider than ever. “I didn’t know you could do that. Make a charm like that, I mean.”
“I didn’t, either. It’s quite a remarkable thing for someone who opposes magic to possess.”
The pleasant expression stayed stuck to Parrott’s face like gum to the sole of a shoe, but he ran a hand over the perfectly styled hair. One with a plain gold wedding ring, again like the one the ghost had worn. Did all men’s wedding rings look identical? “This could ruin me. I’m asking you not to say anything, anything at all, about it.”
“I don’t out anyone unless I have to. Unless it’s essential to the investigation, whatever Gift or trace of the Blood people are concealing is their own—”
“I am not of the Blood.” His lip curled in disgust. “As for my Gift . . . yes, it’s quite minor. But I am not a hypocrite, Special Agent. Magic is wrong, an essential weakening of the tie between humans and our Creator. I had the charm made years ago for religious reasons. I wanted to suppress my Gift. Not to hide it, but to suppress it.”
That was . . . entirely possible. Maybe. When she’d shaken Parrott’s hand, she’d felt . . . not his magic, exactly, but the pressure of it, as if buried magic coursed beneath a null skin. The sensation of something flowing beneath an artificial skin was why she’d guessed at a Water Gift—a hidden one. But it was possible to suppress a Gift. Lily knew an empath who did just that with a spell. Parrott’s magic hadn’t felt the way the empath’s did, but maybe his charm operated differently. “You’d have to have the charm renewed from time to time.”
He grimaced. “Unfortunately, yes. I dislike it intensely, but I . . . I don’t feel I have much choice. I’ve been told there is no way to rid me of magic entirely, so I have to renew the charm.”
Mullins shook his head. “That’s tough. And working here with the senator, who disliked magic as much as you, maybe more . . . shoot, I bet he’d have fired you in a heartbeat if he found out.”
“He knew.”
Lily’s eyebrows climbed. “You’re claiming Senator Bixton knew about your Gift and kept you as his chief of staff?”
“I’ve been with him for fifteen years. Of course he knew. I confessed it to him years ago. He also knew about the charm. Bob is—was—a compassionate man. He respected the choice I’d made to suppress the trace of magic I’m cursed with.”
Naturally Lily tried to convince him to let them take the charm with them and have it tested. She wasn’t surprised when he refused. Either he was lying and it didn’t do what he said, or he was telling the truth and was worried about the state of his soul if he were parted from the charm.
He wouldn’t tell them where he went to have the charm renewed. That was a tad more suspicious, but he might not want to provide additional evidence of his Gift. He might even be protecting the practitioner he used the way he claimed. Lots of practitioners were wary of authority.
Lily left that interview unsatisfied. They let Bixton’s secretary know they were ready for the space she’d cleared for them, and she showed them to a small conference room. No windows, but it did have a pot of coffee. Lily headed there first. “Want a cup?”
“Never touch the stuff. What do you think?” Mullins pulled out a chair and sat. “He really tell Bixton his nasty little secret?”
“Maybe. If he didn’t and Bixton found out, it would make a dandy motive. Especially if he isn’t as suppressed as he claims.”
“How’d you know about the charm?”
“I guessed, based on experience. It could’ve been a spell—”
“Isn’t a charm a spell?”
“They look a lot the same to the rest of us,” she agreed, “but practitioners consider them quite different. A charm is the product of a spell, and not all practitioners can make them. I’m told the main difference is temporal, whatever that means. For me personally, charms and spells don’t feel the same. Charms are usually weaker, and their texture is, uh . . . more repetitive, maybe.” She shrugged. “Different, anyway. I thought you were going to say, ‘aw, shucks’ any minute there.”
He pulled a pack of gum from his jacket pocket. “I’m good.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “You weren’t completely idiotic yourself. Picked up my pass right on time.”
“Better watch it with the compliments. I’ll get all fluttery.”
He unwrapped his gum slowly, looking as dour and dull as ever. “You going to have trouble working with me now that you’ve discovered my massive intellect, charm, and sex appeal?”
“My God. You’ve got a sense of humor.”
“All part of the package.” He put the gum in his mouth. “Have to fight you women off with a stick sometimes.”
SENATOR Bixton had a large staff. They talked to four of them before Lily had to leave to get checked out by the Leidolf Rhej.
She was thinking about appearances and first impressions as Cullen pulled into the garage behind the row house. Doug Mullins wasn’t the unthinking, self-important prick she’d thought. Oh, he was a bit of a prick, but he was not stupid, and he was self-aware enough to know that people underestimated him and use that. He was damn good in interview.
Was she making assumptions about Dennis Parrott the way she had Mullins, based on dislike?
“Tell me more about the differen
ce between charms and spells,” she said to Cullen as she got out of the car. “It’s something to do with time, right?”
He shut his door. “A charm is a spell held in stasis.”
“Like a ward? Wards don’t do anything until they’re activated, either.”
“Not exactly. A ward doesn’t act until it’s triggered, but then the action is immediate and complete. With a charm, part of the spell remains suspended even when the charm is activated. If it didn’t, the charm would work only for a split second.” He glanced at her as they started for the house. “Spells act in the now. In the moment. Charms can act over a period of hours or days or weeks, depending on the skill and intent of their maker.”
“Weeks? The sleep charms you made last month lasted a couple hours.”
“I made those in a hurry, and they needed to knock someone out immediately. I’ve got sleep charms that would keep someone asleep for a week, but they’d doze off gradually, which was not what we needed at the time.”
True. “What’s the upper limit on how long a charm can work?”
“Theoretically there isn’t one. Practically, it depends on what kind of charm you’re making, how it’s powered, and how good you are. But for reasons we don’t understand, charms don’t last beyond a single moon cycle. You’d have to be an adept to make one that lasted longer, and then what you’d have would be called an artifact.”
Startled, she paused just short of the deck Rule had added at the back of the house before Lily met him. “So an artifact is like a charm on steroids?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Or so I think. Since no one knows how to make an artifact anymore, I can’t prove it.”
“You’ll get a peek at the dagger used on Bixton this afternoon. Will you be able to tell right away if it’s an artifact or a . . . I guess a charm, though that doesn’t sound right when its purpose was death.”
“A charm that kills or wounds is often called a curse, but that’s poor nomenclature. Curses can also be spoken spells. I prefer to call a cursed object a maluuni. That’s from Swahili, though the original derivation is Arabic, and it means—”
“Back to my question,” she said firmly, stepping onto the deck.
“One glance will tell me that much. If I don’t see the spell and can’t call it up into my vision, then it’s an artifact.”
“Wait a minute. What does that mean? If you don’t see it—”
“I’ve got a spell that brings up the details of other spells so I can see them.”
“Your magnifying spell, yeah.”
“It doesn’t work on artifacts. At least not the ones I’ve seen. I’ve seen five objects we’d call magical artifacts. With four of them, the details of the spell—the construction of it, the girders and wiring and plumbing—were hidden when it wasn’t being used. The only part that showed was the trigger, the part designed to interact with the user. Adepts didn’t like to give away their tricks, and they knew how to hide what they wanted hidden. And no, I don’t know how they did it.” He brooded on that a moment. “If I ever get that damn elfstone figured out, I’ll be able to tell you more.”
“The gem you snatched off Rethna, you mean? It’s an artifact?” It had made bullets bounce off the elf lord. Or maybe they’d poofed out of existence. She didn’t know how the gem worked, but she knew it worked. She’d shot Rethna several times at close range. Didn’t hit him once.
“Oh, yeah. Tricky bugger. I haven’t figured out how to activate it or get the rest of the spell to show, but the trigger shows, and I can see the power, so I know the charm didn’t evaporate with Rethna’s death.”
“Which makes it an artifact.” She opened the back door. No one in the kitchen, but Rule was upstairs. Maybe the Leidolf Rhej was with him. “And the fifth magical artifact you’ve seen? What about it?”
“With that one, nothing showed but power, even when it was used.” He followed her inside. “Which ought to be impossible, because the trigger has to show. Otherwise there’s nothing for the user to connect with.”
“But you’re sure it was an artifact?”
He slid her a grim smile. “Oh, yeah. But that one wasn’t an adept’s work. That was the staff she made.”
ALL Rhejes were Gifted, but their Gifts varied. Two were healers. The Leidolf Rhej was one of those two, a statuesque woman with skin the color of hot chocolate made with plenty of milk. Her hair was a tight cap of mixed gray and black that showed off a high, round forehead and the pair of huge gold hoops in her ears. Lily didn’t know her name. It was custom to not refer to a Rhej by name unless the Rhej gifted you with her name personally.
“No need to cram your lunch down so quick,” she told Lily, leaning comfortably on her forearms, crossed on the round kitchen table. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m supposed to, though.” Lily finished the corned beef sandwich she’d thrown together and reached for her glass of milk. She was usually a Diet Coke girl, but corned beef demanded milk. “Tell me something. Your Gift doesn’t work on me, so why is it you can peek inside my body?”
“Same reason Mr. Gorgeous here can see your magic,” she said promptly. “It’s not vision I use, but it’s a way of sensin’.” She flashed Cullen an amused smile. He looked all twitchy with the need to interrupt . . . but she was a Rhej. Even Cullen managed a modicum of respect with a Rhej. “An’ he’s just dyin’ to argue with me and explain it all real pretty, but you don’t need all that talk. Does the Nokolai Rhej sense where you are, even though she can’t see a thing?”
“Well . . . yes. But she’s a physical empath.”
“But your magic doesn’t keep her from sensing you. The way I see it, physical empathy’s a lot like healing, but a physical empath has all her Gift sittin’ on the sensing side of things. A healer has a bit of that sensing, only we have to lay on hands to do it, and then we can look under the skin, not just on the top. But it’s a sense, not that different from when Cullen here senses the shape of your magic.” She smiled. “You ’bout ready to begin?”
Lily’s stomach jittered unhappily. She didn’t think it was the corned beef. “I guess so. Do I need to do anything?” The only healer who’d worked on Lily before was Nettie. This woman’s methods might be different. Probably were, because she wasn’t a shaman like Nettie was. Same Gift, different practice.
“Just a few questions first. Tell me about these headaches of yours. You’ve had three of them?”
“Yeah. They hurt pretty bad, but didn’t last long. The first was just for seconds. A minute or less the second time. I’m not sure about the third.”
“Just over a minute,” Rule said. “I didn’t time it, but it was probably between one and two minutes.”
“Okay,” the Rhej said. “Where’d it hurt?”
“Here.” Lily rubbed the back of her head. “Um . . . the third time it happened, I was exhausted afterward. I couldn’t stay awake.”
“Any dizziness? Nausea? Weakness in one place more’n another? Any change in vision?”
“You mean like a migraine aura?”
“Any kind of change.”
Lily shook her head. “I felt dizzy after it happened the third time. Exhausted. No nausea, though. I thought it might be some kind of migraine. My aunt has migraines.”
“Let’s find out. Give me your hands.” The older woman stretched her hands across the table to Lily.
The Rhej had warm hands with wide palms and long fingers . . . and lots of magic. Healing magic, yes, and Lily loved to touch a healer’s magic. If air could experience touch, it would feel like this beneath the slow stir of the summer sun, with new-grown grass blades brushing against it like a friendly cat. But there was more. Lily felt that more, banked and waiting and massive—the fur-and-pine prickle of lupi magic.
A Rhej could, at need, draw upon the magic of the entire clan. Lily had no idea how. The Rhej was fully human. She didn’t hold the mantle, couldn’t affect it, wasn’t part of it. But she could use it to do what the Rho could not.
Th
e Rhej’s face smoothed out, her eyes losing focus. She hummed softly . . . “Amazing Grace,” Lily realized. Maybe she did work with spiritual energy like Nettie did. Lily didn’t feel anything. No wave of seeking magic touched her skin. She didn’t get sleepy the way she usually did when Nettie examined her, but Nettie almost always ended up putting her in sleep, so . . .
“Cullen,” the woman said in a low, soft voice, “I want you to look at that passenger of hers. Look real close and careful.”
Rule frowned. “What is it?”
The Rhej shook her head without replying. Cullen slipped out of his chair and knelt on one knee beside Lily. “Push away from the table so I can see.”
“I can’t . . .” But the Rhej let go of Lily’s hands so she could. She scooted her chair back and tried not to fidget while Cullen moved in front of her and stared intently at her abdomen. After a bit he frowned. He started muttering under his breath—it sounded like an unholy mix of Hawaiian and Norwegian—while he sketched signs in the air. He put his palms together as if he were praying, then drew them apart slowly, stopping when they framed about twenty inches of space.
He moved that space slowly up to Lily’s neck, peering at it intently for several moments, then shifted so he could move behind Lily, holding his hands steady. She couldn’t see what he did for several way-too-long moments. Her heart pounded.
Finally he moved back in front of her. His hands were only about ten inches apart now. He dragged those ten inches of empty space back down her trunk, pausing now and then, passing her stomach to study her pelvis. He snapped his fingers, releasing what Lily guessed was a magnifying spell.
Slowly he stood. “That . . . doesn’t make sense.”
“What did you see?” the Rhej asked.
“Roots. That’s what they look like, tiny tendrils finer than a hair, too small to see without magnification. I found seven of them. They go from the mantle into her spinal cord. Four of them seem to stay there. Three of them . . .” He stopped, looked at Lily, then at Rule. “Three extend through the brain stem to the cerebellum and are tangled up in her brain.”