The rest of the blood drained from his face. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s split up.” She had to be here somewhere. Linus hadn’t bound her to the house as he promised his mother, but surely Amelie wasn’t so foolish as to have used the distraction to escape. “We’ll cover more ground that way. Start in the attic? I’ll take the second floor.”
We raced upstairs together, peeling apart on the landing. I shoved into her bedroom. Empty. I moved on to mine. Empty. Other rooms lined the hall. I ducked my head into each of them. Empty, empty, empty.
Amelie wasn’t here.
A flash of blue light snared my attention as a small boy popped into existence beside me. He wore a dark blue sailor suit with sagging ankle socks and dirtied canvas shoes. A matching cap, wrinkled within an inch of its life, sat at a jaunty angle on his mass of blond curls. “What’s wrong? I heard yellin’.”
Apparently good diction was a respect paid only to strangers or parents, and I was neither. The more comfortable Oscar got with me, the more he relaxed, and the more suffixes he axed off words.
I affixed a smile on my mouth for his sake. “We can’t find Amelie, that’s all.”
“Is she playing hide-and-seek?” The black voids of his eyes sparkled like polished coals. “Can I play?”
“Sure thing, kid.” I could use all the help I could get. “First one to find her wins.”
“Deal!”
Magic swelled in the room, easy to sense through my connection to Woolly, and he vanished.
I met up with Boaz out in the hall as he was climbing down from the attic. “Well?”
“No luck.” He folded the access ladder up then secured the hatch behind him. “She wouldn’t leave.”
Blue light blasted my corneas as a boyish face appeared at the end of my nose.
“I found her,” Oscar crowed. “I win! I win!”
Smiling to acknowledge his victory, I cut my eyes toward Boaz, but Oscar wasn’t great with hints.
In all the excitement, the little ghost had forgotten we couldn’t talk openly in front of Boaz for his safety.
“Since she’s not inside,” I reasoned with Boaz, “she must be outside.” I made a subtle gesture at hip level for Oscar to lead the charge. “The wraparound porch covers a lot of real estate. We need to search all four sides.”
Indecision warred with Boaz’s driving need to secure his sister. “I’m going with you.”
On the porch, I nudged him in one direction while Oscar and I went another.
“This way.” Oscar gripped my hand and tugged me along after him. “She must have felled asleep.”
“Fallen,” I corrected absently, and then winced at the habit I had picked up from Linus.
We raced around to the left side, which pulled the carriage house into view, but there was no Amelie. The back porch was the same. Not expecting much from the right side, I almost tripped over her crumpled form before Oscar slammed on the brakes.
Hitting my knees on the wood, I checked her pulse. Steady. That was all I knew to do.
“Good job, kid.” I ruffled his hair. “We’ll talk prizes later, okay?” I held a finger to my lips in a reminder that his living with me was a secret between Linus and me for now. Not even Amelie could know since telling her was the same as whispering in Boaz’s ear. “Can you go play with Woolly?”
“Sure.” He bobbed on the breeze. “She lets me play in the secret room when I behave.”
Gut sinking into my toes, I grasped for him. “I don’t think that’s such a good—” my fingers sliced through air, “—idea.” The urge to smack my forehead itched my palm, but at this rate I would give myself brain damage. “Woolly, tell me you’re not letting him play in the basement.”
A breeze whistled innocently through the eaves.
Fiddle-de-dee-sticks.
We three had to have a chat about boundaries before he went poltergeist and got us all in trouble fooling around unsupervised down there.
“I found her,” I called out as Boaz rounded the corner. “She’s breathing, but she’s out cold.”
On a hunch, I pulled up the leg of her pants, exposing her sock and the tattoo Linus had given her to contain the dybbuk’s energies. The reddish-black ink glittered and swirled, almost alive under her skin. I touched it, and the magic burned hot. I yelped and stuck my fingertip in my mouth.
“What is it?” Boaz crowded her other side, phone pressed to his ear, but his attention shifted to his call before I could tell him. “Heinz, hey, my sister’s unresponsive. I need you here yesterday.” He paused. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”
“Her tattoo is hot.” I turned down the top of her sock and checked for scorch marks, but the fabric appeared to be fine. For the sake of thoroughness, I also checked the cuff of her jeans, but it wasn’t blackened either. “Can you feel it?”
He pressed a single finger to the intricate design that reminded me of a Celtic knot. Showing no visible reaction, he cupped her whole ankle in his wide palm. “Her skin feels normal to me. The ink does too.”
“I don’t get it unless—” I chewed my bottom lip. “You can’t feel it because you’re…”
“I’ve been Low Society all my life.” An amused smile tugged up one side of his mouth. “You can say it. I’m not ashamed.”
“It’s not that,” I hurried to assure him. “It’s about magic.”
“Ah.” He took my hand and examined the pinkened skin on my finger. “That makes sense.” He kissed the stinging tip. “You designed the tattoo. Does that link you to its magic?”
“I redesigned the sigil, but Linus tattooed her.” I was having trouble looking away from his mouth. “If anything, it should respond to him, not me.”
Embedding ink in skin wasn’t the same as using ink with a brush or in one of his modified fountain pens on skin. But he must have proven the method safe or else the Society wouldn’t have granted his patent. The one thing I still believed in was their dedication to customer satisfaction as it applied to their profits.
A faulty product created no revenue stream and kicked the door open for lawsuits that cost money, two fates worse than death according to the High Society. Therefore, tattooing sigils must be a valid magical application with no lasting side effects that might prompt a disgruntled customer to demand restitution.
All my anger toward Amelie stalled out as I held her hand, linking our fingers, waiting on help to arrive.
The distant clang of the garden gate as it closed had me straining to hear footfalls cushioned by grass.
“Grier,” Linus expelled my name on a relieved breath when our eyes met.
“Oh, look. The cavalry has arrived,” Boaz grumbled. “Will Woolly even let him on the porch?”
I don’t think I imagined the smug twist to his lips at the knowledge she approved of him, not Linus.
“Some days more than others.” She was grateful to him, but she was also still hurting from his betrayal. Forgiving him for breaching her wards, kidnapping Keet, it would require time. “I better go make sure.” I rushed around to the back porch and found Linus standing in the grass, fists clenched, with Cletus wavering behind him. “Woolly, let him in.”
The porch light brightened in acknowledgment of my request. For once, she wasn’t fighting me.
“It’s safe now.” Under different circumstances, I would have laughed at his hesitance, but nothing about this struck me as funny. Woolly and I were under attack. Again. I stood on the bottommost step and held out my hand. He took it, wrapping his cold fingers around mine, and I hauled him through the barrier encompassing Woolworth House. “Come on. Amelie’s this way.”
“Amelie?” He matched his stride to mine. “Was this her doing?”
As much as I wanted to defend her with a vehement no, I had to admit, “I don’t know.” We rounded the corner. “We found her out here like this.”
Boaz swung his head our way, and his gaze dragged down my arm to the hand still holding Linus’s.
“Any idea what hap
pened?” Boaz demanded, his tone sharp. Under his stare, I broke away from Linus so fast he flinched. “Grier is picking up on an anomaly within Amelie’s tattoo. Care to give your two cents?”
Having his arm almost yanked out of its socket mustn’t have fazed Linus as much as I thought. He knelt beside Amelie and examined her tattoo, jerking his hand back the instant his fingers brushed the ink.
“That was unexpected.” He didn’t meet my eyes, just angled his chin in my general direction. “You sensed the heat too?”
“It burned me.” I rolled my thumb over the sore spot. “I have a blister.”
The thoughtful way he inspected his pointer made me think he had suffered the same negative reaction. I half expected him to offer to soothe my hurt, and when he didn’t, it almost stung. “Does Woolly have any ideas about who or what attacked her?”
“No.” I patted the nearest railing. “The images she sent me don’t make much sense. She’s aware of where she was struck—on the front steps—but not how or who initiated the strike.”
“What do you think it means?” Boaz asked Linus. He wasn’t looking at me either. Great.
“There’s no residue on the lawn that I noticed or shrapnel on the stairs. The blow must have been magical in nature.” He confirmed what I had been thinking. “That might explain why a siege against Woolly resonated through the tattoo on Amelie. Grier designed them both, and Amelie was within Woolly’s protective bubble at the time.”
A chill scrabbled down my spine. “You’re saying Amelie is linked to Woolly?”
“No.” Linus tugged her sock over the design. “I’m saying she’s connected to you.”
Somehow that made it worse. I was used to being responsible for Woolly, but Amelie? Forever?
“Whose blood did you use?” I rubbed my forehead. “Yours or…?”
“Maud was the donor.” He angled his head in my direction without meeting my gaze. “I involved myself as little as possible to make Amelie and Boaz more comfortable.”
That brought Boaz’s head up, and a frown pinched his forehead, but he didn’t share his thoughts with us.
“The wards were inked using Maud’s blood too,” I reminded him. “Her blood could be the connection.”
“There’s power in her blood, potent magic, but it’s…” he searched for the word, “…inert.”
Meaning the energy had survived, but its origin no longer existed. The remaining power took on the tenor—for lack of a better word—of the practitioner. And since I had applied Woolly’s wards, and he had applied Amelie’s tattoo, there was no harmony between them. Each carried its own tune.
“That only leaves the design,” I said, praying he contradicted my logic but not holding my breath.
“Practitioners are inventing original designs and mass distributing them all the time. There’s a thriving patent business. I’m proof of that. There are hundreds of textbooks put into the hands of thousands of children that never elicit this response.” He rose with a frown fixed in place. “No designs are specific to the person who created them. Any residual link, if there was one, should dissolve the first time the sigil is used by another necromancer.”
Thanks to my rare designation, sharing my work with others was unlikely, but it worried me that I might not be able to use it either without running the risk of connecting my client to me. “I’m a freak of nature.”
“No, you’re not.” Halfway to brushing his fingers against the back of my hand, Linus dropped his arm to his side. “I’m going to conduct a search. I can start with Woolly and work my way toward the property line.” Head down, he lingered a moment longer. “How certain are you that Eloise left Savannah?”
“We saw her get into a car. She left the grounds, but we can’t be certain where she went from there.” He nodded and took a step back, but I pinched the fabric of his shirt where it rolled over his elbow to hold him in place. “Do you think she did this?”
“We’ll know more soon,” he promised, easing back until I lost my grip on him. “I won’t be long.”
Flashing lights strobed over us, washing his pale face in reds and blues, as an ambulance screamed into the driveway. Two doors slammed, and two sets of footsteps pounded up the flagstone path. However, in a surprising move, neither of them braved the steps. One must have possessed enough magic to sense the wards. Or they came armed with equipment that helped them perceive any hidden dangers they might encounter on calls.
“Medic,” Heinz called. “Get your hot, fresh medic.”
“We’re back here.” As Linus left, I stood to go fetch him. “I’ll come get you.”
Woolly, for her part, was as polite as could be to the men, allowing them on the porch with nary a flicker of her opinionated porch light. Both men were Low Society and gaped as her curtains flittered, and she preened beneath their regard. Nudging them out of their stupor after she batted her blinds at them, I guided them to Amelie. Luckily, a downed patient was enough to snap them out of their trance.
Chewing my thumbnail, I hovered behind the guys while they examined Amelie.
“Let me try something,” Heinz said at last. “Does she have any allergies?”
“No.” Boaz beat me to the punch. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve seen kids with these symptoms. Only High Society, though.” He snapped on a pair of gloves. “A magical interaction in the blood causes the problem. The condition is linked to new bonds formed with familiars. For a while, it’s push and pull while the two acclimate to one another. Most animals have a stronger survival drive than people. They pull too much energy from the kid, and the drain knocks them out cold.” He held out his hand, and his partner slapped a plastic kit across his palm. Inside, vials filled with what resembled diluted ink sloshed. “This mixture won’t break the bond, but it confuses the magic long enough for both parties to normalize.”
There was no hesitation in Boaz. “Do it.”
Amelie gasped awake ten seconds after Heinz depressed the plunger.
“W-w-what…?” She sucked down huge lungfuls of air. “Boaz?”
“Everything’s okay, sis.” He pinned down her shoulder. “You winked out on us there for a minute.”
“Miss Amelie, you’re coming with us.” Heinz conducted a quick examination then nodded his satisfaction. “I’ve never seen a Low Society necromancer exhibit these symptoms. We need to run a full screen on you.”
“That’s out of the question.” Boaz rubbed a hand over his face. “Know any phlebotomists who make house calls?”
“Sorry, man.” Heinz cringed while yanking off his gloves. “I wasn’t thinking.”
High Society necromancers learned early how to tap their own veins, but Boaz’s training wouldn’t have been the same. Given the circumstances, I wasn’t about to suggest he allow Linus to do the honors, and I was too out of practice to offer to do it myself.
“Amelie is under my protection,” I informed Heinz. For the next six months, I was her sole means of support. “Contact whoever can do whatever she needs and send them out here. I’ll cover the bill.”
The look Heinz turned on me conveyed many things, but chief among them was gratitude for taking care of his friend by providing for his sister. “I’ll do that.”
Once the paramedics left, Boaz carried Amelie inside then made her comfortable on the couch. Wanting to give them a moment of privacy, I waited for Linus on the porch. I was a tad concerned Woolly might bar his entrance now that Amelie was out of danger. I needn’t have worried. Linus appeared not five minutes later, exchanged words with the house, then joined me near the door.
“We can’t send those samples to a Society-owned lab.”
“You’re worried someone will trace her condition back to me.”
Hearing our voices, Boaz snapped his head toward us, his gaze bouncing between us. After kissing Amelie on the forehead, he ambled over to add his two cents.
“What do you propose we do then?” An ugly, bitter noise rose in his throat. “You must have a
ll the answers, right, Professor?” Muscles fluttered in his jaw. “You’re the one who oversaw Grier when she designed the new wards on Woolly, and you’re the one who tattooed my sister. Seems to me if you don’t know what you’re talking about, then you ought to get a damn clue before you go around handing out advice.”
Linus stared him down. “We both know there are extenuating circumstances.”
Vertebrae popped when Boaz jerked his head from left to right. “What do you propose we do?”
“Discuss this in private, for one.” Linus still wasn’t looking at me when he said, “Put her to bed then meet me at the carriage house.”
“We’ll be there,” Boaz assured him before turning to me. “Help me get her upstairs.”
Imperiousness must be bred into Society males of all castes.
“Yes, sir.” Snorting, I saluted him then headed inside after shooting Linus an apologetic look that glanced off his cheek. He went his way, and we went ours. At the couch, I wedged my shoulder under Amelie’s armpit to give me leverage to heave her onto her noodly legs. “Whatever you say, sir.”
“One day that smart mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble,” he threatened, eyes glinting.
“Gonna be…sick,” Amelie moaned. “Stop flirting. It’s disgusting.”
“I won’t take that personally,” Boaz said magnanimously, “since you’ve suffered a fainting spell and possible head injury, which would explain your lack of respect for my prowess.”
I turned my head against my shoulder to stifle a laugh, but they both heard, and Amelie grinned.
“I don’t need a head injury to know you and your moves are gross.”
“She is your sister,” I reminded him. “I’d be more worried if she did admire your, uh, prowess.”
A full-body shudder rolled through him. “Good point.”
Once we situated Amelie on the bed in her room, Boaz and I approached the carriage house.
The door was shut, of course, and required knocking, which made my jaw clench. He was expecting us. Surely, he would have confined Julius by now. Why not leave the door open? Or at least greet us when we arrived?
How to Break an Undead Heart Page 7