by Eileen Wilks
“Not quite everything.” Lily had hoped they could work this out without her pulling out the big guns. Wasn’t going to happen. “I also need to notify you that the FBI will be taking custody of Roy Don Meacham today. The marshals should be here in a couple hours.”
Farquhar stopped. Turned. “Oh, no, you’re not. If you think I’m going to roll over because you’ve got some crazy idea that a man who clubbed his wife and children to death is a victim—”
“I realize that you’ve only my word about the magic. However, his lack of magic makes it—”
“I don’t give a good damn whether Roy Don Meacham has magic or not. He killed those kids.”
Lily heard that broken voice again: Not my hand. Got no hands. “His hands killed those children and their mother. Roy Don wasn’t in charge of them at the time. Someone or something used Meacham, and somewhere in his head is information about that. I’m not taking chances with him. He’ll be examined by competent experts, both medical and magical, and placed on suicide watch.”
Farquhar sniffed. “I might let your experts see him—after the arraignment. But—”
“Marcia,” Deacon said.
“But there is no way I’m going to let you—”
“Marcia,” Deacon repeated, louder. “She’s Unit Twelve and she’s claimed jurisdiction. How you gonna stop her?”
Silence. Then Farquhar flung one furious glance at Lily and left. She didn’t slam the door behind her. She closed it carefully, as if she were too angry to let even a little steam out that way.
Lily sighed. She was making friends all over the place today. “I guess it would be awkward for you to storm out, too, seeing as this is your office.”
Deacon resumed his seat. “Guess it would. You going to need some work space here?”
He’d surprised her again. “Probably. This didn’t seem like the best time to mention it.”
He shrugged. “You burst Marcia’s bubble. I’m not Marcia. She doesn’t have a whiff of a Gift, does she?”
“If Ms. Farquhar asks what I felt when I touched her hand, I’ll tell her.” She paused. “Just as I told you what I felt when we shook hands.” The implication being that she considered such information private.
He nodded. “You’ve got a careful way of putting things. I appreciate caution. Marcia does, too, but she doesn’t appreciate magic. She thinks you’re grandstanding. I’ve got a little edge on her there. I can tell you believe what you’re saying, and I’ve got reason to think you know what you’re talking about. Now.” He leaned back in his chair. “About that work space—best I can offer you is the conference room.”
“I’ll take it. Ah . . . I’ve put in for some backup, but I’m not sure when I’ll get them. Noon, maybe later.”
“Conference room should hold more’n one person. Who’s coming to pick up Meacham?”
“A pair of federal marshals and a medevac unit.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Medevac?”
“He needs medical attention. Possession tends to screw up the host’s mind. Sometimes the body, too. We don’t know that he was possessed, exactly, but something sure screwed with him. And I think he’ll travel better sedated.”
“Your marshals will have an easier time if he is,” Deacon said dryly. “Where will you put him?”
“Georgetown in D.C.” There was no such thing as true magical shielding, not in their realm, anyway. But Georgetown University Hospital had a couple of rooms that were circled and heavily warded. It was the best they could do.
Deacon leaned forward, pressed a button on his phone. “Edna? Could you come in here a minute?” He leaned back. “I’ve got a few things to do that don’t have a blame thing to do with Roy Don Meacham, so I’m going to let Edna get you settled. She’s been copying the case file for you. I hope you’ll be able to bring in your own office supplies and such. The budget’s tight.”
“SOP is for me to order in what I need, then donate to the host jurisdiction whatever’s left when I leave. Which means you’ll probably come out ahead by a fax machine, copier, and whiteboard.”
He smiled, satisfied. “Sometimes it pays to be the nice guy.”
“Sometimes it does. Here’s another chance to play nice.
I’m going to need to look at the crime scene—Meacham’s home. I also need to talk to your witness, the mailman with the broken skull.” This time the name was there, waiting, like it was supposed to be. “Watkins, right?”
“Bill Watkins. He’s still hospitalized, but stable. Shouldn’t be any problem seeing him. The key to Meacham’s place is in Evidence. Edna’ll get it for you.”
“Great. Quick question. You said the physical evidence at the scene suggested the two kids were killed in bed. How far apart are their rooms?”
He frowned suspiciously, as if it were a trick question. “They’re right next to each other.”
“And the mother, Becky Meacham. Where was she killed?”
“From the look of the blood, all over the damned place.”
She sighed, nodded, and reached for the door.
“Ah . . .”
Lily paused with her hand on the doorknob. Deacon was fiddling with a pen. He spoke without looking at her. “I’m going to ask you something that’s none of my business.”
Her eyebrows shot up as curiosity fought with common sense. Whatever he wanted to ask, it would probably annoy her and possibly make it hard to work with the man.
But with Lily, curiosity almost always won. “What’s that?”
“It doesn’t bother you, the way Turner is?”
“Lupi aren’t the bestial killers that popular culture makes them out to be.”
“I don’t mean that. I’ve seen him. He holds it together okay, even when you push at him some.” Deacon put the pen down. “I mean the way he is with women. Weers—I mean lupi—they don’t believe in marriage.”
A dozen things jostled through her brain, trying to make it into speech. Explanations, justifications . . . reasons. Lupi had reasons for their ways. They were nearly infertile, and their very survival had long depended on scattering their seed as widely as possible.
That secret could not be spoken, of course. Neither could she explain that Rule was faithful to her. The mate bond that tied them together made it unthinkable for him to stray, even though she could. She wouldn’t, but according to his beliefs, it was acceptable for her to dabble on the side.
Lily wasn’t sure how much he truly believed that. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But in fact, she had a guarantee of faithfulness perhaps no other woman could claim . . . and no chance of claiming it aloud. “No,” she said after a brief pause. “It doesn’t bother me, Sheriff.”
She closed the door quietly behind her.
ELEVEN
EDNA was a six-footer with a linebacker’s shoulders, a sun worshipper’s wrinkles, and a ship’s prow of a bosom. Her hair was short, gray, and straight. She wore a wholly unflattering white oxford shirt tucked into belted khakis. No weapon.
“Crime scene photos,” Edna said, slapping a folder on the conference table. “Rest of it’s in here.” A second, thicker folder landed on top of the first. “Coffee’s in the break room, west end of the building, between the restrooms. Like we all want to hang out at break next to the piss pots, right?”
Lily agreed that those who did space planning for public buildings were idiots, and Edna went to get the key from Evidence.
Like almost everyone in the Unit, Lily had been sent all over the place in the seven months since the Turning, so she was used to quickly setting up a field office. She called a local office supply store, then sat down with the files. First she’d go through the reports, get a picture of what had happened at Meacham’s house four days ago. So far all she had was Deacon’s version.
She’d studied the photos and was halfway through the thicker folder when a muffled drumroll sounded in her purse.
That was Cullen. She frowned, glancing at her watch as she retrieved the toy Rule had given
her for her birthday in April—an iPhone. “It’s six forty in the morning in California. What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Cullen asked. “What could be wrong? You texted me. I called.” The next part came out louder, but muffled, as if he’d turned his head. “How would I know? I’m not the Finder here. All right, all right, I’ll look for it. Just get your beautifully gravid body in and out of that shower fast. The plane leaves in seventy minutes.”
“Plane?” Lily repeated. “Where are you going?”
“Washington—the state, not D. of C. Kidnapping. A little boy this time, four years old. She just got the call.”
Cynna was on limited duty due to her pregnancy, which meant that, unlike other Unit agents, she wasn’t flying all over the U.S. these days. Except in special cases, that was. Cases like this, when a child’s life was at stake. Cynna was the top Finder in the country.
“You’re going with her again?”
“Of course I’m going with her. I’m not about to . . . Lily,” he snapped, and it took her a second to realize he was speaking to Cynna, not her. “I’m talking to Lily, who’s allowed to know about kidnappings and such, right? Since she’s FBI, too, and not likely to give interviews on the subject. Now, are you going to take a shower or not?”
This time Lily caught Cynna’s raised voice. And the slam of a door. “Maybe you shouldn’t yell at the pregnant woman.”
“If I don’t nip back when she nips at me, she’ll think something’s wrong. Tell me about the death magic Rule found.”
She did. Lily was good at condensing a report to the key points, having given plenty of them in her days as a beat cop, then in Homicide. But she didn’t believe in skimping on the details when consulting an expert—she couldn’t know which details Cullen needed. So it took several minutes.
When she finished, Cullen proved once again that he was as bright as he was irritating. “You’re wanting to know just how shaky the limb is you’ve crawled out on, yanking Meacham away from the locals. Was he responsible for what he did, or not? Sorry, love. Can’t say for damned certain sure.”
“You can tell me for certain sure if Meacham needed a Gift to use death magic.”
“To invoke it, yes. To use it? That’s where things turn iffy. There’ve been reports going back to pre-Purge days of . . . Yes, it’s still Lily.” Cullen’s voice took on a different tone. Husky. “Have I mentioned how great you look wet, naked, and knocked up? There’s probably another flight we could catch....”
The next part was muffled, but suggested a moment that should have been more private than it was. Then Cullen’s voice came back, sounding absurdly cheerful, considering he couldn’t have done much in that brief time. “Cynna says hi. Now, where was I?”
“Explaining the difference between invoking death magic and using it.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll give you the short version, because we’re leaving as soon as that luscious body I get to touch whenever I want to is covered—hey, no throwing things!” Lily assumed that bit wasn’t directed at her. “Full disclosure: I don’t know much about death magic.”
Lily paused a beat. “Inconvenient, yet reassuring.”
She could hear the grin in his voice. “That said, I’m eighty or ninety percent sure no one in this realm could perform the invocation ritual solo. And ritual is required—there’s no way of just slurping up power by killing people at random. Meacham couldn’t perform any part of that ritual, but it might—just might—be possible for him to do the killing. The power released by the deaths would be contained within a circle and absorbed by whoever created the circle.”
“The three victims were killed at some distance from each other, separated by walls. Doesn’t sound like there was a circle.”
“No. Bludgeoning with a baseball bat doesn’t fit what I know, either. But again, on this particular area of magical practices I am not an expert.”
“Get to the part about how using death magic is different from invoking it.”
“It’s possible to create a charm or talisman even a null could use. Hellish hard, but it can be done. So technically, it’s possible for someone like Meacham, someone without magic, to have used a talisman.”
“Talisman?” Her heart gave a sudden, scared jump in her chest. “Is that another way of saying artifact?”
“Not exactly, but you probably aren’t interested in the precise definitions.”
“No, I’m not.” Absently, Lily rubbed the place on her stomach where the skin was shiny-smooth . . . a burn scar. Cullen had given it to her last year, but she didn’t hold it against him. Not considering the alternative—an ancient staff powered by death magic in the hands of the man it had driven mad. The staff had been used to control others.
It had also sent Rule to hell, along with part of Lily. The part that ended up dying there.
“Déjà vu all over again?” Cullen said gently. “I don’t know what’s going on in Halo, but it’s not the staff. I burned it, Lily. Mage fire doesn’t leave any remnants behind, not even ash. That staff is gone.”
“Okay.” She grabbed a good breath and let it out. “Okay, that’s not it, but I hope you’ve got some ideas to offer in its place.”
“Three possibilities.” She heard what sounded like the trunk of a car slamming, followed by Cynna’s voice, indistinct in the background. “One: someone discovered yet another powerful ancient artifact and is feeding it. Two: your perp or perps discovered or invented a kick-ass coercion spell and forced Meacham to kill his family, somehow using those deaths to gain power themselves. Three: your victims were killed, and Meacham coerced, through some unknown but innate magical ability.”
Lily didn‘t like any of those possibilities, but . . . “Number one’s the simplest.”
“Not really. Hold on a minute.”
Cullen told Cynna to chill, that he could drive and talk at the same time, at least until they hit the highway. That last was a concession to Cynna’s condition, Lily figured. All lupi had fast reflexes, but Cullen’s were off the charts. He could probably drive, talk, and play with fire—literally—and still react quicker to traffic than most people.
She heard a car door close. “You still there?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah. You don’t like Door Number One?”
“I included it only to be thorough. Even if we ignore the fleetingly small chance of yet another ancient artifact turning up—and recent experience to the contrary, they remain more legend than reality—power like that tends to draw attention. Earth isn’t interdicted anymore. If an ancient artifact turned up here, maybe blown in by the power winds, all sorts of bad-asses would have hoofed it to our humble little realm and be duking it out now for possession. Hard to miss that sort of thing.”
That made sense. “And Door Number Two? Coercion spells aren’t supposed to work.”
“Yeah, but if someone invented one that almost worked . . . maybe that’s why Meacham’s nuts and his family’s dead. The spell sent him into a homicidal frenzy instead of making him do . . . whatever. Not that I really think that’s what happened—it doesn’t explain the death magic—but I can’t rule it out.”
Meacham didn’t seem a likely target for some hotshot coercion spell. What could he have had that anyone wanted? “You’re going for Door Number Three—an innate magical ability. But it wasn’t a demon, Cullen.”
“Maybe the traces of demon magic faded before you touched the bodies.”
She rubbed her temple. “Possible, I guess, but I’ve found traces lingering more than two weeks after someone made a demonic pact. That’s not the same as possession, but . . . shit, I need to know more. Do demons use or, ah, invoke death magic?”
“You can consult about that possibility with my resident demon expert here, after I get off the phone. Which will be in a couple minutes. We don’t know much about out-realm beings, do we?”
“You think something crossed during the power winds. Not an artifact, but a—a being or a creature.”
“I hate to say yes. It
’s here-there-be-dragons thinking—we don’t know what’s out there, so we draw whatever shapes suit us. But that does seem the most possible of the possibilities.”
“This creature would—well, feed, I guess. That’s what you mean. That it uses the energy generated by death magic.”
“I don’t know. I could draw some pretty shapes for you, but I do not know.” And ignorance pissed Cullen off. “And even my best possibility doesn’t really fit, dammit. It doesn’t fit all the facts.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lily, you aren’t thinking. Death magic clung to your corpses and to Meacham for four days, but it didn’t cling to Rule for more than moments. It knocked him out, then just went away. And there is nothing I know of to explain that.”
Shit. Double shit. That should have jumped out at her, the one variation in a solid pattern.
“Somehow he shed death magic like a duck sheds water,” Cullen was saying. “And no, that doesn’t sound like any natural lupus ability I ever heard of. Unless there’s something about being two-mantled . . . I don’t see what, but there’s a helluva lot I don’t know about mantles.”
“You must know more than I do. You’re affected by one.”
“You can be affected by sunlight without knowing shit about photons, frequencies, or nuclear decay. You need to talk to Rule, maybe Isen. Someone who’s carried a mantle or part of one.”
“I’ll do that. You have any other ideas?”
He didn’t. He made a vague promise to see what he could turn up. The vagueness meant he didn’t want to tell her what kind of stones he’d be looking under, but she had no problem with that. He passed the phone to Cynna, who snorted at the notion of a demon using death magic.
“But they eat something other than flesh when they eat an animal,” Lily said. “Or each other.”
“Well, yeah, but . . . look, it isn’t the same. Most of us—people who’ve, uh, studied this—think demons eat the life energy of whatever they consume, but it’s a biological energy. Material. Probably magical, too, since they get the memories of whatever they eat. But death magic involves spiritual shit. Demons can’t touch the spiritual shit.”