by Eileen Wilks
Lily frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Spells that kill don’t need mega-oomphs of power. How much depends on the precision of the spell and the skill of the caster, but anyone with a strong Gift should have enough power on his own to enspell a knife to kill. So why involve at least four more people? Why use death magic?”
“Could it be someone with a weak Gift? Or someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing? Maybe he or she thought they had to use death magic to kill.”
“That’s . . .” Cullen stopped. Scowled. “Never underestimate the power of ignorance. Yeah, that’s possible. There is so much hogwash out there masquerading as fact.”
Progress. Lily jotted a few things down. “For whatever reason, the perp used a lot of power. That’s why I assumed human sacrifice. The dagger was still loaded with the nasty stuff over an hour after doing its job.”
“If you’ve got an ignorant asshole in charge, that would make sense. Overloading the power, I mean. I need to see that knife.”
“I’ll try to arrange it, but so far Drummond isn’t cooperating.”
“Yeah, Rule told me I’m not getting paid.”
“Speaking of ignorant assholes, Drummond may yet approve the consult, which would let me get this on the record. So do you think we’re talking about Friar as the perp? He lacks experience.”
He shook his head, looking frustrated. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit for me. If she passed a killing spell to him in a dream, she did a pisspoor job.”
“Maybe he had to find one on his own. Maybe he used some flunky. It’s a place to start, anyway. Next question. Why would someone suddenly leak death magic?”
He frowned. “You’d better explain.”
She told him about the trail she’d found and followed to a bench in the park.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I don’t . . . wait.” He sat up straighter. “If your perp didn’t do the deed himself—if he gave the knife to a null—”
“A null? Someone unGifted could use the spell on the knife?”
“Sure. Remember those sleep charms I made? A death spell on a dagger is a charm, basically. More difficult to shape than a sleep charm, and it takes more power, which is why I assumed . . . but they’ve got the power. That would explain why they used death magic. Blades will take a killing spell readily, but they don’t store magic well. It can be done, but then it would take magic to trigger the spell. A null couldn’t do it.”
“And this makes you think a null used the knife? Because he couldn’t?”
Cullen rolled his eyes. “Let me take you by the hand and lead you step by step. We’ll call the guy who did the actual killing Perp Number One. He’s null. Perp Number Two, who probably was part of the death magic ritual, is Gifted. Perp Number Two meets Perp Number One at that bench. Number Two activates the spell on the dagger and hands it to Number One. It doesn’t start leaking until it’s activated.”
It fit. It fit really well, and yet it bothered Lily. She couldn’t put her finger on why. Maybe it was the sheer complication. “Why have a null do the killing? What’s the advantage? You’re talking about a pretty elaborate conspiracy.”
Rule spoke. “We’ve been talking about a conspiracy all along.”
She looked at him. His mouth was grim. His eyes were dark and clear. “Yeah, I guess we have been. But I—shit.” She’d caught a glimpse of the clock on the stove. She shoved her chair back. “I have to go.”
Cullen shoved his chair back, too. “Okay.”
Suspicion dawned. “Why are you agreeing with me?”
“I’m going with you.”
“Drummond isn’t going to let you—”
“Lily.” Rule stood. “You can’t drive, so Cullen will. You passed out last night. It could happen again at any time.”
Her lips thinned.
“You could take one of the guards instead, but there are advantages to having someone with you who can see and work magic. And answer questions about it.”
“I hate it when you’re right.” She looked at Cullen. “You’ll have to wait in the car, maybe for hours. You’re going to be bored.” Cullen hated being bored.
He snagged his phone from the table. “Got a new app. I’ll play while I wait.”
THIRTEEN
LILY did ask her driver a few questions on the way to Headquarters. No pain gods sent lightning bolts through her skull as he parked in the underground garage. She thought about Aunt Mequi as she rode up in the elevator.
Her aunt had migraines. Serious migraines. A couple times she’d ended up at the ER with one, though no one was supposed to mention that. Aunt Mequi’s dignity was much affronted that she’d been unable to endure the pain without help. Of course, Mequi’s migraines lasted for hours, not the few moments Lily’s bolts-from-the-blue had occupied so far. But there were bound to be different types of migraines, right?
Rule feared that Lily’s malady was rooted in some terrible malfunction, either physical or magical, but Rule was lupus. He’d never had a headache without a concussion. Lily could see plenty of other possibilities.
There was a small crowd in the hall near the designated conference room. Lily recognized two of them: Doug Mullins and Sherry O’Shaunessy. Everyone glanced her way. Mullins frowned. Sherry smiled.
Sherry O’Shaunessy looked like a young, upscale grandmother, except for her hair. That was gray and reached past her hips when down; today she wore it in a braid coiled on top of her head. Her cheeks were chubby, her smile contagious, and her Gift was Water. She was one of the most powerful witches in the country, and the High Priestess of the Wiccan coven the Unit kept under contract.
This morning, she looked tired. Lily went to her. “Good to see you. You didn’t pull an all-nighter, did you?”
“I’m afraid so. That’s not as easy as it once was. Did you—”
Mullins interrupted. “He wants you inside, Yu.”
In Mullins’s world, “he” had to mean Drummond. Lily nodded at him and said to Sherry, “I’ll see you inside, I guess.”
Sherry took Lily’s hand and gave a little squeeze. Water magic felt like the element it drew upon, but there were variations. Sherry’s magic evoked the ocean for Lily rather than rain or brooks or deep pools. She could almost smell the salty spray. “I’m glad you’re working on this one, dear.”
“Inside,” Mullins repeated, scowling.
Sherry smiled at him. “Your name is Doug, I think?”
Mullins blinked and looked conflicted, no doubt trying to resist the urge to smile back. Satan himself would find it hard to resist Sherry’s smile. “Doug Mullins, yes, ma’ am.”
She patted his arm. “Not everyone is able to offer the proverbial spoonful of sugar, but we can at least avoid pouring vinegar over everything.” She looked at Lily. “Doug is guarding the door. I’m afraid he’s been a bit abrasive, but he does have orders.”
“I guess I do, too.” Lily gave her a nod and headed for the closed door.
The conference room was large enough for a table that could seat up to thirty people. At the moment it held four: Drummond, a senior MCD agent named Mike Brassard whom Lily knew slightly, and two others who were strangers to her. There was a whiteboard with crime scene pics tacked up and a console table with a coffeepot, cups, and fixings.
Lily headed for the coffee.
Drummond stopped talking to the woman beside him—brown and blue, pale skin, glasses, five-five, one sixty, wrinkled gray suit. She looked to be on the far side of forty. “You’re late,” he told Lily.
“It’s 8:01, so yes, I am.” She poured herself a cup. It smelled fresh.
“I want you to check everyone in this room in your own special way. Do it now.”
Lily sighed, put down her coffee, and walked up to the dumpy woman beside Drummond. A quick handshake confirmed her lack of a Gift or any trace of death magic. She did the same with a bright-eyed Asian man of around thirty and with Brassard,
the MCD agent.
“Well?” Drummond said.
“No death magic. I should check Ruben Brooks.”
“No.”
“It wouldn’t prove anything, but it would be information.”
“You aren’t just his subordinate. You went to his damn party Saturday. You won’t go anywhere near him during the course of this investigation.”
Her lips tightened. She went to retrieve her coffee.
“Feed your caffeine jones later. We’re going to be working with a large team. I want them all cleared before we start. Doug will send ’em in one at a time. Stand by the door and check them out. If you find death magic, don’t say anything. Signal by rubbing your hands together. Nguyen, stand by to take anyone down who doesn’t pass.”
It was a good plan, minimizing the confusion if she did find anything suspicious. Lily nodded but said, “My clearing someone this way only means they haven’t worked death magic recently. I can’t even say how recently.”
“It’s information.”
Hard to argue with what she’d just said, but she wanted to. Drummond affected her that way. “I’ve got a theory about one of the perps. The one who stuck the knife in Bixton.”
“Make it quick.”
She explained Cullen’s idea about the killer being a null—though she didn’t use that term, which some considered derogatory.
He grunted in what might have been surprise. “I’ll call on you to repeat that later. Right now, get started at the door. I want to get this thing under way.”
Lily shook nineteen hands. No death magic. One agent had a minor Gift—physical empathy—which surprised Lily. It was an unusual Gift and not one the man could have remained unaware of, as it essentially provided him with another sense. Physical empathy, unlike true empathy, allowed someone to sense physical objects directly in a way that had no clear analogue to the usual senses.
The agent met her gaze when she shook his hand and said nothing. Lily didn’t, either. She refused to out people. But she made a mental note of his name and face: Don Richardson, European ancestry, early forties, five-ten, brown and brown, with a small scar just under his right ear.
Lily knew some of the people, like Paul from Research and Hannah from CSI. And she knew the last person in, who had a minor patterning Gift. Lily already knew about that. She’d recommended Anna Sjorensen for training when they met last month. Sjorensen had been delegated to Headquarters recently so she could receive that training; she’d be transferred to the Unit once she’d completed it.
Working in the Unit was Anna Sjorensen’s dream. Lily gave her a smile. “Good to be working with you.”
Sjorensen nodded back, very serious. She was always very serious. “This is a bad business. I’m not sure why I’m here, though.”
“If I say to fetch coffee, someone’ll file a damn suit against me,” Drummond said sourly, “and Erin will bean me. You’re here to do as you’re told. Sit down and let’s start.”
Drummond introduced Mullins and the three people who’d been in the room first, calling them Team One: Mike Brassard, Erin Hoffsteader, and Sam Nguyen. Each of the three would be in charge of a different aspect of the investigation. He said he’d summarize the status of the investigation and call on some of them for reports after Ms. O’Shaunessy gave them her findings. She would take questions, but he wanted to let her get some sleep, so “keep the questions pertinent.”
Maybe the man wasn’t always an asshole.
Sherry gave a quick précis of what her coven had learned. Yes, the dagger held considerable death magic, and there were traces on Bixton’s body as well. They had also confirmed the presence of a spell, but hadn’t been able to identify the spell. “It may take weeks, even months, to deconstruct the spell,” she concluded, “if we can do so at all. There are no visual components, so it’s a matter of trial and error.”
Lily had already figured out that she was the only Unit agent in the room. The questions that flew after Sherry’s report made it clear that most of the others knew diddly about magic. They weren’t stupid questions. Just ignorant. A couple people seemed skeptical about the validity of magically derived evidence. One guy was downright hostile.
“. . . scientific method means the results can be duplicated. You can’t say that about dancing around naked all night then coming up with—”
“Mayhew,” Drummond said, “shut up. She’s the expert. You aren’t. If you can’t flex that steel-trap mind of yours enough to accept that, you don’t belong on this team.”
Mayhew shut up. Lily didn’t think his mind had flexed, but he did shut up. She took advantage of the brief silence to say quietly to Sherry, “About IDing that spell . . . Cullen’s in town.”
“Excellent! He’s just what we need.”
Drummond had good ears. He zeroed right in on that. “Are you talking about Cullen Seabourne? That damn consultant you wanted?”
“That’s right. He arrived last night.”
“And you thought it was somehow okay to bring him in when I haven’t authorized—”
“He’s working pro bono for now.”
Sherry’s eyebrows shot up. “Cullen?”
Lily flashed her a grin. “Amazing, isn’t it?” She looked at Drummond. “We need to know more about the spell on that knife as quickly as possible. For example, if we know what tradition it’s drawn from, that may limit our suspect pool.”
“Explain.”
Sherry fielded that one. “With a few exceptions, practitioners can only work spells derived from or couched in their own tradition. A Vodun priest wouldn’t be able to cast a Nordic rune spell, for example, or an Egyptian zoan. There’s more overlap among the so-called pagan traditions, but even there, variations in symbology and sourcing make it difficult for a North American shaman to use most Wiccan spells without altering the spell.”
The MCD guy—Brassard—spoke up. “But there are exceptions.”
“Sorcerers are said to be able to work in multiple traditions.”
He snorted. “They’re also said to be rare. As in, there aren’t any.”
“You’re confusing sorcerers with adepts. Sorcery is a Gift, not a level of ability. We have no adepts in our realm anymore. Sorcerers are extremely rare, but that Gift does still appear from time to time. Also, we know very little about the nonhuman traditions, such as gnomish or elven magic, so I have to consider them possible exceptions.”
Sjorensen spoke up gravely. “You said something about adjusting spells. What does that mean?”
Sherry blessed her with a smile. “Advanced practitioners can often adapt a spell from a foreign tradition to their needs. But that would be information, too. If this spell shows signs of drawing on multiple traditions, you’ll know you are looking for an advanced practitioner.”
The woman directly across from Lily frowned. “Don’t we already know that? They harvested death magic and used it to kill Bixton. That sounds pretty advanced.”
Sherry shook her head. “Unfortunately, death magic can be harvested by someone with only a moderate understanding of magic if they get hold of an accurate rite. Your suspect may be quite advanced, or only the equivalent of a bright middle-schooler willing to put out a lot of effort.”
“Which is why,” Lily added, “once someone starts down that path, they usually practice with animals at first. That’s a possible way to track our perps, or to provide corroboratory evidence. And only one guy has to be skilled. The others involved in the rite may be completely ignorant. There’s some disagreement,” she added with a glance at Sherry, “about whether they even have to be Gifted.” The disagreement she knew about was between Sherry and Cullen.
Sherry’s eyes twinkled. “True. I personally believe all the participants must possess some trace of magic, but that’s a theoretical preference on my part. Obviously I can’t test it.”
Erin Hoffsteader said, “What about the spell on the knife? That has to be pretty advanced.”
“We don’t know that,” Sherry said c
almly. “Not yet.”
“In fact,” Lily put in, paraphrasing Cullen again, “for all we know, our perps didn’t enspell the knife themselves. They could have found it or bought it. It’s even possible—not likely, but possible—they got hold of a pre-Purge artifact with an intact spell.” She looked at Sherry. “If the knife’s old enough, that is.”
“I don’t know. The most accurate spell to determine age must be performed in two parts—at new moon, then at full moon.”
“Pre-Purge?” Drummond was skeptical. “That would make it over three hundred years old. Is it possible for a spell to survive that long?”
“Oh, yes,” Sherry said, “if it was cast by an adept. I know of three such artifacts with intact spells. Two of them are in museums.”
Now that was interesting. Lily didn’t want to get sidetracked, though. “All of which explains why I want my expert to have a look at that dagger. We need information, even if it isn’t admissible.”
Sherry smiled. “There’s a good chance my coven can corroborate anything Cullen learns, and our results would be admissible.”
Drummond looked like he’d bitten into the proverbial lemon, but he agreed, with the provision that Sherry be present when Cullen examined the dagger. Drummond then thanked Sherry brusquely for her time and dismissed her. The he told them sourly to “get some coffee if you want, but make it quick.”
Lily didn’t hesitate. She had her foam cup in hand and was sipping when he began the briefing. “You’ve all heard shit about this one already. Most of it’s wrong. Listen up to what we actually know.” He went on to hit all the basic points concisely without leaving anything important out, covering when, where, and what they knew of how the senator had been killed. Then he called on Hannah to describe what CSI had found.
That turned out to be not much, except for an oddly damp spot on the carpet near the body. They were running tests on fibers from that spot. Results not in yet.
Drummond told Hannah she could go if she wanted. She did. He looked around the table. “This next part is going to stay in this room. Anyone leaks it, I’ll find out, and I’ll bury you. We’ve got a wit—the maid—who places someone on the scene with the senator at the right time. Someone who identified himself to her as Ruben Brooks.”
