Downpour (40 page)

“His child is worse.”

“Shea? He’s a fool.”

“Apparently that’s your part.” Her face grew stormy and she started to raise one hand, but I put up both of mine and said, “Hear me out before you smite me—or whatever you’re thinking of doing. How well did he know your father? Would your father have, say, given him a gift?”

She watched me with a narrowed, angry expression, but she let the gathering power in her hands slide back to the ground as she answered. “They were friendly, but not like that. Daddy was lonely and Shea liked to sit and talk to him instead of working. It seemed harmless.”

“He’s a better actor than anyone would have credited. And good at masking his abilities—he fooled me, too. What did they talk about?”

“I don’t really know. I wasn’t around much—too busy staying out of Ridenour’s hands and trying to teach myself the Way.”

“I think your father must have told Shea how he meant to fix the lake. I don’t know how he got it, but he figured out that the anchor stone was the key to the problem. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to use it properly. I think he was going to take the stone away from the lake. He didn’t know that would have just made things worse. Shea didn’t know, either, and he thought he had to stop it. So he killed your father and hid his body and his car in the lake. The anchor was in the car the whole time, ironically, but it never redirected the leyline as it should have done, because it wasn’t in the right place.”

Willow blinked at me and a tear rolled down her blank face, leaving a streak. “Shea can’t have done it. He’s not strong enough.”

“He was strong enough to steal your mother’s circle.”

“Why do you think it was him? It could have been—”

“Nobody else. No one else needed it except you and no one else who could use it is still here except Shea. It has to be Costigan’s child—who turned up as soon as I found the circle—Shea. He steals magic; that’s why he’s here. I can tell from the color of the energy he leaves behind. He uses Costigan’s hoodoo and he ‘borrows’ your family’s energy, too. I think he gave the ley weaver the hand-spiders and said they were from Costigan. Then he could get help from that creature, too. I think he’s used his access to people’s houses to set traps and drive other, weaker mages away now that he’s getting closer to his goals. He comes and goes wherever he pleases and no one pays him any mind—they even
ask
him in! He must be clever enough to get his master’s loa to help him hide the Subaru after he rigged the brakes and set it on fire when it crashed. I saw the memory of it in your mother’s circle.”

“He used my mother’s circle to kill my father?” Willow looked appalled and started shaking her head desperately. “That can’t be. The divine horsemen would never obey Shea. He’s only a hoodoo-man, not a real votary of the loa.”

“He’s not ‘only’ anything. That’s how he’s tricked all of you for so long. But if not the loa, then it must have been Jin who helped him. Which might be why Shea banished him.”

Willow stared at me. “Banished Jin? He couldn’t. . . . He wouldn’t know how. . . .” She put her hand on her chest and closed her eyes, whispering words that circled into the air and died. Her eyes flashed open in shock. “Jin’s gone!”

I nodded. I wished we were having this conversation somewhere warmer, but I suspected she’d never agree to sit in the Rover where the steel and glass would cut her off from the streams of magic that flowed underfoot.

“Willow, how would you banish a demon like Jin? Or May?”

“I’d cast it out by force. I can. Now. But I didn’t banish May. I liked her, and I wasn’t strong enough then to force a demon. I barely managed to bind Jin so he wouldn’t kill anyone after Jonah.”

“Couldn’t you have used a spell on yellow paper?”

“If I could have bought one. I never learned the characters for a major banishment. The best I could do with the Chinese I can write is scatter the stupid guai. It’s much easier to just shove them out.”

I knew it wasn’t easy to shove anything in the Grey, but Willow seemed to have a greater command of the local power than she realized. Shea had been wise to keep her distracted for a while, but he’d been terminally foolish to let her stay alive so long. I imagined he had plans to change that soon. “You must have learned more since then. . . .”

She cocked her head and pulled a sarcastic face. “It’s not like English letters, where it doesn’t matter which stroke comes first. Especially for magic, the characters have to be made right. Who would teach me? Jewel? One of the old women—oh, but I forgot: There
are
no old Chinese grandmothers left here. I know—I could have gone to Olympia! Except I can’t leave here for very long; the magic owns me.”

“Maybe, but you also command it. It’s yours—or it should have been. Your mother’s family have been taking care of the magic here for generations. I’m guessing you should have been next. Shea knows it, and he’s been perfectly happy to keep you from learning what you needed to, to keep you on the run and unable to repair the damage to the leylines that were your mother’s legacy while he played games and set everyone against one another. He got the other sorcerers around here to fight and waste their time while he became stronger, keeping Ridenour occupied with May and then with hating you. Now he’s got to make a move, and banishing Jin must have been his first step to weaken you.”

“I knew the demon worked for others, but I didn’t know who. I didn’t have the skill to bind it exclusively to me, but so long as it didn’t kill anyone else, that seemed good enough. But Shea . . .” She shook her head. “I told you he couldn’t possibly banish Jin.”

“I’m pretty sure he did. First he bribed Jin to do work, and then he got rid of the demon now that push has come to shove.”

She scoffed. “How? He has no power over the gate to Diyu.”

“He only needed a banishment that he stole from me last night. Anyone can use one, right?”

“Yes,” she replied, slowly, as if waiting for the “gotcha.”

“I thought the purpose was to kill us, but now I think he just wanted this.” I pulled one of the scraps from my pocket and held it out to her. She took it and gave it a wary look for a moment, as if she could read what had been written on the vanished silk. Then she handed it back to me.

“How did he get it from you?”

“He borrowed Costigan’s zombies and attacked your father’s house last night while we were sleeping there. The zombies tore it out of my pocket and Shea picked it up in the aftermath. He probably stole things from this house to bribe Jin with, too—Jin had a pair of your father’s cuff links. And when that wasn’t enough, Shea gave him information gleaned in Seattle, where Jin couldn’t go.”

Her face grew dark with fury and she muttered under her breath.

“Don’t waste your time on him just yet,” I warned. “There’s a party at your sister’s tonight and I want you to crash it. Then you can raise some hell for Mr. Shea. Of course, I imagine Jewel and Costigan will have some of their own to sling around, so hold on to your resources until then. In the meantime, I want you to get in touch with Soren Faith—he’s the man investigating Alan Strother’s murder.”

“Why should I? He can’t help—”

“Don’t be an idiot. He has the anchor stone and he said he’d give it back if you would meet with him.”

“He only wants to arrest me!”

“He said he’d come on your terms to whatever spot you designate. I think he really does just want to talk. He doesn’t believe you meant to kill Tim Scott,” I added.

She stared at me, conflicted and confused.

“Come into the house where we can speak in private,” I suggested. “We need to get that rock back and I’m afraid it’s up to you. But if we keep talking here, someone is bound to overhear us. . . .”

“The trees will keep them away,” she objected.

“Maybe, but I’d still prefer somewhere drier and more private.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “You’re very soft for such a hard-ass.”

“Yes. I have a lot more to do today and hypothermia won’t help.”

The trees swayed away from the Rover, and Quinton jumped out to join us, apparently relieved to get out of the truck at last. Willow gave him a crooked smile and shot a funny look in my direction before she shrugged and started walking to the house, letting us fall in behind her.

THIRTY-TWO

W
illow seemed a bit uncomfortable indoors, glancing around continually and unable to sit still. She walked around the living room, noting the repositioned couch and the ashes in the Franklin stove, and grinned at us. “What have you two been up to in Mother’s house?” she quipped, not really expecting an answer and not getting one. I bit my lip and brushed absently at my cheek with the back of my hand.

Quinton came back into the living room from starting up the generator—he’d taken the gas can from the Rover. Since the cat was already out of the bag that we were staying in the lakefront house, it seemed pointless to live rough. There was nothing we could do about the propane stove and fridge, but electricity did make things a little cozier and helped push back the Grey fog and swirls of color that seemed to be seeping into the building, deepening, and growing thicker since we’d followed Willow inside.

“The water heater’s electric, and there’s a microwave, so it’s not going to be cold food and baths like last night,” he announced, sitting next to me. He rubbed at the dried poultice on his cheek, knocking some of it off.

Willow hopped up from the chair she’d barely perched on, announcing, “I’ll make tea!” and darted for the door, giving us amused looks as she went to the kitchen.

“What the hell is that about?” Quinton asked.

“Your goop is flaking,” I said, touching the crusted wound on his face with my fingertips.

“About time. It itches.” He scraped his fingers over it again, loosening more of the dry muck Costigan had plastered him with. Outside, the shadows were deepening under the cap of clouds as the sun headed for the ocean. I hoped we’d be able to talk Willow into meeting with Faith before things got crazy at the Newmans’—and it was a good bet they would get weird once we showed up.

I studied Quinton’s face. The dead color had vanished, leaving pale but healthy-looking skin under the fading gauze of magic that had covered most of his injured cheek. The tiny tendrils of energy were retracting into the dried cake of glop that hid the ugly black line that had appeared when the spirit thing had touched him. “Well . . . it looks a lot better,” I offered.

“Maybe I can wash it off, then. You think?” He raised his eyebrows in hope. “I shudder, imagining what might be in this stuff.”

“Something worse than rum and spit?”

Willow stuck her head around the kitchen door. “It’s mostly comfrey, red pepper, and bearberries, maybe some boneset, definitely some garlic. It brings the blood to the skin and warms it up, wards off infection. Since it was Loko who came to help, there isn’t any graveyard dust in it—you’re lucky.”

“Garlic and red pepper,” Quinton said. “That explains the smell. . . .”

“I wouldn’t use it,” she added with a raise of the eyebrows and a smug-cat smile, “but it does work when you’re getting some help from the loa.” Willow vanished from the doorway and went back to making tea.

“I begin to see why she’s a loner,” Quinton whispered.

I poked him with a finger in the ribs. “You could just go wash it off.”

“What, and miss my chance to imitate a spicy Italian sausage?” He waggled his eyebrows at me in a way that was too silly to be suggestive.

“You are a danger to morality,” I said, smiling.

“I try.”

I flapped a hand at him. “Go wash that stuff off. Costigan said it was done when it started to itch.”

“All right, all right,” he agreed, getting up from the couch and heading for the kitchen.

Willow redirected him up the stairs to the bathroom, saying she didn’t want Costigan’s concoctions dirtying up the place. In a few minutes, she came into the living room with a teapot in one hand and a cluster of mugs threaded on her fingers by the handles.

“You said he was your boyfriend,” she said, putting the tea things down on the nearest table.

I frowned. “He is.” Then I felt a sharp, cutting pain across my cheekbone. “Ow!” I gasped, clapping my hand over my face.

Willow shook her head. “Mates.”

“What the hell . . . ?”

She stopped what she was doing and peered at me. “When did it happen?”

“What happen?” I asked, looking at the palm of my hand and expecting to see blood, but there wasn’t any.

“When did you marry?”

“We’re not married.”

“Not by the state. The soul-bond. It must be new—it looks new.”

“We haven’t done anything like that. No ceremonies, no rings, no blood, no . . . whatever it takes.” I found myself glancing over my shoulder, half expecting some Chinese ancestor to materialize and chastise me for abusing their hospitality. No one did, but that funny feeling remained....

Willow looked around the room. Her gaze paused on the neat pile of blankets beside the couch, then on me. She looked me up and down again. “Did you two have sex in this house?”

I blushed and gaped at her, feeling like a naughty teenager.

She gazed around the room again, but this time with fondness. Then she shrugged. “It’s my parents’ house. It knows these things. You really have to be careful on top of a leyline.” Then she giggled. “Layline. That’s funny.”

Quinton came clomping down the stairs and into the room. “What’s funny?”

“You’re bonded and you didn’t know it,” Willow said, chuckling.

“What?”

“It’s sort of adorable,” Willow added, “in a sickening way. You two.” She started laughing. “You had sex. Here.”

“I’m confused . . .” Quinton said. “Are we in trouble?”

“Willow,” I growled in the most quelling voice I could, leaning hard on the Grey.

She snapped her head up, spinning away from me and into a crouch near the door, her expression feral and her hands curling into the rising tide of energy that flooded suddenly into the house. “Don’t do that! Don’t make me!”

I let go of everything and sat back against the couch, keeping my own hands relaxed and in plain sight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”