Mind Magic (14 page)

“My going to Wythe Clanhome would make you feel trapped?”

“I have to be free to go to Lily if she needs me.”

Ruben spoke slowly, as if unsure of Rule’s ability to understand language. “You agreed not to go with her.”

“Yes. I didn’t agree not to go to her.”

“I don’t understand why my leaving traps you here.”

Rule opened his mouth to explain . . . and closed it again. He couldn’t explain. He didn’t have a reason.

“I feel that you’re needed here,” Ruben went on. “Sam believes you should stay here. But that’s true whether I’m here or not.”

“When will I be needed here?”

Ruben’s eyebrows lifted. “I don’t know.”

“Perhaps I’m needed now but won’t be later. I don’t know. I can’t explain. But I have to be free to go to her. If you leave—”

“If you—” Ruben’s phone buzzed. He took it from his pocket. “It’s Lily.” And touched the screen. “This is Ruben. Rule’s with me.”

Ruben hadn’t put his phone on speaker. He didn’t have to. Rule heard Lily clearly. “Good. I’m at the park outside Whistle. So are a couple of deputies and a body. The deceased is male . . .”

It was good to hear her voice. He listened closely as she described the body she’d found. “. . . jeans and a T-shirt. Barefoot. His shoes were next to his sleeping bag. Age between . . .”

His own phone dinged. He grimaced and checked to see who it was. Cecily Alvarez. Cecily handled Rule’s website, social media, and public e-mail account. She had excellent PR instincts. She knew how to respond to most e-mails and posts and when to ask for guidance, but she texted, she didn’t call. Whatever the problem was, she must consider it urgent. He accepted the call. “This is Rule.”

It was, as he’d suspected, bad news, but nothing major. He’d have to put in a call to one or two of the reporters he’d cultivated. Rule caught snatches of Ruben’s talk with Lily while listening to Cecily’s explanation, which was more technical and detailed than he required.

“. . . discern the type of magic?” Ruben asked.

“That’s the weird thing,” Lily told him. “I’m pretty sure—”

“—want me to do other than the post I already made?” Cecily asked.

“No,” Rule said, pulling his attention back to the problem at hand. “I’ll deal with it. Let Isen know right away, then find out how it was done . . . I understand, but there must be consultants who can. Contact Arjenie Fox. If she doesn’t already know, she’ll be able to find out. Yes. Thank you for letting me know right away.”

Rule disconnected, frowning. Someone had tampered with his Facebook page, posting a number of pornographic photos as if they came from him. That could be dealt with, but the sophistication of the attack was worrying. Cecily didn’t know how the hacker had gotten in. Rule used a random-generated password, and Facebook’s software should have shut down the account before a brute force attack was able to hit on the right combination.

He turned his attention back to Ruben’s conversation with Lily. Ruben was asking if she’d spotted the weapon.

“No,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, given how high the brush and grass is. I figure that search should be left to CSI.”

“That’s logical. The deputies arrived very quickly after you found the body.”

“Within minutes,” she said.

“How timely of them.”

“Yeah. I’m betting they received a tip, but I wanted to speak with you before I question them about it. I took control of the scene, but I don’t know if you want me to handle the investigation.”

“Hmm. Give me a moment.” Ruben fell silent. His eyes went unfocused. After a long moment his gaze sharpened again. “Very well. It’s your case. Consider yourself restored to active duty. I’ll see that Ida sends you the contact information you wanted. Felix Thompson has a strong TK Gift and manages a chat room for others with that Gift, so he’s quite knowledgeable. He’s wary of speaking about his Gift to those he sees as outsiders, however. You’ll need to be sure he knows I referred you to him. Is there more?”

“No, sir.”

“Report when there is.” He disconnected, tapped the screen a couple times, and looked at Rule without putting his phone down. “I heard very little of your conversation, but I gather there’s been a security breach?”

“Nothing earthshaking. My Facebook account was breached and the hacker posted some unpleasant pictures.” He waved that away. “Lily found a body. Homicide? And I gather magic was involved.”

“Yes—in, as she said, a weird way. The . . . Ida, I’m sorry to interrupt your Sunday. I need you to send Lily Yu contact information for Felix Thompson. Yes. Thank you.” This time Ruben put his phone in his shirt pocket when he finished the call. “The victim’s appearance suggests he was homeless. His throat was cut very deeply. The nature of the wound is such that, had Lily not been sent to that park, no one would have suspected that magic was involved.”

Which was why Ruben had put Lily back on active status. Rule had mixed feelings about that. He didn’t voice them. “Sam doesn’t ordinarily take an interest in the death of a single human.”

“No, clearly this is significant in some way. Perhaps the means of death is the important element. Lily believes it possible that no physical weapon was used.”

Rule’s eyebrows lifted. He remembered another time when someone had killed at a distance, using magic rather than a conventional weapon. An ancient artifact had been involved. “Did she find death magic?”

“No, she found TK.”

Rule’s eyebrows shot up. “Telekinesis?”

“Or a magic with a similar feel. She detected some difference between what was on the body and what she has felt in the past when she touched that Gift. She isn’t sure what that difference means.”

“Using a sword with your mind instead of your hand is an odd way to kill, but still involves a weapon.”

“Perhaps not. Because of the way the magic was concentrated at the wound itself, she thinks the killer may have magically removed an extremely narrow slice of the victim’s neck.”

Rule’s eyebrows flew up. “Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lily’s right. That is weird.” Rule paused, shifting gears. “Are you going to go to Wythe Clanhome?”

Ruben looked at him steadily. Too steadily, given the way his mantle pushed at Rule’s, but Rule had his head straight again. He didn’t react. When Ruben spoke, his voice was mild enough. “What will you do if I say yes?”

He smiled. “Leave. Immediately.”

Ruben sighed faintly. “I suppose I’d best stay here, then. For now.”

TWELVE

THE
dark-haired young man with a military bearing closed the door carefully before speaking. “Sir, we’ve got a situation. I’d like you to listen to the intercept we just picked up from Target Prime.”

The round little man paused with his hamburger in one hand. A big glop of shredded lettuce and mayonnaise oozed out from under the bun and fell on the paper towel he’d spread on his desk in lieu of a plate. That desk was large and cluttered, all but overwhelmed by its piles—of paper, folders, and tech paraphernalia. “Target Prime?”

“Yes, sir. I just sent you the audio file.”

“Very well.” Smith put down his lunch, wiped his hands carefully on a paper napkin, and tapped at his keyboard. A moment later, Ruben Brooks’s voice came over the speaker. The two men listened intently. The one behind the desk cursed briefly when Lily Yu reported that she’d claimed the scene, but didn’t speak again until the audio file reached its end.

“Damnation,” he muttered. “How in the hell did she turn up there?”

The other man shook his head. “I don’t know. Unless there’s a leak—”

“If anyone who knew anything was leaking information, we’d already be under arrest.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” the younger man persisted. “Target Tres has been on sick leave. Now suddenly she’s in Ohio, stumbling across the remains from the last training exercise.”

“Target Prime specializes in inexplicable coincidences. He’s a precog. Clearly, he had a hunch that Target Tres needed to be in Ohio.” The smaller man drummed his fingers briefly on the stack of folders to his left. “Still, the possibility, however unlikely, has to be checked out. Put Roberts on that. I want you to activate the Humboldt identity.”

“Yes, sir. Who’s going to be using it?”

A cold smile. “Time to wrap up loose ends, Rudy. The body was found by someone we very much didn’t want to find it, but we can make that work for us. The dead man will assume the Humboldt identity.”

Revelation dawned. “Of course. You want to go after the girl.”

“The terrorist,” he corrected his subordinate. “A deranged young woman with a terrible Gift. Agent Humboldt has been pursuing her for weeks now, but she must have realized he was on her trail and killed him. Tragic, really.”

THIRTEEN

THE
deputy who’d recognized Lily was named Gwen Orlander. The one who’d drawn his weapon on her was Rick Savage. Lily had learned that much about them before she called Ruben. She’d also shaken their hands—an obvious ploy, maybe, but she wanted to know if either of them had a Gift.

They didn’t. While she spoke to her boss, Deputy Savage—God, what a name!—called his boss, then relayed the gist of that conversation to his partner. Lily didn’t catch all of it, but enough to know that the sheriff wasn’t going to make trouble.

Ruben told Lily to report when she knew more and disconnected. When she put her phone up, Deputy Savage gave her his best thousand-yard stare. “You’re that FBI agent who married that weer,” he informed her.

That’s what he fixed on? Of all the things she’d done, everything she’d been part of . . . and sure, the press didn’t know everything, but they’d reported on some and speculated about more, like her connection to the return of the dragons. Or to the collapse of a mountain. Or her role at the Humans First massacre at the D.C. Mall, which had also been attended by demon-ridden doppelgängers and an Earth elemental. Next month she was supposed to receive a presidential medal for that. Not that she deserved it, and the vast majority of her fellow citizens had no clue what the Presidential Citizen’s Medal was, but you’d think a cop might.

Nope. What got Deputy Rick Savage’s attention was the fact that she’d recently gotten married.

“You are,” he insisted, as if she’d been arguing instead of staring at him. “You married that rich weer.”

Deputy Orlander sighed. “They went to France for their honeymoon. I’ve always wanted to see France.”

“It’s lovely,” Lily said dryly. “You want to call them lupi, Deputy. Lupus in the singular, lupi in the plural.”

“Same difference. Listen, the sheriff says you’ve got the authority to claim the scene, but—”

“No, it’s not the same. It’s clear you’ve had good training.” Otherwise the idiot would probably have shot her. “Surely that training included a caution against using racial epithets.”

“It’s not an epithet. It’s just what we call them around here.”

“José, would you explain to the deputy why ‘weer’ is a derogatory term?”

“Sure. It’s what we’d been called in most of the shoot-on-sight states before the Supreme Court made them stop. The word has a real bad connotation for us.”

Savage’s eyes bulged. “Wait a minute. You mean he’s a—”

“Lupus,” Lily said. “Yes. So are the two wolves I haven’t introduced to you yet. Carson? Did you finish checking out the trail?” A very large gray-and-tan wolf emerged from the brush and shook his head. Lily added to the deputies, “Do not draw your weapons again. That would deeply annoy me.”

Savage’s hand hovered over his holstered 9mm, but he didn’t draw. His eyes were all bulgy. Carson gave Lily a wolfish grin.

“Deputies, this is Carson Forrester. Carson, Deputy Savage and Deputy Orlander.” Orlander’s eyes were wide, but she gave Carson a nod. Savage just stared. Lily told Carson to finish checking out the trail, Change as soon as he was able, and report. Then she asked the deputies why they were here.

Like she’d thought, they’d gotten a tip. The caller—who’d sounded male, young, and shook up—had said “someone got his throat cut out at Whistle Creek Park.” He’d declined to identify himself.

“He thought he was anonymous.” Orlander snorted her disdain for that assumption. “What do they think—that everyone but us has Caller ID? He used a mobile phone, so it will take a bit longer, but not much.”