Mind Magic (43 page)

“Hmm.” Something in the girl’s expression made Lily think this was important to her. “I think panic is what happens when terror hits and you don’t have any training to fall back on. Without training, it’s easy to panic when you’re terrified.”

Danny gave a satisfied nod and picked up two more bales. “My lists. I use my lists when I’m panicking. I can’t think straight then, so they let me know what I need to do. They’re like my training.”

“I like lists. They organize my thoughts and keep me on track.”

“I know! I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t make lists, but lots of people don’t. Not even grocery lists.” She shook her head, marveling at this odd behavior, and dropped her bales in the next stall. “How many do you think we need?”

“I’m not sure. I’m going to start cutting the twine and spreading out the straw so we can see how much it takes to make a bed. Would you bring some of those horse blankets?”

“Sure.”

Lily watched as Danny walked to the back of the barn, where the tack was kept. The girl’s shoulders were looser. Good.

Rule said Danny had Asperger’s syndrome. Lily knew a little about that. A key witness in a homicide she’d investigated a few years ago had been an Aspie, though with more severe symptoms than Danny seemed to have. That’s why she’d set things up so she and Danny could work at a task together—to help the girl relax, feel more at ease. It seemed to be working.

She was spreading straw when Danny returned carrying a pile of horse blankets. “You talked in my mind, didn’t you? I thought it was someone else, but Rule was sure it was you.”

“That was me, yes.” Lily reached up for the horse blanket Danny handed her. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I hadn’t figured out how to mindspeak consistently when I did that.”

“Can you do it consistently now?”

“With some people, not everyone.” Which reminded her . . . Lily sent a tendril out to sample Danny’s mind.

“With me?”

“You’d be easy.” An orange, Lily decided. That’s what Danny’s mind reminded her of—a glowing orange with an invitingly nubby surface. Easy to sink a ripple into that.

“I’d really rather you didn’t.” Her words were polite. Her face was alarmed.

“I won’t, then, unless it’s really important.” Lily smoothed a second blanket over the straw. Blankets for Shire horses were big, but it took two of them to make a human-size bed. “Two bales per bed seems about right. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

“I think I’ve already told Rule everything.”

“And he passed on the basics, but we didn’t have time for him to go into detail, so I may cover some of the same ground you’ve already covered with him. I need to know more about the drug Smith’s people are using on the kids. Rule said you’d started telling him about it, but you were interrupted. Did they ever try it on you?”

“I didn’t even know it existed until after I ran away.”

“Rule said you’re certain the drug has mind control properties.”

She frowned. “Did he tell you about Nicky?”

“Briefly. Danny, mind control can only be achieved through spirit or through magic. Nothing you’ve said suggests Smith has a god pulling spiritual strings for him, so if you’re right about the mind control, magic must be involved. The drug’s other properties indicate that, too. Which means we can’t call it a drug. If magic’s involved, Lodan must be a potion.”

“Does that make a difference?”

“Yes. Among other things, it makes this my case. Using unauthorized magic on minors is highly illegal and very much Unit Twelve business. About this Lodan potion—it’s supposed to give a magical boost to a Gift?”

“Yes, though the increase isn’t consistent. It ranges from thirty percent to four hundred percent.”

“That’s a lot of variance.”

“Due to their small sample size, they can’t be sure, but they think the difference is due to the type of Gift involved.” She hesitated. “The four hundred percent increase was Amanda.”

“The telepath.” Lily nodded thoughtfully. “I see. Is this increase permanent?”

“Oh, no. It decreases with time. Looked at proportionately, the decrease is consistent regardless of the Gift involved. Two months after the drug—or potion? I guess it is a potion—has been administered, its effectiveness has decreased by fifty percent. In another month, any lingering effect is too slight to be measured. I need to tell you about Cerberus. I didn’t have a chance to tell Rule. One of the reports outlined what dosage was necessary to achieve Cerberus, but didn’t say what that meant.”

“Cerberus—that’s from Greek mythology, isn’t it?”

“He’s the three-headed dog with a serpent’s tail, a lion’s claws, and a mane made of snakes. Sometimes he’s shown with just one head, and once in a while with lots of heads, but mostly it’s three. He guards the gates of hell.”

Cheerful. “Was Cerberus mentioned anywhere else?”

“In the report on practical applications, but it just listed Cerberus as one of the applications with a note to ‘See R.R. 1180; Harris, B.J.’ The purported author, B. J. Harris, is one of Mr. Smith’s researchers, and the numbered reports seem to be the ones that aren’t on the NSA’s system.”

“Hmm. What Gifts are represented in the kids?”

They finished making everyone’s beds well before Lily ran out of questions. Danny claimed one of the stalls for herself by moving her backpack there. Lily sat next to her, still asking and listening. Danny was a good witness. She sidetracked easily, but didn’t mind when Lily prompted her back to the original question. And she had a phenomenal memory.

At last Lily fell silent, turning over what she’d learned. Danny sighed. “I wish Harry would come back and tell me that password.”

“Brownies have a different sense of time than we do.” Rule’s sense of time was fairly human, though. She’d expected him to show up by now. Was he still negotiating? “I’d like to hear more about Edward Smith. We don’t know what his goal is. What’s your impression of the man?”

Danny grimaced. “I’m not good at people. I can’t read expressions and body language and sometimes my theory of mind hiccups. About all I can say for sure is that he’s a liar.”

“That’s an important datum, but don’t undervalue yourself. Rule said that Smith has a minor charisma Gift. It’s possible he’s test-driven that potion himself, which would mean his Gift isn’t minor anymore, but—”

Danny’s eyes were big. “I never thought of that!”

“It’s something to keep in mind. But he must be accustomed to relying on his Gift to make people like him and trust him. His Gift never worked on you, though.”

“No, he managed to fool me without any magic.”

“When you were thirteen, yes. It’s not that hard to fool a thirteen-year-old. But did you ever like him?”

Danny frowned, thinking it over. “No. I didn’t dislike him, but I didn’t . . . he was just this adult who was not a friend, not family, but important.”

“That’s factually accurate, isn’t it? He was extremely important in your life. And that’s the other thing you’ve got going for you. Because you don’t have much instinctive understanding of people, you’re used to trying to understand them logically. There’s nothing wrong with relying on instinct. It’s a powerful tool, but so is logic.”

Danny brightened. She liked that.

“Let’s talk about what can logically be deduced about Edward Smith based on what you know of him. I’m going to stipulate that he isn’t insane, not in the irrational sense. If he were truly irrational, someone at the NSA would have noticed.”

“So we assume his actions make sense. That there’s logic behind them.”

“Exactly. Let’s start with your mother. She worked for him a long time. She must have talked about him sometimes.”

“Well . . . she trusted him, but that was because of his Gift, I expect. And, um, let me think.” She did just that, remaining silent so long Lily had a hard time not prompting her. Finally she gave a nod. “She thought he was really patriotic. That nothing mattered to him as much as protecting the country.”

“Did you observe anything to support or contradict that?”

They talked for a while about things Danny remembered about the man she always referred to as Mr. Smith. “He wants to be in charge,” she finished, sounding surprised, as if she hadn’t known that until she said it. “That’s my observation, based on—oh, lots of things, but my mom said something like that once. He wants to run things. He thinks he can run things better than anyone else.”

A small brown head peeked around the opening to the stall. “It’s ‘firefly.’”

Lily blinked at Dirty Harry. “What is?”

“The password. ‘Firefly.’”

Danny had her laptop open and was typing madly. “Firefly. And the network is Browniehome, so—yes! I’m on!”

So much for questioning her witness. Lily had a feeling it would take dynamite to get Danny’s attention away from her computer. Still, she’d covered the ground she most wanted to. “Can you check the news? See what they’re saying about the murders. And about calling in the National Guard.”

“Sure.” Danny happily typed “national guard Ohio” into the search box. Apparently it didn’t matter greatly what she did online, as long as she get could online.

Lily’s satisfaction evaporated quickly. “Gaddo bullets? There’s no such thing. And that supposed expert who advised the Homeland Security guy—he was discredited years ago. Disgruntled former MCD agent,” she added. “He wanted lupi put down with extreme prejudice, not just rounded up and branded, back before the Supreme Court made the whole registration thing illegal. And that’s Franklin Foster,” she said when they checked another headline. “Good God. How can anyone take him seriously? He doesn’t know enough about lupi to . . .” Her voice faded as she read quickly. “Shit. Harry. Go get Rule. Tell him it’s important.”

“Wow,” Danny said, scanning the article, too. “What they said about Ruben Brooks—is that true?”

“Danny. Can you make a secure phone call with your computer?”

“Sure, but about Mr. Brooks. Is he—”

“It’s really important that the NSI doesn’t hear what I say on this call.”

Danny’s lip curled in scorn. Her fingers danced over the keyboard. “They haven’t caught me yet. You may see some delay because of the way I’m routing this, but it won’t trip any of their flags. Unless they’ve already flagged the number you call, that is. Who do you want to call?”

Lily had her phone out, scrolling through her contacts. “Dr. Xavier Fagin.” Fagin was the world’s foremost expert on magical history. He was also a friend, a fellow touch sensitive . . . and a member of the Shadow Unit.

THIRTY-SIX

CHARLES
sat beside Rule. Together they watched the video clip playing on Danny’s computer. Forty seconds into it, Charles growled. Rule didn’t, but he was every bit as angry. “That son of a bitch.”

To most people, that was a garden-variety curse. Not among lupi. If one lupus called another a son of a bitch, Lily knew, he’d be challenged—if his opponent didn’t just go for his throat. Lupi meant the phrase literally. Call someone a son of a bitch and you accused him of being the product of bestiality. To be specific—and lupi considered it a very specific insult—you claimed that the man’s father had impregnated a female dog while he was in wolf-form.

“I’m guessing you mean Smith,” she said, “not Eric Ellison.”

“He’s a son of a bitch, too.” Rule scowled at the computer as it played the rest of the news clip. He was shirtless. He and Gandalf had reached an agreement which included having the brownies seek out his men and bring them here. His shirt had been ripped to shreds to give to the searchers, along with the name of Alex’s adopted daughter. His scent on the shirt scraps plus a name only those in Leidolf Clan would know should reassure his men that the summons came from him.

He finished watching the son of a bitch give his press conference, then clicked to end the video. The moment he did, Danny spoke. “So did Mr. Smith make this up, like he did all the other stuff, and Ruben Brooks isn’t really a lupus? I asked Lily,” she added, aggrieved, “but she wouldn’t answer.”

Rule glanced at Lily. She shrugged. It seemed that the truth was out, but it wasn’t up to her to confirm or deny. At least the bastards didn’t seem to be aware that Ruben was Rho of Wythe. The public didn’t know that clan existed, and Ruben wanted to keep it that way for now.

“He is lupus,” Rule said in a dead-level voice.

Bert gave a low whistle. He and Little John had accompanied Rule, as had an undetermined number of brownies. Amazingly quiet brownies. Lily was pretty sure they thought they were hidden. They hadn’t come into the barn, and Lily had only caught a couple glimpses of small, brown heads peeping around the door. Mike hadn’t come with them. Rule said one of the brownies was a healer who was supposed to be good with broken bones.

“If it’s true,” Danny persisted, “why are you so mad? You are mad, aren’t you? Your face doesn’t look mad, but you cursed. You didn’t curse when people were shooting at us.”

Rule’s mouth twitched in what was probably unwilling amusement. “I was too busy to curse then. But this is why people shot at us. Why some of my men may be dead and two women are dead. Smith is guilty of murder and attempted murder and inciting the country to genocide—”