Mind Magic (54 page)

Those textures influenced her choice in a way she couldn’t describe. With her mind both linked to Mika’s and touching that water-crystal mind, she spoke: “
Bái.
” White, she named him. White for those shiny patterns. As she did, Mika sent a pulse of shaped power along Lily’s mindsense—a peculiar sensation.

The naming sank gently into the baby’s mind.

Mika had terrified Lily by telling her that the names she gave the babies would shape them, eventually becoming the first syllable of their true names. For now, the names would be Mika’s entry into their minds, allowing her to speak to her babies, to teach them how to speak back—and when necessary, to control them. But until a baby grew beyond his birth name, it could, potentially, be used by someone other than his mother. Mika assured her that was unlikely. Simply pronouncing a name correctly was not the same as using it, and very few in this world knew how to use a name. But why take a chance? By giving them Chinese names, Lily greatly reduced the number of people who could say them properly. On this side of the world, anyway.

Plus she’d just thought Chinese appropriate. These babies were American dragons. They’d probably have English call-names, but their parents were immigrants. Their roots stretched back to China. And probably to someplace even more remote as well, but none of the dragons had seen fit to confirm or deny that idea when Lily asked. The babies would have to settle for names that reflected their earthly roots.

Bái wobbled up onto his feet for the first time. Lily beamed at him.
Good
, she told him.
Good for you
. She even got a reply, though not in words—a sort of delighted hum. Carefully she withdrew her mindsense from him.
I’m going to check on Rule
, she told Mika.
And on the invaders you’re ignoring. I’ll have to break the link.

No response. Mika was lost in the bright fascination of her babies.

Lily sighed. Single-minded, the brownies had called the dragon. She had to agree. She took her hand away from the dragon’s hot body—and swayed as her mindsense snapped back into her and pain stabbed through her head.

She’d expected that. While she was linked with Mika, her head didn’t hurt. The moment she broke the link, it did. But the worst pain would subside if she waited a bit.

She sat without moving. It seemed to take longer this time and hurt worse. Finally, though, the pain ebbed to a dull throbbing.

Carefully she moved the blue baby off her lap—
Fe¯ng
, she’d named him, Wind—then stood and stretched. The hot sand was littered with brightly colored shell fragments, glossy shards of pale pink streaked with fiery red, deep blue, and now turquoise.

Lily checked on the last two intact eggs. Neither were cracked, but when she crouched to get close, she could hear tapping from the one marbled in copper and yellow.

She settled beside it and closed her eyes. That seemed to help when she wanted to mindspeak someone who wasn’t close by.

Rule was easy to find. Oh, it took effort to push her mindsense out far enough to touch his mind, especially when she was already tired. Even before she nearly fainted after overextending herself, Lily hadn’t liked the way it felt to extend her mindsense very far. It was disorienting, for one thing. It made her feel stretched and precarious and, if she pushed too far, downright tenuous. But with Rule she didn’t have to go looking. The mate sense guided her right to him.

She touched his mind very lightly, not wanted to distract him, and sent the softest “voice” she could. Her lips shaped the words as she sent them.
I’m here, if you can talk.

. . . hold . . . a minute.

Funny how his mental voice sounded exactly like the one she was used to hearing. Did her brain just interpret it that way, or was it an innate property of mindspeech—something his mind did, not hers? She’d have to check that out with people whose voices she didn’t know . . .

Sorry. Had to get some distance from . . . following me.

I missed some of that. Who’s following you?
Giving really was better than receiving when it came to mindspeech. For her anyway. She could send quite clearly, according to those she’d practiced with, but she often missed part of the response.

A couple squads. Keeping them . . . while the others look for Nicky. No luck. Brownies . . . half a dozen soldiers in one pit and IFV in another.

His amusement came through clearly, making her grin.
Go, brownies. Is it going well, then?

A few problems. No major injuries, but when . . .
A frustratingly long break then, followed by,
You’re okay?

Sure. There are now three baby dragons. Two more to go.

Baby dragons.
It’s hard to picture. Are they cute?

They’re dragons, just very little ones, so mostly they’re stunningly beautiful, but there are moments of cute. They meep.

They what?

Big dragons roar. Baby dragons meep. It’s adorable. I missed what you said earlier about—shit! What was that? What just happened?
It had felt as if his mind had been jostled or jolted.

Got to go.

She stayed in touch with his mind, but didn’t try to speak to him. That abrupt departure could only mean something was happening that needed his attention. A fight. Bullets. It might be some more benign event, but the ones that seemed most likely all involved threat, danger, possible injury.

But not death. He hadn’t been killed. At least she knew that much. She drew a shaky breath and, at last, let her mindsense coil back up inside her. Things were not going well, though she wasn’t sure how bad their position was. Rule had been careful not to tell her. A few problems, he’d said. No major injuries. Whatever she’d missed would likely have been more of the same, a way to tell her as little as possible because he didn’t want her to worry.

She snorted. As if that would work.

Mika’s tail shifted across the sand, coming to rest beside her. She shook her head, trying to dispel the anxiety that chilled her in spite of the overheated air of the creche.

The egg in front of her had developed a long crack. It rocked slightly as its occupant attacked it from within.

Lily’s hands were resting in her lap . . . in fists. Slowly she straightened her fingers and shook them out. Time to get back to her midwifery. She stretched out a hand and her mind and touched the dragon.

FORTY-SIX

AS
they approached Mr. Smith’s house, Demi grew sick with nerves. It was just her, Ruben, and Mike—Ruben in the lead, her and Mike behind him. The door was recessed with a semicircular fanlight above it. The porch was tiny, too small for Demi and Mike to step up onto it with Ruben when he rang the doorbell. They waited, listening to the voices coming from the backyard.

Mr. Smith really was having a party.

They’d discussed how to do this—at least Ruben and Mike discussed it. Demi didn’t have an opinion. Mike had wanted to go straight to the backyard, where the brownies reported that seventeen people were gathered, including Mr. Smith. More room to maneuver, he said. There were people in the house, also—two in the kitchen who were probably a caterer and a waitress. Plus one man had come in to use the bathroom, and four more men wandered throughout the house. Those four were armed, the brownies said. So were at least two of the people in the backyard. Ruben and Mike both thought the armed men were mercenaries.

Almost all the guests were male. The brownies had seen only three women.

Ruben wanted to go up to the front door, and he was in charge, so that’s what they did. There were legal reasons for that, but mostly he wanted it because of the two people standing on the edge of Mr. Smith’s small front yard—a skinny man and a chubby woman. The woman held a camera with the WGVT logo on its side.

A desperate man might behave rashly, Ruben had said, but having a television camera aimed at him would strongly discourage a violent reaction.

Someone was sure taking his time answering the door. Ruben rang the bell again. Demi rubbed her stomach.

Mike leaned close and whispered, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you, either.”

“It won’t. Nothing I can’t heal anyway.”

“Your bone isn’t finished healing. If you—”

The door opened.

It was not Mr. Smith. This man had a hard face, skin much darker than Demi’s, and he wore a black jacket over his black shirt, even though it was July and hot. He didn’t say anything.

“We need to speak with Edward Smith,” Ruben said.

“You aren’t on the guest list.”

“Tell your employer that Ruben Brooks and Demi McAllister are here to speak with him. I believe he’ll overlook our lack of an invitation.”

The hard-faced man did something with his chin and talked at the air. He had a radio, she realized, like the police sometimes used, with the mic on a thingee around his neck and an earbud in one ear. Then he stood there, staring at them, not saying anything.

“He gives me the creeps,” Demi whispered to Mike.

Mike didn’t whisper. “He’s trying for intimidating. He’s not there yet, but I’ll bet he takes comfort in knowing he can creep out a seventeen-year-old girl.”

The man did not like that. He scowled at Mike. That made Mike smile, but it didn’t seem to be a friendly smile somehow. Then his radio talked to him. She couldn’t hear it very well, but the lupi with her probably could. “You can come in,” he said, stepping back and opening the door wider.

“Thank you, but no,” Ruben said politely. “Mr. Smith needs to come to us.”

More talking to the radio. More waiting. Demi’s stomach didn’t like waiting. She started stimming, moving the fingers of one hand down at her side where it wouldn’t show too much. “Greensleeves” was such a soothing song.

Suddenly Ruben turned around and gestured at the two people waiting on the sidewalk. They jogged forward just as Mr. Smith came to the door.

He looked so much the same. That was the only thought in her mind as she stared at him. He was still a round little man with a shiny forehead. He didn’t look scary at all.

“Ruben Brooks?” Mr. Smith said. “I certainly hadn’t expected you to turn up on my doorstep. And Demi.” His voice got all sad. “I’m glad you’re all right, but—” He broke off, staring behind Demi. “Who are you?”

“Morrie Peterson, WGVT News,” said the skinny man. “Are you Edward Smith of the NSA?”

“I don’t give interviews. If you—”

“Edward Smith,” Ruben said firmly, “you are under arrest on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit arson, and multiple counts of the unlawful use of magic. There will be further charges,” he added, “once we’ve recovered the children you’ve abused, but those will do for now.”

Mr. Smith looked at Demi with eyes meaner than Mrs. MacGruder’s had ever been. The hate was so clear that Demi took a step back—then it vanished beneath his usual expression. “You’ve been listening to this poor girl. She’s not stable, you know.”

“She’s been very helpful, but we’re hardly going to rely solely on the testimony of a minor.” Ruben cocked his head. “It wasn’t really a very good conspiracy, you know. As long as no one suspected, as long as we weren’t looking, you went undetected. Once we knew where to look, however—”

“Get off my porch. Off my property.”

“No, sir. You are under arrest. Please step out onto the porch.”

“This is absurd! You can’t arrest me. You’ve been removed from your position.”

“I am still a legally empowered agent of Unit Twelve, however.”

“I don’t believe you.” Mr. Smith’s pink tongue darted out and licked his upper lip. He half turned and said something Demi couldn’t hear to the hard-faced man, then he demanded, “Where’s your warrant? I insist on seeing a warrant.”

“Did you think Jim Mathison was wholly your creature? Or that ambition would prevent him from listening to me?” Ruben shook his head. He sounded as if he felt sorry for Mr. Smith, which made no sense to Demi. He also made it sound like he’d spoken with the current head of Unit 12, and he hadn’t. It must be some kind of trick. “Your Gift allows you to manipulate others when you’re with them, but the effect isn’t permanent, and you don’t really understand the people you use. Take Eric Ellison, for example. When he—”

Mr. Smith moved to one side. “Nick. Get them out of here.”

And Nicky stepped forward—only he didn’t look like Nicky anymore. He looked like a drug addict or an AIDS patient or a Holocaust victim—haggard and rail-thin, with long, dirty hair. His arms hung down by his sides as if they were too heavy to lift. And his eyes weren’t right. They weren’t right at all.

Ruben and Mike flew backward.

Mike collided with the camera-carrying woman. And someone seized Demi’s wrist and yanked her. She tried to resist, but it was the hard-faced man who’d grabbed her, and she couldn’t even slow him down. He dragged her into the house as easily as if she were three years old. Someone slammed the door shut.

“Nicky!” she cried. Mr. Smith was talking—yelling—but she didn’t listen. “Nicky, you have to stop doing what he says!” Nicky was looking at her with those terrible eyes. She wasn’t sure he knew who she was. She wasn’t sure he knew who he was anymore. “He’s a bad person, Nicky, a really bad—”