Death Magic

SEVENTEEN

THE sky was dreary with pending rain when Lily slid her key into the lock, turned it, and shoved open the back door. She wanted Rule and he was not here. About ten miles to the northeast, she thought.

She could ask one of the guards where he’d gone. They’d probably know.

Hell with that. She shut the door, locked it, and dropped her purse. And stood there, clenching and unclenching her left hand, staring at a hole in the wall next to the pantry. A fist-sized hole.

Rule had needed to run, he’d said. When she left to go back to the job, he’d said he needed to run, and with the way his eyes had kept trying to bleed to black, she’d thought that was a good plan.

Apparently he’d also needed to put his fist through something. She could relate. Lily set her laptop on the table. “Cullen? You here?”

She heard footsteps on the stairs. “Quiet,” he said as he got closer. “The Rhej is asleep. I was about to order pizza.”

“No anchovies.” The tight band around her shoulders eased slightly. Maybe it was just as well Cullen was here and Rule wasn’t. Some things might be easier to talk about with him. “And let the guards know about the delivery. Order plenty. Rule’s headed this way.” She hadn’t noticed that at first, but now that she was paying attention she knew he was in motion, headed this way.

“Rule likes anchovies.”

“I don’t.” She took out the coffee grinder. She used her left hand. It gripped the grinder just fine. “Maybe the Rhej doesn’t. Did you ask?”

He snorted as he reached the kitchen. “Did you miss the part where I said she’s asleep?”

“You could have asked before she fell asleep.”

“I didn’t. Rule called the Szøs Rho. That candidate he found for the Wythe mantle will be here tomorrow morning.”

“He texted me about it.”

“Huh.” He tipped his head. “It isn’t five o’clock yet.”

“No. It isn’t.” She opened the canister where Rule kept his special-order, fresh-roasted coffee beans. “Did you get a look at the dagger?”

“I called Sherry and asked to put it off until tonight. We’ll meet up there about eight. You’re taking a coffee break?”

“I got sent home. One of those damn pain bolts hit me in front of Mullins, and he banished me.”

Cullen’s eyebrows climbed. “This Mullins guy told you to go home . . . and you did?”

“I didn’t pass out.” She brooded on that a moment. “I must’ve looked bad, though. I, uh, told him it was a migraine. He gave me a choice. Either I go home or he tells Drummond about my little problem.” Unstated but clear was that Drummond would pull her if she couldn’t pass a medical. The surprising part was that Mullins would cover for her at all.

Maybe he’d lied. Maybe he’d told Drummond anyway. She’d find out, she supposed. “This one was different.”

“Different how?”

“I didn’t get nearly as dizzy, and while I’m tired now, I’m nowhere near passing out. Only . . .”

“Keep going.”

“It lasted longer, my vision went blurry, and my hand . . .” She held it out, studying it as if it didn’t belong to her. “It went numb. I dropped my notebook, dropped the damn thing right in front of Mullins, and”—her brows snapped down—“and you’re happy about that?”

“I am.” He patted her shoulder. “That’s excellent news. At least I think it is. Assuming your hand and vision are okay now—”

“They’re fine.” Automatically she squeezed her hand into a fist, proving once again that she could.

“Then it’s good news. Probably. Sit down and I’ll tell you what the Rhej told me. How long did the attack last?”

“Less than ten minutes. More than five. What did she tell you?”

“You aren’t sitting down.”

“Your keen powers of observation are a wonder to all of us.” She spooned beans into the grinder. “I’ll sit when I need to. Start talking.”

He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, and wisely decided to accept that. “Consider what I tell you hemmed in by all sorts of qualifications about it being speculation. That’s why the Rhej didn’t pass it on to you and Rule earlier. First the part we’re sure of. The mantle’s been healing your arm.”

“Slowly, yes.”

“It looks like slowly is better than quickly for you. We—the Rhej and I—think the healing the mantle has been doing on your arm caused you to have that first TIA. The Rhej says that any TIA causes damage. Minor damage, so small that the long-term effects are close to nil, but the mantle doesn’t seem to know that. Lupi healing sets priorities, and the brain’s number one, so the mantle tried to heal that damage quick-quick. But that quick healing was too hard on you, so you had another TIA, which kept the cycle going.”

“Shit.” She slapped the button and the grinder buzzed away. “Double shit. Stupid damn mantle. Can’t it tell it’s screwing with me?”

“No. The mantle is a magical construct. It isn’t sentient.”

“That’s what Rule always says, but it’s not an artifact like that damn staff you burned. I don’t care what you say.” She rested a hand on her stomach, frowning. “It’s . . . it feels like it’s alive.”

“Oh, yes.”

“But you said—”

“I said it’s a magical construct. I didn’t say it lacked life. Artifacts are charms on steroids. Constructs are—pay attention here, this gets complicated—constructed. And sentient means—”

“Capable of thought and reason. Which, okay, I’m not doing so hot with right now.” She scraped the newly ground coffee into the insulated French press she’d bought Rule a couple months ago. “So the mantle’s alive, but it doesn’t think.”

“Let’s not try to define thinking right now. Suffice it to say that mantles can’t be reasoned with and give no signs of reasoning on their own, which is why it’s doing the wrong damn thing with you. But living things are capable of learning or adapting. Some more than others. Plants pretty much suck at learning, but they can adapt to some extent.”

“So what kind of living thing is a mantle? Plant, virus, bacteria, cute little kitten?”

“The immortal kind.”

She stared. “But they can die. That’s why I’ve got the Wythe mantle in here causing all these problems—to keep it from dying.”

“If the holder of a mantle dies without an heir to receive the mantle, the mantle is lost, not dead. The constructed part is destroyed. The living part goes back where it came from. Back to the Lady. Mantles hold a bit of the Lady’s life within them.”

It made a weird kind of sense. The mantles were what kept lupi from being beast-lost. They imbued Rhos with authority that was literally inarguable . . . and the lupi’s Lady was the one authority lupi would not or could not deny. “Why didn’t I know this?” she demanded. “I’ve asked Rule questions about the mantles dozens of times. I’ve talked with the Nokolai Rhej about them. Why didn’t I already know this?”

Cullen’s mouth quirked up. “Because it’s a secret.”

“Ninety-five percent of everything about you people is a secret!”

“This one is secret from pretty much everyone. Only the Rhejes and the mantle-holders know.”

“Then how did you . . . oh.” Cullen had been born to Etorri, not Nokolai. Etorri was a very small clan, steeped in honor, and—for complicated historical reasons—the heir’s portion of their mantle was shared among all Etorri lupi, not just the one their Rho named heir. Which was—natch—a secret, and meant that Cullen had been a mantle-holder once. Only a small bit of a mantle, but he’d been there, done that, and had apparently been given both the T-shirt and the secret handshake. “You’re breaking the rules by telling me this.”

“Technically, you’re carrying a mantle now yourself. And you need to understand why Rule’s control is splintering.”

She glanced at the hole in the wall. “That’s not hard to understand.”

“If all he does is put his fist through a wall now and then, we’ll be lucky. Rule believes the Lady has betrayed him.”

“Because she shoved this thing into me without clueing us in about the consequences? That pisses me off, too.” Lily had had to give permission, but apparently Old Ones didn’t worry about informed consent.

“Lily.” He sighed. “The Wythe mantle is doing something it should not be able to do. Mantles don’t send out little roots. They are controlled by their holders—within limits for the heirs, and entirely by the Rhos. There’s only one exception, one way the mantles can act without direction by a Rho. They are of the Lady. If a mantle starts doing something wholly new, we have to think that she’s directing it.”

“She’s making it try to kill me?”

“That’s unlikely,” the Leidolf Rhej said.

Lily damn near dropped the coffeepot. “Dammit, how did you do that? You’re not lupus. You shouldn’t be able to come down those stairs that quietly.”

The woman smiled wearily. “Maybe you’re a little preoccupied.”

Maybe so. “Why do you think the Lady isn’t trying to kill me?”

“If you die, the Wythe mantle is lost.”

Oh. That was a lot better answer than the sort of “have faith” argument Lily had been expecting. “Then maybe she’s just not very good at whatever she’s doing.”

“Could be. We don’t have any idea what she is doin.’ As far as we know, she hasn’t fiddled with a mantle since she changed Etorri’s, but Cullen says she’s doin’ something to this one. Whatever she has in mind, though, I’m sure she doesn’t want you to die, which is why I agreed with Mr. Gorgeous here about what we might do to help a bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I hadn’t told her that part,” Cullen said.

“Good. You makin’ coffee, honey? I could sure use some.” She headed for the table, moving as if her body was twice as heavy as it had been earlier.

Lily suppressed her impatience and grabbed the kettle. “Coffee’s coming. What did you do that left you so tired?”

“Made some phone calls, then spent some time in the memories.” She sat at the big, round table with a sigh.

When the Rhej said she’d spent time “in the memories,” she meant she’d essentially relived certain events. The memories were just that—actual memories magically preserved and passed from Rhej to Rhej. A lot of them were from the Great War. All of them involved key events, which meant heaping doses of disaster, death, betrayal, battle, pain, tragedy . . . and, now and then, triumph.

Also—now and then—spells. Spells such as hadn’t been cast since the Purge. Spells that had been lost centuries before the Purge. Adept-level spells, some of them. Which was one reason Cullen was so damn twitchy about Rhejes. They knew things he desperately wanted to learn, and they weren’t talking.

Maybe there was a spell that would help Lily now. She put the kettle on the stove, glanced toward the front of the house, then at the Rhej. “I hope it was worth it. You learned something?”

“A technique that hasn’t been used for a very long time. The Wythe Rhej—she was one of those phone calls—agreed to try it. The idea is to pull enough power out of the mantle that it has to slow down on healin’ you. Slower healin’ should mean less damage. In addition to that, I want you to stay close to Rule. Physically close. The mate bond may be able to help.”

Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “She can pull power from the mantle? I knew she could pull power from the clan as a whole, but to take it directly from the mantle . . . that seems like a different deal.”

“It is,” the Rhej said grimly. “And it is not recommended. It makes the mantle vulnerable. Lily, you’re Lady-touched, so it’s okay for you to know about this, but you can’t speak of it to anyone. Neither of you can.” She fixed Cullen with a firm stare. “Rhej’s seal.”

“I have no objection to secrets,” he said, “as long as I’m the one keeping them.” He made a graceful gesture with one hand, touching his lips then his heart. “It is sealed, serra.”

The kettle started whistling as the Rhej turned that imperative stare on Lily.

“Sure,” Lily said, retrieving the kettle. “Except for Rule, of course.”

The Rhej shook her head. “Especially not Rule.” “Serra—” Cullen began.

“No. None of the Rhos are to know about this.”

Too late. “I can’t agree to that.”

“Nor can I,” Rule said from the doorway.

“Good timing.” Lily poured steaming water into the French press. “Coffee’s almost ready.”

RULE breathed deeply of the kitchen’s smells—the richness of coffee blended with undertones from last night’s shepherd’s pie, the spicy-sharp meatiness of corned beef, notes of lupus from Cullen . . . and Lily. It smelled of Lily. “I gather you found a way to drain power from the mantle.”

The Rhej frowned unhappily. “I gather you were eavesdropping.”

“I overheard, yes, but how is it eavesdropping to walk into my own home?” He walked up behind Lily and put his arms around her from behind. She leaned back into him. He closed his eyes, wishing they could stand here, just stand here like this, for an hour or two. “If it makes you feel better, I will honor the Rhej’s seal you have declared on this knowledge.”

“Not much,” she said dryly, “but it’s something. We’re hopin’ that draining the mantle some might help Lily.”

“Did help,” Cullen corrected, “or so it seems.”

Rule stood quietly, holding Lily while the coffee steeped and the others told him about Lily’s latest brain-bolt—that was her term—her temporary banishment from the investigation, and about what Cullen and the Rhej had discussed . . . a discussion they’d purposefully left him out of. He didn’t bother being angry about that. His anger had more important targets.

“. . . basically, we hoped slowin’ the healing would slow the occurrence of the TIAs,” the Rhej finished. “And drainin’ the mantle was the one way we could think of to slow things down.”

“That seems clear, yes,” he said, sipping the coffee Lily had handed him. She was taking her own mug over to the table. He sent her a smile. “You’ve gotten good at coffee.”

“It’s a matter of priorities.” She sat beside the Rhej. “Coffee’s important.”

Priorities. Yes, he’d learned something about his this day. He sat beside her. “I also heard something about us staying physically close. It seems a good idea. The mate bond has sometimes helped.”

The Rhej’s eyebrows lifted. “You figured that out on your own, Rule? That the healing was causing the problem?”

“Once I’d run a few miles I did, or suspected it, at least. Sam agrees.”

“Sam?” This time it was Lily’s eyebrows that shot up. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have phone service.”

“Sam is able to mindspeak through any of the other dragons, if they agree to allow it. I persuaded Mika this was important enough to make such a contact. The three of us, ah . . . discussed your condition.” Before they could talk about Lily’s condition, Mika had briefed Sam about what he’d observed during his training session with Lily.

If briefed was the right word. That communication hadn’t involved anything Rule recognized as words, thoughts, or images. Rule had damn near passed out. Mika had forgotten to separate that channel from the link the three of them were sharing, and wolf brains weren’t physically able to handle that form of communication.

Rule was glad he could heal quickly. He’d still had a headache for a while. “Sam says the mantle’s actions are affecting Lily’s Gift.”

“The roots?” Cullen said, sitting up straighter.

Rule wobbled his hand in a yes-and-no way. “We don’t know what the roots are doing. Maybe they’re healing her. Maybe they’re doing something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Sam declined to guess. Specifically, he said he does not ‘presume to guess what purpose an Old One holds, nor to meddle with that purpose.’ I gather that means he doesn’t know what the Lady is doing, but he agrees that she’s up to something.”

“Nothing that involves Lily’s death,” the Rhej said firmly. “The Lady does not want to lose that mantle.”

“I never heard that the mantle-holder’s brain had to be firing on all cylinders,” Lily said, “and Leidolf’s last Rho pretty much proved otherwise. So the fact that the Lady wants to keep me alive isn’t as reassuring as it might be.”

“Yes.” Rule’s voice was desert-dry, as bleached of emotion as a cow skull. The mantle would be fine as long as it was in a living host. It didn’t matter if the host’s brain was damaged. “So I concluded also.”

“Rule—”

“I’m all right. Let me finish this the way Sam told it. We knew the Lady had done something to allow the Wythe mantle to rest within Lily without Lily’s Gift absorbing it. Sam says the Lady persuaded Lily’s magic that the mantle is part of Lily. This should have kept the two magics from interacting. The problem arises from the healing, but also because of the nature of Lily’s Gift. Very young dragons can’t control their healing, so—”

Cullen’s eyebrows shot up. “Adult dragons control their healing?”

“Apparently. If a dragon who hasn’t yet learned this control is seriously injured, he’s subject to a condition called netha in which his natural immunity to magic is set askew by the large amount of power needed for healing. What Lily is experiencing is similar to netha.”

Lily shook her head. “My Gift seems to be working fine.”

“It wouldn’t affect the way your Gift works. Sam likened netha to an allergic reaction in which the body’s immune system becomes hypersensitive or confused and overreacts to some substance. Your Gift is overreacting to the healing.”

“You’re telling me it’s my own Gift that’s causing the TIAs.”

“Boiled down, yes.”

Lily scowled and drummed her fingers once on the table. “If Sam can figure all this out from over two thousand miles away, seems like your Lady should’ve been able to guess it could happen when she first stuck this mantle in me. Old One, vast amounts of knowledge—they go together, don’t they?”

Oh, yes. Yes, the Lady must have known. The wild rage surged up like a sandstorm, tattering thought, fraying his control—

“Rule.” Lily closed her hand firmly over his.

He took a slow breath. Looked down at the table, at her hand on his. I am not whole. “I would speak with my nadia privately.”

“Sure.” Cullen shoved his chair back.

“That,” Lily said, “was a very Rho way to handle it.”

He looked at her, puzzled.

She squeezed his hand. “You didn’t excuse us so we could go to another room. You just let everyone know what you wanted.”

He didn’t understand her point. “I was courteous.”

Her mouth tipped wryly. “Yes, you were. Never mind.” She looked at Cullen. “About those pizzas . . . is ten large enough, if we’re including the guards?”

Six guards plus the four of them in the room.... “Better make it a dozen.” Rule lifted up so he could retrieve his wallet.

“I’ve got it,” Cullen said.

It was for him to feed his people. “No.”

“Yes. I’ve got your card number.”

Of course he did. Rule nodded.

The Rhej had stood, too, and moved behind Lily, placing her hands on Lily’s shoulders. “I won’t tell you to have faith. Faith is for God, not the Lady. But she’s good people. She’ll do right by you.”

Lily looked uncomfortable. That was probably more because the Rhej had brought God into the conversation than because she didn’t agree with the Rhej. She took a swallow of coffee to hide her discomfort. “I’ll bear that in mind. So how do you feel about anchovies?”

“Nasty little . . .” The Rhej stopped. Stilled. “Do that again.”

“What?” Lily craned her head around to look up at the woman. “Talk about anchovies?”

“Take another swig of coffee. A nice big one.”

“Uh . . . okay.” Lily did just that.

For a long moment no one spoke or moved. Then the Rhej nodded slowly. “Honey, I think you’re going to like this prescription. I want you to drink lots of coffee.”

“I always thought coffee affected you.” Lily refilled her mug.

Rule was leaning against the counter, frowning into his own mug. “I’m still not sure about it.”

Lily smiled and shook her head. Stubborn man. “The Rhej can sense what happens when a lupus drinks coffee. If she says it affects you, that’s good enough for me.”

“It’s what she said about it affecting the mantle I have trouble with. Nothing affects the mantles.”

Rule had always maintained that he enjoyed coffee purely for the scent and flavor. Caffeine couldn’t affect him any more than any other drug. His healing eliminated the effects too quickly. Lily had suspected he was fooling himself.

Turned out she was right . . . if, that is, you believed the expert.

That shouldn’t be much of a stretch. There weren’t many things that affected lupi, but a few herbs did, like wolfbane. According to the Leidolf Rhej, coffee acted like both stimulant and sedative on lupi, heightening concentration while calming them. The mechanism was different than for humans. It was the scent—the vaporized brew—that did it. Drinking coffee increased the effect, but not because of what was swallowed. Vapors travel from the mouth up the sinuses to scent receptors in the nasal passages, so drinking it increased exposure to the vapors.

For lupi, it was all about the smell.

The Rhej believed coffee acted on the mantle itself because the effects were strongest in mantle-holders. She couldn’t be sure. She sensed the physical, and the mantle was all power, no substance, so she couldn’t monitor what happened directly. But she was sure of the effect.

She was also sure of what coffee did for Lily. She’d sensed that clearly when she was touching Lily while she sipped from her mug. Whether because it affected the Wythe mantle or for some other reason, coffee did good things for the blood supply to Lily’s brain. Things that made a TIA less likely.

“The Rhej treated Victor with coffee,” Lily said. “It made him calmer, she said.”

“I am not Victor Frey.”

“Thank God.” The man who’d been Rho of Leidolf before Rule had been vicious and unprincipled . . . and that was before he went batwing nuts. Lily took a thoughtful swallow of coffee.

Had she been craving the stuff more than usual? Maybe. Probably, she admitted as she counted up the cups she’d drunk today. The Rhej had asked her that. She thought Lily had been unconsciously reaching for something that helped.

The Rhej and Cullen were in the living room, banished ever so politely because Rule needed to talk to her. So far, he wasn’t saying much. Lily walked up to him, set her mug on the counter, and slid her arms around his waist. “I know you’d rather that the mantles were invulnerable, but I’d just as soon believe the Rhej is right.”

His mug joined hers on the counter. He put his arms around her and rested his cheek on the top of her head. “I want coffee to work. To help. I want that so badly I don’t dare believe it.” He paused. His breath was warm on her hair. “I asked Sam to remove the mantle from you.”

She jerked her head up. “You what? You did what? Sam couldn’t . . . could he?”

“He can’t. Or won’t. I’m not sure which. He called me a fool and said it was as well that he wasn’t one, also. I asked if he could help you in some other way. That’s when he said he doesn’t tamper in the plans of Old Ones. Lily.” He ran both hands into her hair. “I understand better now why it’s so hard for you to consider joining the Shadow Unit.”

His eyes were dark and focused intensely on her. She rested a hand on his chest. His heart beat steady and slow. “Okay. Why?”

“You don’t know who you are if you aren’t first a cop. I knew that, but I didn’t . . .” He sifted her hair with his fingers as if he might find words there. “I didn’t understand in my gut. Now I do. I learned that I’m not . . . I’m no longer the Lady’s first. I still serve her, but she’s not first. If I must choose between you and her—”

“Don’t. Don’t try to choose.”

He placed his hand over hers. “Too late. I already have.”