Mortal Sins

TWENTY-FOUR

“YOU didn’t think it would?” Lily snapped. She darted inside to slap at Hodge’s recliner, where several of the bits of splashed fire had landed. “Dammit, Cullen, get some water or something.”

“Oh. Sorry, I forgot.” He held out both hands. All the baby flames leaped toward him, banging together to make a single large flame that danced a few inches above his raised palms . . . then faded away.

Lily quit slapping at the upholstery. “You’re showing off again, but at least this time it was effective. What did this spell do? Other than sling fire and dirt around Hodge’s living room, that is.”

“It’s a Finding spell, of sorts.” Cullen rose, dusting off his jeans. “One I adapted from a couple of Cynna’s kielezo. I’ve used it to find haunts, but couldn’t be sure it would react to traces of the scattered dead.” He frowned. “I expected the dust to go flying. I wonder why the fire did, too.”

“Figure it out later.” The scattered dead: that had an ominous ring. “Are you telling me we’re after a ghost?”

“Yes and no. He’s more of a ghost-maker, like the ghosts said. But he’s definitely dead. Well, mostly dead.”

“Mostly?” This was one of the want-to-punch him times. “I’m sure that means something.”

“I’m afraid this is one of those good news, bad news deals, love. The good news is that I can tell you what has been possessing people.”

“And that would be?”

“A wraith.”

She frowned, trying to match the word with anything she’d heard or read. “Doesn’t that just mean ghost?”

He shook his head. “Ghosts occur naturally from time to time, and are almost always harmless. Wraiths are far from harmless. And far from natural.”

“Keep talking.”

“They . . .” He ran a hand over his head, spiking his hair. “I’m laying this out poorly. I’ll start with the historical record. Wraiths existed in the past, but there hasn’t been a confirmed account of the creation of a wraith—”

“Creation?”

“Yes, they’re made, and yes, that means you have a human practitioner to look for. Don’t interrupt,” he said, scowling. “Let your questions pile up while I lay out what little I know, which is . . . ambiguous, unsteady, unreliable.

“As I was saying,” he continued, beginning to pace, “I’m unaware of any confirmed accounts of a wraith for perhaps two hundred years. I have reason to think their absence is mostly due to a lack of available power, not the eradication of spells to create one. Because the accounts are so old, most of what I tell you is anecdotal at best. The stories often contradict each other . . . but there are stories of wraiths in almost every culture. Hungry ghosts, they’re sometimes called, or the scattered dead. They both create and consume death magic.”

“How—”

He stopped, fixing her with a firm stare. “Hush. There are a few, very few, mentions of possession by wraiths. I would have called those bits highly apocryphal, but it looks like they were accurate. I need my references.” He brooded on that briefly, then resumed his restless motion. “Almost all of my texts and scraps of texts are back home. Cynna’s going to check them for me.”

“You talked to her about it?”

“Yes. She has a Vodun acquaintance, a mambo—that’s a female priest—who has told her a few things about wraiths. They could be complete fabrications, made up to frighten or impress. The woman is not exactly reliable. But Vodun deals with spirits, so its practitioners are probably the best contemporary source on the subject.”

He paused again, his expression intent. “I’ll give you a summary of the things that hold true in most of the stories, both those I’ve heard about or read and what Cynna’s contact told her. First, wraiths are created by a practitioner delving into forbidden arts. That part’s solid. To create one, the practitioner must blend magic and spirit in a—call it an unholy manner. It may be an attempt to create a soul-slave. That’s not solid, but it has a good probability.”

“What’s a—”

“Save it. Second, wraiths may or may not be able to kill directly—that’s one of those areas where the stories contradict each other—but they can certainly hasten death for the ill or infirm. They feed off the act of dying, the transition from mortal to something else. In feeding, they create damaged ghosts. And no, we don’t know why. Normal ghosts fear the damaged ones and the wraiths who make them. That’s what tipped me off that you had a wraith here.

“Also, I have reason to believe it would take either enormous power or skill on a level of an adept to create a wraith. There aren’t any adepts around, so I believe yours was made during the power winds of the Turning. That’s the only time there would have been enough free magic available. All right.” He gave her a single nod. “Ask your questions.”

“Why do you think it would take so much power?”

Magnificent blue eyes narrowed in irritation. “I should have known. How is it you’re able to zero in on the one thing I don’t want to talk about?”

“Sheer, mind-boggling talent. Usually the things people don’t want to tell me are exactly what I need to know. So talk.”

“All right, all right. It won’t help you, but I don’t want you wasting your delightful obsessiveness on a distraction. I once saw a spell intended to create a wraith.”

She took a quick step closer. “You saw it? But of course that helps. If you know how they’re made—”

“I don’t. I burned it.”

Lily stared. “You burned it.” She shook her head. “I would have voted you the man least likely to destroy any spell, no matter how icky.”

His face was tight. “Icky. That’s one word for it. There was a . . . miasma about the very parchment it was written on. A foulness. Two layers of reality, and the one underneath was . . .” He lifted both hands. “I can’t describe it to one who doesn’t see what I do, but that spell was abomination.”

“If you burned it, how do you know it would take so much power?”

“I read part of it before I realized what it was.”

“So what do you remember about it?”

“I don’t,” he said curtly. “I have been careful not to remember. There was this compulsion . . . Mind you, this was before I had my shields. Years before. I think the spell may have drawn me to it.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “A sentient spell.”

“Hardly. But there was something about it, something that could crawl inside you . . . Evil accumulates, just as holiness can.” He shrugged. Cullen was as uncomfortable discussing religion and spirituality as she was. “The point is, I saw enough to understand that there were two ways to implement the spell. One required great knowledge; the other, great power.”

She took a moment to order her questions. “What’s a soul-slave?”

“Probably impossible, but during the Purge some sorcerers were accused of trying to create one by binding a soul after death.” He shrugged. “I’ve never put much store in those accusations. Sorcerers were also accused of eating babies and drinking the blood of virgins—anything to whip up enough hysteria to do the job, which was killing, maiming, and blinding people like me. Some of whom, admittedly, were not nice folks, but the wholesale butchery . . . Well, that’s not today’s subject, is it?”

“Okay, You said wraiths hasten death. Hospitals have dying people. What can we do to protect them?”

“I have no idea.”

“Cullen—”

“A really strong protective circle might work. I could make one that would, but I can’t make one that strong that’s larger than about ten feet. And I can’t spend all my time at the hospital, holding a circle around one or two patients.”

She took a breath, let it out slowly. She’d come back to that later. “Next question. If the spell was cast at the Turning . . . that’s nearly seven months ago, but it gives me a place to start. Are there likely to be any unusual ingredients? Stuff I could trace?”

“Blood and death. The practitioner needed blood from someone who was dying. Then he needed their death. It takes a death to make a wraith.”

Of course. Of course. Lily tapped her fingers on her thigh. “Then I need to find out who died at the Turning. Someone in Halo or nearby, right? If a wraith is like a ghost that way, I mean. Ghosts are bound to a place or, more rarely, an object.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You’ve done some homework.”

She waved that away. “Ruben had this panel about it. Is a wraith like a ghost? Bound to a certain area?”

“Most likely, yes. If the stories are true.”

Progress. “I’m looking for a violent death, right? Death magic requires violence.”

“A wraith creates and consumes death magic, but the spell to create one—damn, how to put this? The spell is just that, a spell. A relatively simple working, not a ritual. I suspect any death could be used, but the spell caster would have to be present at that death.”

“So I’ve got two perps, and one of them, the spell caster, is human enough to arrest.” That pleased her on several levels. “He or she would have been present when someone died at the Turning. That gives me something solid to look for. When we find him or her . . .” Lily frowned, turning it over in her mind and not liking what she came up with. “I guess we get the human perp to stop the inhuman one.”

He sighed. “You’ll remember I said this was a good news, bad news deal. We’ve arrived at the bad news.”

“Persuading the perp won’t be easy. The law wasn’t designed to cover this sort of situation, but maybe with the promise of a reduced sentence—not that the bastard deserves it, but . . .” Cullen was shaking his head. “What?”

“The stories about wraiths are consistent about a few things. The practitioner who creates one must feed it to maintain control. A wraith who feeds on its own has broken free of its creator.”

She absorbed that. “You think this wraith is no longer controlled by its creator?”

“It’s possible, even probable, given the sudden change in its feeding pattern. And if so, I have no idea how to stop it.”

“Mage fire burns anything. You’ve always said that.”

“Lily, even mage fire won’t kill someone who’s already dead.”