Blood Magic (19 page)

TWENTY-THREE

LILY
took some satisfaction from slamming the door—but not much. She wanted to go back and yell at Rule some more. Where did he get off, telling her what she thought, what she felt?

She couldn’t believe he’d picked
now
to dump that on her. That was just wrong.
He
was wrong. What made him think she didn’t know what she wanted? She wanted him, dammit. Marriage was . . .

She dragged a hand through her hair. Marriage was scary.

There. She’d admitted it. Marriage scared her, but it was the right thing to do . . . wasn’t it?

She started walking.

The Medical Examiner’s building was a graceless white Lego set in the midst of a sea of concrete. They were supposed to move to a new, larger facility soon—they’d long since outgrown this one, which had been built in the 1960s. But construction delays had them still working in the same old cramped quarters Lily used to visit, back when she was with Homicide.

It was stupid to feel a twinge of nostalgia for the dead house.

Cody straightened as she reached his car and fell into step beside her. “Hey, there. You’re not wearing your happy face.”

“Gee, I wonder why not. Big investigation, stinky corpse. What’s not to put a smile on my face?”

“No, that’s your just-had-a-fight face. I ought to know. I used to see it often enough.”

The past ghosted across Lily’s mind. It smelled like cigarettes and wet sand, burnt coffee and bourbon. She slowed without meaning to, tilting her head for a sideways look at the man beside her.

Cody’s face hadn’t changed much, and his body was still strong, muscular. But he didn’t smell of cigarettes anymore. Or bourbon. “I was never sure how much you remembered of those fights. Toward the end, especially.”

“Most of them. Most of them I remember better than I’d like. If it makes any difference, you were right.”

She shot him another glance. “What, about everything? That’s a dangerous thing to say.”

He grinned. “I live for risk.” The grin faded. “Not for booze. Not anymore.”

They walked in silence for a moment, heading for the loading bay on the side of the building. “I heard,” she said finally. “I heard you went to rehab.”

He snorted. “Got my ass shoved into rehab, you mean. I screwed up big-time and I got caught, which was the best thing that could’ve happened. Course, I was too stupid to see that at the time. Not entirely stupid, because I knew it was only luck I didn’t get anyone killed, but pretty damn stupid. You told me that’s where I was headed. You were right.”

She’d heard about it. Cody had been off duty when he tried to stop a liquor store robbery. Unfortunately, he was there as a customer—and way over the legal limit already, which was why the idiot had a cab take him to the store. Typical Cody, she’d thought at the time—half asshole, half hero. He’d known he was too drunk to drive, but he’d still tried to take down an armed perp.

It could have been so much worse. Cody ended up with a slug in his thigh and the clerk got his hair parted by a stray bullet, but they both survived. The perp got clean away.

Oh, yeah, she’d heard about it. Some of CJ’s friends had made sure of that. The way they saw it, if she’d stuck by him, he wouldn’t have needed to drink so much. “I didn’t want to be right.”

He smiled. “If you’re not going to take the opportunity for one helluva good I-told-you-so, I can’t make you.”

That smile flicked a lot of memories on the raw. She stopped, looking at him. “Did you know what Hammond and Sheffield said after we broke up?”

He shook his head. “I was too down-deep in my own miseries to pay attention to much else.”

“They told everyone I’d used you. That the Armani bust should’ve been yours, but I used you, took the credit, then dumped you once I got some attention from the brass.”

“Shit. Those assholes. I should’ve guessed they’d shoot off their mouths, but I didn’t. I didn’t think, which was typical for me back then.” His voice went low and fierce. “Lily, you gotta believe me about this much. After you dumped me, I said some shit I shouldn’t have. I was hurting, and I wanted like crazy for it all to be your fault so I wouldn’t have to look too close at me. But I never talked you down professionally. Not to those two or anyone else.”

Some of the rawness eased. Though she noted the qualifier—he hadn’t talked her down
professionally
—she could let that go. After a breakup, people talked bad about the other one . . . or that’s what seemed to be the norm, anyway. Lily hadn’t talked about Cody at all, good or bad, but that was her norm. When she hurt, she clamped down tight.

“Okay. I believe you. Maybe we’d better let all that rest in peace now. I’m here to get a look at that body. There’s a lot riding on this one.” She started forward.

He fell into step beside her. “Guess I picked a bad time to drag up auld lang syne. You’re smarting from whatever you were arguing about with your new man.”

“You said the vic was found in a storage shed.”

“I can take a hint. You don’t want to talk about him, but I can’t help wondering—”

“Is Magruder the pathologist on this one?’

He shook his head sadly. “Guess I might as well let it drop. You aren’t talking. But you could have knocked me down with a feather when I learned you’d taken up with a lupus. Fun and games I could understand . . . well, sort of. You weren’t exactly the fun-and-games type back when I knew you, but that could’ve changed. I hear lupi are real good at changing a woman’s mind about that sort of thing. But you and he are an item, right? Been together a few months.”

“I’m remembering another reason we used to fight so often. One that had nothing to do with your drinking.” They’d reached the loading dock. She jabbed the buzzer next to the normal-size metal door, but the light stayed red, meaning the door was still locked.

“You fight with your lupus dude much?”

She punched the button again. “On what planet would that be any of your business?”

“Friends get to ask that sort of thing.”

“We aren’t friends!”

That came out too hard, too strong. The flicker of hurt in his eyes was real, judging by how quickly he hid it with a grin. “Don’t think I mentioned it at the time, but that’s one of the things I appreciated about you. You didn’t give me that ‘let’s just be friends’ crap.”

“Cody.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “You want to get together and have a heart-to-heart, fine. But later, dammit. Right now, I’ve got an investigation. It’s not about just one guy—one lupus—who got stabbed. It’s a whole, huge, scary lot more than that. That’s where my focus belongs. You are not helping.”

He regarded her out of eyes gone flat and unreadable, then pushed the button she’d tried twice, and held it down. “Magruder’s on vacation. Davis did the autopsy. He’s new, so you may not know him, but he’s got a good eye.”

The door opened. “You don’t have to lean on the goddamn buzzer,” the young man snapped. “I’m coming as fast as I—oh, hey, Cody. What’s up?”

“Jamal, my man.” Cody and the attendant executed an elaborate high five, then Cody intoned, “We’ve come to see dead people.”

Jamal cracked up. Cody could do that—make the corni est line sound fresh and funny. And he knew everyone. There were one and a quarter million people in San Diego, and Cody seemed to know half of them by name. Grinning, Jamal said, “You’re at the right place, then.”

“Then I got one thing right today. Jamal, this is Agent Yu,” Cody said as they came in.

“Sure, I know you,” the attendant said, amiable now. “Lily Yu, right? But I thought you were a detective.”

“Used to be. I’m with the FBI now.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Want to have a seat? Dr. Davis is working on another one right now, but he’ll be out to talk to you when he’s done.”

“I need to see the body with the wound to the heart. I can do that while I’m waiting for Dr. Davis.”

“Guess that ought to be okay. He’s a smelly one,” Jamal warned as he started down the hall. “I’ll get you a mask, but it won’t help.”

“Worse than a floater?”

“Four, five days in this heat—what do you think?”

The door to the second autopsy room opened and a tall, lanky man with silver-rimmed glasses, a Jay Leno chin, and dirty blond hair stepped out. He was unfastening his green surgical gown when he noticed them. He frowned. “Cody. You don’t have a case here, do you?”

“Not today,” Cody said cheerfully. “You called me about that one you did this morning, remember?”

“Right.” His gaze flicked to Lily. “This must be the FBI agent you mentioned.”

“Lily Yu,” she said, moving forward and holding out her hand. “You’re Dr. Davis?”

He reached out to shake automatically. His hand was large, dry, and devoid of magic. “Good to meet you, Agent Yu. You’re interested in Mr. Xing, I understand.”

Lily’s heart kicked up a beat. Maybe she knew this vic. “If he’s the man with the wound to the heart, then yes, I am. You’ve ID’ed him?”

“I did that,” said another voice. “It’s tentative, pending the dental.”

An older man sauntered down the hall from the direction of the offices. His white hair and beard gave him the look of Santa in civvies. The blue eyes twinkling behind gold-rimmed glasses heightened the effect, though Santa wasn’t supposed to have . . . Well, those weren’t just bags beneath his eyes. More like steamer trunks.

“T.J.,” Lily said, grinning with pleasure. “You’ve grown fur.”

He gave a nod to Cody and stopped in front of Lily, fingering his new beard. “Hides the wrinkles.”

T.J. didn’t just have wrinkles. He had deep, droopy crevasses. “It looks good on you, but how in the world do you get away with a beard?”

Cody’s phone chimed just then. He plucked it from his pocket, glanced at it, and moved a few feet away. “Beck here.”

“Doctor’s orders,” T.J. said.

“The doctor ordered you to grow a beard?”

“Got this dermatitis thing that’s irritated by shaving.”

He looked completely serious. T.J. always looked completely serious when he was winding you up, which was pretty often. The man might resemble Santa, but he had a sick and twisted sense of humor. He was also one of the best cops she knew. He’d mentored her when she got transferred to Homicide. “This your case, then?” she asked.

“It was. You going to grab it away from me?”

“I play nice, when I can.”

He shook his head mournfully. “Didn’t learn that from me.”

Actually, she had. “You said the vic’s name is Xing. Anyone I know?”

“Probably. I made him based on what’s left of the tattoo on his right bicep. One of those Chinese thingies they use for writing. You’d recognize it.”

The Xings had an import company. They brought in cheap pottery, souvenirs, and heroin. “Which brother was it?”

“Too short for Zhou, so it must be one of the twins. We’ll need dental to be sure.”

Cody put up his phone. “Lily, that was dispatch. I have to go.”

There were maybe a dozen things she might say, but none seemed right. She kept it business. “I’ll be in touch about what I learn here. Thanks for the tip.”

Cody’s dark eyes flicked between her and T.J. “T.J., good to see you—however briefly. Later.” He lifted a hand in a casual farewell and headed for the door.

She didn’t realize she was watching him go until the door closed behind him and T.J. drawled, “He does have a cute ass.”

“That he does.” Lily felt a twinge of embarrassment at being caught looking, but only a twinge. “I didn’t think you were wired right to appreciate it, though. Camille know about that?”

“Camille,” he said of his wife of thirty-some-odd years, “knows everything. Absodamnlutely everything. Seems like I heard you and Beck were an item a while back.”

“Five years ago. It’s kind of weird, running into him again.” And that was enough of that subject. “I need to see the body.”

“Think you mean you need to touch it.”

She met T.J.’s eyes. They weren’t twinkling now. The whole time she’d worked with him—with everyone in the SDPD—she’d hidden her Gift. Some had guessed, but they’d kept quiet about it. T.J. was one of those who knew and hadn’t spoken. “Yeah,” she said at last. “That’s what I mean.”

“What’s this? You want to touch the body?” Dr. Davis shook his head. “That’s against procedure.”

“It’s part of my procedure, Doctor. I’m a touch sensitive. Your DB’s wounds sound like those inflicted in a near-fatal attack I’m investigating—one which involved the use of magic. If I can pick up traces of magic on the wound, I’ve got a solid connection.”

The frown lingered. “I didn’t know that sort of thing was considered evidence.”

“What I learn from my Gift isn’t admissible in court, but I’m allowed to use inadmissible leads in pursuance of an investigation.” And tired of explaining that, but it came with the territory.

“Hmm. I suppose that makes sense.”

She bit back the urge to tell him the attorney general would be glad to hear that the pathologist agreed with him. “What can you tell me about the wound?”

He was on comfortable ground again. “Entry from the rear, angled up through the fifth and sixth ribs to penetrate the left ventricle. The assailant used a very thin blade, between one quarter and three quarters of an inch in width. I can’t be more precise due to the decomposition of the flesh, I’m afraid.”

“That’s better than I’d expected, considering the decay.”

“I based my estimate on the wound to the heart itself.”

Speaking of which . . . “Have you put Mr. Xing’s pieces back together yet?”

“The tech is doing that now, I imagine.”

“Maybe we could stop him or her. It would be handy if the heart wasn’t put back yet. That’s where I’d expect to find traces of magic, if any are present.” That body had been rotting in the heat a few days. But she had to try.

Dr. Davis’s frown seemed to be a permanent fixture. “I’m concerned about your touching any portion of the corpse without gloves. With such intensive microbial action, there’s a severe risk of contamination.”

Lily grimaced. “Guess I’d better scrub really well, hadn’t I?”

TWENTY-FOUR

THERE
was no magic on the corpse. Not on the entry wound or on the heart. Lily hadn’t really expected to find any so long after death, but it would have made the connection between this killing and the attack on Cullen definite. As it was, she only had a “maybe.”

Still, it was a strong maybe, and the detective in charge of the case was T.J. He wouldn’t hold out on her. She didn’t intend to hold out on him, either. The treaty might have kept her from giving Ruben information, but T.J. wasn’t an agent of the federal government. He needed to know what he might be facing.

Dr. Davis personally supervised her scrubbing. He even timed her. When she was done, he allowed that she was probably safe to mingle with others and even eat.

Eating was a damn fine idea, and she knew just the spot. Rosa’s was a hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint a couple blocks from the Medical Examiner’s. The crowded lunchroom had frigid air-conditioning, red-hot
enchiladas verdes
, and a TV that was always tuned to a local Spanish channel. Lily agreed to treat T.J. to lunch there.

T.J. had two cases with the Medical Examiner, so while he talked to Dr. Davis about a different DB, Lily headed to Rosa’s and ordered for them both. She sat where she could keep an eye on the door so she’d see him when he got there. That also gave her a view of the TV, which was showing a Mexican soap opera.

It was just like old times. T.J. had always insisted that junior detectives were obliged by code, courtesy, and common decency to pick up the check for their seniors. Now his story was that rich FBI agents could damn well afford to treat their underpaid local cousins.

While she waited for the food and for T.J., she took out her notebook. She hadn’t made any notes yet about her talk with Sam. She needed to get the details down, get her thoughts moving—and to see if she
could
. Would the treaty stop her from recording information?

First, though, she made a couple phone calls. She got Rule’s voice mail, which made her drum her fingers. She left him a message . . . a brief, businesslike message asking what he’d told Cynna and Cullen.

It made her stomach hurt. She didn’t understand why. It hadn’t been all that big a fight. Sure, she’d been mad, and who wouldn’t be? He’d picked a helluva time to get all huffy about the wedding. He . . .

Was right, dammit. Anger drained out like a balloon deflating. She’d overreacted all the way around. The binding the damned treaty placed on her infuriated her, and she’d kicked out at Rule. That wasn’t fair.

Rule was right about something else. She knew in her gut it was right to marry him, but . . . Well, some people might be fine going with their gut, but she needed reasons. They were bound together for life whether or not they got a license from the state, so why marry?

Instead of figuring that out, she’d pretended the question didn’t matter. In some obscure way she’d felt it was disloyal to ask questions about marrying Rule.

Lily sighed. It wasn’t like her to avoid asking.

She wasn’t the only one in the wrong, though. Rule’s anger must have been simmering awhile, but he could have brought it up earlier or left it on the back burner a little longer. Like maybe until they weren’t trying to stop an undying being from wrecking the city without precipitating a wave of illegal immigration that really might destroy the fabric of civilization.

She tapped her pen on her notebook. How many Chimei were there, anyway? How did you stop them if they weren’t entirely physical?

Time to get some things on paper. First she jotted down the gist of what Sam had told them about the Chimei. The treaty didn’t stop her. Maybe it would keep her from showing them to anyone? She made a note to find out, then added her conversation with Li Qin, then the call from Ruben. Then sat there, tapping her pen against the table.

Some three hundred years ago, Grandmother had killed the Chimei’s previous sorcerous lover. And that was weird, thinking of Grandmother being around longer than the United States . . . but the point was that killing the Chimei’s lover would stop her. But it was a temporary solution, and not one Lily could use, anyway. She was a cop. She arrested people. She didn’t assassinate them.

Of course, Lily could have legally killed the Chimei if the Chimei had been killable. The Chimei wasn’t human. The law was in a huge muddle about nonhumans, but Congress had given Unit agents wide discretionary powers right after the Turning, when any number of creatures had been blown here by the power winds.

But she wasn’t some legalized hit man, dammit. That wasn’t what she did.

She also wasn’t entirely human herself.

Her thoughts hitched—just this quick, mental hiccup that interrupted her as thoroughly as a siren.

She understood why it bothered her. It upset her sense of who and what she was. Until last year, she hadn’t even thought of herself as Gifted. People didn’t think of sensitives that way because blocking out magic seemed the antithesis of working it.

Then she’d found out that being a sensitive
was
a type of Gift. That had unsettled her, but not for long. Once she thought about it, it made sense. This, though, was like . . . It was like finding out she was mostly female, but not entirely.

What did it mean to “partake of dragon nature”?

You have already begun to manifest one ability common to dragons
, Sam had said. He’d said something about her overlooking it, too.

Mindspeech? She hadn’t done that except with him, and her conversations with the black dragon were hard to overlook. How could it be possible for her to use mindspeech with non-dragons when her Gift prevented her from using magic? Did she even want to?

Automatically, Lily started to jot those questions down. She stopped with “how would.”

Her notebook could be produced in court. She didn’t want to be cross-examined about mindspeech or partaking of dragon nature on the witness stand.

She went back to the original question. How could she stop the Chimei?

From what Li Qin had said, the bond between the Chimei and her lover had something to do with keeping the Chimei physical, or with her ability to affect people’s minds, or both. Lily needed to know more about that.

Grandmother
, she wrote. And underlined it. And added Cullen’s name beside it. Either the Chimei or her lover considered him a real threat. He might have some ideas about how to break that bond without resorting to murder.

Okay, assume she found the sorcerer. She knew a few things about him now, and she had a lead to follow, thanks to Dr. Davis. Assume she learned how to break his bond with the Chimei . . . big assumption there, but was that bond anything like the one she knew so much and so little about? The mate bond that tied her to Rule?

If so, did the Chimei have to be physically close to her lover?

She underlined that question. It would sure be handy if the answer was “yes.” Separate the two and maybe both would be weakened or incapacitated.

Skip past the assumptions, though, and the question was: how did she arrest a sorcerer? His magic couldn’t affect Lily directly, but if he started a fire, she’d burn. And if he knew how to call mage fire . . . A shiver of remembered pain turned her hands clammy.

Last year, Cullen had used mage fire to destroy an ancient staff. They weren’t certain if the scar on Lily’s stomach came from the mage fire itself or from the intense heat it produced. Supposedly she was immune to magical fire, but mage fire was different. Black fire, it was called. Cullen said it could burn anything.

Another difference with mage fire was that the heat was oddly contained. Localized. Cullen thought that the black fire consumed most of the very heat it produced. But the staff had been touching her when Cullen zapped it, so even highly localized heat could have burned her.

They couldn’t very well test the two ideas to see which one was right. Aside from the general danger—mage fire was hard to control—Lily had no intention of letting Cullen try crisping some part of her.

Enough of that. Did this sorcerer know how to call mage fire? It was supposed to be a lost art, but Cullen had rein-vented it. Someone else could have, too. She made a note to ask Cullen about that and what other tricks the sorcerer might possess.

And how did you lock up a sorcerer, anyway? Back in the days of the Purge they’d made life simpler for themselves by cutting off hands, chopping off tongues, that sort of thing. Not options the federal penal system could adopt.

Clearly she’d been shaken after hearing Sam’s story. She’d missed asking several questions. If Sam couldn’t or wouldn’t answer them, Li Qin might be able to. Or Grandmother.

Where was she? Lily underlined
Grandmother
a second time. That was one question she might be able to answer . . . with a little help from a friend. Cynna was one hell of a Finder.

And what in God’s name was Sam up to?

He was manipulating them. She was sure of it. Maybe he had to because the geas forced him to be devious. Maybe he had, like Li Qin had said, a good goal in mind. But she didn’t like it.

“You so deep into your scribbling you didn’t see me?” T.J. demanded. “If I’d been a bad guy, I could’ve popped you.”

“I saw you,” Lily said without looking up as she finished jotting down one more thing. “Even if I hadn’t, the server’s headed this way with our plates, so it stands to reason you’d be here.”

He grinned and pulled out his chair. “I’ve got great timing. That’s what Camille always tells me, and she ought to know.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Have I given you any reason to think I’d want to hear about your sex life?”

“I’ve seen you checking out my ass. Did you order me . . . Ah, here it is. Extra jalapeños. Thanks, sugar.”

T.J. could not be brought to believe that waitresses didn’t always like being called
sugar
. Lily accepted her plate with a nod of thanks, turned the page in her notebook to a blank one, and said, “Let’s talk about the Xings. What have you got?”

RULE
finished his account of what he and Lily had learned. There was a long pulse of silence.

He had three listeners—Cullen, Cynna, and Max. Jason was present, but sound asleep; Nettie had left to arrange for Cullen’s release and transport by ambulance. Cullen would go to Sam’s lair this afternoon. Various bits of medical paraphernalia would be traveling with him, as would Nettie and Jason. Nettie wouldn’t stay at the lair, but Jason would.

So would Cynna, of course. Rule wondered if Sam had anticipated such a large contingent of guests when he agreed to host Cullen.

Cynna broke the silence. “So we’ve got two bad guys, and one’s a sorcerer. Lily saw him, so we’ve got a physical description, but it’s kind of vague and may not help much if he can make everyone except Lily think he’s someone else. The other bad guy is some kind of out-realm being hundreds or thousands of years old. She’s a heavy hitter magically who eats fear and can’t be killed.”

“Except by dragons, apparently,” Rule agreed.

“Good thing I’m leaving,” Cullen said. “Won’t take him long to find me.”

Rule looked at his friend. Cullen’s skin was waxy, his breathing shallow. An oxygen mask dangled from the corner of his bed. He hated it. After some discussion, Nettie had agreed he could leave it off for brief periods. He’d interpreted that to mean whenever he was awake.

He wasn’t healing. According to Nettie, Cullen wasn’t any worse, but he wasn’t healing. “Lily’s taken every precaution she can to keep your location secret. You’re here under a different name, you don’t have any hospital staff caring for you who might gossip about your presence, and—”

“And the killer’s a sorcerer.” Cullen snorted faintly. “Think he can’t find his own spell, which just happens to be in the middle of my damned chest?”

“Shit!” Cynna said explosively. “I’m a Finder. I should’ve thought of that. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Cullen smiled faintly. “You’re used to no one being able to do what you do. And maybe a little distracted.”

Cynna gripped his hand and gave him a long, intent look full of the things lovers can say in silence. Rule could see worry and promises in that look. No doubt Cullen saw much more.

She spoke quietly. “No point in me trying to jazz up the room ward now. I’m not as good at that as you. By the time I had anything with a hope of deflecting a Finding spell, you’d already be lazing around the dragon’s lair.”

Cullen’s eyelids were beginning to droop. “Where Sam’s wards will do a fine job of keeping out anything he doesn’t want around. Though I won’t mind if he lets that bastard get close enough to be his afternoon snack.”

“Sam has wards?” Rule said, surprised. “I didn’t think dragons did that.”

“The young ones like Micah don’t. Don’t think they can. Their ability to shape magic . . . seems a . . . product of age. Sam’s wards . . . are elegant as hell. I’m looking forward to . . .”

“Oxygen,” Cynna said firmly, grabbing the mask.

Cullen grimaced. “I don’t—”

“Want to be a baby about this,” she finished for him, slipping the mask on.

Rule grinned. He liked watching these two together.

Cullen took a couple slow breaths, then pulled the mask aside to say firmly, “Food.”

Rule glanced at Cynna. “What arrangements has Nettie made?”

“He can eat pretty much whatever he wants,” she said. “To avoid any chance of his tray being poisoned, we’re supposed to go get it from the cafeteria downstairs.”

“Not we,” Max said. “Him.” He jerked his thumb at Rule. “He’s the least useful person here.”

Rule’s eyebrows lifted.

Max chuckled. “Don’t like that, do you? Sure, you could jump someone faster than the rest of us—if you could see who needed to be jumped. You can’t, I can, end of story. As for the rest of this crowd, Cynna here can tell if her wards are disrupted. Jason can deal with medical problems if needed. You’re just not that necessary.” He grinned evilly. “I’ll have a cheeseburger and fries with the works.”

Max was obnoxious, but right. Rule took down the others’ requests. Jason woke up and placed an order, too, though he had to be persuaded it was okay for his Lu Nuncio to fetch his food. “You won’t be able to eat all that,” Rule told Cullen when he ordered three double-meat cheeseburgers plus fries. “You’ll fall asleep before you finish.”