Cullen had gone back to messing with his glowing glyphs or runes or whatever they were. The battered journal was open in front of him. Freshly made coffee perfumed the air.
Lily poured herself a cup. Her hands were steady enough for that. Rule handed a mug to Karonski and gestured at the table. They sat. Cullen ignored them.
“So?” Karonski said to Rule. “About that explanation.”
“A brief preface for Lily first.” Rule looked at her. “The communications staff”—his lips twitched—“sent out word that everyone is to report to me rather than Ruben. I didn’t explain. Most will assume it’s because he’s in hiding. I haven’t yet decided who and how much to tell the real reason.” He looked at Karonski. “But you need to know, Abel. Ruben is now lupus and the Rho of Wythe clan.”
Karonski didn’t fall out of his chair. Quite. He wanted explanations. Rule didn’t offer them, save to say that Ruben was well, but as a new wolf he wouldn’t be able to function as a man for some time—impossible to say how long. There had never been a new wolf who came to First Change as an adult. That might make a difference . . . or it might be years before Ruben could rejoin human society.
Assuming he could rejoin that society outside of prison, that is.
Karonski didn’t like it, not one bit. “What the hell were you thinking? If this is supposed to be some kind of improvement, it’s a damn sight—”
“It wasn’t my idea. Abel, think. Do you honestly believe I have the power to turn someone into one of my people?”
He subsided, still glowering. “Who, then?”
“The Lady.” Rule sipped from his mug. “You’ve been briefed. That’s all you’re getting. Now it’s Lily’s turn. Lily, Abel and Cullen will be working under you.”
She frowned. “Abel should be in charge. He’s got twice the experience.”
“Nope.” Karonski gave her a steady look. “I have the experience, but not the time. I’ve got three open official investigations I’m supposed to stay on top of.”
And she had nothing but time—interrupted now and then by things like her arraignment. “That makes sense.”
Karonski gave her a nod. “Plus you can contact Rule a helluva lot easier than I can, and you can do the mindspeech thing with Mika. I can’t.”
“Not predictably or consistently,” she said, “so don’t count on me to—”
Cullen sat bolt upright. “Hot damn. That’s it.”
“What?” Lily said.
He waved a hand at her. “Not now. I’ve got the trigger, but I still need to see how the . . .” His voice fell to a low mutter involving phrases like “nine signa” and “west quadrant” and “Mephistophelian dilemma, dammit” as he squinted at his midair squiggles.
She regarded him wryly. “Does Cullen know he’s working under me?”
“Technically,” Rule said, “yes. You’ll have two other resources to draw on. Arjenie will handle research. Ruben set her up with virtually unrestricted access, so that includes pretty much anything in the Bureau’s databases. Your other resource comes from one of our allies. The brownies.”
“Brownies.”
He smiled. “They’ll be more helpful than you think. You may recall that I told you Parrott had ties to Humans First. I knew that because the brownies have been watching him. He’s met with Paul Chittenden three times in the last two months.”
“Chittenden.” Friar’s East Coast lieutenant. She drummed her fingers on the table. “Parrott’s tied in at the top, then, which damn sure changes the picture. You couldn’t tell me this before?”
“Unfortunately, no. Brownies are, as you said, timid. Part of their agreement with the Shadow Unit bans us from revealing specific information they’ve gathered unless that information is obtainable elsewhere. They don’t want anyone who hasn’t pinkie-sworn to not reveal their secrets to find any link back to them.”
Abel grinned. “He means ‘pinkie-sworn’ literally. That’s what they do, all very solemn. I imagine Harry will show up at some point to take your vow.”
“Harry. Like my cat?”
“Exactly like your cat.” Rule’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “He’s the leader of the troop who are spying for us. He took that use-name to deal with us in honor of Dirty Harry, whom they consider a great warrior. When that demon showed up here last year—”
“They know about that?”
“Apparently they find you and me too interesting to ignore in spite of the clear drawbacks to being in our company. They’ve been keeping an eye on us whenever we come to D.C. When the demon approached last year, Dirty Harry yowled—giving warning—then took off.”
“That’s their idea of a great warrior?”
“He warned the others and made an excellent escape. Brownies are escape artists. They don’t consider courage a virtue. A grim necessity, perhaps. When I first met Harry, he compared courage to taking a laxative. If you must then you must, but you don’t want people patting you on the back for it, and you’d be crazy to swallow a whole bottle of cod liver oil if a little sip will do the job.”
She had to grin. “So Dirty Harry took the necessary sip, then split, which makes him a hero.”
“That’s about right, from what I can tell. You’ll have to get Harry—the brownie Harry, not the cat—to tell you the story sometime.”
Lily had never visited a brownie reservation. There weren’t any on the West Coast. “Are they as cute as they look in their pictures?”
Karonski snorted. “They’re freaking adorable.”
She nodded. She was kind of looking forward to meeting the brownie leader. “Okay. I need to lay out what I need from you two. Cullen, stop playing with your shiny lines and pay attention.”
“What?” He scowled. “I need to—”
“At the moment,” Rule said, “you need to do what Lily says.”
Cullen grimaced, but waved at his air-drawings. They vanished. “I’m listening.”
“You said the dagger might be elven made.”
“Not the dagger. The spell on it. And I don’t know for sure because I need to see the grimoire to confirm, but the spell is a mix of Vodun—that’s the part I’ve been working on in spite of all these interruptions—and what looks almost like Celtic runes. Almost, but not quite. The Vodun segment’s the trigger, which makes sense. Vodun specializes in charms and curses that can be used by nulls. Though there’s a weird bit to it—but I’ll tell you about that in a minute. The thing is, the Celtic-looking runes are not Celtic. I think they’re elven, because Celtic runes were derived in part from elven. But I need the damn grimoire—”
“To confirm your guess. Right. I’ve got the number for Fagin’s safety-deposit box. His thumb drive’s there, with a copy of his translation. He’s supposed to contact his attorney about getting the thumb drive. Here’s the safe deposit number and his lawyer’s contact info.” She handed him a sheet of paper with the information. “Talk to her.”
He grinned. “Guess it was worth listening to you, after all.” He pushed his chair back.
“Sit. I’m not finished with you.” She looked at the others. “One of the problems with the Bixton case has been the level of magical expertise required to make the dagger. If it’s elven work, that solves the problem. Rethna could’ve made it for Friar long before we came on the scene and spoiled his plans. He could have made other things for Friar, too. Things we haven’t run up against yet.”
Karonski’s eyebrows shot up. “Rethna’s the elf lord you two killed last month.”
It had been Arjenie’s sister who actually killed him, but Lily nodded.
“And you
like
the idea that he might have made all kinds of heavy-duty magical shit for Friar?”
“I like the idea of knowing what we’re up against. I like the idea that the guy who enspelled that dagger isn’t around to make more. If I’m right, whatever Friar’s planning, his best magical tools and assets are limited to stuff he’s already got. And I was thinking . . . maybe Rethna made a disguise charm for whoever impersonated Ruben. Elves and illusion go together, right?”
But Cullen was shaking his head. “I can’t rule that out a hundred percent, but I really doubt Rethna was good enough at illusion to transfer a solid one to a charm.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“Partly because of how his magic looked—which is a damned unsatisfactory answer, I know.” He looked frustrated, as if he didn’t like it much, either. “But in addition to that, Rethna’s specialty was body magic. Ah . . . something you need to know about elves. The nobility, anyway. They all have a bit of glamour, which is a type of illusion magic. Some of them go on to develop that enough to cast full illusions. And they’ve all got a bit of body magic, enough to heal themselves and change their own bodies to some extent. All those pretty hair colors? They aren’t born with baby blue hair.”
“Like that spell that elf lady gave Cynna to turn her permanently blond. That’s body magic?”
“That’s right. Some elves go on to develop their body magic enough to affect the bodies of others. But body magic and illusion are two very different types of magic. The more you develop one, the harder it is to work the other. It may be different with the High Sidhe,” Cullen admitted. “Probably is, but we aren’t talking about High Sidhe. We’re talking about Rethna. He was aces at body magic, so it’s unlikely he could do much with illusion. It would be like a Water Gifted trying to work Fire spells. With a lot of work he might learn a few of the simple ones, but he’d never be that good at them. He’d sure as hell never call Fire.” Cullen waved his hand. For a few seconds tiny flames danced there, then puffed out.
Lily nodded. “Then if Rethna was really good at body magic, could he have changed someone to look like Ruben?”
“Probably. I very much doubt he could’ve made someone smell like Ruben, though.”
“The maid didn’t say anything about Bixton’s visitor smelling like Ruben,” she said dryly.
Rule answered instead of Cullen. “Matt did.”
She swung to face him, frowning. “I don’t know Matt. Who—no, wait, I remember. You were going to send someone to check out the trail I followed into that park across from Bixton’s house. That was Matt?”
“He’s Cynyr, one of those who’ve been guarding Ruben. He knows Ruben’s scent and he has an unusually good nose, even when two-footed. I heard from him this morning. He found Ruben’s scent on that bench in the park.”
“But that’s crazy.”
“Actually,” Cullen said, “it’s not. Though I just finished putting together ... can’t call it proof, but supportive evidence for my theory. Which I’m warning you is pretty wild, but the trigger on that dagger wasn’t just meant to be used by a null. It was made to be used by a magical construct.”
She blinked. “And that helps you how?”
“I think Friar used a doppelgänger of Ruben.”
A dopplegänger? “Uh . . . isn’t that some kind of ghostly double, a harbinger of death? You see your doppelgänger and you die. Something like that.”
Cullen rolled his eyes. “I’m talking about real doppelgängers, not fairy tales. Not that real ones are supposed to be real.”
“Is there a point you can back up to where you start making sense?”
“Son of a bitch,” Karonski breathed. “Son of a bitch. You’re talking about a double? An actual, physical double?”
Cullen’s eyebrows lifted. “Basically, yes.”
Karonski leaned forward. “I need to tell you about one of my open investigations. The one into the attack on Ruben.” He patted a closed folder. “It’s all in here, but I can sum it up. We know how the potion was administered. According to what Sherry’s group found, it was added to a pot of coffee. The problem is, Ruben says Ida brewed that pot. Ida says she didn’t. She washed out the pot like usual, then went back to her desk and didn’t go back in Ruben’s office until he had the heart attack. Whoever made the pot, it was brewed between five and five fifteen. Ruben had the heart attack at five forty. Three people had access to the pot between five and five forty—Ruben, Ida, and the director.”
Lily jerked back. “Ida? No. That’s not . . .” Ida Rheinhart had been Ruben’s secretary forever. Sure, she was kind of scary, but scary like Lily’s third-grade teacher. Lily, like the rest of her class, had been convinced Mrs. Brown was an alien. She had to be, since she was either telepathic or really did have eyes in the back of her head. Unlike some of the kids, however, Lily hadn’t thought Mrs. Brown was a kid-eating alien. No one had gone missing, after all.
Ida didn’t eat children, either. Or FBI agents who failed to file a report properly, however much it might seem that way at times. And if you pulled out her fingernails one at a time, she’d give you the Gorgon gaze, but she would not betray Ruben or the Bureau. “But it can’t be the director, either. Can it?”
“None of the above, if Seabourne here’s right.” Karonski’s eyes gleamed. “We’ve been looking for some kind of compulsion charm, which is several shades of unlikely, especially since Ida claims she doesn’t have any blank places in her memory. But compulsion is all we could make fit—until now.”
“Oh, yeah.” Cullen was almost purring. “I don’t feel quite so crazy now. I don’t suppose you found any puddles or wet places near Ruben’s office?”
Karonski frowned. “Nothing like that in the reports. I didn’t arrive on-scene until long after puddles would have dried up.”