“Why not?”
Lily struggled for a way to explain. “You’ve got some kind of shields, right?”
“Sure.” She looked around. “Um… I’m going to need to touch something of Kim’s.”
“We’ll tag whatever you handle. Try not to leave fingerprints on anything else.” She moved to the dresser, which held a mirror, jewelry box, and several bottles of perfume on a little tray. “Anyone with a Gift can learn to do spells, right?”
“Pretty much.” Cynna elbowed open the closet door. “Some are better at spellcraft than others. Most of us are only really good at a few types of spells, the ones related most closely to our Gift.” She sat on the floor and pulled out an athletic shoe, running her bare hand over it. “This will work.” she said with satisfaction.
Apparently shoes absorbed more than sweat from their wearers. Lily opened the jewelry box. Kim Curtis had liked earrings and bracelets. No necklaces, though. “So shields would be stronger or weaker depending on how strong your Gift is and how good you are at that type of spell.”
“Basically. There are ways to store power, but it helps to have a strong Gift.”
“Well, I can’t use magic,” Lily said flatly, closing the jewelry box. “And I don’t have shields. Being a sensitive is more like… like not being porous. Some substances won’t soak up water, no matter how much you pour over them. Magic can’t soak into me, no matter how much I’m hit with. Except…”
“Don’t stop now. If there’s an exception, I need to know about it.”
“Last night Nettie was able to put me in sleep. I’m told she used some sort of religious energy, not magic. But it was still a spell. I don’t see why it worked on me.”
Cynna shrugged. “Can’t help you much. I don’t know what the difference is, either.”
She put down the shoe and rose.
“I’ve got Kim’s pattern. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick up enough of Harlowe’s to do any good, but I’ll give it a shot.”
“You can limit your scan to Harlowe, right? So you won’t get anything from the staff.”
“I don’t scan. I sort.”
“I’m not following you.”
“They’re two different operations. Scanning would be… oh, like looking for a red scarf you dropped on the floor. You’d see it from a distance. You wouldn’t have to touch it or pick it up. Sorting is more like looking for a silk scarf in a tangled pile of scarves. You’d have to touch the scarves to find the one you wanted and work it loose from the others.”
“Then be careful what you pick up.”
She flashed Lily a grin and moved up to the bed. Gradually all expression bled out of her face, leaving only focus. She held her left hand at her waist, palm out as if deflecting something, and extended her right arm, elbow locked and fingers together, pointing down at the bed.
Slowly her arm swung to the left. Nothing else moved. She might have been a statue with a single moving part— the slowly swinging arm, moving now to the right. If she still breathed, it didn’t show.
The arm hesitated and stopped. Gradually, her fingers spread out.
Her eyes rolled back in her head. As if every muscle in her body had simultaneously melted, she collapsed.
Lily leaped for her. She got there just before the woman’s head smacked into the bed frame, but not with any grace. Off balance, Lily ended up going down with Cynna sprawled half on top of her.
She managed to sit up, shifting so Cynna’s head rested on her thigh. She was checking her pulse when those whiskey-colored eyes blinked open and Cynna said, “Shit.”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Turns out the sorcerer was right. That staff does not want to be found.”
For a second Lily just stared at her. “You tried to find it. After everything I said—in defiance of a direct order—you tried to find the damned staff.”
Now she looked sheepish. “I, uh, figured you didn’t know what you were talking about.”
Lily stood. Cynna’s head hit the floor. “Hey!”
“Karonski was right when he called you a loose canon. How am 1 supposed to work with you when I can’t trust you?” She wanted to punch something. “Did you bother looking for Harlowe’s pattern at all?”
“Of course,” She had the nerve to sound indignant. “What I found—I assume it’s from Harlowe—was all tied up with the ugly stuff. Couldn’t sort it out.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“I wasn’t excusing myself. Just letting you know.” Gingerly Cynna got to her feet. “Whew. I feel as if I’m coming off a three-day drunk. Ah… I was wrong about one thing, so maybe you should, ah, check to see if… well, if something was done to me. It shouldn’t be possible,” she added hastily. “Not at a distance. But the impossible just keeps happening lately.”
Lily was mad enough to let her stew a while. It was only after a severe struggle with her less professional side that she managed to say curtly, “I touched your skin when I checked your pulse. No trace of death magic, so I’d say the staff didn’t do anything but knock you down.”
“I guess you couldn’t have missed it if there was just a teensy trace?”
“If death magic had a smell, it would be like that stuff they put in natural gas to make it smell bad—even the tiniest whiff and you know it’s there. If I touch death magic, I know it.”
“Good.” There was no mistaking the relief in Cynna’s voice. “Uh… there’s one more thing I need to tell you. It’s about Kim Curtis.”
“Yes?”
“She isn’t entirely gone.”
TWELVE
RULE felt sick. “You’re sure the residue you picked up isn’t a ghost?”
They were waiting for the FBI’s crime scene specialists to arrive. He and Cynna stood in one corner of the yard. Lily was on the porch, talking to the uniformed officer who’d been first on the scene. The rest of the police were gone. Leung had dismissed them in a temper fit when his chief told him to let the FBI have the scene.
At least the press hadn’t showed up. Yet.
Cynna shook her head. “I don’t know what I picked up, but with ghosts there’s always a direction, you know? This time there wasn’t.”
“What made you try to find a dead woman?”
“I always check,” she admitted. “When I’m called in, a lot of times someone has died violently. That’s a good way to throw up a ghost. So I do a Find on the victim to make sure. If there is one, we call in a specialist.”
He looked at her quizzically. “You’ve Found ghosts, then?”
“Sure. They’re not that unusual. Most times they aren’t strong enough to manifest, so no one knows they’re around.”
“And when there isn’t a ghost, you get… what?”
“Nothing. When people die, there shouldn’t be anything for me to Find. This time there was… well, not all of her, but something of her. That’s what a ghost feels like. Only this remnant wasn’t tied to a place like a ghost would be. I don’t know what it means.”
“It means,” Lily said grimly as she joined them, “that he didn’t just kill her. He took her life—and fed it to the staff.”
Cynna shook her head stubbornly. “I couldn’t get a fix on the staff. How could I pick up on something inside it?”
“You connected with it, though. It knocked you on your ass. So where is it?”
“1 couldn’t tell, dammit! Something…” She stopped. Swallowed. “Something’s blocking me.”
“The staff, yes.”
Cynna looked ill. Rule didn’t feel too great himself. Was the remnant of Kim Curtis aware? Trapped, bodiless…
He turned to Lily. “Did you learn anything useful?”
“Maybe.” There was strain around her eyes, a tightness he instinctively wanted to ease. “I heard a lot more about Mike Sanderson, the one who found her. I’m trying to get a handle on why she brought Harlowe home with her.”