“I get the idea.” Three people had gotten out of the van. Lily broke away to talk to them. Cynna was talking on her phone. “You lost us.”
“Twice,” he admitted. “Picked you up again, but you were off the map for nearly a mile at one point.”
“That’s not good.” Rule looked at his car, blocked now by two federal vehicles. He’d tucked the charm Cullen gave him last night under the driver’s seat, where Lily was unlikely to see or touch it.
She was so bloody stubborn. Observant, too, unfortunately. Cullen’s charm was supposed to allow her bodyguards to trail her, undetected—an excellent idea, if it could be made to work.
Rule slid his hand in the left pocket of his slacks and fingered the small gold button. It looked ordinary enough, though it was, in fact, truly gold—twenty karats, very soft and pure. “Perhaps we should test the panic button you gave me. If that doesn’t work—”
“If you’re not trying to insult me, then roll your tongue back up into your mouth so you don’t keep stumbling over it. That thing is simple. Witches make them all the time. Now, if you didn’t call to pester me about the tracking spell, what the hell do you want?”
“The answer to a question.” Lily and the crime scene techs started for the house. Cynna had put away her phone and was following. Briefly he explained about Harlowe’s victim and her reluctant boyfriend.
“You’re right about one thing,” Cullen said. “Helen could make people forget they’d seen the staff. Harlowe wouldn’t be able to do that. At best, a charisma Gift might persuade them to lie about seeing him with it.”
That could complicate things, Rule thought, when Lily talked to witnesses. “The boyfriend seems to have thrown off whatever effect Harlowe had on him pretty quickly.”
“Charisma’s a chancy Gift. Some are more susceptible to it than others, and if there’s a lot of dissonance, the effects don’t last. If that’s all you needed to know, I need to get back—”
“Not so fast. If Harlowe needed the staff to get the effects he did on his victim and the boyfriend, then he had it with him, but no one mentioned seeing it. A ‘don’t see me’ spell would explain that, but I’m told that’s impossible with a moving object.”
Cullen snorted. “It would present more problems than I’m up to handling, that’s for damned sure. I can’t even get this blasted tracking spell to work right. I need to talk to that Finder of yours. She might have some spells I could use. Or bits of them, anyway, once I take them apart to see how they work.”
“She’d like to meet you, too. But right now, I need to know if the staff could be made invisible.”
“Not true invisibility, I wouldn’t think. That alters the physical properties of an object, which requires not only enormous power, but—”
“Cullen.”
“Right. No theory, no explanations, just an answer.” Rule could almost hear his friend shrug. “The staff is Hers. I wouldn’t want to guess what all She can do that I can’t.”
“She’s limited in how she can operate in this realm.”
“But we don’t know what those limits are. except in a very general way. We know she can’t operate directly in our realm—she has to use an agent. Nor can she spy on us—on lupi, I mean.”
That was both lore and, according to Cullen, common sense. He claimed that the supposed omniscience of the gods—or Old Ones, as he preferred to call them—was basically one hell of a good farseeing spell. And farseeing spells didn’t work well on those of the Blood. “Or on Lily, as long as she wears the Lady’s emblem.”
“According to the Rhej, yes, and I’m inclined to think she knows what she’s talking about. But otherwise… we know damn little about the staff. Don’t know that much about demons, either,” he added thoughtfully. “Except for the lower sort that idiots sometimes summon. She seems to have made some kind of alliance with one of the demon lords, though. Hard to say what that means.”
“You’re not cheering me up.”
“You’ll feel cheerier once I’ve destroyed that bloody staff.”
Rule’s gut clenched. “I’m moving up the time for the next circle to tonight.”
There was a heartbeat’s silence. “Something’s happened.”
All sorts of things. “I’ll explain tonight.”
“It will have to be late, or between shows. I’m dancing.”
“Between shows, then. The same place—make sure Max saves it for us. Tell the others to arrive singly, as before.”
“What am I, your bloody secretary?”
“I can’t call,” Rule said quietly. “I could be overheard.”
“Filius aper umbo. All right. I’ll play secretary this once.”
Rule grinned in spite of himself. “You may be right, but I wouldn’t mention the possibility to the Rho.”
“We don’t chat often, so 1 doubt it will come up. Ciao.” Cullen disconnected.
Rule took a deep breath and did what he had to do, punching in a number he knew well. Why this felt like even more of a betrayal, he couldn’t say. But it did.
His father answered the way he always did. “Yes?”
“I need Benedict.”
“He won’t be happy. He just got back to his mountain.”
“It can’t be helped. I’m calling another circle.” Rule explained as briefly as possible. His father would know about the attack from Nettie, so it didn’t take long to fill in the rest.
“All right. What time, then, and where?”
“Have him check with me. I”m not sure where we’ll…“ Rule’s voice drifted off. Something he’d heard, though hadn’t fully registered, had brought his senses on alert.
Lily. Speaking to someone inside. From this distance he couldn’t make out the words, but the tone… He started for the duplex. “I’m needed.”
“Go, then—t’eius ven. Call me after the circle.” The Rho disconnected.
Rule reached the porch just as Lily came to stand in the doorway. Her quick glance his way told him little. “Baxter,” she called.
One of the suits Cynna was talking to looked up. “Yeah?”
“We’ve found something.”
Baxter started toward her, with Cynna right behind.
“What is it?” Rule asked. Lily looked at him and shook her head—and seeing her face clearly, he realized she wasn’t upset or shaken, as he’d thought. She was in a cold rage.
“What have you got?” Baxter asked when he joined them. The agent from the district office was sixtyish and fit, with most of his remaining hair concentrated in a pair of gingery eyebrows. He wore rimless glasses and reeked of tobacco smoke. He glanced at Rule, giving off a faint whiff of seru—just enough to tell Rule that, age and appearances to the contrary, Baxter considered himself the dominant male in most situations.
After that single glance, he ignored Rule. “What have you got?”
“Harlowe left us another little present in the DVD player.”
The bushy eyebrows lifted. “A bragger, is he?”
“You might say that.” She inhaled, visibly reaching for control. “He likes to take pictures, and Curtis wasn’t his first kill.”
Gan wasn’t happy. Earth hadn’t been as much fun as usual, not with it tied to Her tool. All Harlowe wanted to do was plan and kill, plan and kill. He wasn’t interested in fucking anymore, since he couldn’t do it.
And… well, all the killing was bothering it. It had hoped to see or uth a soul at the instant of death—that’s when one ought show up, wasn’t it? But that hadn’t happened. To all its senses, humans died so very dead.