He wasn’t much like a dog—too big, too smart, too wild—but he did love a good pet. She rubbed him briefly behind the ears. “Did you find anything interesting out here?”
He gave his head a single shake.
“Come on, then. I’ll bag your feet on the porch.”
They’d done this at a couple of other scenes, so had the routine down. Lily put plastic bags on Rule’s feet, securing them with covered rubber bands. Then she took off her shoes, cleaned her feet with an alcohol wipe, and pulled on her gloves.
Bare feet weren’t the preferred way to enter a scene you didn’t want contaminated, but they were the fastest way of picking up any magical traces inside. Lily checked the door, ready with the key she’d taken from Hodge’s pocket. But he hadn’t locked it before leaving home to kill people.
The door opened directly into the living room. It was small, cluttered, and dusty. The sofa was floral and faded; the La-Z-Boy recliner, newer and facing the television. Shelves along one wall held framed photos, books, a hodgepodge of inexpensive collectibles in glass and ceramic.
“He’s been a widower about ten years, according to Mrs. Asteglio. Looks like he kept things the way his wife had them.” Lily moved farther into the room. Here, yes—a prickly foulness on the soles of her feet, faint but unmistakable. “Check along here, where I’m standing. Traces of death magic.”
Rule sniffed. His lip curled back. He looked at her and waited.
The trick was to ask only yes-or-no questions. “You smell anything nonhuman?” He shook his head. “Human, then?” A nod. “Someone other than Hodge?” Negative. “Damn. Well, let’s keep looking.”
But twenty minutes later, the only magical traces Lily had found were the fading touches of death magic here and there, apparently left by Hodge himself after being possessed or constrained by something wielding death magic. That and a dim, indeterminate tingle on the old Bible on the table next to Hodge’s double bed.
It wasn’t the first time she’d run across a nondescript magical residue on objects of faith. You’d expect it with Wiccan holy symbols, given that religion’s connection with magic, but she’d found it on Bibles, Torahs, once on a small statue of Buddha. Magic sometimes built up in them over time, a slow, sedimentary accumulation, even when the individual who owned the object had no magic at all to confer upon it. She didn’t understand that, but it wasn’t unusual.
It was damned discouraging, though, in this case. Hodge was a man of faith, but his faith hadn’t protected him.
Still, it was confirmation that whatever they were dealing with, it wasn’t demonic. Those of strong faith couldn’t be possessed by demons.
“You find anything?” she asked Rule. He shook his head. She sighed. “Okay, let’s go. I’ll bring your clothes.”
They went to the old cedar so Rule could return to his usual form without giving the neighbors a thrill. The Change came more easily, she knew, when he had his feet planted literally on the ground. She held his clothes and waited.
Lily held a secret conviction that one day, if she watched carefully enough, she’d be able to make sense of what she saw when Rule Changed. Did his eyes alter first? Was his fur swallowed up by spreading skin? Did the bones melt before re-forming?
This wasn’t the day. If there was order in the process, her eyes refused to find it, reporting only unsynchronized snatches.
First he stood there on four feet; then the universe bent, folded, and folded again in directions that didn’t exist. Feet were two, four, and two again. Fur both was and wasn’t, but the “wasn’t” stuck. Prickles danced across her eyeballs as if the air were playing a tune on them.
Then he was a man, naked and magnificent. She handed him his underwear, not allowing herself to regret the necessity. She would see him naked again soon, she hoped. Not as soon as she’d like, with him heading for Leidolf Clanhome. But soon.
“I didn’t find any magical traces, except the nasty stuff. You?”
“Nothing.” He stepped into the shorts and accepted his pants. “I could swear no one has been in that house except Hodge himself for at least a week.”
“Then he was contaminated elsewhere.” A sigh sneaked out. It would be hard, maybe impossible, to learn who all Hodge had been in contact with away from his house. At least they had a limited time frame to work with—the four days since the other killings.
Or did they? Could the whatever-it-was have infected two people at the same time? More than two? “Maybe I’ll luck out and he’ll be able to tell me what happened to him.” If he lived. If he hadn’t been driven insane like Meacham. “I’m going to head for the hospital next, see if he made it. See if I can talk to him.”
“I’ll be gone when you return, then.” Half-dressed, Rule lost interest in completing the job, putting his hands on her shoulders. “I wish I could be in two places. I don’t like leaving you to deal with this alone.”
“I won’t be handling it alone.” But she didn’t want him to go. It was selfish, it was stupid, but she didn’t want him to go. She told herself to ignore that. “Rule . . . can you tell me about Toby now? Why you’re worried?”
He was silent, unmoving, for several heartbeats. When he spoke, his voice was carefully even. “A boy nearing First Change is kept segregated at the terra tradis. This is for the safety of the human members of the clan, of course, but also so that he’ll be surrounded by clan lupi at First Change, so the mantle will know him. Toby should not respond to either my Changing or the mantles this young. Do you remember when Cullen explained the type of cancer that sometimes afflicts us in old age?”
“Sure. That’s what the Leidolf Rho has. The magic in his system has separated from the pattern that should hold him to his proper shape. Cullen said . . . Oh. Oh, shit.” She’d just remembered the rest of it—the other time, aside from extreme old age, when a lupus might be struck down by this wild cancer.
“Yes.” Rule’s voice was soft now, almost a whisper. “Sometimes—rarely—it strikes in early adolescence, at or soon after First Change. We don’t know what goes wrong for those few, but some say . . . There are reports, anecdotal evidence . . .” He stopped. His jaw tightened.
Lily knew he was fighting for control—and that he needed it. Right now he needed the flat force of logic to keep the monsters at bay. So she waited, holding back her questions and fears to give him time.
Finally he swallowed and finished. “When a boy feels the tug of Change too young—when it pulls at him before he’s heard the moonsong—it may be a sign that First Change will trigger the cancer.”
SEVENTEEN
LILY hated hospitals. Just pulling into the parking lot of one made her jaw set, kind of like lowering her butt into the dentist’s chair. She was a reasonable woman, she thought as she locked her car and strode toward the entrance. She was glad some people didn’t share her aversion. It would be hard to staff the places if everyone shuddered at the thought of walking into one.
Though she didn’t see why anyone would want to work in a hospital. Maybe it was like coffee—you started drinking it, despite the taste, because you needed something to pry your eyes open, and before you knew it, you were grinding beans or paying five bucks for fancy caffeinated froth.
Pritchard Memorial was midsize. She’d been assured it had good doctors, good tech, and at least some shielding for that tech. They didn’t have a separate cardiac unit, though, so Hodge was in ICU awaiting surgery tomorrow, when his pacemaker would be replaced.
She stopped in the ER first, where she found that Ed Eames was about to be released. “I’m one of those ‘treated and released’ victims,” he told her with a smile that missed the cockiness she thought he was aiming for. “The kind who don’t get mentioned in the story by name. You heard anything about that woman? The young mother?”